Dnipro, 4 April 2024 – The Ministry of Justice of Ukraine has started the digitisation of archives of civil status records taken from Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in a project organised at the initiative of the ministry with the support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Ukraine, and technical assistance from the DIA Support project, which is implemented with funding from Sweden.

Over the course of six months, the ministry plans to scan more than three million of the documents, retrieved from archives in the war-affected regions, containing information about births, deaths, marriages and divorces, and changes to the names (surname, first name, patronymic) of citizens of these regions.

The scanning of documents taken out of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts began in Dnipro in February 2024. In a month and a half, the project was able to process more than 800,000 documents, including ones dating back to the 1940s. The scanned records are uploaded to the relevant state register. The scanning work is expected to be completed by August 2024.

Transferring documents into a digital format will help speed up the provision of public services for those citizens named in the records, said Serhii Orlov, Deputy Minister of Justice of Ukraine for Digital Development, Digital Transformations and Digitalisation.

“Ukrainians who relocated from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, encountered the most difficult and frequent bureaucratic obstacles during the registration of public services, including because it was difficult to check and verify legal records,” Orlov said.

“The digitisation of this data will help facilitate and speed up the provision of services to these people. After scanning civil status records, we will be sure that the necessary data is preserved, even in case of destruction of physical (documents), which is especially important in times of war.”

“The scanning will also help to facilitate the verification of information about recipients of public services, which in turn will contribute to increasing the efficiency of their provision.”

Based on the results of the pilot project on document scanning, the two regions will consider the issue of the digitisation of all civil status paper documents in Ukraine.

The civil status act scanning project was a response to the challenges caused by the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia to the state and the sphere of public services, said UNDP Resident Representative in Ukraine Jaco Cilliers.

“Together with international partners, UNDP is providing systematic support to the government to ensure the smooth operation of government registries, despite the unprecedented threats and attacks the country is facing,” Cilliers said. “The digitization of state acts of civil status makes it possible to ensure the preservation of personal data, as well as to increase the efficiency of the system of state registration of acts of civil status and the provision of public services. It is important to continue and scale up these efforts to ensure the preservation of documents important for the provision of state services.”

Previously, UNDP supported the development of the IT infrastructure and electronic registers of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, with funding from the government of Sweden. The computer equipment and technical support it provided helped the ministry in its work on the digitalisation of access to the most important types of documents.

Media inquiries

Yuliia Samus, UNDP Ukraine Communications Team Leader, yuliia.samus@undp.org