State Emergency Service of Ukraine and the UN Refugee Agency enforce cooperation to meet needs of IDPs

On November 10, the Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the State Emergency Service of Ukraine and the UN Refugee Agency. The document signed Serhiy Bochkovsky, Head of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine (SES) and Oldrich Andrysek, UNHCR Regional Representative in Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine.

Within the frameworks of Memorandum, the Agencies agreed to join their efforts to work with the internally displaced persons (IDPs), the number of which totals in 445 000 people.

“State Emergency Service of Ukraine is one of the most active and efficient state agencies that has been trying to respond to displaced persons’ needs since the beginning. But, unfortunately, SES has not had enough resources and power to solve IDPs’ issues on a daily basis, since the Government still has to appoint the authority responsible for taking care of this category of persons”, emphasized UNHCR Regional Representative in Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine Oldrich Andrysek.

Besides the monitoring and joint needs assessment, UNHCR and SES will implement joint response programme to address the needs of the internally displaced person residing in Ukraine. Such cooperation will be empowered namely in the field of coordination of state bodies and international institutions by the means of participation in joint working groups and meetings of  Inter-agency coordination headquarters on social security services for displaced.

UNHCR accordingly to its mandate will continue provision of humanitarian assistance for the most vulnerable categories of IDPs, while SES will provide to the extent possible warehouse space and logistical support for storage and delivery of humanitarian aid of UNHCR. The Memorandum foresees SES to provide to extent air freight and by surface vehical transportation to destination points of humanitarian aid goods – non-food items as well as canned foods too.

UNHCR is planning to provide technical assistance – best practices and equipment – to strengthen the efficiency of responsiveness of SES and for speeding up coordination in the matters of IDPs’ assistance.

"...Just because of today’s signing the Memorandum, together with UNHCR we will define priority directions for providing the humanitarian assistance. Thus, we will establish a working group on provision of shelter and non-food humanitarian aid. We will also develop and implement new mechanisms for welcoming newly arrived displaced persons on the railway stations. We will make a system to facilitate voluntary return and reunification of families”, explained Serhiy Bochkovsky.