As the number of countries experiencing war or fragility continues to rise, what is at stake for current and future generations if the physical and psychological toll on civilians in conflict zones goes unaddressed?
From human rights violations to the lack of access to basic necessities, community leaders have emerged with practical responses to the urgent realities facing nearly half of the world’s population.
At Davos, Washington Post columnist Ishaan Tharoor moderated “In the Midst of Chaos,” a discussion on the escalating toll of conflict on civilians and what institutions and communities can still do as the multilateral system frays. UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell warned that record numbers of children are living in or fleeing war, losing education and healthcare, and facing rising “grave violations” including “murder, maiming, kidnapping, sexual violence.” She described Sudan as the largest crisis by scale: nearly two years of disrupted schooling, mass displacement, and systematic terror, including sexual violence used to “demoralize the population.” Russell also noted a harsher operating environment: roughly a 20% funding cut to UNICEF, led by U.S. reductions and compounded by European reallocations to defense, pushing UNICEF toward deeper private-sector and technology partnerships.
Nobel laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk portrayed Ukraine’s winter as “cold darkness and gratitude,” sustained by citizens repairing infrastructure under fire. She argued the “international order…is collapsing,” replaced by “the will of strongest,” and said 2025 became Ukraine’s deadliest year since 2022 despite peace talks. Her organization documents roughly 100,000 war-crime episodes, “returning people their names.” Both emphasized that peace is not paperwork or occupation; it is “freedom to live without fear,” and “stubborn human efforts” remain decisive amid chaos.
Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us here on a beautiful afternoon in Davos. My name is Ishaan Tharoor. I'm a global affairs columnist at the Washington Post. And I'm here to moderate our discussion evocatively titled In the Midst of Chaos. Despite what the occupant, the prime occupant of the white House, may say, we are not living in a time of of peace. From Gaza to Ukraine, Sudan to the DRC, Myanmar to Haiti. Haiti is conflicts persist around the world. And we're seeing and of course, portend terrible consequences for the civilians caught within them. We're seeing record numbers of people displaced by war, of people who need food aid, and of children who are not in school. So the question is, as these conflicts endure and as governments struggle to end them, what can civil society, ordinary community groups and international organizations do to alleviate human suffering and perhaps one day achieve some justice? To discuss this, I have a terrific panel. I'm joined to my immediate left by Catherine Russell, executive director of Unicef, the UN children's agency, and Oleksandra Matviychuk, the chair of civil liberties in Ukraine, human rights organization that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 for its work. Catherine, we spoke a year ago in a similar context here in Davos. I wish I could say it's been a better year since then, but I'm afraid it's not. And of course, there have been new disruptions introduced, into the ecosystem, by President Trump and others. What has this year been like for you? What are the challenges that you're facing? And and what is, you know, for children around the world, what are the main plights that you are worried about?
Well thank you, Ishaan. I would say there are many challenges. Excuse me that Unicef is dealing with. But really the most important thing is that there are challenges that children are facing. I think the most pressing issue is that so many children are either living in places of conflict or fleeing from conflict, and that's challenging for children for obvious reasons. First, because they're directly impacted by conflict, but also because children really rely on government services, in a way that, you know, older adults don't necessarily do. So they rely on education, healthcare, and in conflict. And when you're fleeing, you don't have any of those services or you have very few. And I think that is tremendously difficult for children. I think we were also seeing just record numbers of grave violations against children, which is something that the UN tracks, which is things like, you know, murder, maiming, kidnapping, sexual violence. So those numbers are increasing. We're also seeing children who are living in places where they're really vulnerable to climate change. And we estimate that Unicef, that a billion children. So almost, you know, almost half the world's children live in places that are directly impacted by climate. So there are just a whole range of problems. Our biggest concern is trying to help as best we can. At Unicef, we do two things. One, we do humanitarian response. So in these big conflicts, we provide life saving materials, you know, food, water, the basics to try to keep children alive. We always are trying to do immunizations and provide health care, but we're also trying to make sure that there is development in the world so that longer term children have some access to decent futures, and that means making sure that they're born healthy, that they get educated, that they're protected in their in their environments. And that's obviously very difficult because you have these conflict settings that draw so much in the way of resources away from other issues.
I want to circle back on some of those, those hotspots. But Alexandra, you've of course, come from Kyiv. It's bitterly cold there right now. And we've heard of, the blackouts that many are enduring, the lack of heat, electricity, running water in some situations. Can you describe the situation on the ground? We're about to enter the fifth year of full blown conflict since Russia's full fledged invasion. What is it like for ordinary Ukrainians on the ground right now?
I associate this winter with cold darkness and gratitude. Cold and darkness. For obvious reasons, Russians deliberately destroyed energy infrastructure in Kyiv and other cities in Ukraine is prohibited to do even during the war. It's crimes against humanity. And that is why International Criminal Court launched their criminal case. But Russia don't care. So I have come from Kiev. It -70°C there. We are literally freezing. We are literally freezing in our houses without water, heating, electricity and sometimes even internet connections. It's not easy, frankly speaking. And why? Gratitude is also associated with this difficult winter. Based on my experience as a human rights lawyer who can't rely on the legal instruments because they are not working, I know that even in such circumstances, you can always rely on people. We get used to thinking through the categories of states, politicians, inter-state organizations, global powers, and so on and so forth. But ordinary people have a much greater impact that they can even imagine. And now how we are surviving in such circumstances in a modern city with destroyed energy infrastructure, with helping each other, the modern heroes of our winter is ordinary people who provide rescue and repairing every day, every night. Despite the constant Russian shelling, despite the cold weather outside, they are doing their job knowing that tomorrow Russia will hit these objects again and they have to start from scratch. We have a lot of groups who self-organize and provide food, and all necessary staff for people who have risen, who can't help themselves. We have people who take care about foster animals because for them, it's a desk to be outside the warm places. So we care about every life in such circumstances. And that is why I think that yes, we live in cold and darkness around us, but there is no cold and darkness inside us. And that's why I feel gratitude.
That's a really poignant and beautiful thought. Catherine, I wanted to ask you, specifically about Sudan. This is obviously a hideous civil war. That's, I think, going to be entering its third year, a few months ago, less than a couple of months ago, you saw the RSS paramilitaries capture the city of El Fasher in, in North Darfur. And what we believe followed was a hideous massacre. Some estimates suggest over 100,000 people slaughtered, a panicked exodus to relief camps and, elsewhere, from your perspective, as the head of Unicef and what you've seen on the ground in Sudan and in the neighboring countries that are hosting Sudanese refugees, describe the situation. Tell us what you know about what happened in El Fasher and what children in Sudan are experiencing right now.
I think Sudan, at least in terms of numbers, is certainly the biggest crisis that we're facing right now. We have millions of children on the move in the country. Almost all children have been out of school for almost two years. And and what is of great concern is what you're referring to, which is they are suffering incredible violence in many parts of the country. El Fasher was under siege for a year. The RSF finally took it and the stories we heard were absolutely horrific. I was in Sudan just before Christmas, and I heard, you know, it's interesting to hear from children kind of what their perception of it is. And I met a boy who had was at a boys school but had come from the area, and he described how his family fled. And at every step along the way they were terrified and they would run into armed militias who would stop them and then insist on money and threaten them. And so just this little boy, you know, he just he couldn't really imagine what was happening. But he knew that his whole family was petrified. He had left behind some of his family, some were able to leave. I met a woman who, she was a really a girl. She was 16, and she was telling me about just the incredible sexual violence that they had endured and that in some places they were, you know, they would take the boys and often kill the boys and then the girls, they would subject to sexual violence, almost always in front of family members and community members for the purpose, really, of terrorizing the community, which is quite an effective way to terrorize the community. So I think you know it. It's a it's a terrible conflict in terms of the numbers of children, but also the nature of the violence is so horrific and so, purposefully intended to actually really demoralize the population, scare the population. And I think, you know, that we will be dealing with these repercussions for years and years once the violence stops. Our strong plea is for this to end as quickly as possible. I mean, honestly, I was there and I couldn't even understand what they were fighting about. It's so ridiculous. And the numbers of people who have died and who are suffering for what? Because two people, you know, are having this sort of dispute about who should be in charge. I think there are a lot of forces outside the country who are having an impact as well. And I would just say to anyone, to the parties and to anyone who has any control over the parties, they have got to put this thing to an end because Sudan is a beautiful country. It's a big country. Having it destabilized in the middle of Africa is not good. You know, you're seeing refugees moving all over. I was in South Sudan. There were refugees from Sudan and South Sudan. I was in Chad. There were refugees in Chad. I mean, people are fleeing. It's just very destabilizing to the whole region. And I think everyone has an interest in making it stop.
And yet it has not.
And yet it has not. And unfortunately, you can say that about a lot of things. You know, some it seems like an obvious rational answer, but that's unfortunately not the way people always behave.
Alexandra, you've spoken in the past about, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the attacks by Russia on civilians in Ukraine as a kind of litmus test for the rules based order that are at stake in this conflict, are international laws, are are values, the question of democracy versus authoritarianism as the war has continued and as you see what's happened, say, in Sudan and in Gaza and elsewhere, do you still place much faith in the rules based order?
I don't know how historians in future will call this historical period, but we literally in the midst of House because the international order, which is based on UN charter and international law, is collapsing before our eyes. This system was created in past century to prevent wars in was mass violence. But now we just stalling and reproducing ritualistic movements for obvious reasons. Even my smartphone has an expiration date. The system has never been reformed. So this is a simple answer. Ukraine found itself in the epicenter of events which will shape the world future, because it's not just a war between two states Russia and Ukraine. This is a war between two systems authoritarianism and democracy. And when we look around what's going on in Sudan, in Gaza, in Greenland and other parts of the globe, I have a very strict impression that over the past year, we made a significant step back to the past, to the world, which was based not on international law but on the will of strongest. And let's be honest, this was world. And this past wasn't a great one because even the strongest are not safe in such kind of world. The world where you can't rely on anything, it's very fragile world. It's always a world of wars and mass violence. And that is why I'm not satisfied with this, current state of affairs. We must try better. And I am sure that not just among human rights lawyers, but among politicians, among businessmen and other people from other fields of society, there are people who are not satisfied with this clash back. We must unite and we must step in, in this civilization, battle for our future.
Before we took the stage, you were telling me, a statistic that I had not fully grasped that, even in this year, which has been sitting in Washington a year shaped by President Trump's efforts to start some kind of peace process, between Russia and Ukraine, it has been the deadliest year since 2022.
Yes, according to UN experts, they estimate that, past year, the year of Trump's, year of negotiation, was the deadliest year for Ukrainians since 2022, since the first year of large scale war. And the numbers of people who were killed and injured, is increasing for 31% in comparison with the previous year. So we are faced with two parallel realities. The first reality is going on in Washington, Miami, Geneva, Istanbul, where this series of international meetings, tried to make impression that we have a progress on the path to peace. But we leave people in Ukraine in different reality, which tells another story. We tell that Russia's Russia intensify shellings and killings. When President Trump initiated this peace talk, this is our life, Catherine.
You know, it's old news at this point to talk about the UN, and not least because of the war in Ukraine as an institution that's not fully fulfilling its mandate as institution where there's dysfunction, where there's, a certain sense of institutional paralysis. And also now we're seeing major cuts to funding across the board, as well as an American withdrawal from a host of agencies. Putting that to a side, what is Unicef doing in this new environment to make up shortfalls, to expand its work, to deliver the the goods that it wants to deliver to children around the world?
Well, look, I think it is there is definitely, it is a time of real challenge for the multilateral system generally for the United Nations, for sure. I think that, you know, as Alexander was saying, it is the UN was created, the multilateral system was created out of terrible violence. Right. And and it's not perfect. I mean, nobody would ever say it's a perfect system or that the UN is a perfect institution. However, it does make a big difference. And it has led, I think, to years of relative peace. Not certainly there have been conflicts over the last several decades, but we haven't had a huge, you know, world conflagration like we've seen in the past. So I think Unicef, certainly we are a proud part of that system. We have done and seen real progress for children over the years, and we are working hard to protect that. I think that the cuts are certainly challenging for us. Overall, it's about a 20% cut to Unicef led by the US, which has been our biggest donor and and did the biggest reduction. But importantly, it's not just the US, the European. Many European donors cut as well. Now, for them, it was not an ideological decision. It was more because they were shifting money to defense. It's not that they were opposed to the system. But what the result is, we were already struggling to meet the needs of children around the world. Obviously, that's more challenging at a time when the conflicts continue to, to, to rage on. And I think, you know, we're doing our best. And I think one of the there are a couple bright spots, you know, one is we're really working hard on innovation and technology to see how that can help us. Partnerships are so important now, even more so than before, because it's a way to bring the private sector to the table, not just for resources, although obviously that's helpful, but more to say. Are there strategic partnerships we can do together? And we're doing some great partnerships on AI with Google and others on skills training. I mean, there's a lot of work and a lot of great work to be done, and I'm excited about that. But it is no, there's no question that the pressure is enormous because the needs are so great and we do not have nobody has the resources necessary to really deal with what we're dealing with, what what the what the challenges are. So, you know, we're going to keep at it. I have confidence that we'll do a really good job, but it is definitely in the context of very enormous pressure and strain.
There's more I want to ask about that. But Alexandra in your when you in our first when I asked you your first question, you very beautifully talked about the kind of unofficial ways in which the local ways in which Ukrainians are helping each other, building sources of strength and solidarity together in the darkest of times. Could you talk a bit more about the work you do with civil liberties and the work that civil society has done in Ukraine, in conditions that most of us can't even imagine?
I'm documenting war crimes in this war, which Russia has launched against Ukraine 12 years, and Russia uses war crimes as a message of our fear. It's a way how Russia tries to win the war. They instrumentalize the pain they deliberately inflicted, the immense pain to civilians in order to break people's resistance and occupied the country. So no surprise that only in our database, the database of civil Initiative, we have approximately 100,000 episodes of war crimes. And when I try to explain what we are literally doing, I tell that the war turns people into the numbers and we are returning people their names, because people are not. Numbers in life of each person matters. And that is why, because we completely lost human dimension. In this peace talk, I would like to share with you one story from our database. Just to understand which such kind of stories we are working on daily basis. This is a story of ten year old boy Ilya from Mariupol. When Russians tried to siege the city, they didn't allow the International Committee of Red cross to open green corridors and to evacuate civilians. Hence, Ilya and his mother, like other people in Mariupol, had to hide in the basement of their building from Russian shelling. They melted snow to have water and they made fires to cook at least some food. But when supplies ran out, they were forced to go out and suddenly they appeared in the center of Russian shelling. Ilya's mother was hit in her head and the boy's legs were torn. With the last trance. His mother took her son to the front department. It was no medical assistance because prior to this, Russians deliberately destroyed the maternity hospital and the entire medical infrastructure in Mariupol. So in this front apartment, they just laid down on a couch and they hugged each other. They were lying like this for several hours. And this ten year old boy told to my colleague how his mother died and got frozen right in his arms. I'm a human rights lawyer in situation when the law doesn't work, but I do believe that it's temporary, and probably some people think that our efforts have no sense. But believe me, if something has sense in the midst of House, it's stubborn human efforts.
The courageous and vital work that your organization does and did in 2022 was recognized by the Nobel Committee in Norway, for Peace Prize alongside another Belarusian organization as well. You obviously did not do your work in search of a Nobel Prize. So I have to ask you, given the current environment that we're in right now and the fact that I live in a city where the American president, is constantly clamoring for one, what reaction do you have for that? And what does it do to the Nobel Prize that your organization won?
I think that the main problem is that we stop to define the word peace properly. Now we have a situation when the Football Association granted peace prize for politicians. So it's like entertainment. The peace is not made just on papers. The peace has to be made on the ground. And peace is not Russian occupation. Very often I found myself in a weird situation that I have to convince someone that people in Ukraine want peace. Are you serious? People in Ukraine dream about peace. We just simply don't want to be occupied by Russia. Because peace doesn't mean occupation. Occupation is the same word just in another form. Occupation means enforced disappearances, torture, rape, denial of your identity, forcible adoption of your own children, filtration camps and mass graves. So when we use the word peace, we have to speak about freedom to live without fear of violence and have a long term perspective of future. This is peace.
Thank you for that. And you know, I think there are other journalists who would ask you other questions about the prize, and I'm not going to do that because, it's the we have all, all, all had reactions to the scene of Maria Corina machado giving her prize to President Trump. And I'll put it there, to to both of you, there is this question of thousands, tens of thousands of Ukrainian children who have been taken to Russia. What work is being done about bringing them home and on both the Ukrainian level and the international level?
Well, I think the work to bring them home is challenging. I think at this point there are efforts to track the numbers. Unicef has no access at this stage to the eastern part of the country. So we have no ability in that part of the country to understand and see what's happening. We do work hard with the international Red cross to when children do get released to reconcile them with their families. I think this, I would hope, will be a central part of whatever negotiation, peace negotiation takes place. I think at that point we'll get a better sense of what the actual numbers are. It's just widely, different depending on who you talk to. And it's really hard to have visibility into that. But certainly Unicef has a very strong position that children can never, should never be adopted during times of conflict or other uncertainty, because it's really hard to know exactly what's going on. And we would we continue to have that view here. And we think it's really important that children be reunited with their families as quickly as possible, and would very much like to be a part of that discussion. We have made these offers. We haven't made a huge amount of progress yet, but I'm hoping that at some point this will get resolved and will be able to deal with these children as a group and get them back to their families.
Alexandra.
I would like to use this opportunity to draw your attention to another categories of Ukrainian children. We have 1,600,000 Ukrainian children under Russian occupation. They identity I roast because they prohibited to speak Ukrainians. They study on Russian textbook where Ukraine is not exist as a state that totally militarized starting from the kindergarten, for example, their parents are obliged to give their kids for some time spending in sports and re-education camps where Ukrainian children told that they are not Ukrainian children, that they are Russian children, where Ukrainian children live in barracks. We are military uniform, study how to use weapons. So Russia is preparing a new generation of Putin soldiers from this 1,600,000 Ukrainian children. It's not just human rights problem, it's security problem. Because when these children will have 14 years old, they will receive Russian passport. When they children turns 18 years old, they will be forcibly recruited to Russian army. This means that they will go to fight and to die in any country that Russia sent them to go, to fight and to die.
In the last couple of minutes left, I know we've had a very bleak discussion in many ways, but I'd like you to in the last couple of minutes, we have left just to to tell us, you know, looking ahead in the months to come, what gives you hope? Where do you locate hope in the work that you do and what you want to see in the world?
You know, for me, there are two things. One, that we have a lot of people, excuse me, who care about these issues and support Unicef. And and that means a lot because it is an emotional sort of recognition of how important the work is and how important children are. But honestly, the thing that gives me the most hope is always the children themselves. And it's, you know, wherever I go, you see children, the most dire situations. I mean, I was in Gaza and I was touring a hospital where there were so many people who were seeking refuge. They're all in blankets on the floor. And a little boy started to follow me, and he's trying to get my attention, kind of playing hide and seek with me. By the time I got to the end of the tour, it was a whole crowd of kids, you know, almost all little boys. And I thought, no matter how terrible the situation is, children want to play. They want to be children. You know, they have some resilience to them. And I think if we can get them at some point, at any point and try to make their lives better, I have confidence that we can, you know, for the most part, not always, but for the most part, we can try to save them and give them a life that is really the dignified existence that they deserve. So the kids will always make your day. They'll always they'll always bring a smile to your face. And that, to me, is what gives me tremendous hope about the future.
Sandra.
Ordinary people provide me hope. Ordinary people who are doing extraordinary things and hope. It's not a confidence that everything will be fine. Hope. It's a deep understanding that all our efforts have a huge meaning.
That's powerfully and beautifully said. Thank you to you. Thanks to you both. Thanks to the audience here at Davos. And best wishes for 2026.
Thanks. Let's hope it's good for you. Thank you.
Thanks.