We are the United Nations Development Programme, the development arm of the UN. We partner with governments, civil society and the private sector around the world in 170 countries and territories to eliminate poverty, develop and retain national capacity, achieve tangible and impactful development results, sustain the environment, and advance democratic governance, leaving no one behind.

Our work is guided and informed by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by all UN member states in 2015. The 2030 Agenda is a blueprint for ending poverty and other deprivations, improving health and education, reducing inequality, and fostering economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.

In Ukraine, UNDP has been working since 1993 with the Government and local authorities, with partners across the UN system, with civil society and with local communities to help identify and develop targeted solutions to the country’s development challenges.  We work in close collaboration with several key ministries, departments and agencies in a robust, integrated manner through our Six Signature Solutions:

1. Keeping people out of poverty;
2. Improving governance to make society peaceful, just and inclusive;
3. Working on crisis prevention and resilience;
4. Using nature-based solutions, and solutions in harmony with nature, for development;
5. Investing in clean, affordable energy; and
6. Ensuring women’s empowerment and gender equality.

In Ukraine, these Solutions are integrated and targeted with a focus on three programmatic areas of support:

1. Inclusive Development, Recovery and Peacebuilding,
2. Democratic Governance, and
3. Energy and Environment.

All three of these programmes are aligned with the Government’s National Development Strategy and Action Plan, which includes accelerating economic growth and attracting foreign investments, fighting corruption, resolving the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine, and streamlining digital governance to make all state services accessible electronically.

Through these programmes, for example, UNDP helped established 825 home-owners associations in all 24 regions and organized 1,130 training sessions in local-governance, facility management and energy efficiency.  It also was able to work with these associations to coordinate an information campaign that reached 1.8 million Ukrainians

To support the Government’s efforts to end corruption in the country, UNDP developed an electronic verification module that has been used to carry out efficient and effective automatic checks of over 4.1 million e-asset declarations of Ukrainian public officials.

In our constant effort to think out of the box and to develop new ideas to evolving development challenges, we launched Ukraine’s Accelerator Lab in September 2019 as part of a network of 60 such UNDP innovation incubators serving 78 countries. The Ukraine lab team analyzes challenges within local contexts to identify connections and patterns in search of new avenues of work to act effectively in addressing urgent development issues.

Building forward better

While remaining committed to the achievement of the SDGs, the Government of Ukraine also is working tirelessly to build forward better from two formidable challenges: recovering from an ongoing conflict that has engulfed the east of the country since 2014, and responding to consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.

The conflict has so far resulted in the displacement of more than 1.5 million people, extensive damage to critical infrastructure, and the undermining of social cohesion in the areas worst affected by the conflict – Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. UNDP, acting as integrator uniting the efforts of sister UN agencies, the Ukrainian government and international partners, has taken a leading role in a holistic response to this crisis through the UN Recovery and Peacebuilding Programme (RPP). Through the RPP, UNDP is helping to restore critically important social and economic infrastructure and the effective work of local governments in eastern Ukraine, as well as to create jobs and spur entrepreneurship among internally displaced people and their host communities, at the same time promoting peace and reconciliation.

For example, this programme has supported 743 business start-ups, generating employment opportunities for 3,729 conflict-affected persons (54 percent of them women). In addition, UNDP training programmes prepared 8,900 entrepreneurs (57 percent of whom are women) in business management, marketing and fundraising skills.

Since the beginning of the pandemic in Ukraine, UNDP has been at the forefront of the country’s response and rapid recovery, aiding the government, the health and emergency services, and the general public with expertise, equipment and information to fight the disease. UNDP’s top priority is to ensure the country is stronger, more sustainable and more resilient in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, and to give greater attention to reducing the inequalities that COVID19 has exacerbated.