In the weeks leading up to spring break, the UMass Amherst political scientist Charlie Charpentier closely followed the war in Ukraine. Carpenter, who teaches a course in the rules of war and runs the Workshop on Conflict, Violence and Security in the political science department, has been widely published in the foreign policy press on conflict, war, and global peacekeeping efforts, and over the past year has been a columnist for the magazine World Policy Review. Seeing the flood of refugees entering Poland after Russia invaded Ukraine, she decided to take advantage of her spring break to travel to the Polish-Ukrainian border to witness the situation. and report it in a series of essays for the magazine.
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“It was very clear to me, from conversations with my contacts in the humanitarian world, that the big organizations had not yet established a significant presence on the border,” says Carpenter, professor of political science at the College. social and behavioral sciences. and director of Human Security Lab. “I had read that all these Polish citizens were setting up these grassroots efforts and three weeks later they were tiring and really needed government support, and the big NGOs weren’t up and running yet. It felt wrong to stay home and write comfortably in cafes during spring break when I could lend a hand.
With a plane ticket provided by her WPR editor, Carpenter boarded a plane for Warsaw on March 14 and spent the week ferrying needed goods and medical supplies to the border, all helping refugees connect with emergency accommodation, transport and essential services.
Carpenter traveled alone, but reached out to fellow humanitarians, local journalists and others who had previously volunteered in the area to get a sense of what it was like on the ground and the best ways she could. could be useful.
“Once I said on Twitter, ‘I will,’ people started reaching out to me, many of them from the area letting me know how to help; people from small NGOs, journalists or academics already there and people who just wanted to talk to me once there,” she says. “So even though I planned my trip on my own, I already had a network of contacts when I arrived.”
carpenter had posted a thread on Twitter the day before he left for Eastern Europe explaining his plan, as well as a link to a GoFundMe page to help raise donations for supplies and resources to help refugees. Donations started coming in almost immediately, enabling him to rent a van for nine people.
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“I wanted to be able to transport as many people as possible at once, in the time I had, but the money just kept coming in,” she says. “Once I rented the van, I started responding to requests for supplies I was getting from people already at the border, most of whom I had met on Twitter. They knew I was coming so they were asking the supplies they needed, mostly to help the refugees, but much of it was being taken across the border to hospitals in Lviv.
In total, Carpenter raised more than $8,600 in donations, which covered hotel rooms for seven refugee families, 100 sleeping bags, 30 suitcases, thousands of dollars worth of medical supplies and the ability to provide essential supplies. to a woman she met at the border who was eight and a half months pregnant and traveling alone while her husband and four-year-old son remained in Ukraine. Carpenter helped transport the woman to Amsterdam and watched over her as she passed, ensuring she had comfortable accommodation and assisting her in her efforts to find the young son she had left behind. .
Carpenter was joined by other volunteers who had heard about her travels via Twitter, including Bogdan Prokoyovicha lecturer at the Isenberg School of Management, who returned from the area with a variety of ideas for how the refugee crisis could be better handled, and Meredith Pearson, a Providence-based relief worker who had time on her hands. and the desire to help and who traveled to the area to meet Carpenter after reading Carpenter’s tweets.
The three formed a loose association of grassroots aid, sharing contacts and ideas and attracting other volunteers, crowdfunding and amplifying awareness of the crisis as they went.
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“It was fantastic to meet another UMass faculty member that I had never met here in Amherst,” Carpenter said. “We all wanted to be helpful, but we also came in with our unique intellectual hats to look at the situation and figure out how to bring some kind of order to the chaos of people showing up without a coordinated government response.”
The three made the decision to hire multiple cars instead of just one, and individually dispatched to different entry points in the area, while sharing information and appointments for meals and accommodation.
Carpenter alternated between supply runs and transporting refugees, and also spent time at Warsaw Central Station working with the local relief team, later written in World Politics Review on ways AirBNB could improve its refugee housing program, based on its experiences.
“The helpers there are just citizens,” she says, “people who work with the refugees who try to help them and put them up in accommodation around the station – hotel rooms for the night they go through. There was a phase of my journey where I was really trying to figure out how we can get more of these refugees off the ground and into a hotel room for the night with their children before they continue on to the next shutdown and that is, unfortunately, in a grassroots humanitarian effort, a bigger coordination issue than you might think.
Throughout his career, Carpenter has provided regular updates on his GoFundMe page and tweeted regularly, with many of his tweet threads aiming to provide practical advice to other volunteers who show up to help in Poland’s ‘Dunkirk moment’. Too often, she warns, volunteers enter conflict zones in ways that are actually disruptive, but the solution to this may not be to stay completely out of the way, she says. to be worth. Those with extensive networks, disposable income, flexible schedules, and the ability to travel, fund, and inspire others can add great value when government resources are scarce and professional humanitarians have yet to establish adequate presence. The objective should be to add the greatest value and leave the lightest imprintshe says.
For Carpenter, whose teaching and research include the law of armed conflict, transnational humanitarian networks and the protection of civilians, joining the relief effort involved observing and participating in dynamics that she studies and teaches, too common in many other parts of the world.
Prior to the outbreak of war in Ukraine, she says the Human Security Lab had focused on the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. His research team of seven students at the Human Security Lab was consultation with the United States Agency for International Development on gender programming in Afghanistan, and she recently received a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study attitudes toward women, peace, and security in conflict zones. “It’s really important that we don’t lose sight of other complex emergencies like Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Yemen, or the humanitarian consequences of weapons development, just because the Ukraine crisis is so prescient,” she said.
Yet she says there is something distinct about what is happening in Europe, partly because it has caught the humanitarian system off guard. Writing to World Politics Review, she called the situation on the border “quasi-organized chaos.”
“Grassroots humanitarianism is inspiring, but not an adequate substitute for an organized government response or professional humanitarianism,” she says. “Participating to improve the structure of effort can not only help but also inform teaching, research and practice.”
Carpenter is currently working with staff at the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences to host a webinar about his trip, and his essays based on his experiences on the border about the broader implications of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict are available at WorldPoliticsReview.com.
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