Why we’re fundraising for Ukraine’s women and girls.
The Brookings Institution describes Russia’s unlawful invasion of Ukraine as a “particularly egregious example” of Article 2 of the UN Charter being violated. Inside that clear breach of international law, beyond all the case studies and UN statistics, real women of all ages are subject to untold trauma. Ukraine’s women are suffering grievous human rights abuses including human trafficking.
We made a music album with Ukrainian artists to support Ukraine’s women and girls being devastated in this senseless humanitarian crisis. We believe the Ukrainian Women’s Fund is the best way to support Ukrainian women and girls to rebuild their lives.
The press hasn’t made this clear but 90% of the 5 million+ people who have fled the Ukraine are women and girls. Gender-based violence, human trafficking, mothers giving birth in bomb shelters, homelessness, sexual assault, these are just a few of the life changing traumas that have descended on millions of Ukrainian women forced to flee their homes.
A harrowing unreported world that is not addressed by censored media coverage attests to gender-based violence against Ukrainian women & girls who face what Carnegie Europe’s Judy Dempsey describes as “a war that is now known for its cruelty and indiscriminate killing of civilians”.
On women, the destruction meets the legal definition of persecution carried out by a lawless, merciless government with poisonous disregard for human life. Cited by multiple human rights attorneys, Russia deploys mass murderers who’ve been on the radar of the International Criminal Court for years in relation to grave human rights atrocities including torture and extrajudicial killings.
Unfortunately time is running out. As a stalemate looms, Heather Conley of German Marshall Fund warns “the Ukraine doesn’t have for as long as it takes”. Russian missile strikes have destroyed over 50% of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure while western-led sanctions have neither impacted the Russian economy nor removed the prospect of a nuclear confrontation.
An anti-invasion album with Christian values to raise funds for Ukrainian women and girls
HostJane for Ukraine, an anti-invasion music album made with Ukrainian artist Olga Shtonda, Ukrainian vocalist Olha Lishchyshyn, and Edinburgh-based busker Eliza Rose, is donating all proceeds (after mechanical licensing royalties) to the Ukrainian Women’s Fund.
Known for her Google Doodle on Ukraine Independence Day 2022, award-winning Ukrainian artist Olga Shtonda created a unique stamp for HostJane for Ukraine, to celebrate the hope and courage of Ukraine’s women.
Olga worked with HostJane to design her stamp, and has also created thought-provoking artwork to protest the human rights atrocities perpetrated against the Ukraine by Russian military aggression.
Bono once said: “Music can change the world, because it can change people.”
Wherever they have fled in the world, Ukrainian women are the silent candle holding the Ukraine and its future identity above the surface just by staying alive and surviving.
HostJane was inspired by the brave Ukrainian girls on #AGTAllStars and we were honored to have a rare opportunity to work with 2 courageous Ukrainian women, illustrator Olga Shtonda and vocalist Olha Lishchyshyn, to raise awareness about the devastating trauma facing Ukraine’s women subject to unimaginable suffering.
Ukrainian artist Olha Lishchyshyn recorded 2 beautiful Christian songs from Hillsong Church in HostJane for Ukraine 🇺🇦, fusing with Eliza Rose’s meaningful anti-war anthems that include Bob Dylan’s Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door and Ben E. King’s Stand by Me.
Eliza reinterpreted songs usually sung by male voices, including Snow Patrol’s Run, José González’s Heartbeats and The Calling’s Wherever You Will Go. The women’s voices embody our shared goal to end the violence against women and girls, and bring fundamentally more support, peace and unity for Ukraine’s existence.
A conflict that hurts women and girls more than any other group
Women and girls have been disproportionately hit dealing with serious risks of gender-based violence, human trafficking, and mental health trauma; harm that was glossed over all 2022 by mainstream media and seemingly set aside by powerful governments in favor of an appeasement policy.
In Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War 2, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield estimates between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainians have been “interrogated, detained and forcibly deported” to Russia.
While Polish and German families have taken in over 2 million refugees fleeing Russian bombing, other European governments were slow to react to the humanitarian crisis in the first 6–8 months; the results hurt women and girls more than any other group.
Similar to thousands of Ukrainian women forced to leave their homes, Ukrainian artist Olga Shtonda told HostJane she is worried about her family having witnessed her home city of Kharkiv destroyed to ruins.
The senseless devastation inflicted on Ukrainian women and girls directly crosses one of HostJane’s core issues: securing gender equality. Embedded in HostJane’s values, we see the price of female equality to be paramount.
Inside the wider human rights atrocity that is razing Ukraine to the ground, it’s fair to say that not enough people are talking about how this war has devastated women. Echoing our company statement, the conflict has had a massively destructive anti-women impact that will take many years if not generations to restore.
We’re asking people to have a conversation about this difficult and upsetting issue. Ukraine’s women and girls continue to be at risk in all places, at all levels, abroad — their homes annihilated by a totalitarian dictatorship with vast resources to inflict extreme suffering.
HostJane.com’s lead developer in Moldova impacted by Ukraine invasion
Days after Russia invaded the Ukraine on February 24, 2022, our long-term web developer, Alexandr Comanici who is based in the Moldovan capital of Chișinău, a 1 hour 45 minute drive from the southwestern Ukraine border at Odessa Oblast, messaged us on Telegram from the border crossing that he was stopping work on HostJane. With family members in the Ukraine, Alex was responding to a family crisis.
For a short time we lost contact with Alex, which for us at the time, topping the insaneness of Covid’s restrictions, seemed like our world was caving in. We often say at HostJane, a U.S. company which follows Coinbase’s footsteps to hire a 100% distributed workforce with our people working remotely from Moldova to Australia, that HostJane marketplace runs on 1 time zone. We welcome people of all nationalities and races.
We’d been working with Alex in Moldova since 2019 who pushes to our private Github repositories as a remote developer. Alex stayed loyal to the company with reasonable charges through Covid, and 2 years of lockdowns that hit Moldova particularly hard.
But Alex’s rescue mission to get his family members out of neighboring Ukraine was nothing short of an absolute disaster for HostJane. We’d never heard of Transnistria before February 2022. We didn’t know that Moldova is subject to risks and restrictions imposed by Russia to keep the country economically dependent on Russia.
Previously we’d no idea of the precariousness of Moldova’s location but got an education from Alex on the situation as an exodus of some 5 million people, 90% of them women and girls, chaotically evacuated a potential nuclear war zone.
As we watched helpless the TV images of Ukraine’s women forced to leave the Ukraine with their children as a result of Russia’s illegal war, HostJane simultaneously grappled with being left without our key developer. Alex is responsible for coding the innovative workspace on HostJane, primarily a marketplace for freelancers, for example his design of kanban-style boards to assist freelancers to do better work online for clients.
Addressing the racial vilification against Ukraine
We couldn’t go ahead with our Christian production, HostJane for Ukraine, or speak up for the displaced Ukrainian women we are fundraising for without addressing the alarming hate speech in forums and comments designed to attack people whose lives have already been torn apart.
We urge people to read the words of journalist, John Lindsley, who like our web developer, Alex and his family, is actually there — in the region — before making judgments on the racist, sensationalist libels and misinformation being circulated by the right without evidence to corroborate their claims.
Conservative media figures on social media, notably Fox’s outgoing talk show host Tucker Carlson, have created a spiral of silence that has given carte blanche to an army of online trolls engaged in the dissemination of racist hate speech against the Ukraine. Through 2022 and 2023 such media figures broadcast a series of fabricated, misinformed messages including serious libels, assisting the Russian government’s racial vilification of the Ukraine and its heroic president.
We’ve addressed this disinformation by publishing facts in our company statement that are substantiated by independent authorities. The Russian army is documented by Human Rights organizations of killing and maiming with torturous weapons including using illegal cluster bombs against women and children.
Our team is in an unenviable position. Because of Transnistria & the distressing abuses of a lawless Russian government with unalloyed contempt for human dignity, our web developer Alex has had to change life plans as have others involved in HostJane for Ukraine music album. Alex is a first-hand eye witness and has confirmed what citizen journalists and Ukraine’s heroic representatives are tweeting.
Misinformation and racial propaganda deployed against the Ukraine is intense but shouldn’t be allowed to hide the human rights atrocity against Ukrainian women, the central victims of Moscow’s obscene war crimes deliberately inflicted with extreme cruelty.
Since 2022 these unconscionable human rights abuses account for the bombing of a maternity hospital, the decimation of homes across Ukrainian cities, flagrantly violating the UN Charter while Russia pushes its influence within the BRICS alliance to upend and weaken the U.S. dollar.
We know because of Alex, Olga, and Olha, how high the stakes are. There are parallels to 1939. If Russian military aggression succeeds in erasing Ukrainian identity from the world, Moldova and others will follow.
HostJane’s full statement:
Please donate to Ukrainian Women’s Fund:
At a time when Ukraine’s people are suffering so immensely, we believe the best way to assist is to support the Ukrainian Women’s Fund. Follow them on Twitter @FundUkr.
