Kyiv, 1 August 2023 – The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Ukraine and the Secretariat of the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the country’s parliament, have joined forces to develop a unified methodology for monitoring the safeguarding of human rights during rehabilitation. 

These joint efforts are aimed at creating an effective tool to monitor whether the rights of Ukrainian citizens to rehabilitation services are being observed, and to identify obstacles if such requests are not being met.

UNDP in Ukraine is providing comprehensive technical support to the Secretariat on this issue. With the assistance of UNDP, a toolkit has been developed for monitoring the implementation of powers in the provision of rehabilitation that are entrusted to local authorities, healthcare, and social protection institutions.

The Commissioner for Human Rights of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Dmytro Lubinets, emphasized the importance of joint efforts to ensure the rights of persons who need rehabilitation services.

"Every day, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the number of people injured due to the war is increasing. The return of such people to ordinary life and their integration into society is one of Ukraine's strategic tasks for the coming years. That is why parliamentary control over compliance with the right to rehabilitation is more relevant than ever."

To test the monitoring toolkit, representatives of the Secretariat and UNDP visited rehabilitation facilities in Vinnytsia, Lviv, and Drohobych. They held meetings with representatives of structural divisions of the healthcare and social protection services. These visits provided valuable experience in improving the developed toolkit.

Head of Democratic Governance of the UN Development Programme, Olena Ursu, said she believed that this joint initiative would positively impact improving the system of rehabilitation services in Ukraine. 

"Thanks to monitoring, we will be able to identify problems and challenges in the system, which will allow us to develop ways to solve them and, in the future, ensure equal and unhindered access to rehabilitation services for all those who need them," Ursu said.

To expand the coverage of monitoring of rehabilitation facilities, UNDP organized a training seminar for representatives of the regional network of the Commissioner. The seminar will help deepen the participants ' knowledge of the legal framework that regulates rehabilitation in Ukraine, and familiarize them with the developed monitoring tools.

By September 2023, monitoring is expected to cover at least 14 more rehabilitation facilities in various regions of the country.

The work will make it possible to obtain valuable information about the state of affairs concerning the monitoring or violation of the rights to rehabilitation and develop measures to improve the rehabilitation system, as well as access to it.

UNDP will provide training and further monitoring visits within the project "Supporting the rehabilitation of people with disabilities caused by the war" with the financial support of the governments of the Republic of Korea and Germany.

Media enquiries: Yuliia Samus, UNDP Ukraine Head of Communications; e-mail: yuliia.samus@undp.org