The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) supports the abolition of the linkage of receiving pensions and social payments to registration as an internally displaced persons.

UNHCR notes that Ukrainian authority is continuing repeated checks of IDPs to pay them pensions and social benefits, making twice a year home visits. Wherein the rest of Ukrainian citizens don’t undergo such thorough checks.

‘To hold such checks is hostilely enough from the side of authorities’, the Deputy Head of the United Nations Agency for Refugees Noel Calhoun said about it at the briefing on Tuesday, August 8, in Kyiv.

She also added that in origin the registration of IDPs was conceived as the system to improve the distribution of aid, and if it is now hampered, action must be taken.

‘It’s necessary to simplify the procedures for the assignment of payments to IDPs, so that internally displaced persons are not discriminated against in access to assistance’, the statement tells.

Also, organization considers that pensions are legal acquired right of all citizens of Ukraine and shouldn’t depend on the fact of registration of the IDP, and the provision of social assistance should depend on the insecurity of the person, and not on its movement.

We note, that as of August 7 in Ukraine 1 million 586 thousand 439 IDPs or 1 million 275 thousand 798 families from the Donbass and Crimea are accounted for free territory. The press-service of the Ministry of Social Policy, referring to the data of structural subdivisions of social protection of the population of the regional and Kyiv city state administrations.