Observations of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine

The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission assesses the situation in the whole of Ukraine on a daily basis. See below excerpts from their August reports about the IDPs in the country.

1 August: In Dnepropetrovsk, the SMM met with the deputy head of the State Emergency Service, who said that, based on their data, 8,247 internally displaced persons (IDPs) are currently registered in the municipality. The State Emergency Service organised bus transport for returns during this week, and a total of 94 people departed for Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

5 August: In Kharkiv city the head of the IDP Co-ordination Centre told the SMM that, as of 5 August, 34,047 IDPs from the Luhansk and Donetsk regions and 739 from Crimea were registered in the Kharkiv region. He warned that the region had reached its limits in terms of accommodating IDPs.

In Chernivtsi a member of the State Emergency Service, who is also a member of the Regional Task Force dealing with IDP issues, told the SMM that there was a risk of intolerance amongst locals towards IDPs, with resentment growing because IDPs from the east were seen as avoiding military service in the east and / or refusing to work, preferring instead to live on assistance provided from the regional budget.

10 August: A number of interlocutors in Pershetravneve (50 km southwest of Kharkiv city) told the SMM on 10 August that all internally displaced persons (IDPs) from Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, hosted by a local Baptist church in the town, had returned home. According to the interlocutors, these people have, however, been replaced by other IDPs from Donetsk and Luhansk cities.

11 August: A group of internally displaced persons (IDPs) from Pervomais'k (76km west of Luhansk city) spoke to the SMM at Svatovo IDP transit camp (150km northwest of Luhansk city). They said that only 10,000 of Pervomais'k's 80,000 inhabitants remained in the town. The town, they said, was being shelled by both Ukrainian military forces and irregular armed forces. The result, they said, was that almost all apartment blocks in the town had sustained damage, and only 30% of detached houses were intact.

They said that 200 people had been killed in the town, and more than 400 wounded, since the shelling allegedly started on 22 July, with the dead being buried in courtyards. The town's mayor, contacted later by the SMM over the phone, corroborated the figures supplied by the IDPs.

Two IDP co-ordinators for the Luhansk region told the SMM in Svatovo that a second IDP transit camp had been opened in Severodonetsk (97 km northwest of Luhansk city), and that 400 people were currently there, waiting for Luhansk city to be re-taken by Ukrainian military forces. The interlocutors said that in the last two weeks around 1,000 women, children and old people had passed through the transit camp in Svatovo.

The mayor of Yuzhne (50 km east of Odessa city) told the SMM that IDPs needed to have a registered workplace in the town if they wished to have their children enrolled in a local kindergarten. Members of an non-governmental organization in Odessa city told the SMM that 80% of IDPs staying in Kurortnoe and Serhiivka sanatoria (100 km southwest, and 80km west of Odessa city, respectively) intended to return to their homes in Kramatorsk or Sloviansk in the northern Donetsk region before the start of the school year.

The head of the IDP Co-ordination Centre in Ivano-Frankivsk city told the SMM that there was a risk that local people in the region may feel resentment towards IDPs, as IDP children were given priority over local children when enrolling in kindergartens. She also said that there was no central budgetary support for the extra costs incurred, and as a result, the financial burden was borne at a local level, adding to the potential of even more resentment.

A member of the Kyiv Regional Administration Co-ordination Centre for IDPs told the SMM that the centre had since July logged 9,000 requests from IDP families asking for assistance. He said that 4,460 IDPs (90% of whom were women and children) had been accommodated with the help of the centre. 

14 August: In Kharkiv the regional administration informed the SMM that a convoy of 26 trucks carrying Ukrainian humanitarian aid had left the city for Luhansk city. The convoy was accompanied by traffic police. The SMM met with the regional deputy head of the social protection department who said that the Kharkiv region had not been prepared for a big influx of IDPs coming from the conflict zone hence there was no co-ordinated effort to face the needs of IDPs. Efforts were made at the district level and in an ad hoc manner, the interlocutor said. According to the interlocutor, the Kharkiv region "has exhausted" its capacity to absorb additional IDPs; the lack of a unified IDP database hinders the capacity to properly plan and respond to different categories of IDPs, particularly the most vulnerable categories, such as children with disabilities.

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