4.2.4 Protection

Summary of Needs 

Comprehensive analysis of protection needs is available in the Protection Analysis Update 2025. The below represents a summary of key protection needs, including child protection and gender-based violence. 

Four years after the full-scale invasion, the protection environment in Ukraine remains heavily affected by ongoing hostilities. Civilians continue to face occupation, attacks on populated areas and infrastructure, displacement, family separation, grave violations against children, and conflict-related sexual violence. In 2025, civilian casualties reached their highest levels since 2023, with 2,049 people killed and 1,013 injured, including some 600 children. The Government of Ukraine estimates that 23% of the country, 138,503 km² of land, including agricultural, remains contaminated by explosive ordnance. Populations under active threat or displaced are reaching the limits of their coping capacity, with older people, persons with disabilities, single female-headed households, children separated from their caregivers or otherwise without parental care and families with children experiencing the highest levels of vulnerability. Protection gaps remain critical across all Strategic Priorities and are increasingly difficult to address due to deteriorating security conditions, the protracted nature of the conflict, funding reductions, and limited humanitarian presence in areas with high concentrations of vulnerable IDPs - both along the frontline and receiving areas in the West and Center. 

While frontline populations face severe infrastructure damage and security risks, the situation of the most vulnerable groups, particularly older people, children without parental care and persons with disabilities, is aggravated by limited presence of state service providers, including social and child protection services responsible for people at risk. Reduced funding is weakening the availability and quality of GBV services, increasing protection risks for women and girls. Over 60% of people in frontline areas are experiencing high levels of psycho-social distress, with children particularly affected facing heightened risks of death, injury, and psychological harm.  

People whose property was damaged by strikes, both in frontline areas and nationwide, require protection counselling and legal assistance to restore personal and ownership documentation and to access state compensation mechanisms. The most vulnerable groups also need social accompaniment, psychosocial support, individual protection assistance in cash and in kind and specialized referrals to address more complex needs. 

Evacuations remain a critical need and are supported by humanitarian actors. Vulnerable groups, often the last to leave, require more accessible information on evacuation options. Gaps in communication on evacuations, transit center support, and accommodation options continue to limit informed decision-making. In 2025, drone attacks targeted humanitarian workers, highlighting the need for strengthened personal protective equipment for evacuation teams and evacuees. People with limited mobility rely on humanitarian assistance, as they are often unable to reach assembly points or board regular evacuation vehicles. Some families do not evacuate or return and hide children to avoid state enforcement of evacuation regulations. This leaves an unknown number of children in heavily affected frontline areas, highly vulnerable and often invisible. 

Proper reception capacities both in transit centers and collective sites must be ensured, including an accessible environment for older people and people with disabilities, adequate privacy in sleeping spaces to mitigate GBV risks for women and girls, and dedicated premises for specialized services for people with medical conditions, children, and GBV survivors. Reception capacities in collective sites remain a major gap for newly displaced people and, similar to transit centers, require light improvements to ensure accessibility, mitigate GBV risks and ensure privacy. With heightened vulnerability of IDPs residing in collective sites, there is also an elevated need for provision of protection services, including child protection, GBV and specialized services for older people and people with disabilities. Ensuring that these services are also available for vulnerable groups who did not pass through transit centers during the evacuation process and IDPs at risk outside of collective sites also remains essential. 

With displacement rising in 2025, protection partners also report return movements to frontline areas driven by economic pressures, including high rent costs and limited employment. This creates a critical need to support both newly displaced people and highly vulnerable groups in prolonged displacement in receiving oblasts to prevent escalating protection risks and premature returns to unsafe or occupied areas. Displaced families are in need of safer and more sustainable community-based integration and reintegration support, which ensures their access to services in hosting communities, addresses stigma and promotes social cohesion through social behaviour communication change interventions, strengthens the protective role of families, promotes family-based care options for children who experienced separation and were deprived of parental care due to displacement, and prevents family separation. Through legal aid, case management, information provision, and referrals protection partners play a key role in linking these groups to state services (social protection and benefits, healthcare, education and administrative services) 

Observing the increasing trend of children and youth returning from occupied territories and the Russian Federation throughout 2025, and the intensified political efforts made by the Government of Ukraine to promote such returns through the President’s Bring Kids BackInitiative, Child Protection partners will need to strengthen the coordination with national, regional and local authorities in ensuring that safe and sustainable community-based reintegration support services are in place to address the individual needs of these highly vulnerable groups of children and youth, including accommodation/placement, family-based care options, MHPSS, medical care, education, legal aid, mentorship, etc. 

Gender-Based Violence 

In 2026, an estimated 2.9 million people, predominantly women and girls-require GBV services. Even before the war, social and GBV services, such as mobile police units, social service centers, shelters, and crisis rooms, were unevenly distributed. Rural and frontline areas experienced the greatest deficits. Humanitarian actors have filled critical gaps through mobile services, hotlines, shelters, and case management, yet many survivors delay seeking help due to safety concerns, stigma, competing priorities, or lack of information. Adolescent girls, older women, those with disabilities, and those in remote areas often face the greatest barriers.  

As the war in Ukraine continues into successive years, the risk factors and drivers of gender-based violence (GBV) have grown more complex, interacting with pre-existing inequalities and the cumulative pressures of displacement, economic insecurity, prolonged stress, and deteriorating social infrastructure. Women across the country are expected to shoulder expanded caregiving responsibilities-caring for children, older relatives, and family members with disabilities-while simultaneously facing barriers to employment and reduced access to essential services. These intersecting pressures heighten vulnerability to various forms of GBV, including intimate partner violence (IPV), domestic violence, labour and sexual exploitation, trafficking, and conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). 

IPV and domestic violence continue to be reported as the most common forms of GBV in Ukraine. Stigma, fear of retaliation, lack of confidentiality, limited police response, and the erosion of services all contribute to underreporting. Many women, especially in rural areas, are unsure where to seek assistance. In families under severe strain, tensions have escalated due to insecurity, overcrowded living conditions, displacement, loss of income, and emotional stress associated with military deployment or return from the frontline. This has led to more frequent and more severe violence within households. Children are also directly affected, either through witnessing violence or being harmed themselves. Some older female relatives have taken on increased childcare responsibilities when families separate, adding to already heavy caregiving burdens. 

Women often find themselves facing a situation where neither the home nor the surrounding community feels safe. Heightened aggression in households and communities, growing substance abuse, and rising economic pressures all contribute to increasing risks. Alcohol and drug use, reported as escalating both at home and in public spaces-plays a significant role in exacerbating violence. Women frequently express fear when moving through poorly lit streets, collective shelters, or public transport, especially where groups of intoxicated men or youth are present. Additionally, the presence of armed actors, especially in areas of heavy military activity or along evacuation routes, increases the perception and risk of sexual violence. 

CRSV remains a persistent and deeply concerning element of the conflict. Documented cases include violations against women and girls, particularly those with disabilities, in occupied areas, as well as men, boys, and LGBTQI+ individuals-particularly in places of detention. The Office of the Prosecutor General has recorded hundreds of cases since the start of the full-scale invasion, though these figures likely capture only a fraction of the true scale. OHCHR similarly documents ongoing abuses, primarily attributed to Russian armed forces and security actors. 

In response, Ukraine has taken significant legislative steps. Two laws adopted in late 2024 introduce interim reparations for survivors of war-related sexual violence and establish state mechanisms for documenting harm. These laws mark an important milestone, as Ukraine is the first country to offer interim reparations while conflict is ongoing. However, effective implementation will require sustained funding, clear procedures, and survivor-centered approaches to ensure accessibility. 

Women’s roles have expanded dramatically since the beginning of the war. Many women now manage households alone, including making decisions about evacuation, safety planning, and resource management-while trying to maintain employment or re-enter the job market in an environment of contracted opportunities. Pay gaps, limited childcare options, and a lack of accessible services deepen structural inequalities and economic dependence. These conditions exacerbate stress, reduce autonomy, and heighten vulnerability to various forms of violence and exploitation. 

A sharp reduction in funding threatens the continuity of vital GBV services. By early 2025, 73% of women’s rights organizations reported significant operational disruptions, and many anticipated closure within months. Staff layoffs are widespread, leading to loss of technical expertise, institutional memory, and the safe spaces and services survivors rely upon. With state systems unprepared to absorb this workload, funding cuts risk leaving thousands of survivors without access to legal, psychological, and social services. 

Child Protection  

Children’s protection needs remain severe across Ukraine, with 2.5 million children and caregivers requiring specialized assistance in 2026. Grave violations against children in Ukraine continue unabated. As noted above, in the first 10 months of 2025 alone, the UN-verified the killing and maiming of some 600 children and attacks affecting nearly 500 educational and health facilities. According to the Protection Analysis Update (2025), children are increasingly exposed to intersecting risks driven by intensified hostilities, repeated displacement, overstretched social services, disrupted caregiving environments, and rising psychosocial distress and increased exposure to explosive ordnance contamination. Children’s needs are most acute in areas in the frontline, communities experiencing sudden shocks, evacuation routes and transit centers, collective sites, and rural areas hosting families with complex vulnerabilities. Over 9,300 children in alternative care, including children in institutional care, remain evacuated both within as well as outside of Ukraine, with over 5,200 children having returned from evacuation or from the Russian Federation or Occupied Territories. More children in alternative care continue to live in frontline areas from which they might be forced to evacuate. 

The 2025 protection analysis update (PAU) identifies five priority risks affecting children: exposure to violence and trauma (including from strikes and EO contamination); separation or disrupted caregiving; psychosocial distress requiring both immediate and ongoing MHPSS; restricted access to essential services, legal identity and documentation; and loss of protective environments, including disrupted education. Children with disabilities, children living in alternative care, including in institutions, adolescents, children living in large households, and in single-headed households are at the highest risk of being left without essential services. 

Displacement intensifies these risks. Children evacuating, whether with state/humanitarian support or independently, whether in families or as a part of alternative care arrangements such as institutions, face heightened risks of family separation, documentation loss, psychological shock, and interruption of services. Children affected by repeated shock events require immediate and longer-term psychosocial support, child-friendly information, and rapid referral systems. 

For 761,500 children in prolonged displacement, especially those in collective sites and other forms of residential care, chronic vulnerabilities continue to deepen. Overcrowding, lack of privacy, disrupted caregiving, educational instability, isolation and financial strain create high-risk environments where violence, exploitation, and harmful coping escalate. In rural frontline-adjacent communities, small-scale farming households face deepened vulnerability due to limited access to services, movement restrictions, and economic instability. 

Children deprived of parental care and those in alternative care, including residential institutions and family-type care, face layered risks. Before the full-scale invasion, Ukraine relied heavily on residential care for children who are wards of the State. Since 2022, thousands of these children have been and remain evacuated from institutions and other forms of alternative care to countries across Europe under emergency arrangements, while thousands have been returned to Ukraine, sometimes to different oblasts than their place of origin. Many remain separated from parents or kin, experience unstable placements, documentation gaps, disrupted education, and heightened psychosocial distress, and are at risk of re-separation and re-institutionalization if returns are not planned and supported. 

Children returning from the Russian Federation and temporarily occupied territories, including those who spent prolonged periods under occupation or in alternative care, face specific reintegration challenges. They may have been exposed to numerous forms of violence and harm. Upon return, they frequently require intensive case management, medical services, legal aid to restore documentation and legal status, psychosocial support, and safe care arrangements. Without dedicated reintegration pathways, these children face high risks of retraumatization, exploitation, social exclusion, and long-term rights violations. 

Social services remain overstretched, with reduced staffing and safety constraints limiting access to child protection case management, alternative care, disability services, documentation, and legal assistance. Caregivers increasingly report exhaustion and diminished capacity to support their children’s well-being, reinforcing the need for sustained humanitarian child protection support.