Khrystyna Kit: “Asking for help is always easier when you have someone who can help you along the way.”

Khrystyna Kit is the Head and Chairwoman of the Board of JurFem, one of the first associations of women lawyers in Ukraine, which, since the beginning of the Russia’s full-scale war, has become a place of support for survivors of sexual violence and all types of gender discrimination. The organization has around 60 lawyers who provide legal assistance to survivors of sexual violence across Ukraine. Every week, about 20 survivors contact JurFem, and currently the organization is supporting 110 cases of sexual violence, in which lawyers provide qualified legal assistance. 

“Today, JurFem works across two areas. The first is the work on responding to cases of sexual violence, including conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) as a war crime. The second area is advocacy work to amend legislation, implement practices and approaches, train professionals and provide assistance to the survivors of sexual violence, providing legal support to women survivors of sexual violence, and representation of their interests in courts and during pre-trial investigations,” says Khrystyna. 

Over the past two years, great efforts of international organizations and the international community have been aimed at supporting the authorities and civil society organizations to effectively respond to cases of sexual violence as a war crime. However, according to Khrystyna, today it is not enough to change approaches and practices exclusively in the field of war crimes and sexual violence.  

“It is important to talk about two aspects. The first is gender-based violence, in particular, sexual violence not related to war, and the second is war-related sexual violence as a war crime. Now it is necessary to work in parallel, including with access to justice for women who have suffered from sexual violence as a war or domestic crime. Because changing the approaches of some specialists does not automatically mean that we are increasing trust in the entire system." 

Today during Russia’s full-scale war, women and men are increasingly facing sexual violence, including sexual violence as a war crime. However, if they see that experts are not able to respond effectively and work with a focus on the needs of survivors of sexual violence, this can undermine their trust in changes to the approaches in responding to war crimes.  

“When we talk about gender-based violence, and sexual violence not related to the war, there are still not enough resources and support in this area. After all, most resources are now focused on the war, which is obvious, because of the challenges we face. But today we also need to support organizations that work with non-war-related violence in order to develop access to justice and support women in general,” adds Ms. Khrystyna. 

There is an urgent need to change legislation to better regulate, protect and prevent sexual violence. In 2019, JurFem contributed to the amendment of legislation to respond against domestic violence, and in 2022 - to the ratification of the Istanbul Convention in Ukraine. But there are still issues that need to be addressed at the legislative level.  

“Speaking about CRSV, Ukraine has recently ratified the Rome Statute and the relevant amendments were made to the Criminal Code. But where we see more gaps is in responding to and prosecuting violence in the cyber sphere. This is the issue of cyberviolence, which is addressed by both the Istanbul Convention and the EU Directive. The system for responding to and investigating crimes in the digital environment, including violence against women, is now very acute. Unfortunately, in this aspect, our legislation is not effective enough.” 

It is important to note that sexual violence in the cyber environment is not only an issue in Ukraine but also affects other countries. Cyberviolence has become a relatively new tool of harassment and violence against women, gaining prevalence over the past 20 years. Responding to cyberviolence requires both work with electronic digital evidence and strong international cooperation. "Digital violence against Ukrainian women is also an issue that requires cooperation with countries that have access to electronic evidence and databases. Unfortunately, as of today, these mechanisms remain underdeveloped,” she adds 

“This problem concerns all countries. This year, a new EU Directive on violence against women was adopted, where a significant part deals with digital violence and the lack of mechanisms in the EU to respond to these types of crimes. Therefore, it is the issue of international cooperation, improving the common legal framework and bringing perpetrators to justice that is crucial,” says Khrystyna. 

In September 2024, JurFem presented a sociological study conducted jointly with UNDP on how Ukrainian women and men identify sexual violence. The study showed that the majority of respondents had experienced some form of sexual violence at least once. At the same time, although they believe that this is unacceptable behavior, they do not identify it as violence.  

"We have seen that in the case of sexual violence, people do not want to contact law enforcement agencies and prefer to resolve the issue on their own. They don't trust them and the effectiveness of their work. As for violence in the cyber environment, it is mostly identified by young people rather than older people, and this is understandable, because for young people, the digital space is equivalent to physical space." 

The study also shows that women and men are not sufficiently aware of the concept of sexual violence and the boundaries of acceptable or unacceptable behavior. At the same time, victim-blaming remains a widespread problem, which is actually a barrier to asking for help. Most people do not ask for help because they are afraid of being judged or do not accept what happened to them.  

“In parallel with changing legislation and practices, we need to work on raising people's awareness of violence, for example, implementing sexual education and gender equality strategies in education system. The Ministry of Education is already taking some steps in this direction, but this is not enough. That is why one of the main focuses of our work is the information campaigns we implement together with UN Women, where we explain what CRSV is, how people can get help, how approaches to providing assistance have changed to build trust in the law enforcement system, show people the importance of reporting, and where they can get this help,” added Khrystyna.   

Currently, there are many different services in Ukraine that can provide assistance and support to survivors of sexual violence or other forms of gender-based violence, as well as many NGOs, where you can get anonymous and free help.  

“We have JurFem Support, which you can use to reach us by email or any messenger, completely anonymously, and find out what the first steps are. When talking about the protection of survivors of sexual violence, asking for help is always easier when you have someone who can help you along the way. It can be a lawyer who knows how to work with such crimes and offenses, a psychologist or a psychotherapist who can support a person and refer them to get help in the future. Therefore, my recommendation is to look for opportunities for this support, either psychological or legal, there are people along the way who can explain what is happening and advise you as best as possible on how to ask for help,” she concludes.