On September 30 – October 2, the Council of Europe Project “Internal Displacement in Ukraine: Building Solutions” (hereafter – the Project) in cooperation with the Ministry of the Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine organized an Autumn School “Local initiatives for Lasting Solutions”. The event was held in a hybrid format in line with the established quarantine measures and recommendations.

The Autumn School aimed at creating a space for the exchange of experience and good practices of local integration of IDPs. Participants discussed the current challenges of internal displacement along with strategic directions to facilitate the effective integration.

Lilja Gretarsdottir, Acting Head of Division on Independent Human Rights Bodies, Directorate General on Human Rights and Rule of Law (Strasbourg) and Olena Lytvynenko, Acting Head of the Council of Europe Office in Ukraine (Kyiv) welcomed the participants of the event.

Key partners of the Project took part at the activity: Inna Holovanchuk, The Deputy Minister of the Reintegration of the Temporary Occupied Territories of Ukraine, Oleksandr Baranov, Acting Director, Coordination Centre for Legal Aid Provision, Oleksandr Ostapenko, Representative of the Parliamentary Commissioner on Human Rights in the Southern Regions, Volodymyr Uiazdovskyi, Deputy Director of the Department on Implementation of the State Social Policies, the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine, Serhii Komnatnyi, Chairman, State Fund for Support of Youth Housing Construction; the representatives of the Ukrainian Social Investment Fund, lawyers of the system of free legal aid provision, displaced notaries, the Project grantees and their partner NGOs.

The Project invited a number of international consultants to present the results of the research on housing and property rights of IDPs. The research is the first of its kind to accumulate an extensive data in the field of compensation and restitution, assess to housing and pension for IDPs in the conflict affected European countries.

During the Autumn School the Project grantees promoted their initiatives to facilitate local integration of IDPs. This include the instruments for local democracy and participation (Civic Holding “Group of Influence”), a tool kit for gender mainstreaming in integration policies and practices (NGO “Public Alternative”), IDPs needs assessment tool (Kharkiv Institute of Social Research) and the mobile application “IDP-Rights” (CH “Gorenie”).

Participants attended the parallel workshops on personal development.  They learned on the prevention of professional burnouts, the possibilities to apply mediation in restorative justice, discussed national court practice on IDPs rights and the distance learning HELP course on internal displacement.

As a result of the Autumn School the participants elaborated the initiatives to facilitate and improve the integration of IDPs. The Project will summarise all the outputs and share with the Ministry of the Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine along with other key partners.