Small Steps in Right Direction

Ruth Ni Ghlasain, an OSCE SMM monitoring officer from Ireland, still sometimes wonders how she, with no police or military background, ended up on the contact line in eastern Ukraine.

On the surface – with armoured vehicles, flak jackets and an array of security mitigation measures – the OSCE SMM seemed like an ill-fit for a human rights defender who had spent years working on local grassroots initiatives in Cambodia, advocating for peace and social justice, and promoting and defending human rights and freedom of assembly and expression. “I had wondered if there would be a place for me but from the moment I arrived in Ukraine, I knew I was in the right place at the right time,” Ruth explains.

Currently on a seven-day rotation at the SMM forward patrol base in Svitlodarsk, in one of the most kinetic areas along the contact line, Ruth does indeed spend most of her time wearing a flak jacket and helmet, monitoring and reporting ceasefire violations. “Most nights here, the sky is lit up with tracer rounds, and the horizon is speckled with artillery and mortars exploding,” she says.

Ruth spends her days counting the human cost of conflict. She cites a recent example, in which a man was injured in nearby Novoluhanske, hit by shrapnel from a 122mm mortar that flattened his home. “He’s one of the latest civilian casualties in a list that just keeps growing,” she says, referring to the estimated 13,000 people killed and 30,000 injured, the result of ongoing fighting that has undermined the security of the civilian population.

The OSCE though, Ruth explains, takes a multi-disciplinary approach to security, and so there’s a lot to do in addition to monitoring the sides’ partial compliance with the Minsk Agreement. “That’s where I come in,” she says.

The most striking aspect of this conflict, she says is the absence of bitterness. “People are suffering; we hear and see it every day,” she says, “but it’s a shared suffering among neighbours; not one inflicted on each other.” Prolonged violence though, she warns, can result in protracted conflict and hostility. “Believe me, I know; I grew up just a few kilometres from the border in Ireland.”

Hard lessons learnt from home and remedies practiced on the other side of the world, in particular dialogue facilitation, Ruth says are what she brings most of all to Svitlodarsk and other towns and villages in eastern Ukraine. Sometimes it’s just a matter of listening to people and giving them voice, she says, especially when they are engaging with one another, demanding an end to violence.

These are small steps, she admits but steps in the right direction nonetheless, away from the past five years of violence. “I don’t have experience in fighting in a conflict,” Ruth says, “but with the OSCE SMM, I hope my experience and efforts here can prove useful in resolving this one.”