During the war in Ukraine, humanitarian aid is critically important, as it saves lives and meets the basic needs of people affected by the hostilities. And it is civil society organizations that play the role of providers of this assistance, responding quickly to the needs of the population, and providing access to food, medicine, warm clothing, and temporary shelter, which becomes critical in a situation of mass destruction, and supporting the viability of communities in the most difficult times.
From 16 to 30 September, we surveyed NGOs and charitable organizations that provide humanitarian aid in different regions of Ukraine and we are ready to share its results.
The survey covered 54 civil society organizations, most of which are from the northern and western regions, with a predominance of representatives from Kyiv and Lviv oblasts. At the same time, more than half of the respondents are representatives of charitable foundations.
44% of our respondents receive from 51 to 100 requests for humanitarian aid per week, and 22% receive more than 1,000 requests. The surveyed organizations use different customs checkpoints to import humanitarian assistance. The choice of customs checkpoint depends on the country of origin of the humanitarian aid. Most of the respondents used checkpoints on the border with Poland.
Most organizations reported that their director or accountant works with the Automated Humanitarian Aid Registration System (AHRS). There are no separate staff members for this task. The Automated Humanitarian Aid Registration System is a digital humanitarian aid accounting mechanism that aims to ensure transparent accounting of humanitarian aid recipients and cargo. To bring humanitarian aid to Ukraine, organizations must register with the System. More than ¾ of respondents praised the work of the AS AS, but most respondents have no comments on the ease of generating and submitting reports in the system and do not need to improve the declaration form on the list of goods recognized as humanitarian aid. More than ¾ of the respondents have identified the quarter as the optimal period for reporting. However, it is not without its complications.
For example, a fifth of organizations have experienced cases when they were unable to import humanitarian aid due to imperfections in the system. In particular, respondents complain about malfunctions in the system itself. In some cases, the AS DG did not save the data and had to be re-entered, the indicators from the entered inventory were not ‘pulled up’ to generate a report based on them, and it was impossible to correct the indicators already entered, they had to be deleted and re-entered, which was a time-consuming process.
As for compliance with the legislation on humanitarian aid by civil servants at checkpoints or customs posts, respondents' opinions differ. More than ⅔ of respondents believe that there are no problems, but some respondents still complain about bureaucratic difficulties at checkpoints, in particular, customs officers are not always familiar with the work of the CCA and act at their discretion, in some cases deliberately delaying the process of processing humanitarian aid to the CCA. Some SMS employees even allow themselves to be biased and comment on the appropriateness of certain types of humanitarian aid. Another issue that needs to be addressed is the lack of understanding of the mechanisms of transfer and receipt of humanitarian aid by the final beneficiaries.
More than half of the surveyed organizations keep internal records of humanitarian aid stored in their warehouses in the form of Excel spreadsheets but would agree to use the AS DG as a free CRM system instead.
In addition, most respondents agree that to simplify document flow, the form of the report on the availability and distribution of humanitarian aid should be correlated with the form of the annex to the Report on the use of income (profits) of a non-profit organization.
Key findings of the survey:
- The regional distribution shows that the northern and western regions are more active in working with humanitarian aid, with Kyiv and Lviv regions leading the way;
- Charitable foundations, which make up the majority of recipients of humanitarian aid, continue to receive a significant number of requests for humanitarian aid (51-100 per week) even in the third year of the full-scale invasion;
- The vast majority of such organizations had no problems using the Automated Humanitarian Aid System in their activities and moving humanitarian aid through customs control.
- However, isolated problems with the technical serviceability of the Automated System itself and bureaucratic delays at the border do occur and need to be addressed;
- To simplify and improve the procedure for importing humanitarian aid, most respondents support the idea of using the AS GD as a free CRM system and making certain types of reporting consistent with each other.
The survey was conducted by the Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research as part of the project ‘CSO Meter: Empowered for Action’ within the framework of the CSO Barometer Hub in Ukraine with the support of the European Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ECNL) and funding from the European Union. The results of the survey will be used to improve the legislation on humanitarian aid. Our organization continues to collect feedback from the public sector on the work of the PAC and is ready to help solve the problems faced by other organizations. We thank everyone who took part in the survey. Together we can improve the processes of providing and receiving humanitarian aid!