The United Nations Development Programme’s interventions within Component 2 of the United Nations Recovery and Peacebuilding Programme (UN RPP) focus on supporting the resilience, early recovery, and stabilization of war-affected communities, promoting the re-establishment of local services, and supporting local governance actors, including in transit and host oblasts of Ukraine.

This should be achieved by enhancing local capacity for gender-responsive decentralization and administrative reforms to improve governance, local planning and implementation, and the delivery of services. Activities are intended to improve access to quality public administrative, social, and environmental services adapted to the current context, and to enhance government capacity for participatory strategic planning and transparent implementation.

Between 2015 and 2021, and in response to the armed conflict erupting in eastern Ukraine in 2014, the Programme helped the recovery of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts by fostering institutional development through elaboration of the Donetsk Oblast Development Strategy 2027. The Strategy absorbed the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and a gender-based approach, and used the theory of changes method application.

Up to 30 local socio-economic development strategies, 40 investment profiles, 20 marketing strategies, and 20 sectoral analyses and methodologies have been elaborated to help increase the investment attractiveness of the region.

Under the UN RPP, up to 7,500 local authority representatives participated in capacity-building events covering topics such as strategic planning, project management, financial management, countering corruption, good governance and participatory policies.

The Programme intensively implemented best practices in the provision of public services, in favour of the population of the government-controlled areas of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. In particular, 16 new fully equipped mobile Administrative Service Centres (ASCs) were handed over, and 24 further stationary ASCs were renovated and equipped in target communities. In addition, the UN RPP supported the creation of 130 remote ASC workstations in rural settlements along the “contact line”, to enable 25 basic administrative services to be rendered on-site.

Moreover, the Programme supported Donetsk and Luhansk oblast administrations to implement the national health-care reform. In particular, six pilot hospitals (Kramatorsk, Myrnohrad and Mariupol in Donetsk Oblast; and Lysychansk, Starobilsk and Bilovodsk in Luhansk Oblast) were supported in the conducting of strategic audits and development of strategic plans that adhere to current legislation, and to successfully implement secondary health-care reform. In 2020, the Programme also actively supported the partners with their challenges related to COVID-19 and to combat the spread of the pandemic, including through procurement of protective equipment and oxygen concentrators.

As evidenced by the SCORE survey (scale from 1 to 10), between 2017 and 2022 citizens’ perception of corruption decreased in both conflict-affected oblasts: from 6.4 to 6.1 in Donetsk Oblast and from 6.4 to 5.8 in Luhansk Oblast.

In addition, the Programme renders advisory and capacity-building support to 11 universities and colleges displaced from non-government-controlled areas of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, to increase the quality of education provided to the host population.

From the very beginning of the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the UN RPP, within Component 2, started providing rapid response activities for more than 60 communities in 24 oblasts. Priority is given to regions and communities hosting high numbers of internally displaced persons, oblasts where active hostilities are taking place, and the field of medicine, which bears the main burden of saving people's health and lives. Throughout 2022, the Programme has focused efforts on supporting local authorities to oversee a transparent and inclusive recovery planning process.

Component 2 helps communities to move from infrastructure rehabilitation to institutional development though implementation of the Local Integrated Recovery and Development model, support for provision of public services, health-care, socio-economic development and territorial management; implementation of good governance principles and combatting corruption; environmental protection; and citizen involvement in decision-making at local level.

To find out more, please download the 4-pager in PDF on the Component 2 activities available here.