Ukraine horrors: Without accountability, some agencies take ‘safari’ so their teams can get something to tell donors

Ukraine horrors: Without accountability, some agencies take ‘safari’ so their teams can get something to tell donors

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Many Ukrainian civilians say they’re not getting enough assistance. Registration with the UN for cash aid – people are eligible for $74 a month for up to three months – has been slow.

Several locals said they either register and don’t receive money, or they don’t know where or how to get help. Internal emails between aid agencies show that while people were promised money within two weeks, they hadn’t received anything after more than a month, they were unable to reach anyone on the UN hotline, and many were losing trust in aid groups.

Several humanitarians, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisal, said there wasn’t enough accountability for the mammoth influx of cash. Some organisations have been taking “safari” trips to visit field projects so communications teams have something to show donors, according to one aid worker.

“People are visiting shelters like they are zoos, taking photos and doing communications about activities that haven’t taken place yet or that weren’t funded by them. They’re doing this to raise more money which we’re already struggling to spend,” said the aid worker. We could not independently verify the allegations, but they were corroborated by a second source.

Ukraine’s government is working with the international community but is wary of creating a culture of dependency. In May, it changed the law, reducing the regions where displaced people are eligible for assistance. One aid group, who did not want to be named, said it was prevented from distributing food assistance to displaced people in the western town of Lviv.

“We don’t have a culture of receiving social aid. People are used to working,” said Kuleba, the regional military official.

The government says it wants to restart the economy by fuelling local business, but there isn’t really the money right now. For instance, it has only given approximately $13,500 so far to support small repairs for damaged houses in the Kyiv region – a drop in the ocean, as Kuleba noted, compared to the billions needed to rebuild.

While Ukrainians in the west and around the capital look to rebuild their lives or try to figure out where they’ll find shelter come winter, communities in eastern Ukraine and along the front lines are struggling to survive.

The UN estimates that one million people aren’t receiving assistance because it’s either too dangerous for aid groups to reach people, or because access is being denied by the Ukrainian or Russian militaries. Out of 17 requests for access by humanitarians to either side since May, only six have been successful, according to the UN.

A soldier speaks with residents during a food distribution in a frontline town on the outskirts of Kharkiv.

“It’s very clear that across the lines of control [into Russian-occupied areas], it’s very very difficult to get support,” Matthew Hollingworth, emergency coordinator for the World Food Programme in Ukraine, told The New Humanitarian. “Of course, some of those areas are the areas where there are [the] most acute needs… it’s very difficult to negotiate pauses to get access when there is ongoing fighting.”

Half a million families in the east have no electricity for cooking, only 30 percent of the Zaporizhzhia area in the southeast is accessible, and fighting in the north around Kharkiv is intensifying, making it harder to reach people there as well, Hollingworth added.

It’s not only challenging for aid groups to reach people near active front lines. Even in places where the fighting has subsided, many roads are still lined with explosives, preventing assistance from getting through and civilians from getting out.

In June, The New Humanitarian travelled close to a remote village in the northern Chernihiv region that had been cut off from assistance since February – after a tank was blown up by an anti-vehicle mine on the main road into the town.

The Danish Refugee Council, one of the few groups clearing mines in the country, says it can take more than a week to clear just a few kilometres. “If they are not cleared, mines and unexploded ordnance will threaten lives, livelihoods, and freedom of movement for many years to come,” DRC’s Secretary General Charlotte Slente said.

During a trip to the frontline eastern town of Lysychansk, which Russia has been bombarding daily, a local Red Cross team of 18 people described how they live and work in a bomb shelter trying to bring food and water to thousands of civilians still living in the city with little outside assistance.

Without a car – they’ve all been damaged or have left, and there’s little fuel for those that remain – aid workers bike around town under the missiles, delivering food. “People are afraid to come here. No one can deliver [aid] here. The road is hard and dangerous,” one Red Cross worker, who didn’t want to be named for fear of her safety, said. The team was also worried that supplies were running out.

In a village outside the north-eastern city of Kharkiv that was partially occupied by Russia until April, and is still just five kilometres from Russian-held areas, shells line the road, and the few remaining people have no electricity or gas and are forced to rely on handouts. “We have nothing here,” said 45-year-old Dina Gribanova. “We can’t get food here. No stores are open. We rely only on volunteers.”

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