The 6th UIC Refugee Task force meeting remotely attended on 12 April 2022 by around 40 participants from across Europe, with representatives from UIC member railways and partner organisations, focused in particular on security issues, among them human trafficking.
Marie-Hélène Bonneau, Head of the UIC Security Division, coordinated this task force meeting. Taking into consideration that human trafficking is an increasing issue worldwide and traffickers have been seen at stations attempting to lure Ukrainian refugees, a UIC survey was circulated through the security platform to share practices to raise the awareness of refugees on this threat in stations and trains. UIC is also working on a guidance on measures to be taken for refugee crises, which will be released shortly reporting on all Task Force activities.
Last Friday, Kramatorsk station was attacked and 52 civilians killed. In memory of the victims, UZ ensured that seat number 52 was left vacant on trains across the country and were marked with a commemorative note and flowers.
The situation in Poland remains stable. PKP shares a number of 4 500 000 million people who fled Ukraine, 2 657 000 in Poland and 322000 by train. The flow of refugees has decreased a lot since the beginning of the crisis, with less congestion, but in order to ensure a smooth flow of passengers they provide humanitarian trains in close cooperation with the government, and local forwarding by bus to relieve stations. Borders stations were reinforced to streamline the process, security office employees and security guards are maintained at borders even if the situation is stable now. PKP has to deal with a great increase of unattended luggage observed in comparison with previous years (24/7 contact point in the crisis management system.) SBB will organise a call with other members regarding list of items to forward the materials needed in Ukraine, in order to well coordinate, and not duplicate. The list is updated with what was already delivered.
Report from OCHA Ukraine: Humanitarian Impact Situation Report
Rail Security Hub: Easily find, access and share solutions and information on railway security issues on a secure, user-friendly, comprehensive and interactive platform brought by UIC Security Division.
Members are encouraged to share their thoughts, either by writing to the internal UIC Refugee Task Force team refugees at uic.org or by posting in the UIC Extranet dedicated workspace.
A Task Force LinkedIn group is open to members. Feel free to join the group and share your thoughts: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/14061600/
A dedicated webpage of the Refugee Task Force is available on the UIC website: https://uic.org/refugees/
The next Task Force Refugee web-conference is scheduled to take place on 26 April 2022.
