“946 families of IDPs had been registered by the 8th of May, 2015, what equals to 1 278 100 IDPs”, — every official of the Ministry of Social Politics or even the Minister Pavel Rozenko, starts every speech with those words. Then they tell about budget money, which were allocated, and a program of socialization and reintegration of IDPs, which has to be written by officials any day now, but not yet …
Why do we need to count?
Volunteers, members of Ukrainian public and international organizations insist on necessity to create centralized base of IDPs’ registration, where it would be possible to count IDPs and understand problems of people, who suffered from the conflict with pro-Russian fighters in the East of Ukraine and occupation of Crimea.
Need to know a number of people, who left the conflict zone – is not just idle curiosity of importunate public activists, and not a try to count a number of people, who will claim to get cherished 442 UAH, about which officials talk every time, – it is a necessity.
It is important to understand how many people live in any settlement to administrate it: how many preschoolers, schoolchildren, students, pensioners and workers, unemployed people and entrepreneurs are in the city? This information can help local administration bodies to plan quantity of collected taxes, number of places at schools and kindergartens, workload on medical institutions with a quantity of vaccines and medicines, ambulance cars and prescriptions. Number of population impacts work of public transport, department of social protection and passport offices. Such numbers can help local self-administration bodies to attract funds of foreign donors.
There are many IDPs/ There are few IDPs
There are few IDPs when we are talking about work of officials. On every meeting they say that there is no need to created new places in educational institutions, resolve housing issues or create jobs for IDPs. There are not so many of them, they will manage with existing jobs. When we are talking about ability of IDPs to participate in local elections – number and influence of IDPs rise significantly. Officials and politicians suppose that IDPs will radically impact elections’ results. It is very difficult to understand in such demagogy whether there are many or few IDPs in territorial community. Nobody cares about people.
There is a data base/ There is no data base
If you will try to understand how officials count IDPs at the moment – you will be very disappointed. It is like to go to space with a digger stick. Every social security department counts IDPs in their own way, using existing bases, entering data from paper applications. Children are added to applications as attributes. Excel table is sent once a week to each city, city sends it to region, region sends it to the center and at the center public servants combine data from all around Ukraine. Tables have different formats and it is hard to join them into one. Such badly combined information is sent to officials and it has been working that way since October 2014. Thus, there is no online base of IDPs’ registration. That is why such problems as duplication, overpayments, letters to IDPs with a demand to return money, deprivation of certificates and etc. occur.
But if you will try to understand what happened to 40 thousand EUR, which were granted by the UNHCR to the Ministry of Social Politics for creation of such base, you will understand that the base exists, but there is no base. It is better to say that it will appear any very-very soon …
There are no programmers in Ukraine / There are programmers in the USA
Every official from the Ministry or even a Minister will tell you that they are finishing to develop a requirements list for the base of IDPs’ registration. But in reality they don’t do it, but the UNHCR does, and even not the UNHCR, but the IOM (International Organization for Migration). IOM can only develop recommendations and we can accept them or not. The last story was about programmers from the USA, who will come and do everything.
It sounds great – “programmers from America”, but when I hear that Ukrainian specialists cannot make a registration base for IDPs – it makes me laugh. There are no programmers in Ukraine? I suppose that even American programmers will be surprised to hear that.
There are no enough computers / There are no enough heads
Standard answer to journalists’ question why the system of registration is not working – is absence of computers. In most cases such answer works. But when someone offers to provide computers we found out that there is no software for them. After a year and a half of the conflict the Ministry of Social Politics of Ukraine hasn’t created the registration base and even a requirements list for such base.
Of course we can continue the list of imagined problems against which the Ministry of Social Politics fights every day as against windmills. It is important to understand that existence of IDPs’ registration data base and access of international and Ukrainian organizations to it without access to personal data, will make provision of humanitarian, psychological, social and material aid to IDPs more effective. It will make this process transparent and understandable.
Of course the Ministry is not interested in transparent distribution of international funds and it tries to manage those flows by itself, providing incomplete and false information about its work for protection of IDPs’ rights.
Public organizations don’t have other way except taking an effort to create parallel system, which will change existing burocracy at some point of time, when public activists will change ineffective officials, who have become rooted to their chairs and lost ability to help people, who suffered in the war.
Aleksandra Dvoretskaya, coordinator of human rights department of the “Vostok-SOS”, for the Informator.lg.ua