Women on the Contact Line
Amid suffering and sorrow on the contact line in eastern Ukraine, there are remarkable women who strive daily to make life better. Female community leaders and female monitoring officers from the OSCE SMM build bridges between people, serving the cause of sustainable peace in often unseen but concrete, meaningful ways. Read their stories of resilience and hope here.
Small Steps in Right DirectionRuth 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.Story
Monitoring Officer: 10 years of serviceAt the conference table in the OSCE SMM Luhansk hub – where ordinarily operational briefings are held and presentations given – Tinatin Bezhanishvili stands beside a cake. As the acting hub leader and former Patrol Group Leader at the Kadiivka Forward Patrol Base, there has been little that has ever left her unable to respond but now as she faces her smiling colleagues, there to celebrate and honour a woman who has given 10 years of service to the OSCE, she is momentarily left speechless.Story
Reconnecting divided communitiesAnnett Gerber knows well the deep pain and the exhausting challenge inherent in divided communities – she comes from one of them. Hailing from the former German Democratic Republic, the 54-year-old SMM monitoring officer is no stranger to division.Story
A Community Stands Together: A Story of Resilience“Who needs art when guns are firing?” Anna Voloshyna asked herself in 2014, when the conflict in Donbas started. The answer soon became clear – everyone does. The cultural centre she leads in Novomykhailivka, kept its doors open, bringing new life to the village of almost 1,500 which lies close to the contact line, some 28 kilometres from Donetsk city.Story
Cups of HopeNataliya’s small stand is a lifeline for the thousands of people passing through Berezove, a small town in a government-controlled area of Donetsk region close to the contact line. Read her story:Story
Rejoicing in the happier momentsLeaving Krasnohorivka, a town close to the contact line in eastern Ukraine, was never an option for Olga Cheremnikh. As a doctor specializing in HIV and AIDS at the local hospital, she is determined that her HIV-positive patients, exhausted both economically and emotionally by the four years of conflict, do not interrupt their anti-retroviral therapy.Story