In war-torn Ukraine, more than 14 million people have fled their homes, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency. People have left for neighboring countries, primarily Poland and Romania, and have also been internally displaced, fleeing to other regions within the country.
Photographer Alissa Everett has been documenting the experiences of refugees for 15 years. In Ukraine, a country devastated by a full-scale invasion by Russia since February, she found uncertainty and intimacy while capturing humanitarian efforts on its borders.
In March, Everett traveled to western Ukraine and the surrounding borders of Moldova and Romania, where for over 10 days, she was asked to capture "individual, human stories behind the inconceivable numbers of refugees," as she tells Mashable. Everett was commissioned by a communications officer working for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a United Nations agency providing services primarily concerning migration, particularly in times of crisis and in order to support those displaced.
"There was a sense of urgency," Everett says, "to provide humanitarian assistance to the millions of Ukrainians fleeing across the border." During her time with the IOM, Everett witnessed the organization as they formalized the refugee registration process, logged data, and set up a humanitarian corridor to move refugees from the borders of Moldova to Romania. The agency had also set up a partnership with Airbnb to provide immediate housing for refugees. The latter consisted of a 15-hour bus journey, with extremely long waits at border crossings in the middle of the night. Most of the people on the bus had already taken days to arrive to the border, some driving and others taking public transportation.
"Each and every one I spoke with had their lives completely turned upside down," she continues. "From children leaving school, facing moving to a country whose language they do not speak, to women who worked in Ukraine facing providing for their children and finding a place to live."
Everett says that she primarily met women and children, who were "exhausted from long journeys, having witnessed and lived through traumatic events, relieved to be reaching safety and yet incredibly uncertain for what the future might hold." Most of the families had left men behind — brothers, fathers, husbands, sons — and didn't know "when or if they would ever see them again." Men aged 18 to 60 have been banned from leaving the country, as enabled by the declaration of martial law.
"Each refugee is a person with their own story, hopes, dreams, desires."
"In these situations, it is easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer numbers, and incredibly important to remember that each refugee is a person with their own story, hopes, dreams, desires," Everett says. This was her purpose during her time in Ukraine: to centralize the individual in each portrait, as they navigate the atrocities and heartbreak of war.
In the western regions of Ukraine, where pockets of peace offer relatively less intense fighting and outright acts of war, Everett captured photographs of women and children, many of whom had taken refuge in bunkers or apartments dotted across cities. Days were broken with air sirens and trips to these bunkers, and while life was moving forward, there was an "unspoken tension" hovering. A dominant fear, she found, "that comes from the enemy being able to attack from 2-3000 kilometers away and attacking places typically seen as refuge: churches, schools, hospitals."
A large majority of the people Everett met in Ukraine were involved in war efforts, from finding ways to distribute medical supplies to the frontlines to helping others who had been displaced by offering refuge and support.
"That sense of purpose was helping them cope with the loss of home, family, work, and plans for of a future, which had become very uncertain."
Everett's photographs evoke simplicity and poignancy, with the subjects conveying multitudes. When asked about a photograph that stood out to her, Everett speaks of an empty stadium in Romania, covered with hundreds of vacant hospital beds. There, IOM was looking at potential shelters in the capital of Bucharest, preparing for "the enormous numbers of refugees yet to come."
"The empty beds spoke to me of each family whose lives were being uprooted and marked unexpectedly and indelibly," she says.
She also recalls a young Ukrainian woman she met during a break on the journey from the borders of Moldova into Romania. Tanya, aged 24, was leaving the heavily-bombed town of Mykolaiv, on her way to starting a new life in Spain.
"Tanya’s story spoke to me of the generation of young people, starting their lives after school, whose hopes and dreams had been interrupted by war."
Everett, who has photographed refugees across Kenya, Turkey, Afghanistan, and countless other countries, said that in many ways, the scenes in Ukraine reflect a similar plight to that which refugees face worldwide. When it comes to efforts for Ukraine, most of Europe's embrace of refugees is unprecedented. This is particularly true as compared to the response towards to other displaced nations. While the solidarity has been welcome — and wholly necessary — some double standards have been noted, prompting a call for empathy towards refugees of all nationalities and religions.
The war in Ukraine has now spanned three months, and is far from over. Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, have requested more weapons provided by the West, with the latter saying that NATO has done "virtually nothing" to help the country besieged by war.
Everett's photographs are a testament to who the war is affecting: many who have had to leave their homes, others who are witnessing destruction outside their doors, and the majority who are now facing uncertain futures.
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