Dear Friends,

Since Russia’s assault on Ukraine began in February, LGBTIQ organizations in Ukraine and across Europe have opened shelters for displaced queer people. Groups that spent years honing their advocacy skills suddenly had to transform themselves into humanitarian aid organizations. And in Ukraine and neighboring Moldova — where Russian-backed forces have long controlled a breakaway region — activists are tackling this work while also being refugees themselves or fearing they soon may also be forced from their homes.

Last month, OutRight sent me to visit partners in the region and learn more about the situation.  I spent much of my time with Gender Stream, an organization founded in the central-eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Within hours of the first bombs landing in Ukraine, director Olha Polyakova and her team piled into a small car (along with a cat and Russian toy terrier) and drove to a city on Ukraine’s border with the EU. (For security reasons we’re not disclosing its exact location.) They began working with the Swedish organization RFSL to open a shelter for displaced LGBTIQ people in Ukraine, and are operating two shelters inside the EU with OutRight’s support to house people who leave the country. They developed a specialty in helping transgender people navigate the military bureaucracy. Under Ukraine’s conscription rules, most people with male identity documents are forbidden from leaving the country, and are required to register for military service. Gender Stream is helping trans people get medical exemptions from conscription, and the documents they’d need to leave the country, but this process is getting increasingly difficult to access as the conflict continues.

One person I met on the Ukraine side is a young trans woman who served in the military after high school. She only confided being trans to one person during her service, believing her life would be in danger if it was widely known — she did not believe she would survive if she was forced to serve again. She wanted to change the gender marker on her documents when she came out of the military, but that requires the sign-off of a psychiatrist under Ukrainian law. And she was discharged just as the coronavirus pandemic began, when doctors would only see patients facing a medical emergency.

Through OutRight’s Ukraine emergency fund that wched on February 24, we’ve been able to support work of these organizations to respond to this crisis. As of April 19, we have already distributed more than $715,000 USD to 32 local partners in Ukraine and neighboring countries. The grants are providing emergency assistance to LGBTIQ people who need safe shelter, food, co medical care, transportation for those who are fleeing, and other types of humanitarian support.

In solidarity,

J. Lester Feder
Senior Fellow - Emergency Research