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Ukraine: Quarterly protection monitoring reports
These reports summarize the findings of DRC protection monitoring conducted in Ukraine. The reports seek to identify trends in protection risks and rights violations, challenges and barriers in access to services (particularly for the most vulnerable) across surveyed oblasts, in order to inform the ongoing and planned humanitarian response and support evidence-based advocacy on behalf of persons of concern.
Executive summary
Civilian safety continues to deteriorate across all monitored regions, driven by the geographic expansion of hostilities, increased use of FPV drones, missile and aerial strikes, and widespread UXO/ERW contamination. Civilians report persistently low perceptions of safety, with daily life increasingly shaped by fear, self-restriction of movement, and avoidance of public spaces.
The systematic attacks on energy infrastructure and resulting disruptions to electricity and heating services are impacting the protective environment for civilians, including sense of safety and access to services, with older people and people with disabilities disproportionately affected.
Displacement remains protracted, fragmented, and largely short-distance, with movement driven by escalating insecurity, housing damage, and service disruption rather than access to durable solutions. Self-evacuation and intra-oblast displacement are increasing.
Returns remain limited, conditional, and non-durable across all regions. Where returns occur, they are often driven by displacement fatigue, financial exhaustion, or attachment to place rather than improved security or recovery conditions, increasing risks of secondary displacement.
Freedom of movement is severely constrained, primarily due to insecurity, UXO contamination, infrastructure damage, and reduced transport services. These constraints disproportionately affect older persons, persons with disabilities, caregivers, and rural households, undermining access to healthcare, administrative services, livelihoods, and assistance.
Gender based violence, particularly intimate partner violence, remains widespread and underreported, driven by conflict-related stress, economic pressure, displacement, and harmful gender norms. Stigma, fear of disclosure, limited trust in authorities, and insufficient GBV services continue to prevent survivors from accessing support.
Housing, Land and Property (HLP) insecurity remains a central protection risk, characterised by widespread housing damage, repeated attacks, and limited access to compensation. Procedural complexity, outdated compensation thresholds, documentation gaps, and digital exclusion prevent many households from restoring safe housing, forcing prolonged residence in damaged or unsafe accommodation.
Access to legal identity and civil documentation is increasingly constrained, particularly for older persons, persons with disabilities, caregivers, and displaced households. Barriers include cost, transport, procedural complexity, annual re-registration requirements, and reliance on digital platforms such as Diia, which remain inaccessible to many.
The transfer of social benefit administration to the Pension Fund of Ukraine has intensified access barriers, especially in frontline and rural areas. Long queues, limited outreach, staffing shortages, and poor communication have resulted in delays and exclusion, disproportionately affecting people with reduced mobility and digital access.
Overall trends indicate a shift from episodic crises to sustained pressure, with increasing strain on civilian resilience, administrative systems, and humanitarian response capacity. Without strengthened, inclusive, and area-specific protection interventions, risks of involuntary immobility, repeated displacement, and social fragmentation will continue to escalate.
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