On war in Ukraine, double standards and the epistemological ignoring of the global east
| Published date | 01 August 2022 |
| Author | Franck Düvell,Iryna Lapshyna |
| Date | 01 August 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.13038 |
International Migration. 2022;60:209–212.
|
209
wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/imig
Received: 15 Jun e 2022
|
Accepted: 17 June 2022
DOI: 10 .1111/imig .13038
COMMENTARY
On war in Ukraine, double standards and the
epistemological ignoring of the global east
Franck Düvell1| Iryna Lapshyna2
1University of O snabruck, Osna brück, Germany
2Ukrainian C atholic Universi ty, Lviv Oblast, Ukra ine
Correspondence
Franck Düvell , University of Osn abruck, Neuer G raben 29, 49074 Osnabrück, Ge rmany.
Email: franck.duvell@uni- osnabrueck.de
War i s back in Euro pe. It actu ally b egan in 2014 wi th Rus sia' s inte rven tion in East ern U krai ne and Crime a and w as
prepared fo r no later than spr ing 2021 when Russia held large militar y exercises at th e Ukrainian border and at
that occasion est ablished the infrastruc ture for its attack. From Novembe r 2021, there was convincing evidence
that a Russian invasion was imminent. During this period , the head of the Russian security council publically
threatened the EU with the arrival of million s of refugees. Al erted by this e scalation we prepa red scenarios for
the scale of displacement in cas e of war predicting up to 9.9 million displaced person s (Düvell & Lapshyna, 2022).
This is not , of course the fi rst war in Europe in recent decade s, we remember th e war in former Yugosl avia and
the many people who were displaced, but we hard ly noticed th e wars in Georgia in 20 08 or Ar menia in 2021.
But just like in 2014– 2015, when Turkey was overwhelm ed by several million Syrian an d other refugees - whole
famil ies were slee ping rough , in parks an d under bri dges and vis ible to all - the EU was ignor ant and comp lacent.
There w as and s till is no organised communication channel bet ween science and polic y and no early war ning
systems in pl ace for cases of large s cale displacement. War could have been prevente d, and so could have be en
displa cement, h ad the West re sponded m ore robust ly. But all wa rnings had been ignor ed. This to us is the great-
est frustration!
As a conseque nce, 24 February saw the b eginning of the largest a nd fastest crises of di splacement in Europe
since WWII. Within four weeks as many people were displaced as during the first four years of the war in Syria.
To date, conventional reports refer to 12–14 million displaced persons, over 8 million IDPs and about 5.9 million
refu gees, 2 .4 milli on in non - neighbo urs of Uk raine a nd 1.26 mi llion r eturne es. How ever, suc h figur es are mis lead-
ing, as usual, and imply certaint ies we do not have and they s hould not be replicat ed without critical ly reflecting
on their shortco mings. For example, initia lly, arrival figures were suff icient but over time migration bec ame more
dynamic and o nward or return migr ation were not suffic iently recorded so t hat net migration fig ures are lacking.
In contrast to much quoted IOM figures of 8 million IDPs, national experts suggest much lower figures, 4.5 mil-
lion , whils t only 1 mil lion ID Ps are reg istere d with Uk raini an autho ritie s. And wh ilst th ere were 2.9 milli on arriv als
in Poland many moved on, for example to Germany. And still, many millions remain i n Ukraine, some even under
This is an open ac cess article und er the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which
permits us e and distributio n in any medium, provid ed the original wor k is properly cited , the use is non-comme rcial and no
modificat ions or adaptatio ns are made.
© 2022 The Auth ors. International Migration published by John W iley & Sons Ltd on behalf o f International Or ganization for
Migration.
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