CHALLENGES ACROSS THE RESPONSE

Marginalised groups including the LGBTQ+ community, Roma people, third country nationals and people living with disabilities found it more difficult to access services and support in some countries because of discrimination. The Roma community in particular faced unfair treatment from private landlords, government-run shelters, host community members, and even their own Ukrainian co-nationals. Partner staff and volunteers took a firm stance to ensure no discriminatory behaviour was adopted in their shelters and centres. One partner advocated on behalf of individual refugees on a case-by-case basis, challenging the behaviour of landlords and shelter managers.

DEC member charities sometimes had difficulty in tracing people taking part in cash assistance programmes, as they tended not to stay in border areas where they had been registered but to move to the capital or larger towns. In one cash assistance programme in Poland, this was the main reason why some clients didn’t cash their second or third grants. To address this, last-minute checks were made on selected families, and DEC member charities who had partnered with local social services departments were able to update information using their internal systems.

Without recognised forms of ID, registering for services has proved difficult for some displaced people and refugees. Many DEC member charities partnered with MoneyGram to disburse cash grants, but some branches in Poland would not accept ID documents in the Cyrillic alphabet, including all Ukrainian ‘oldbook’ passports.

Attempted fraud has occasionally been an issue. Through its real-time monitoring and data management system on the border between Romania and Ukraine, a DEC member charity noticed a high number of new self-registrations for its cash assistance programme. More than 1,000 Ukrainians, mostly from Chernivtsi on the border, had entered Romania specifically to register and had then immediately returned to Ukraine. Within 72 hours, self-registration for people from that area had been disabled and GPS technology was used to create a virtual geographic boundary to prevent further registrations. People outside this geofenced area near the border were still able to apply as normal. After discussions with the government, it was agreed that an additional layer of verification would be added to ensure that claimants were actually residing in Romania.