Ukraine war recovery project awarded OPEN Seed funding

The research project ‘Building Ukraine For All: Inclusive Recovery for a Resilient Ukraine’ - led by DPIR Research Fellow Dr Daryna Dvornichenko, Professor Freya Baetens and Dr Ievgeniia Kopytsia (both Faculty of Law) has been  awarded a grant from the Oxford Policy Engagement Network (OPEN) Seed Fund.

The project seeks to find solutions to the complex challenges of how Ukrainian society can recover from the war, not only through reconstruction, but also through reforming and improving existing structures.

It is hoped that, in addressing a variety of concerns -from security and energy resilience, to healthcare, education and gender equality – it aims to ensure ‘no part of society is left behind’ in the nation’s recovery.

The Project aims to do this through three key strategies:

• Inclusive dialogues: connecting through online and face-to-face dialogue with a variety of stakeholders, including marginalised communities, local authorities and civil society organisations
• Developing evidence-based policy recommendations for the Ukrainian government and international partners based on insights gathered from dialogues and research.
• Promotion of best practices: translating learnings from successful post-conflict and post-disaster case studies of inclusive recovery to the Ukrainian context.

Dr Dvornichenko commented: 

“Tracking the progress of Ukraine Recovery Conference 2024, we will pinpoint issues remaining outside the conference agenda in order to build a comprehensive understanding of what inclusive recovery entails and equip policymakers, academia, civil society organisations, and communities affected by the war with the knowledge and tools needed to contribute to and benefit from recovery.”

The project outputs will include the production of a podcast series, a workshop and a policy brief involving experts and stakeholders from various fields. 

Findings will be broadly shared, by using platforms like the “RightsUp” podcast series led by Professor Baetens at the Oxford Human Rights Hub and co-designing project outputs with a policy partner (Heinrich Böll Foundation, Kyiv office-Ukraine), as well as project partners from Ukraine, the UK, the US and Germany.