Ukrainian TV journalists show the human cost of the IDP crisis

It had been an early start for the family of Jamal Dzhamirov. They had been up since 5am cooking for a group of Ukrainian television journalists.

It hadn’t been asked for, or expected. But for Jamal, his wife and seven daughters, it’s what you do when people visit. You make them feel welcome; even if you’re all living in two cramped rooms in a town far from your real home.

Jamal and his family are Crimean Tartars, some of the estimated 1.6 million internally-displaced persons (IDPs) who have fled their homes in the Crimea and Donbass regions of eastern Ukraine.  

They want to talk about their experience, particularly Jamal who has just returned after fighting in what’s known as the Anti-Terrorist Operation Zone (ATO) in eastern Ukraine.

The family are happy to be filmed about their plight but don’t want us to reveal the name of their new home town near the city of Lviv, in western Ukraine.

Their home is the first stop of the day for a team of regional TV journalists being trained by the Thomson Foundation on how to produce stories showing the human cost of the IDP crisis as a way of helping to defuse tensions caused by the problem.

By telling their stories you help to highlight the considerable difficulties that many IDPs face.

Thomson Foundation trained journalists in Ukraine on how to produce stories showing the human cost of the IDP crisis 

At the end of the five-day TV workshop the participants each produced a high-impact and balanced report for broadcast on their television stations.

Jamal told the journalists: “I wish the government officials would visit me and ask how my family are, like you have done,” he said. “Do they know how we have to live – a family with seven daughters in just two rooms?”

Despite the high numbers of displaced people in Ukraine, coverage of the issue has diminished in the regional and national media. Internationally, too, their situation is a low priority for journalists when Syrian refugees and ISIL dominate the news agenda.

However, 21 months since the first pro-Russian gunmen seized key buildings in the Crimean capital Simferopol, many of the people who fled the region, or left the eastern Donbass area, remain in temporary homes. Some left in just the clothes they wore, and have had to abandon hopes of an early return home as well as all their possessions.

Despite the high numbers of displaced people in Ukraine, coverage of the issue has diminished in the regional and national media

The previous week Thomson Foundation trainers Deborah Kelly, Simon Hustings and Ivan Charalambous were more than 1,000 kilometres away, 10 hours by express train, in Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine. There, many of the displaced are townsfolk living in small villages, where their industrial skills don’t match the jobs available in agriculture.

That was the plight of the family of Vita Pan’kova. Her husband worked in manufacturing in Donetsk and now remains jobless. They, and their two children, face a freezing winter in a small flat without heating in the village of Sinichino.  

Uncertainty about the future

In Kharkiv, the journalists also met the volunteers who run mobile units distributing food and clothes as well as offering legal and psychological help. Often the volunteers are displaced people themselves.

Marina Alfyorova, a local volunteer, said: “The displaced people depend on us for help. By telling their stories you help to highlight the considerable difficulties that many of these people face such as uncertainty about their futures and practical problems of poor housing.”   

The work of the 13 journalists attending each workshop has been broadcast and posted online by the media organisations they work for.

There are further broadcast workshops planned for other regional centres in Ukraine in 2016.

Regional Voices: Strengthening Conflict Sensitive Coverage in Ukraine’s Regional Media is an 18-month EU-funded initiative, implemented by the Media Consortium of five organisations: Thomson Foundation, Institute of Regional Media and Information (IRMI), MEMO 98, Association Spilnyi Prostir (ASP) and The European Journalism Centre, in close cooperation with local partners, including Ukraine’s National Union of Journalists.

Regional Voices

Jamal and his family are Crimean Tartars, some of the estimated 1.6 million internally-displaced persons (IDPs) who have fled their homes in the Crimea and Donbass regions of eastern Ukraine.  

Find out more about the project: regionalvoices.eu