What is “Build Back Better”, or what principles should be followed for the proper recovery of war-impacted communities?

Ukraine faces a massive recovery and reconstruction challenge resulting from Russia’s ongoing invasion, which has displaced millions of people from their communities and destroyed or damaged hundreds of thousands of homes and facilities. The brunt of this daunting recovery and reconstruction challenge falls upon local government – upon Ukraine’s reformed municipalities, their elected mayors and communities.

The impacted municipalities often lack for sufficient expertise and experience as they try to navigate their course through a regulatory and legal environment for recovery planning that is still incomplete, shifting and containing elements of contradiction. Consequently, some have devised plans in the absence of a regional policy framework, some have devised a ‘Recovery and Development Plan’, others have gone down the alternative avenue of a ‘Program for the comprehensive restoration of the territory of the territorial community’.

Underlying all this are the questions: will recovery and reconstruction be free of corruption? Transparent? Participatory? Inclusive? Maximise value? Will the process and results justify the trust of donors and communities, and fulfil the mantra of “Build back better”?

That’s where REPAIR Ukraine aims to make its impact. This pioneering initiative (Recovery, Participation,Accountability, Integrity, and Reconstruction) — now active in 10 municipalities across Mykolaiv, Odesa, Kherson and Chernihiv regions— offers local governments a roadmap for better reconstruction, pulling together the disparate legal and regulatory threads, and rooted in six core principles: accountability, efficiency, transparency, inclusivity, citizen engagement, and integrity.

How? Referencing their previous success in a project approach that raised municipalities’ standards of budget transparency across multiple regions of Ukraine, the Odesa Regional Organization of  ‘Committee of Voters of Ukraine’ and its sister NGO ‘4U’ commissioned a team of legal and local governance experts to devise a matrix of steps and indicators with which to guide municipalities’ planning and implementation of recovery and reconstruction, and against which it can be assessed. The matrix will adapt and grow as implementation of recovery and reconstruction deepens and as its regulatory and legal environment evolves.

“Our experience has taught us that this is the way to generate positive institutional change,” said 4U project director Anatoly Boyko. “While there is a place for policing-style monitoring that exposes malpractice, we find that, long-term, acting as a supportive coach, incentivising improvement and then giving it recognition when it is achieved can be more productive.”

Four experienced regional NGOs were trained in the methodology: 4U (Odesa), Agency for Urban Initiatives (Chernihiv), Agency for Economic Development (Voznesensk), and the Kherson Regional Organization of Committee of Voters of Ukraine. They have been working with the 10 selected municipalities since December, beginning a process of mutual learning, and choosing 10 discrete reconstruction projects to monitor, with which to cross reference assessment of the municipalities’ overall approach to recovery and reconstruction.

Early feedback from municipal representatives raises common themes. In Kherson region: "We are interested in working transparently. If we make mistakes, we are ready to correct them, but we need guidance and partnership, not just oversight." In Odesa region: "We need more than just money. We need knowledge—how to structure projects, how to engage communities, and how to navigate bureaucracy effectively."

To help communities overcome these and many other challenges as effectively as possible, form a holistic and comprehensive concept of community recovery and, ultimately, "Build Back Better", the "REPAIR Ukraine" initiative incorporates six principles for recovery:

1. Feedback, sensitivity in terms of citizen involvement (all procedures are adapted to effective and understandable involvement of residents in community affairs);
2. Efficiency and effectiveness, including ensuring sustainable development of the territory (restoration is provided with the most optimal use of resources on the principle of "rebuild better than it was");
3. Openness and transparency (information about the decisions of local self-government bodies is accessible and understandable to residents, who can freely use it to join the recovery processes);
4. Ethical behaviour, integrity (public values always prevail over individual interests, there are effective means of preventing and combating all forms of corruption in the community);
5. Human rights, cultural diversity and social cohesion, inclusiveness (human rights are respected, protected and realized in the community, all social groups, including vulnerable ones, are involved in the recovery processes);
6. Accountability (all participants in the decision-making process are responsible for their decisions, in which they were involved and who were actively involved in the recovery processes).

These principles derive from the 12 principles of good democratic governance of the Council of Europe, which should be met by any public governance processes and, accordingly, their implementation should help municipalities ensure the most effective, inclusive and harmonious recovery.

The pilot project will run until mid-2025, at which point we aim to diffuse the lessons learned among Ukrainian and international institutional stakeholders in recovery and reconstruction, move to a second stage of the project, scaling it up to larger number of municipalities, so that REPAIR Ukraine plays a significant role in making Ukraine’s post-war recovery into a model of integrity and efficiency—one that prioritizes communities, not just construction contracts.

REPAIR Ukraine is led by the Partnership for Transparency Fund (PTF) Europe together with sister NGOs "4U" and the Odesa Regional Organization of the NGO "Committee of Voters of Ukraine". It is funded by Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung, with a contribution from Česká rozvojová agentura.

The project "Promoting Improvement of Standards of Planning and Implementation of Recovery at the Municipal Level" is implemented by the Partnership for Transparency Europe in partnership with the NGO "4U" and the Odesa Regional Organization of the All-Ukrainian NGO CVU within the framework of the "REPAIR Ukraine" Initiative funded by the Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (BMZ) and Czech Development Cooperation.