I think there are two answers to that question. As I recently told CNN, I've worked in some of the worst places in the world. I don't know what put me in that spot, but for UNICEF, for example, I've been in Gaza and the West Bank. I've been to spots in Donetsk that seem even worse than Gaza, in terms of destruction. It's that bad. I catalogued some of the infrastructure damage.
Then the other thing that is happening is that essential infrastructure isn't working in many places, including on both sides of the contact line. One of the roles of the OSCE special monitoring mission to the Ukraine, of course, is facilitation of access. The mission has been working on a weekly basis to facilitate the access of repair workers on both sides of the contact line. This obviously takes a lot of coordination on both sides. They have been able to repair a lot of crucial infrastructure, especially downed power lines, water mains, and that sort of thing. But then what happens is shelling occurs again and this infrastructure is downed once again. I will table it with the clerk later, but the OSCE special monitoring mission does have a thematic report on IDPs, and in there you'll find a catalogue of infrastructure that has been damaged.
The other aspect, of course, is the erosion of freedom and liberties. Also what is happening is what I call a creeping institutionalization by the rebel groups. For example, what they managed to do over the past few months is establish a new Russian curriculum in the schools and new business registration procedures, introduce the ruble and switch to the Moscow time zone.
On the erosion of civil liberties, I cited the report, from five days ago, of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. What it said—it was quoted in the BBC—is that there's a climate of “pervasive impunity” in eastern Ukraine and very few people have been held accountable for a catalogue of alleged summary executions. The OHCHR says that some of the cases could amount to war crimes.
What does this mean—I won't go on too long—for the people who have remained in the occupied regions? Well, a lot of them don't have a choice. They don't have the funds to go back, or many of them are disabled, or many of them just want to stay in their homes. We've met some elderly people who refuse to leave for government-controlled Ukraine. What they do, however, is that they cross over regularly to the government side to collect pensions, to shop for groceries, to get money out of the ATM. Remember that most of the banks are closed in the occupied territory, so they have to go back and forth at great, great risk to their lives. The gentleman there also did mention that many of them have to wait hours, or sometimes a couple of days, to cross the contact line.
Life, in short, to sum up, is terrible. As I've said, it's comparable to some of the most dire places on the planet. As I've said many times, the worst thing that could happen would be the international community, including Canada, averting its gaze from this humanitarian disaster.