Skip to main content

Ukraine: Humanitarian Situation Monitoring (September 2022) - Briefing Note: Focus on accountability to affected populations (AAP) and information needs in government controlled areas (GCA)

Countries
Ukraine
Sources
REACH
Publication date
Origin
View original

Context and Methodology

As of 23 July 2022, there are estimated to be over 6.6 million people internally displaced in Ukraine.1 Since early April, further escalation in the eastern and southern parts of the country have been causing more damages to infrastructure and disruptions in access to services in affected areas, as well as additional population displacement.2 This briefing note summarizes data on accountability to affected populations (AAP) in government controlled areas (GCA), including the level of satisfaction with and barriers to receiving humanitarian aid, preferred channels of communication and information needs from REACH’s 3 fifth round of Humanitarian Situation Monitoring (HSM) data collection exercise.4 Structured data collection was conducted between July 4th and July 26th through 1658 phone interviews with key informants (KIs) representing non-government organisations (NGOs), local authorities and civil society in 306 settlements in GCA. KI responses were aggregated at settlement level. In addition, 10 long-form semi-structured interviews were conducted with interviewees5 who were displaced to government-controlled areas with high influx of IDPs (5 with IDPs residing outside displacement sites 6 and 5 with IDPs residing at displacement sites 7 ), as well as 5 semi-structured interviews with people who returned to recently liberated areas.8 The findings are not statistically generalisable and should be considered indicative only. Whenever possible, data has been triangulated with secondary data sources.

Key highlights

• In most of the cases in assessed GCA settlements, humanitarian assistance reportedly did not help to meet the immediate needs of the population or helped to a limited extent.

• Food and medicine were identified by interviewees as the most useful types of humanitarian assistance in the assessed settlements in both GCAs and recently liberated areas.

• In the settlements where interviewees reported that people were facing some barriers to accessing aid at distribution sites or reception centres, long waiting lines were the most frequently reported barrier in the assessed settlements both in GCAs and recently liberated areas.

• Interviewees also highlighted limited availability of information on where to register for aid or on eligibility criteria, which was consistently one of the main information needs identified by the respondents through structured data collection of HSM Round 5.

• Mostly, interviewees reported that some level of consultations were held with various actors in the settlement (including local authorities, volunteers, or residents), and in most of these cases interviewees reported that these consultations made a significant difference, particularly in terms of tailoring following rounds of aid to the needs of the people.

• While targeting of humanitarian aid was generally considered as fair and believed to be provided to those most in need, interviewees also shared perceived concerns in relation to some population groups either facing additional challenges or receiving preferential conditions in the aid distribution process, resulting in a level of dissatisfaction with aid targeting among people left out of assistance, or sense of injustice in relation to some people receiving aid more frequently than others.

• Interviewees generally reported some level of perceived awareness among people about procedures and referral pathways to report protection issues (such as sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA), gender-based violence (GBV), human trafficking, etc.), and the police or law enforcement bodies were most frequently cited as relevant bodies to report such cases to.