Violence and related human rights abuses against women fleeing the war in Ukraine

This project will interview women who have arrived in the EU from Ukraine as a consequence of Russia’s war of aggression about their experiences, including violence and other human rights abuses related to the conflict. The data collected will contribute to efforts to better respond to the needs of women displaced by armed conflict.

Project Status

Ongoing

Project start date

May

2023

What?

The project will interview women who have arrived in the EU from Ukraine as a consequence of Russia’s war of aggression. The women will be asked about their experiences, including violence and other human rights abuses related to the conflict. The face-to-face interviews will take place in three EU Member States – Czechia, Germany and Poland, which are among the countries in the EU that have received the largest number of persons displaced by the war. The data collected will contribute to efforts to better respond to the needs of women displaced by armed conflict.

Why?

As a result of the devastating war, an unprecedented number of women have fled their homes in Ukraine to seek safety in the EU. These women are in need of protection and assistance – including services which are afforded to victims of crime according to the Victims’ Rights Directive. The data collected in the project will contribute to a better understanding of the experiences and needs of women who have fled the war in Ukraine and who may have experienced violence and other human rights abuses while in Ukraine, during their journey to the EU and after arriving to their current place of residence in the EU.

How?

The project will interview women who have fled the war in Ukraine and are now residing in one of the three EU Member States where the interviews will be conducted. The interviews will ask women about their experiences in Ukraine during the war, in transit and in their current country of residence, including their experiences of violence and exploitation, awareness and use of support services and service needs. Where relevant, the project aims to collect data that is comparable with other surveys that have collected data on violence against women – including FRA’s 2012 survey on violence against women, surveys on conflict-related violence against women carried out by the OSCE (including data collection in Ukraine in 2018), the European survey on gender-based violence against women and other forms of interpersonal violence (EU-GBV survey) and the 2023 FRA-EIGE survey on violence against women.

Fleeing Ukraine: Displaced people’s experiences in the EU

February

2023

Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine triggered scenes not seen in Europe for decades. It has since caused death, immense destruction, and unspeakable suffering. It also set in motion a mass movement of people not seen since World War II. To protect them, the EU activated the Temporary Protection Directive for the first time. In doing so, all EU Member States must offer protection to those displaced from Ukraine.

The war in Ukraine - Fundamental rights implications within the EU - Bulletin 1

May

2022

This bulletin looks at the fundamental rights situation of all persons fleeing the Russian war in Ukraine to the four EU Member States neighbouring Ukraine. This is primarily in terms of the application of the EU Temporary Protection Directive. It is based on findings of FRA’s field mission to Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia at the beginning of March 2022. It is also based on weekly country reports prepared by Franet, the contracted research network of FRA between 1 March and 27 April 2022.

Violence against women: an EU-wide survey. Main results report

March

2014

This FRA survey is the first of its kind on violence against women across the 28 Member States of the European Union (EU). It is based on interviews with 42,000 women across the EU, who were asked about their experiences of physical, sexual and psychological violence, including incidents of intimate partner violence (‘domestic violence’).