Ukraine: Now is the Time to Remember Children and Families

My Great Great Grandmother, Anna Punaks; the mother of my Grandfather, Valis Punaks, who fled Latvia at the age of 18 to escape being captured and killed by the Soviets in 1944.

Note: This blog post was originally published by Family for Every Child in February 2023.

In 1944 my Latvian grandparents and great-grandparents were forced to flee their country when the Soviets invaded.  Initially the men stayed behind to defend their country, while the women escaped to Poland as refugees.  Eventually, as the war drew to a close, all were reconnected again in a refugee camp with nothing more than a suitcase each to start their new lives in Britain.

This is but one of millions of stories like it from WWII, and many of us are familiar with what came next.  Years of coming to terms with the loss of loved ones – husbands, fathers, wives, mothers, sons and daughters.  The loss of homelands, the loss of livelihoods, disrupted education for children, and deep trauma for everyone.

Maybe like me you thought that military conflicts in Europe between superpowers were in the past, that the cold war was over, a mere part of our history we could learn from. Maybe like me you thought we could reassure ourselves that this would never happen again.  But we were wrong.  It is happening again, it is happening now.

Nearly three quarters of a million Ukrainians have already fled and arrived as refugees in Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Moldova.  The EU estimates that this number may go up to 4 million people.  Families are being torn apart as men are obliged to stay and fight for Ukraine, while women and children flee on trains with few possessions, not knowing when or if they will ever see their husbands, fathers or sons again.  Not knowing if they will ever see their homes again.

At Family for Every Child we know that children need a stable family environment to prosper.  Eighty years of evidence shows that when families are separated it is highly damaging for children’s emotional, intellectual and physical development. 

Like me, you may be glued to the news, following the latest incursions of tanks and soldiers into Ukraine, or the ever growing package of sanctions crippling the Russian economy.  Yet amidst this macabre drama it is easy to miss where the long-lasting damage is being done - to innocent children and families. 

Helping mothers and children access food, medical care, clothing and shelter should be our immediate priority.  But this tragedy may not end soon, and if this happens, families will need help learning new languages, legal support with paperwork, access to employment to earn money to feed their children and preserve their dignity, children’s education and child-care, and where possible, communications with those they have left behind. 

We need to do everything we can to help traumatised families get the help they need.  We need to do everything we can to ensure this is high on the agenda of governments and decision makers. We need to do everything we can to support local civil-society organisations who are amongst the most effective at working on the ground to support refugees. 

In the United Kingdom, where I live, there are monuments to WWII in every town with the words “Lest we forget” written on them.  Indeed, now is the time to remember.  We must remember the real victims of war and do everything in our power to prioritise the most vulnerable.  Now is the time to remember children and families.