Months of escalating hostility towards Ukraine have culminated in a concerted invasion of the country and the launch of military attacks across multiple cities in Ukraine starting from February 24th, 2022. As of March 26, 2022, an estimated 2.2M people have fled to Poland from Ukraine. Many have been welcomed by the Ukrainian diaspora in Poland, many more are being hosted by Polish families, and the rest reside in recently established shelters and reception centers. While the Polish government, Polish NGOs, UN agencies, and local civil society actors have provided multisectoral relief across the country, this rapid needs assessment aims to better understand the priority needs, vulnerabilities, and barriers to accessing information, services, and humanitarian support that people fleeing the conflict in Ukraine face in Poland, including those experienced by groups with heightened vulnerability.  This assessment will be used to inform the IRC’s strategic response to these displaced populations in Poland and will be widely shared with the overall humanitarian community, including with Polish civil society and governmental bodies who have provided rapid and much needed relief to people fleeing the conflict in Ukraine. 

Each year the International Rescue Committee (IRC) works closely with state elected leaders to ensure that the communities in which we resettle are welcoming places for refugees and other new Americans. In addition to working directly on policy, we assess introduced legislation through our state tracker and identify new model policies and the trends in legislation—all informing the policies included in this guide. Year to year it has reflected emerging themes such as: resources for refugee-serving programs; reduced barriers for re-credentialing and licensure processes in states; and access to in-state tuition, to name a few. These measures not only help ensure refugees and other newcomers can access pathways to economic self-sufficiency and integrate more smoothly, but they positively impact the broader community as well. States and localities across the country can only benefit from the personal and professional success that a recently arrived individual achieves as they rebuild their lives. This year’s state policy and advocacy guide includes new policy themes and some familiar ones—but with nuanced examples as the policy efforts take shape in different states and political contexts. Recommendations provided are informed by stakeholder engagement and landscaping impacted communities to understand service provision needs, and strategic assessments of the political realities on the ground.

Protection monitoring is the systematic and regular collection, verification, and analysis of information over an extended period of time, in order to identify violations of rights and protection risks for populations of concern, in order to enable prevention and inform effective responses. It means collecting primary and/or secondary data and analyzing it over time to identify trends in the needs expressed and risks faced by the populations of concern. Protection monitoring is an important tool for both interventions and advocacy. Collecting and sharing high-quality information on these issues is essential to making sure that we are able to continue to improve our ability to respond to these needs through programming, referrals, and advocacy activities. The Protection Monitoring Report is produced on a quarterly basis, representing the result of IRC Italy's endeavors to enhance its protection monitoring activities, aiming to systematically and regularly monitor the protection situation of people met and supported. The report captures the profiles, vulnerabilities, protection risks, and needs of people supported by IRC in Italy, together with significant migration-related context updates covering the whole country. In particular, it focuses and provides numbers and insights on people supported by IRC's digital information service, Refugee.Info and individuals arriving from the Balkan route via land in the city of Trieste, at the border between Italy and Slovenia.