More than 50% IDPs are not able to adapt to the new location – “Restoring Donbas”

11:46 / 16 Sep. 2015 / 1005

The state has not cope with creating of necessary conditions for IDPs to adapt to the new place of residence. 52% are not able to adapt to a new place, one-third of IDPs do not have enough useful information, and 15% hide their status from others. Such data are contained in the sociological survey “Comfort index of IDPs”, which was held by community initiative “Restoring Donbas”, together with the company «TNS Ukraine».

Among the main reasons for inability of adaptation to the new location by IDPs, 50% of respondents noted social and everyday activities (job, housing, health services, etc.), and 37% – are financial reasons.

«Sociological survey, which was conducted jointly with the company «TNS» – is a way to organize and analyze set of problems in order to build further work with IDPs in the thorniest questions, which require immediate attention both from the public authorities and the community. This is the first comprehensive survey in Ukraine, which tells about the problems of displaced persons and attitude of local residents to them. Moreover, it’s a real guide to the work for state authorities», – said Elena Petryaeva – the head of the initiative.

According to the results of the study, experts made unpromising conclusions. 15% of IDPs from Donbas hide their status. The main reasons are: fear for their lives and the lives of their relatives, or simply do not want to talk about it. The biggest threat to their safety is felt in Kiev. 38% of IDPs there do not want to advertise their status due to a threat to their security.
In addition, in Kiev, only 1.8% of respondents are ready to rent an apartment to displaced persons and only 4% are willing to help with the work. At the same time, 57% of Kyiv residents are ready to refuse to help IDPs from Donbas in household aid – food, clothes.

Oleksandr Kozyrev – sociologist of TNS Ukraine – said: “9/10 of local residents feel warmth and responsiveness towards the IDPs. 12% of local residents have their own experience of forced relocations, which probably also affect their attitude to IDPs”.

At the same time, according to results of the study, in August 2015 10% of local residents in the region said that IDPs – are people, who complicate their lives. This figure has increased during the year by 4% (in 2014 there were 6%).

The survey demonstrated that 51% of IDPs are ready to come back to Donbas in course of time. More than half of them are ready to participate in the reconstruction of the destroyed infrastructure in the region.

Oleksandr Klymenko – the head of community initiative – directly got in touch with the participants of the presentation.
In particular, he said: “We can talk for a long time about the reasons of the war in Donbas. Who is right and who is wrong. Till we look to the past, we will have no future. I would like to talk about, how to reintegrate Donbas in Ukraine, how to restore the region, how to re-glue the broken destinies of millions of people who have become, unfortunately, hostages of a big geopolitical game – Donbas residents and those of our fellow citizens, who have received the status of IDPs”.

Let us recall that according to the latest data of the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine, 1 million. 483 thousand 119 IDPs have been registered by September 14 (or 1 million 164 thousand 338 families from Donbas and Crimea).

Reference: The survey was conducted among IDPs from Donetsk and Lugansk regions, over 18 years, as well as residents of 7 regions: Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, Lviv, Luhansk and Mykolaiv regions (in the cities with a population more than 50 thousand people). The survey was conducted from July 29 to August 11, 2015.

The restoring-donbass.com website - is an interactive platform, which was created by the "Restoring Donbas" community initiative of Oleksandr Klymenko. The latest news, blogs and analysis, background information and useful ads for IDPs and Donbas residents are available on the website.