UKRAINE

Political commitment, institutional capacity

Ukraine is committed to achieving the SDGs. Since 2015 a series of reforms have been launched in Ukraine, aiming to implement socio-economic transformations and strengthen its democratic system. The SDGs are integrated into the state policy on ‘leave no one behind’ basis.

An inclusive process of the SDGs adaptation, which was tailored to the national development context, resulted in a national SDGs system consisting of 86 national targets with 183 monitoring indicators. The Government established the Inter-Agency Working Group on SDGs. Responsibilities of the ministries for the SDG targets were defined, the President of Ukraine issued a Decree setting the SDGs as a benchmark for programming and forecasting documents, the SDGs monitoring system was developed, the assessment of mainstreaming the SDGs into national and subnational planning produced. The SDG targets have been incorporated in 162 Governmental regulatory legal acts (4,300 planned actions). In March 2020, the new Cabinet of Ministers adopted its Programme, reaffirming the commitment to the SDGs.

SDGs in Ukraine

2016: SDGs adapted for Ukraine through an open process (national and local levels).
2017: national SDGs targets (86) with benchmarks and national SDGs indicators (183) established.
2017: baseline report “SDGs: Ukraine” approved.
2018: SDGs monitoring introduced.
2019: monitoring report on the SDGs (statistical data), thematic report “SDGs for Children” and National Report “SDG8” presented.

SDG progress and challenges

Ukraine has achieved progress in 15 of 17 SDGs. A key success is poverty reduction: from 58.3% in 2015 to 43.2% in 2018. The country has managed to attain the progress due to improvement of labour remuneration standards and population coverage with housing subsidies (from 12% in 2014 to 64% in 2017). Country has been implementing the long-term concept of educational reform “New Ukrainian School” and joined the PISA-2018. Ukraine introduced a retail and full-scale electricity markets. Due to support to SME a positive balance of foreign trade in ICT has grown 2.5 times, also 4G high-speed Internet was introduced. 1,029 amalgamated territorial communities have been established (decentralization reform); state support for local development has grown 41.5 times. Major obstacles include the ongoing armed aggression, obsolete infrastructure, inefficient public administration, insufficient resource support, and limited financing. The situation is exacerbated by challenges related to COVID-19. The lessons learnt as response to pandemic indicate that Ukraine has to ensure: health care reform; stronger coordination and more professional authorities;  resumption of a full production cycle of some goods (chemical, pharmaceutical industries); reform of the social assistance system, modernization of support for the most vulnerable populations, first of all children, combined with integrated social services and digitalization; introduction of distance education.

Ukraine: vision of transformative pathways for the next decade

Economic: developing innovations and circular economy technologies; implementing infrastructural projects; fast growth of productivity in agro-industrial complex; promoting SME development; digitalization of economy and creation of new decent jobs.

Social: reforms undertaken by Ukraine (education, health care, decentralization) are to improve people’s living standards and reduce all forms of inequality. A top-priority task is to reduce multi-dimensional poverty.

Environmental: amending the environmental policy, upgrading waste management, and terminating unsustainable use of land, forest and water resources.

Effective management: establishing the rule of law, improving the efficiency of central and local authorities. It is important to ensure realization of the human rights, rights of the child, and gender equality.

Problems addressing which requires support

Attempted annexation of Crimea and armed aggression in the east of the country started in 2014 endanger peace, security, and cooperation in Eastern Europe. Active hostilities resulted in considerable human (over 13,000) and economic losses and caused large-scale internal displacement (1.4 ml). Destructive consequences of the armed aggression turned out to be extremely critical. Resolving the problems by means of political settlement and reintegration of the temporarily occupied part of Ukraine’s territory will greatly contribute to SDGs achievement.

Conclusions

A key to success within the decade can be provided by consistent implementation of an evidence-based SDG-oriented policy and SDG financing. Our aim is to achieve the SDGs by raising people’s living standards up to the average European level. This is what the well-being both country as a whole and of every family, every individual, and every child depends on.