THE DOCKET
Justice for Victims of Mass Atrocities
Anya Neistat is the Legal Director of the Docket Initiative.
The Docket Initiative’s mission is to bring actions against those involved in international crimes. It also represents victims in their pursuit of justice through the international criminal courts.
Anya Neistat and her colleague Solomiia Stasiv will be taking part at various Q&A sessions at festival screenings.
To find out more about The Docket and their work please click here.
Further reading:
TRUTH HOUNDS, the human rights organisation, who document and investigate war crimes in Ukraine and eastern Europe.
We have teamed with impact partners Legacy of War Foundation and BlueCheck Ukraine.
In collaboration with Legacy of War we are raising funds for Mobile Women’s Healthcare Units. Fundraising efforts directed to BlueCheck Ukraine will be distributed to their vetted organisations providing food, shelter, medical care and more.
Legacy of War Foundation has been operating fully-equipped ambulances in conjunction with implementing partners on the ground since June 2022.
Though the vehicles were initially supplied to support evacuations for people with disabilities or medical needs, since April 2023 they have increasingly focused on operating mobile clinic services and improving primary healthcare access in Kherson, Donetsk and Kharkiv Oblasts.
Each ambulance can see up to 60 residents per day, connecting them with clinicians via Starlink telehealth systems to fill this gap in healthcare provision. Around 60% of existing patients are from vulnerable categories (people aged 60+ or children), with 70% of appeals in general from women.
Although these mobile clinics are suitable for minor health complaints, up to 8% of patients have to be referred for further diagnostics and 0.5% require immediate referrals or hospitalisation.
However, there is limited provision for specialist healthcare in the immediate surroundings, and many people are unable or unwilling for safety reasons to travel to population centres.
Overnight stays for testing are often necessary due to wait times, curfews and travel restrictions, which can be an unmanageable expense for patients. These referrals additionally place a burden on hospitals and facilities in areas that are already overwhelmed with casualties and patients with more significant needs.
This, alongside other factors related to the full-scale invasion and the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, has led to a drop in diagnoses (of up to 20%, for example, in the case of cancers) and means that even simple health complaints are often left untreated resulting in serious outcomes (Nabok 2023).
Reflecting changing needs on the ground and based on recommendations from our implementing partners NGO Casers and Fight for Right – as well as local clinicians and hospital teams – Legacy of War Foundation is seeking funding for two women’s health units to provide specialist support for civilian populations, initially in Kherson and Kharkiv Oblasts.
Each unit – equipped with Starlink, a portable ultrasound device and a colposcope and manned by a trained gynaecology nurse/technician – would be capable of providing diagnostics to up to 20 patients per day. The units could also host rotating clinics, and would provide a private space for women to access psychotherapy appointments delivered on both an in-person and remote online basis.
Support vehicles would provide access throughout the local area, and provide free transport for onward referral. The mobile units can also provide a discrete way for victims of sexual violence to seek and receive expert treatment and counselling.
The units could additionally be used to provide HPV vaccination clinics in areas with a higher prevalence of under 26-year-old women (Castellsagué et al. 2009), or to run breast cancer screenings with use of a mammogram.
Working in conjunction with our existing mobile clinics as well as similar community health programs in the area, results could be processed and sent to clinicians for review within minutes enabling same-day diagnosis and referral.
This would reduce unnecessary travel for testing and enable teams to provide immediate care, improving health outcomes throughout the region. These units would be well equipped to transition to supporting women’s healthcare provision throughout Ukraine long into the future.
Ukrainians are doing their best to meet these needs. Today, former artists, academics, and technology executives are running frontline aid groups, mostly in Eastern and Southern Ukraine, keeping people alive under sustained Russian bombardment.
Without outside financial support these humanitarian groups cannot operate.
BlueCheck Ukraine was established to vet, verify, and support these frontline groups, which sprang up right after the war began in February 2022. To date, BlueCheck has raised and distributed $5 million to 28 frontline groups focused on a range of needs. No middlemen, no bureaucracy, straight to the people on the ground making a difference. There are many benefits to this model, but we sum them up with three words: Speed, Commitment, and Connection.
With a commitment to maximizing every donation and the connections to identify and vet local groups, BlueCheck is able to allocate resources where they are needed when they are needed.
BlueCheck partners provide:
Today, as attention on Ukraine has started to wane, BlueCheck’s partners are increasingly desperate for assistance.
A donation to BlueCheck goes directly to verified partners on the ground, doing vital work to keep people alive and safe.
Please support our impact partners in the vital work they are carrying out in Ukraine.
The money will dramatically increase the ability of the teams to provide life-saving primary interventions, basic primary care and treatment, and counselling for the unknown number of women and girls who suffered sexual violence but have been unable to report or seek any help.
We set out to do things differently: challenging the traditional neo-colonial concepts in the aid sector, and designing a model that is led by – and returns power to – the communities we work with.
Legacy of War Foundation’s extensive Ukraine Crisis Response provides targeted support for vulnerable communities including adults and children with disabilities, women, and LGBTQ+ people. We supply specialist aid; help people to access primary healthcare in frontline areas; and improve prosthetics provision through training.
To find out more click here.
Since its inception, BlueCheck, in partnership with Ropes & Gray and Integrity Risk International, has identified, vetted, and funded more than 28 local Ukrainian and Ukraine diaspora organisations that have been evacuating children, providing emergency medical care and mental health services, building shelters, distributing food and cash assistance, removing unexploded ordnance, and more.
These organisations have an operational presence in every oblast in the country, most with fewer than 25 staff members and operating budgets of less than $500,000. Nearly sixty percent of the groups did not exist before the war.
To find our more click here
