At the onset of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the world witnessed a massive exodus of refugees from the country. Photos of exhausted, fearful women queuing at the country's western borders, clutching children, waiting to cross to safety, have become iconic in international coverage of the war.
Since then, more than 8 million Ukrainians have registered as refugees in Europe and another 5.3 million have become internally displaced, according to the U.N. refugee agency. But these statistics reflect only a small part of the struggle civilians are going through. With the insufficient financial resources and policies in place that, according to scholars of international law, harm civilians and prevent families from reuniting, for most refugees, displacement has become not a single, lifesaving event but rather a chronic condition of uncertainty and precarity.
