Municipal Governance and Sustainable Development Programme, Ukraine

The decentralisation process that has been initiated in Ukraine over the past years endows local authorities with democratic legitimacy and political powers, and delegates more financial and operational responsibilities to the local level. However, many municipalities are not yet aware of this new reality and/or lack experience, particularly with regard to strategic planning and management of human and financial resources. As in other post-communist countries, another fundamental problem is the fact that the state as well as the local governments still rule the citizens, rather than serving them. On the other hand, the population at large still carry the old mindset that the state is responsible for delivery of goods and services. The relationship between authorities and citizens continues to be characterised by a widespread lack of confidence and by ignorance.

Nevertheless, these days, Ukrainians want democracy and a state that is controlled by its citizens. They believe in the rule of law and a market economy based on private property. At the same time, they are striving for a market economy with a strong social welfare orientation that provides a high-quality education system, good healthcare for all and poverty reduction.

Today, providing services to the communities and addressing the many pressing local socio-economic and environmental problems is largely delegated to the responsibility of Ukraine’s self-governing bodies, namely the municipalities, where 60% of the Ukrainian population live.

It was against this scenario that the Municipal Governance and Sustainable Development Programme - MGSDP (http://msdp.undp.org.ua) was initiated by UNDP with financial support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) in April 2004. It was conceived as a pilot project to test mechanisms for strengthening local governance to achieve sustainable institutional, social, economic and environmental development in urban areas of Ukraine. The programme places emphasis on good governance as a sine qua non for sustainable development. This is also in line with the demand of the Ukrainian citizens for a change in governance and for increased participation in the decision-making processes.

The goal of the MGSDP is to promote participatory governance so as to improve living quality of the people in urban Ukraine. To this end, focus of the Programme is placed on following outputs:

• Improving capacity of central government to decentralize fiscal and administrative powers / responsibilities in support of local development.
• Improving capacity of local authorities to transparently define and implement local development strategies, deliver public services, and foster local economic development.
• Enhancing capacity of communities to realize improvements in local social, economic and environmental conditions.

The programme is closely collaborating with the SDC Decentralisation Support to Ukraine Project, Despro http://www.despro.org.ua/eng