"So many crises come together in Ukraine making it a particularly interesting country to look at," said Marcus Brand, UNDP's Democratic Governance Advisor in Ukraine during a private lunch discussion with SPP students at the School of Public Policy's Global Policy Academy on March 4 (Chatham House Rule applied).
Although traditionally the UNDP is not, according to Brand, seen as one of the "main players in Ukraine," its presence there has grown exponentially in recent years: from $10 million just two years ago to more than $70 million this year. UNDP's largest project is the CBA (Community-based Approach to Local Development) project that supports decentralization efforts by empowering local communities. UNDP is also active in many other areas including the energy and health sectors, and supports human rights and anti-corruption efforts, as well as recovery in conflict-affected areas. "The UNDP is present in every oblast, and is working with thousands of community organizations in Ukraine," said Brand.
The issue of corruption came up repeatedly during Brand's presentation, and was the focus of many of the questions he was asked. "Corruption has been practiced on such a scale and with such impunity for so long in Ukraine," said Brand, "that it can't be tackled in ordinary ways." Brand said that there is now widespread agreement especially among Ukraine's international partners that the incremental approach to tackling corruption that has been tried so far in Ukraine will not be effective on its own. "There are more and more voices calling for people to be held accountable and to be put in jail if found guilty," said Brand.
Brand noted that the issue of corruption in Ukraine transcends national borders. "The Austrian banking system has been accused of being involved in Ukraine money laundering," he said, "but this is not something that the Austrians will investigate unless they are asked to do so by the Ukrainians – and this won't happen as long as the justice sector in Ukraine remains unreformed."
Ukraine is now receiving an enormous amount of financial assistance from the European Investment Bank, the World Bank, and others. Brand agreed with GPA Director Bernhard Knoll-Tudor that absorption capacity was a huge challenge in Ukraine. One of the UNDP projects in Ukraine is to put in place a bottom-up consultative planning system that identifies needs and priorities, and also monitors projects once they are implemented. Brand said that this is an area in which Ukraine was gaining expertise that might in the future benefit other countries in the region.
Although Ukraine faces enormous challenges, Brand said that the country had "a lot of technical capacity" and benefited from a strong civil society. He noted also that some reform efforts had been successful, and pointed to the reform of the patrol police as one example. Brand went on to say that it was unrealistic to think that judges and prosecutors could be reformed in the same way, however.
Another topic that came up during the discussion was the situation in Donetsk and Luhansk. "Sitting in Kyiv, it can be hard to imagine that these are real places," he said. Brand, who had visited the area recently, described it as being a situation characterized by a dire economic crisis and large-scale social challenges, noting also that it was not a "typical humanitarian situation." He said that the people living there needed not only food and shelter, but jobs and a future. "The economy now is very depressed, and the banking system doesn't work in non-government controlled areas," he said. Interestingly, there are still economic relations across the contact line, as Brand pointed out, as some of the "coal trains are still running."
Brand spoke also about what it is like to work for UNDP in a context like Ukraine. "The UN Security Council does not have much day-to-day control over all activities, but we are part of the UN-system based on the UN Charter. We can't be seen as taking sides beyond our mandate and must abide by the relevant decisions of the Security Council and the General Assembly," he said.