On 13th April, EPIC partners and external actors gathered together for the 3rd EPIC webinar “From emergency reception to an inclusive and sustainable response: the narrative of a human-based system to welcome refugees from Ukraine”. During the webinar, participants listened and talked to activists in a safe space, discussing the impact of harmful narratives and on the need for a sustainable reception.

Kateryna Rusetska, artist and activist from Dnipro, who works closely with our EPIC partner Kitev, talked about the importance of using the right word when discussing the current Ukrainian circumstances. Hence, she stressed the importance of calling this situation as what is is: As she  said: “it’s not a conflict, it’s not Putin’s war, it is a real war”. She emotionally continued by expressing Ukrainians’ pain and suffering, alongside with anger.

Furthermore, Yulia Krichiv, Ukrainian activist living in Poland, focused as well on the choice of the right vocabulary. This war, she said, it’s an “imperial and colonial war”, as happened, she continued, to the so-called “post-soviet countries [that] are actually post-colonial countries”.

Hania Hakiel, psychotherapist and supervisor working in the field of refugee trauma, closed the panelist round. According to her, we lack a narrative to feel powerful in peaceful times, thus we talk about refugees only through an emergency narrative. Furthermore, she analysed the psychological attitude of people helping refugees, and how they expected refugees to always be grateful, without realising that by so doing, an unbalanced bond among people may be created.

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