61. Small Fish…

VAL HAMBYE-VERBRUGGHEN: 00:03

Thank you very much for joining today's event. So, "Small fish in a big pond: Ukrainian organisations' (lack of) access to international humanitarian funding". My name is Val Hambye-Verbrugghen, I work with HERE-Geneva and I will be facilitating slash moderating today. I'm joined by three panelists who I'm really excited to have on board today. So the first panelist who will be joining us is Yuliia Chykolba. Yuliia is the co-host of the Trumanitarian podcast series marking the one year anniversary of the large-scale invasion of Ukraine. Yuliia was born in Dnipro, Ukraine and first became involved with humanitarian action when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014. And has since then worked with humanitarian mine action in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. Yulia is a Chevening scholar and an alumna of the Department of War studies from King's College London. The second panelist joining us is Marco Rotelli, who is the former UN deputy Humanitarian Coordinator for Ukraine, although Marco is speaking in his personal capacity at today's event. Prior to this role in Ukraine, Marco served as representative for Africa of the global NGO network ICVA, and in operations with NGOs and the UN in most of the major humanitarian crises since the early 2000s. And the third person that we have joining us is Robert Serry, who is the former first ambassador of the Netherlands to Ukraine, and chairman of the foundation opendoorukraine.nl, who are currently actively involved in humanitarian early reconstruction activities in Ukraine. He has past experience in international crisis management, and sorry, is an international crisis management expert who has served in senior positions both with with NATO and the UN. So I'm very glad to have all three of you on board. We also have my colleagues, Marzia and Freda from HERE-Geneva, who are joining as backup and who you might see popping in and out. Before anything else, I would like to thank our panelists for making the time to join me today and also to thank all of the participants for attending. I would also like to really thank the Trumanitarian podcast for their support in making this panel happen. This panel is also being recorded and will serve as the fifth and final episode of the Trumanitarian podcast series. So I know that the link to the podcast series has been dropped in the chat, if you want to check that out. After this event has wrapped that I really recommend listening to it. So as you saw in the concept note, the focus of today's event is really on the interplay between international actors and Ukrainian national and local actors via the lens of humanitarian funding. And then this panel also ties in with HERE-Geneva's work more generally. We try to enable dialogue and bring in different perspectives on critical issues as part of the exchange work that we do, and in the case of today's panel, this will feed into our broader research on humanitarian coordination. Maybe a bit of housekeeping very briefly. So as I mentioned, this panel is being recorded. And we are going to start with a one hour session slash discussion between panelists, and then we'll move on to a half hour q&a session where you can ask your questions via the chat. But there will be opportunities for you to address some of the questions that you might have throughout, so please feel free to react via the chat and ask your questions there as they arise, and we will incorporate them throughout as well. But the brunt of the q&a session will be at the end of this the last half hour of this event. Um, okay, I think that about covers the general admin side of things. So let's jump right into the discussion. So one of the questions that we had when we started thinking about this event, was originally going to be phrased as 'in your experience, have Ukrainian organisations benefited from the promptness and generosity of the international response'. But then, as has become fairly obvious, fairly quickly, we know that the answer to that is not really, which is based on research that was done both by Humanitarian Outcomes and the Disasters Emergency Committee, as well as open letters by Ukrainian and Polish civil society. So instead, I would like to phrase this question to our panelists differently and to ask you what has been your experience of Ukrainian NGOs benefiting from international -- from the international funding response, and maybe Yuliia, you can take the floor first.

YULIIA CHYKOLBA: 05:05

Yeah, I can take the floor first. But I would be very careful with portraying my experience as experience of a Ukrainian NGO, just just to have this disclaimer in the beginning, because I don't belong to any of them. However, during the Trumanitarian podcast, we discuss it a lot. And we discuss this issue a lot with several national actors, both small and big, and I would probably start from dissecting this question. What do we mean by international funding here, right? Because there was a tremendous outpouring of solidarity and fundraising, on the private sector on the private donations from diaspora from all over the world, but also inside Ukraine. And the crowdfunding platforms, and this flexible funding that went straight to local actors, not necessarily even NGOs, was actually very beneficial, and was something that defined the response back in end of February, March, when the majority of international organisations and international system was basically paralysed by the full scale invasion. So this part of funding, and I think all Ukrainians would agree with me, it was immensely beneficial. It was immensely supportive. And it was something that actually saved a tremendous number of lives. When it comes to international funding, so traditional channels, right, through the UN, through the donors. The situation is not that optimistic. Because I really I was thinking a lot about your promptness and generosity definitions, and when it comes to generosity, probably it is better than promptness. Because when, when we are talking about generosity, yes. First of all, like you, we all have this data, very little percentage of actual international funding went straight to national NGOs. And when this percentage went to national NGOs, there was never enough support costs, there is never overhead. It's just basically using cheap or free workforce of national NGOs, for distributing goods to population, which is never the case for international system, neither UN nor international NGOs. When it comes to promptness, that situation is even worse. Because when it comes to the official funding string, we have quite a lot of and quite significant due diligence processes, we have quite quite an amount of bureaucracy that prevents national actors from benefiting of this international funding. So promptness is like, absolutely not generosity, probably better than without it. But I would say that local actors, unfortunately, stay underfunded, stay underrepresented, and stay sometimes in parallel with official system, and sometimes really prefer not to get involved in it, because there is very limited trust in the effectiveness and efficiency of this system. So yeah, that's very short in a nutshell, but I think we'll discuss further.

VAL HAMBYE-VERBRUGGHEN: 08:23

Yeah, thank you very much, Yuliia, for offering your insights on this. I think before asking questions, I'd like us to really go around the table and ask for everyone's experiences. So Robert, I put the same question to you: what has been your experience in terms of promptness and generosity, and let's put that in quotes, of the response?

Robert Serry: 08:42

Well, first of all, thank you, Val, and also HERE-Geneva for actually inviting me. But I do feel myself a bit of an exotic fish in this pond, in the sense that I'm certainly not considering myself an expert in humanitarian assistance. But I can also add, I'm learning fast since the war and since so many activities have started also from my country, from the Netherlands. And here I very much agree with Yuliia that we also need to think about which international funding we are indeed talking about because if it comes to the crowd funding also coming from the Netherlands, from the beginning, the response has been very big and opendoorukraine.nl, the head of foundation, which I am representing today, we are a kind of umbrella organisation, or at least we are we we intend to be of, of Dutch smaller humanitarian organisations, which have been very active right from the beginning. And you know, I think that before the war maybe there was some 10, 15 smaller humanitarian organisations active in Ukraine. Now we can't keep them counting, I think it's probably something around 50. And if you think about what they have been able also to collect on their own, because they are not beneficiaries of the 555 big action for instance, which was started also in the Netherlands, the public action, then I can say that probably 10s of millions probably 50 or so, have been already channeled through through these very small, sometimes very small crowd funding activities, and they are very direct, they have their own contacts with Ukrainians, they are coming sometimes also very close to the frontline, in providing all kinds of direct humanitarian help, it is really the basic humanitarian assistance, which which they are providing him from, from food, blankets, stoves, and so on. And of course, also generators since the winter. And in this, we have played our own part also as Open Door Ukraine. But since I have been getting more involved in this also as Open Door Ukraine, we have, we have been actually going maybe one step up the ladder, because we got involved now also in early recovery, or you can call it early reconstruction activities, which actually started more or less by coincidence after I made a visit to Irpin but we are now repairing the roofs of - they are called OSBBs, homeowner associations with as we're having flat buildings with no roofs are sometimes also no top roofs, because of the war. We're not only doing it for, for these kinds of OSBBs, but we're also doing it for schools and other organisations by now. This started with crowd funding. And it became a very, I think, and successful model, because we were able actually to help now already three of such flat buildings in Irpin and so we tried to get more money; well that was also difficult for us, and we are not a Ukrainian organisation. But in the meantime, we have been successful, we are now about to conclude an agreement with Stichting Vluchteling, Foundation Refugee in the Netherlands, but also Oxfam and Oxfam Novib is going to help us. But also for us, it's that is a steep learning curve, actually, in terms of how these organisations operate, the due diligence, and we are also not in a very big organization, all these things are also difficult for us. So I can imagine how difficult it will be for all those Ukrainian organisations, which, since the war have been also registering themselves as humanitarian organisations in Ukraine. So this is really, I think, a problem which we, which we are this discussing today. We see our role, and here I will stop, as Open Door Ukraine more as the junior partner of now these bigger established international humanitarian organisations like the ones I have mentioned. I say junior partner because I believe we can add something to them. After all, we have networks. I've been the former Dutch ambassador, I've always been back also to Ukraine. In Open Door Ukraine, we have both Dutch and Ukrainians and working together. It's very much also a network organisation. So I feel that we can add, with our knowledge and experience in Ukraine, also to these organisations, which, of course, are not very familiar with the situation in Ukraine because they didn't use to work there. That's another I think issue for them also. But I know that they are trying to also learn fast and have established also offices now in Ukraine. But I do agree that there is apparently a problem because if I read in your paper here for this that only -- and maybe it's more by now, maybe a few percentage points -- of that assistance, the official assistance more or less from these organisations comes to local Ukrainian groups, then something is wrong, clearly.

VAL HAMBYE-VERBRUGGHEN: 14:30

We'll have the opportunity to return to the question of the footprint slightly further in the discussion. Maybe just before -- sorry, and thank you, Robert, for your presentation -- so before I hand over to Marco, I just want to specify in case our attendants are unfamiliar with the 555 that Robert just mentioned. So 555 is a foundation which basically had a -- raised an appeal for Ukraine. So it's similar to the appeal that was raised by Swiss Solidarity in Switzerland, DEC, Disasters Emergency Committee in the UK, and Aktion Deutschland Hilft in Germany, who by mid April had raised 600 million and this is primarily through private donations. So I just wanted to clarify that point before we moved on in case there was any lack of -- there was a lack of clarity around that. Marco, so coming to you now, you are coming in more from the big aid side of the question, so I'd be really interested in your perspective, and maybe how it contrasts or complements the perspectives that we've heard from Yuliia and Robert. You have the floor.

MARCO ROTELLI: 15:44

Thank you, and thank you for having me. No, of course, it complements, it never contrasts -- I mean, even if it contrasts it complements, right? So, as I said, I'm speaking in my personal capacity, which is giving me a little bit of more freedom to be to be as spontaneous as I can also to pick up from, from the other colleagues' interventions. I will start from the original question itself. To me, the matter is not really if organisations benefited, but it's about the people, the affected people, did they benefit from this bonanza, for lack of a better word, of funding compared to many, many other crises around the world or not? If they did, to me extremizing a little bit the concept, becomes a little bit irrelevant how they did it, right, then it becomes a little bit theoretical, and so on. I think here, we need to point at the effectiveness at the end of the day, and to see what is really happening. Now, I think, and, you know, we discussed with, with many colleagues during the demands of the response, and so on, I think where the frustrations are around funding for national and local organisations, and even known organisations, the volunteer groups and other more informal groups, is on the concept and connotation of directness of the funding, how direct it is. Now, if we go back, if we rewind the whole thing to 23rd of February, I think, last year 2022, I think the HRP, the formal funding for humanitarian response in Ukraine, was around the 20 millions. Now, the combined amount of HRP and and the response to the neighboring countries refugee response is roughly 5.6 billions, right? So an incredible span. I would argue that the large majority of this money is spent by local and national actors. So we're very far from the 1%. Okay, the 1% is probably related to how direct it is, but the overall spending at the end of the day is done by local actors. How? In a number of ways. The first way, of course, is a number, and we will discuss during this panel, a number of organisations that have direct or indirect access to funding and they do operate as an NGO or volunteer group, and so on, they do the typical, the typical response of an organisation. But in the overall response, we have at least two elements: of course, there is a huge amount of protection, it means a lot of soft skills, a lot of stuff, basically, to pay for counselors for psYuliia Chykolbahological support for elements around around, I don't know child protection, etc, etc. But there is an incredible amount of money spent every day in Ukraine on assistance, which is supply-driven but not only supply, it is also basically work. It can be WFP, buying most of the food in Ukraine, as it used to do before the war for the rest of the world, by the way. But you know, a lot of the food is both by food-related organizations and agencies in Ukraine for Ukrainians and so there is a private sector and workers and salaries that do benefit around the millions and millions spent every every day, if not week, with this amount. But it's also all the elements around for instance, we have been mentioning, roof repairing, house repairing windows, and so on. Of course, most of the contractors, and most of the technicians and workers that do install the repair kits, and the windows and so on, are Ukrainians and money is spent there. Now, I don't want to blur or to murk the water in bringing other elements. But at the end of the day, most of the funding is indeed spent there. Now, again, the frustration is around who gets the money directly from the source, that if we go at the real source, so the institutional donors or ECD countries, then of course, you have a lot of pass through the UN, particularly, through the INGOs and then through INGOs to national NGOs and the national NGOs are divided or you know, represented by a plethora of categories. There are the formal organisations that are pretty big, and they are equivalent to any international mid size international organisation, I would say; there are famous names there, some are in protection, some are more in assistance, but they're doing country-wide work. But there are also smaller organisations down and probably down is the wrong allusion, it's not down or up, you know, but who decide to volunteer groups. Now, the characteristic of some of the groups and then we'll enter them I'm sure during this discussion around the principles upon solidarities versus, versus humanitarianism, etc, etc. But the characteristics of some of these volunteer groups is that they don't want to become an organisation. And this is partially because of the nature of the country we're talking about, very developed with a very sophisticated and developed society, where an engineer on architecture that is doing currently a volunteer work, a very treacherous, dangerous, demanding work has been doing, he or she has been doing it for months now for more than a year, wouldn't do it if the war ends tomorrow, as we all hope, right, they would like to go back to their original work. And so there is no appeal to create an NGO as in other countries, becomes an appealing business, where there is a lot of interest around the organisation itself, rather than around the output of the organisation, toward again, and trying to close the circle, towards the affected population. I'm thinking I can stop here and then we'll develop further.

VAL HAMBYE-VERBRUGGHEN: 21:41

Thank you very much for for this presentation and these insights. There are things that are emerging from the conversation that I would like to get back to, particularly in the interest in engaging with the formal international system. But um, I think maybe before we get to that, what do you see right now -- and going back specifically to the point of direct access -- what do you see as being enablers or obstacles to this? And I'm thinking particularly, for example, of the rules and bureaucracy that exist at the international level. Is this suited to a situation like Ukraine? And I think Marco, I'm going to ask for your perspective on this first.

MARCO ROTELLI: 22:25

So, of course, there is, there is, I mean, the international system, the funding system of disbursement of funding is not fit for local actors to get access, I mean, although there are, I would say, arguably minimal requirements like having $100,000 turnover a year or three years of existence as a registered organistion and so on; many organisations or whatever they are, do not have this privilege, if you want, this curriculum. So there is already at the beginning of the conversation already a limitation. This, you know, it's, it is what what is basically keeping them outside of the mainstream system. If the system was not flexible, basically, this organisation, would only wait for money to trickle down through subcontracts, okay, which is a sort of sin in, in the current narrative after the Grand Bargain, subcontracting is bad, and we are all agree. So what the system is trying to do, and I talk about system, but I intend the system as not the UN, not the INGOs, or the UN and the INGOs, but the overall system, so it's not only international, it goes down to where it needs to be. What the clear, deliberate attempt that we have been doing in the last months and so on, is to extend a little bit the the tools available, including the UHF, the Ukrainian Humanitarian Fund, in envelopes that are as directly accessible to national and local actors as possible. Now, because of elegibility criterias, most of this funding still passes through some what a lot of people call intermediaries, what I would like to call enablers. In most of the cases, these are either UN agencies or international NGOs, or some of the biggest, the bigger Ukrainian NGOs. In the discussion what very often is neglected or left apart, purposely or not I don't know, is the amount of risk and the burden that those organisations tend to take anyway. I mean, when things goes south with administration and reporting, it will be Oxfam Novib that will get the heat from the donors from an audit and so on. So there is some value I would say, there is some service that international organisations are bringing in. And I close just saying, let's not throw away the the experience that some of these organisations do have, okay? It is extremely important to have local knowledge of what is happening at the sub oblast level and sub regional level and so on. But it's also extremely important to have some level of global accountability, knowing what worked in Congo, what worked in Afghanistan, what worked in Syria in order to see what could work in a very complex situation as Ukraine. Over. Thank you very much, Marco. Yuliia, I'd like maybe to ask you both what you think of the question itself, and possibly if there's anything in what Marco raised that you would like to pick up on?

YULIIA CHYKOLBA: 25:47

Thank you Val. There are several, there are several things that popped into my mind, like, when we are talking about localisation in general, yes obstacles, yes enablers, but I think we're a bit lost in the concept itself, because like -- money spent by Ukrainians on Ukrainians doesn't mean localisation really, and directness of funding, that you brought up before is very important. Because that gives people -- achieves a power balance, right? Because we are talking a lot about power balance here, where Ukrainian organisations are able to speak for themselves to define their priorities. And because Ukrainian organisations are Ukrainian people, and the fact that there are Ukrainians working in the other system, right, it doesn't really mean that the response is really localised in any way. And this funding can not be counted as locally spent, right? When it comes to obstacles, I'm, I'm very reserved, because there are tons of obstacles, and the system was not designed to have a local response at all. So basically, the system is designed by Big Eight for the Big Eight, and the local actors are on subcontracting roles. And yes, I agree with Marco totally about the administration costs and this is a big part of it but this is a system that is imposed, the bureaucracy and administration is imposed, basically by the Big Eight. When it comes to small organisations and small groups, again, I totally agree: a lot of Ukrainian organisations, a lot of Ukrainian volunteers, would not want to become an organisation because it's immediate response, it's outpouring of like volunteer response a lot. But at the same time, like, I think, by the beginning of last year, we had around 100,000 registered NGOs in Ukraine. Yes, not all of them charity, there are some, you know, cultural NGOs, church based NGOs, and so on, so forth, but 100,000. And when it comes to UN UHF eligible partners, there are 35 national NGOs. So out of 100,000 35, and this is already reported as success. I'm really not convinced. When it comes to obstacles a lot, the resistance of the system itself, and this is something I would emphasise widely, because the system does make attempts to include Ukrainian voices and voices of Ukrainian organisations, but only after the strong lobby of Ukrainian NGOs. Let's take cluster system: in the very beginning, some clusters were not translated to Ukrainian. So basically, it's a bunch of international people who have a very good English, came to the country, and decide how to disperse funds inside Ukraine, while national NGOs -- and we have to be very honest about that not all of them would have staff speaking English, so they don't even have access to the decision making or to discussion itself. Again, there are things of ineligibility when it comes to the experience, when it comes to funding. But again, 100,000 NGOs before the full scale invasion. So 100,000, yes, different size, many of them are not functional, but out of 100,000 there are there are organisations with experience and there are organisations with required funding, and a lot of them were working with a big international donors on different types of democratic governance activities, different type of development activities, they just switched to humanitarian immediately when the need came, and they will come back to their normal like development and advocacy activities when the need evaporates, hopefully, hopefully sometime soon. So I'm not sure how enabling it is. And the power dynamic is very concerning, because when it comes to international NGOs, for example, we all would have nice insurance, we all would have certain conditions, the staff would have an R&R cYuliia Chykolbale, the staff would have different housing benefits and the salaries would be like, you know, up to 10 times more than for national NGOs. At the same time we had on the podcast, we had the CEO of one of the national NGOs in Ukraine, and what she was sharing with us, she said that basically "when I want to put insurance for my staff who is working out on the front line in, in Mykolaiv or Kherson, I'm not allowed to do that, because it's not eligible cost". So the power dynamic is the biggest problem here, and probably the largest obstacle, I would say.

VAL HAMBYE-VERBRUGGHEN: 30:34

Thank you very much, Yuliia, for your perspective on this issue. Robert, I'd like to ask you: because you see Open Door Foundation as being somewhat at the juncture between big aid and small aid, I'm interested to hear how you see your role going forward. And then around this question of bureaucracy and access to funding, maybe -- I don't know if this is something that you can already share at this stage -- but do you see yourself as trying to facilitate access to direct funding? If so, how, and maybe just more insight on where you see yourself and how you plan to move forward to try and implement some of the, you know, positive changes that would be required for this question? Oh, you're on mute.

Robert Serry: 31:24

Yeah, I will certainly try to answer that question also, Val. But first of all, the opportunity indeed, I so much agree here with Yuliia. Ukraine has a vibrant civil society with apparently almost 100,000 registered organisations. So, we do need to enable them, it's a very different situation, I think, from many other crisis situations, where this is not the case. So, I, I also feel that the more cash assistance can be given to such organisations, then you enable the Ukrainians to help themselves and this is basically also our philosophy behind what we are doing. And then I can, I would like you to give you also one other example, you probably all have heard of Dobrobat, the volunteer organisation, which is almost represented, I think in every oblast, every region in Ukraine, and they are very much involved in something similar in terms of what we are doing, early recovery. They are trying to help people with damaged houses to help rebuild them, to take the debris away, etc. These activities are mostly funded by other Ukrainians, not by us. That I find strange: I have been at a conference of Dobrobat and I saw only, I think, the Belgian embassy, USAID and the Germans were there, all with smaller embassy contributions to this Herculean work which Dobrobat is doing. So here again, I'm pointing to something that in my view is wrong and Dobrobat has all the problems in terms of the obstacles because they exist only a half year. So, it's very difficult. And I understand also these difficulties of the major aid organisations to work with organisations that have so little experience. Now, here I come actually there maybe to trying to answer your questions, your question directed to me, although I have to admit and also stress myself that we also are a small organisation. But, but we are growing now, because of the increasing workload which we are taking upon us. But yes, maybe there is a role for intermediaries here. For organisations, which in my case, I like to call myself a Dutch-Ukrainian organisation, with a lot of experience on the Dutch side, also in terms of people like myself with a lot of experience in Ukraine. So we bring that network and for the two organisations, which I already mentioned, we are playing a bit that bridging role at the moment, in particular in the field of early reconstruction, the field of helping as directly as possible, but always also in cooperation with the local authorities, to help OSBBs to help themselves to rebuild those roofs themselves. We are not doing it. We are just providing the bridge funding. And usually the local authorities are providing the materials, they of course have also to restore all the amenities to these buildings. They play a big role as well, whether it's about flat buildings or also schools, which need to be repaired and here I believe that there should be much more funding available at this stage than there actually is at this moment. Because Ukraine is not only fighting, but also rebuilding. And the longer the war takes, the more important that second part is also becoming. In relatively safe areas, like Irpin, I mentioned that's where we have begun, but also in Chernihiv, and also even in the liberated areas in the east, we are now also starting to do some projects. Another aspect of this is that it is very important for the morale of Ukrainians, I believe, and their resilience if they are enabled to actually rebuild their houses, their properties. So I don't feel that -- I know that there are, so I have to be careful here also, but I know that both the UN and the EU, they have opened up facilities for also including home or homeowners associations to, for instance, to get money for buying windows or whatever is another problem for this, but there is little coherence in all of that. After all, you don't need windows if you don't have yet a roof above your head. So there is -- I would plead for more coherence in early reconstruction. And really, here, we don't have to do it ourselves: we have to enable the Ukrainians to help themselves. And that means more cash assistance.

VAL HAMBYE-VERBRUGGHEN: 36:34

Thanks very much, Robert. I think this is actually a really good transition. The questions that we've discussed so far have been a lot more retrospective, and now I'd like us to be a little bit more forward looking. But before we do that, Marzia, I'd like to check whether there's anything coming in from the chat that should be reacted to.

MARZIA MONTEMURRO: 37:02

Yes, Val, um, hello, everyone. There is a question coming from the chat in terms of the role of the Ukrainian state supporting local NGOs. So yes, it's certain that reconstruction funds addressed to the government will open the floodgates of funding. Does the Ukrainian state make conditions to steer funding to local NGOs, not just local state authorities and services?

VAL HAMBYE-VERBRUGGHEN: 37:28

Okay, well, I'm not entirely sure who the last part of the question would be best suited to. But in terms of the first part, the role of the Ukrainian state in supporting local NGOs, Yuliia, maybe you can take this question?

YULIIA CHYKOLBA: 37:41

Yeah, I can take it in a nutshell. Look, we have to recognise that Ukrainian government is not in an excellent position financially right now. So there was always funding available for civil society, but it was not the majority of the funding that state budget would have. Currently, it's even worse. I don't have really numbers on that at all. But I know that some of the funding would go through some civil society organisations, but not necessarily through, not necessarily through the -- yeah, not necessarily majority of them. In Ukraine, we have a minister for reintegration of temporarily occupied territories, for example, which is mandated to work with national and international humanitarian organisations on the reconstruction and reintegration and rebuilding. However, where they can, they can channel state budget funding, but at the same time, there is clearly not enough and not sufficient funding for civil society, for national NGOs comes through the state's budget.

VAL HAMBYE-VERBRUGGHEN: 38:48

Thanks very much, Yuliia, for your perspective on this. Robert and Marco, unless one of you has insights on this particular question that you'd like to share, I'm happy to move forward. So in terms of looking towards the future, what do you think we should be aiming for here? Because we've talked about direct access to funding, how it's limited for a number of reasons, how it should be increased, but we're not entirely sure how to practically go about that. And so what do you -- Yeah, what do you think that aim should be in terms of how the international community articulates itself vis à vis the Ukrainian NGO and volunteer organisations and all the other organisations that are available: is the aim for international organisations to just give more money and basically go away, step outside of Ukraine, or should the ambition be for them to have a bigger footprint and be able to deliver? Because that's another one of the issues that we've mentioned as well, is the fact that it's primarily Ukrainian people who are taking on the risks and responding at the level closest to people in need. So yeah, what do you think the international community should be aiming for here? And I think, Marco, I'm going to put this question to you first, if you don't mind.

MARCO ROTELLI: 40:08

Yeah. Well, a lot of things need to be done. Some of the things are being done, of course, not at scale, where they need to be. In terms of complementarity of the action, I think the first thing is to identify common ground, a common goal. Now, I've already alluded to a very specific thing for the Ukrainian context, which is the blurred line between humanitarianism and solidarity (I don't know if it's English, but anyway). Even international observers and very well reputed thinkers in humanitarian affairs have been discussing about the concept of the principle of neutrality that in situations of extreme clarity of ius ad bellum or ius in bello can be maybe not so important, compared to the need to respond to make sure that there is solidarity approach toward that. Now, yeah, is it right, is it wrong? I don't know. But if we want to uphold the principles, I think we need to find some common ground. And there, there are some surprises, I think. When I came in, in Ukraine, I the idea that most of the local NGOs were completely sided, you know, basically neglecting the principle of neutrality. But it's not true. Most of them didn't have the opportunity to think in depth about what does it mean, and what it means for other crises. I mean, of course, Ukraine is not isolated, is not outside this world. And what is happening in Ukraine is seen and observed and studied by many out there. And if you breach principles in Ukraine, it's very likely that we'll have with some more assertiveness by other actors in other countries to say you did it in Ukraine, you can do it in Afghanistan, you can do it in Syria, you can do it here and there, with a plethora of problems. Most of the organisations do have the, let's say, at least sympathy for the principles. There are other organisations, though, that are basically more radical and they say, "We see absolutely no difference in distributing food to civilians in Chasiv Yar near Bakhmut, or to the army, because these were my schoolmates. So they've been helping, they are helping by risking their lives to help my country, so it's just right for me, to support them". Yes, this may be right, but you can't do it with humanitarian tools. I don't want to be definitional here. But you know, at the end of the day is where the perimeter we use as a compass, if you want, in order to make sure that we try to maintain a line that is coherent, and so on. Now, another element I would say is about and I think Rob brought it in, is about the relationship with local governments or the or oblast military administration, which is already an initial problem if you want in most of the cases. But yeah, Ukraine is not immune in the fact that local actors or local organisations tend to have either excellent relations with the local governments or horrible relations, depending where they stand into the spectrum of politics, the spectrum of any, you know, any sophisticated if you want society and so on. There, I think, there is a value also for the United Nations, but also for embassies, institutional donors, international organisations in order not to be an intermediary, but to be an element of, you know, with basically, with no skin in the game, in the political game, although there is a lot of politics in aid globally and in Ukraine, but a little bit to be a credible broker into the operation when local actors can't. And to the point of Yuliia, of course, there were, there are, I don't know, 100,000 organisations. The point is that a lot of them are repurposed organisations, a lot of them were human rights organisations, anti-corruption organisations, whatever kind of organisation. The sweep, I mean, the shift into humanitarian organisation doesn't take weeks or a month, it takes years. We don't, you know, that is also the problem. Sometimes we need to be at their side, and there's a cost to be at their side, but we need to be at their side in order to make sure that we are combined. But again, going back to the point of the very beginning, I think at the end of the day, probably 70% of the operation is carried out by local actors, regardless of how direct the funding is. Over

VAL HAMBYE-VERBRUGGHEN: 44:51

Thanks very much Marco. So I would like us to stay on funding, so for now -- we are going to get back to the principles when I'll open the Q&A session with that, and I intend to give you the floor then Yuliia. But I would like to ask you, Robert, what you see as being the best case scenario going forward in terms of how big aid and small aid interact when it comes to funding? I don't know if you have a perspective on that. Oh, you're on mute again. Sorry.

Robert Serry: 45:24

I'm very strict with unmuting myself, and I'm often going and coming back, sorry for that. No, well, it's of course not an easy question you're putting to me, but some ways forward have to be found here and the more that can be done practically the better I think in this situation. I would plead for trying to seek coalitions, you know, I feel that it is important. That's what I have learned in what we are doing, we always would like to go as much as possible to the direct beneficiaries, for instance, the owners of a flat building, who are organised in homeowners association, but they need and we need the local authorities. So we're also working with the local authorities -- and if we can find another fund to help us, because all our projects are also to mitigate the risk, limit it to a maximum, we need to cooperate, we try always to build these these coalition's. And the more you can actually involve there the local people, but also the local NGOs, the better. I can give you another example in this respect that we have, for instance, in the Trostyanets in the Sumy region, we are working through a local organisation called Dobrata, which is actually very closely related with the local municipality because they are trying to help the municipality with all the needs. And it is so, so absolutely clear, it should be so absolutely clear to everybody that local authorities are overwhelmed by all kinds of things they need to do. And so they need to be helped. And I feel that, and here, I see this as a challenge for the established international actors to actually become a bit more inventive in terms of how they actually go about in Ukraine, because after all, there is this vibrant civil society, Ukrainians can do everything in principle themselves. So then you have actually to adapt also your the way you operate to that to that situation. But last but not least, it has hardly been mentioned so far, there is of course, here an elephant in the room, which is corruption, which we all know, is still a serious problem in Ukraine. And this is what I sometimes also hear from international organisations, in particular, when you get involved in construction activities. Well, I answer them that if the international world knows that Ukraine is going to be helped with massive reconstruction assistance after this war is over, then better try to localise that also as much as possible. It will be much more effective, cheaper, and the I think the risks of corruptions will then also be mitigated. So I think this is a real challenge for all of us to think about how this could be best done and I have a feeling that we're not yet there.

VAL HAMBYE-VERBRUGGHEN: 48:39

Thanks very much, Robert. I think one of the questions, because so -- one of the recurring elements of the conversation we're having is the fact that Ukrainian society is very, Ukrainian civil society is very vibrant and you know, there's still a strong government in place despite the financial issues that Yuliia mentioned. And I have to wonder: if there are so many complications around direct access to funding in Ukraine, what does that mean for other contexts? How -- I mean, fundamentally, the question boils down to: how feasible is the localisation agenda? If we can't put it in place in Ukraine, where can we put it in place, if at all? And here, I think, Yulia, I'm going to turn to you because I'm interested in your perspective, having also worked as an international aid actor abroad, how do you -- yeah, maybe, how do you see a solution there, if you see one at all?

YULIIA CHYKOLBA: 49:37

Look, I think for a solution which should have like a very strong will to do that. And this is in the first place and prerequisite for all. So far, I don't really see the will and it's not only Ukraine. And it's not about Ukrainian civil society or Ukrainian organisations, which are -- it is really strong, Ukraine has a history of you know, several revolutions and very strong civil society which is our actually making a strong influence on their on government politics. So, of course, they're very good in, for example, being vocal and fighting for their narrative and interest through this open letter from Ukrainian civil society that you were just dropped in the chat box, more at the same time to say that Ukraine is the only country in the world who has a strong civil society? I would, I would disagree, because that's not the case. And in many countries where many of us would work, you would have a very strong civil society which still -- with similar problems than in Ukraine, corruption, and so on, so forth. I don't want to, I don't want to answer like directly about the localisation effort, how feasible it is. I think I would frame it as it's necessary, rather than feasible, and it's necessary and the willingness of the international system, which is clearly not fit for the purpose of localisation, is a key to this change. And I think it's, it's equally both mental and the formal system, formal structures reform, that is constantly ongoing in the UN and the international system. We constantly leap through the reforms of the system. But it's a lot about the mental change, and I think the question is really much more broader than humanitarian aid here. Are we as society in the world, are we really have a willingness and openness to you know, decolonise our mind, and basically think broader and think and make the world kind of a much more equal place? Both in gender dynamics, etc. I think humanitarian aid is just one of the aspects and it can't -- this issue cannot be solved by humanitarian aid only.

VAL HAMBYE-VERBRUGGHEN: 51:55

Yeah. Thanks very much, Yuliia, for that perspective, and I'm glad that you took the answer to the question on a more philosophical path, because that is where I would like to wrap up this first part and ask you all -- and this is going to be ambitious, because I'd like you to be quite brief in your responses but the question is very big -- we've talked a lot about the amount of money that was raised for Ukraine. And I think one of the questions related to this is, all of these appeals were being made and matched in a very short timeframe, and then you have other contexts where the appeal was made and the funding did not reach the expected level. So I'm thinking of the Yemen appeal that was issued last year, and that was issued again this year, that was, you know, not at the level that was expected. So do you think that there's a moral obligation to stop collecting funds once we reach a certain amount, and in an almost -- I suppose it's the application of the principle of impartiality where you have a needs-based approach to fundraising, right, from the from the international perspective? So I'm curious, for your perspectives on this as a final question for this first part. Um, Marco, I think I'll put this to you first, and then Robert, and then Yuliia.

MARCO ROTELLI: 53:17

No, I think you're spot on, as we say. I mean, it's, it is about needs, then we have to define the needs. I mean, money, management of funding and advocacy around funding should be related to the needs. Now, there are two dimensions: there is the dimension of Ukraine itself and the global dimension. For the global dimension, I say, there was at some point, maybe some discussion saying "shall we reduce the funding for for Ukraine to raise more money for other crises?" and so on. The point is, we shall raise as much money as needed in any in any context. Now for Ukraine and probably is valid for any country, we need to define what money are we looking for? I mean, I -- my job was humanitarian, period. Alright? Of course, there is the simultaneity of early reconstruction, early recovery, reconstruction, development, or the nexus thing and so on, but you know, the focus was there. Humanitarian typically raise funds for life saving activities, right? Now in Ukraine, arguably, there is a fine line between, somebody put it in this way, between life saving and life affirmation in Ukraine itself, and all the social protection all the -- not all the cash, but all the cash for instance, the Ministry of Social Affairs is handling for sustaining a large amount of poverty that there is in the country and so on, that is probably borderline with something different from from humanitarian, right, but surprise, surprise it's coming from other funding streams. It's not coming through the HRP, so we're fine. I would say with the amount of people that we have, we have to just make sure that we are not exceeding the request. And I think OCHA in general is doing, the humanitarian coordinator in general is doing an excellent work in defining what are the needs, what is the target also, what is the target of our capacity and normally it's a little bit lower: we know that there will be people difficult to reach or that other people will reach rather than an HRP-driven response. So, summarising, yes, it is about about needs, and let's define it needs. Great, thank you very much for that. Robert, please.

Robert Serry: 55:37

Yeah, well, first of all, I agree with Marco that, of course, we should continue to, to provide assistance as much as is needed and as this is an ongoing war situation, I think the needs will continue to be there. But I also understand your question in the sense that there are other needs elsewhere in the world and the West sometimes tends to be accused of double standards when it comes to Ukraine, in terms of its responsiveness to this crisis, compared, for instance, to crises in the Middle East. I've been working a lot in the Middle East. And I've been last year back and I was struck how people elsewhere are looking differently at this conflict and at the West's role in it. So this is something I think we should be aware, more or less globally, but that doesn't mean that we have in Ukraine an emergency situation, it is continuing and that I not for a minute believe that we should should consider to stop the funding activities. Certainly also not the funding activities which are still done also on a crowdfunding basis, for instance, also in my own country. They remain important. But it is also important that as people have been giving already generously in European countries, that the institutional donors take over. And make sure that the money, this big amount of money that has been collected, is, is disbursed as, of course, is disbursed in a way that it indeed gets to the people, meaning local. And this is what the whole discussion was about and I don't think we have resolved all the issues. But it was a very pertinent issue you have put on the agenda for us.

VAL HAMBYE-VERBRUGGHEN: 57:38

Great, thank you very much, Robert. Yuliia, to you.

YULIIA CHYKOLBA: 57:41

I will be very short, because I generally like I agree with both of my fellow panelists. Yes, it's not the time to stop funding, because the war is continuing and the need is, will be there as long as the as long as the war continues in Ukraine. At the same time, I would actually think a bit more whether we should transform funding in a way that it's kind of moot. Start slowly moving from humanitarian pot to development pot. But at the same time, we all know that to raise for humanitarian needs, it's just easier than to raise for development needs. So I don't really have an answer. We clearly couldn't stop because the need is there. But the nature of the funding might be reassessed in in the future.

VAL HAMBYE-VERBRUGGHEN: 58:32

Thank you very much, Yuliia. So this is where I'm going to formally open the Q&A session of this panel, I see that there's already a question in the chat. So Marzia, I will let you cover that part; I don't know if I've missed anything else. Marzia, over to you, please.

MARZIA MONTEMURRO: 58:55

Thank you, Val and thank you, Yuliia, Robert and Marco for your very, very interesting points. Staying on on funding, I think some of the points have been addressed indirectly but the question in the chat is twofold. So one is, are you aware of organisations that had to stop operations because they couldn't access the funds that they needed? And then also maybe, kind of if you have additional points to add on this, but do you expect this informal funding streams, so all of the direct private sources of funding, to dry out in the near future because of solidarity exhaustion, other lack of interest or other pressures? So that's the question so far in the chat. I'm just going to ask participants to keep adding questions in the chat. I will be monitoring. Thank you.

VAL HAMBYE-VERBRUGGHEN: 59:53

Yes, please. I think maybe I'd like to split this question in two in terms of who it's being directed to and Marco, I'd like to ask you about your input on the first part, on operations who maybe had to stop operating when they couldn't get the funding that they needed. And then, Robert, I'll put the question of informal funding to you, please but Marco first.

MARCO ROTELLI: 1:00:12

Yes, no, absolutely, unfortunately, it is a reality, there are organisations, especially local organisations that, you know, had to stop. There was a beginning, a peak for funding where everybody seemed to add funding regardless of, of the resource, basically, there was -- not enough for everybody, but there was, you know, the first input was very, very large. Some of the non formal donors or international actors, maybe even some international organisations that acted as a mini donor, if you want (there's nothing mini when you talk about funding for humanitarian affairs in Ukraine, let's be clear) but abruptly stopped the programs, saying, you know, a week before, "all right, the money is, is over, at the beginning of September, we close the food, the food support for these and these and these oblasts", with extreme, catastrophic results for the people, for the population first, and for very small volunteer groups that were supporting, like collective centers, where people were finding shelter and so on, typically, with families with children or elderly and so on. So, it is a reality. Others found -- we did stocktaking exercises about localisation and partnership recently, it was in February, with a hundred plus I think organisations and so on. Some of them -- and we wanted stories, not only success stories, but their life, and they say, "Look, we had to readapt, we have this kind of peak and then basically we we went out of fashion in a way, we had to reorganise ourselves and to start partnering with other organisations" and then slowly but steadily coming back to a plateau where they feel also comfortable. Some of the organisations, I think it's relevant to say it, found at the beginning of the crisis was not overfunded in general, but they had, there was too much demand for partners and they were congesting their capacity to handle resources. It is not as easy as it may seem to burn $100,000 a week maybe. Over.

VAL HAMBYE-VERBRUGGHEN: 1:02:24

Thanks very much. And so, Robert, I'm coming to you for the second question. Or the second part of the question, rather, which is do you think there is a risk of the informal funding streams to dry out? And how do you see -- you're muted again -- yeah, how do you see things evolving?

Robert Serry: 1:02:43

Yes, I think it is slowly happening, starting to happen. At least I can -- I can, of course, only talk about my own country, the Netherlands, which has been so far, very, very responsive, the public, to the needs in Ukraine. But of course, the longer the war continues, it's almost logical that people are not again willing to reach out. I feel it also, because we are a network organisation, as I have been telling you, and some of the smaller Dutch humanitarian organisations are not turning to us. But we can help them, particularly also with the contacts we have with some of the major organisations we are cooperating with. But it's the same situation as with the local organisations in Ukraine. That's not how the established organisations are working, so it's very difficult for them to be funded through these more established channels. So yes, it is slowly happening.

VAL HAMBYE-VERBRUGGHEN: 1:04:01

Yeah, thank you for your answer, even though obviously, that is not the answer that I suppose any of us want to hear. We've talked a lot about the interplay between international and national and local actors through the lens of funding. But of course, that's not the only metric through which we can analyse this relationship, and this is where I'd like to come back to principles quite briefly, because Yuliia I did tell you you would have an opportunity to share your opinion on this. I know it's something that you've already covered in the podcast, but if you wouldn't mind maybe giving your opinion on the principles elements of the question. And then I think I'll open the question more broadly to ask whether there are other metrics through which we could analyse this relationship. But first, principles; over to you Yuliia.

YULIIA CHYKOLBA: 1:04:49

Yeah. With principles it's a difficult discussion really. My biggest problem is that adherence to four principles is the major criterion for access to humanitarian funding. And I would not argue that principles are unnecessary, they are necessary, and when it comes to humanity, impartiality, even independence, nobody really disagrees about their necessity there. At the same time when it comes to neutrality, there are a lot of questions. And I totally agree with Marco, that majority of the Ukrainian national NGOs would not even want to be neutral in a situation of the very direct violence against them and their families. Same with national staff of international organisations actually. With principles, it's tricky. I think there are a lot of discussion now happening, talking beyond neutrality and talking about the solidarity and talking about other forms that would be our guiding stars in this humanitarian world. And sometimes I would even pose the question, neutrality versus effectiveness or versus humanity, when it comes to aid in certain contexts, like Ukraine, for example. So yeah, it's a very difficult question here, when it comes to neutrality, but at the same time, yes, there is a place for neutrality and there are organisations with a very particular mandate, who will require neutrality as a cornerstone of their response, like we have ICRC, for example. But at the same time, whether this size was the size of, the size or the model, the modus operandi of humanitarian principle fits all humanitarian response? I'm not convinced. So there are activities where neutrality facilitates access, and their activities where neutrality doesn't facilitate access, and the only thing that they does is actually alienate aid from the population that it's aimed for.

VAL HAMBYE-VERBRUGGHEN: 1:07:12

Thank you very much, Yuliia. Yeah, I kind of would like to put this question to both Marco and, Robert, in terms of are there any other metrics through which we should be analysing this relationship and if so, yeah, beyond the kind of principles question and the question of funding? And I suppose this kind of ties in with the question that's currently in the chat, which is, to what extent can this panel discussion influence a shift in terms of how humanitarian aid is administered? And I think that this, yeah, I suppose we need a big picture approach to ensure this. And so: do we have all of our bases covered by talking about funding and principles? Or are we missing anything? Robert, maybe you'd like to take this one first.

Robert Serry: 1:07:56

Good, first, still.

VAL HAMBYE-VERBRUGGHEN: 1:08:01

You just muted yourself. Sorry.

Robert Serry: 1:08:04

That button, I'm not going to touch it anymore. You will mute or unmute me, please. First, to shortly react to this whole discussion about neutrality because it puzzles me a bit. How can Ukrainians be neutral when they are attacked in the way they are? Of course, I understand neutrality when it comes to the role of the ICRC which would otherwise not have access. But to what extent neutrality should play such a big role in what we are doing, in helping Ukrainian people to survive? I simply don't understand. It's just a remark I wanted to make. When it comes to your more overall question, I have little to add to what I think have already been saying to you, I don't think that this -- I tremendously enjoy as a non-expert to to be part of this discussion, and I feel that more of these discussions will be needed to to make a difference. This panel will not make a difference; straight answer to a question which was apparently put to us. But I feel that the issue is clear. There is an issue. So yes, then we need more. We need more, more attention to it and also higher level.

VAL HAMBYE-VERBRUGGHEN: 1:09:32

Thank you very much. Yeah, Marco, you're up.

MARCO ROTELLI: 1:09:35

Two, three things. On neutrality, you know, at the end of the day, we still try to go where it's needed and where it is accessible. Now, there are a lot of areas that are not accessible and I agree with Yuliia, you know, principles are not -- they are the condition sine qua non to do business in humanitarian affairs, but they are not a guarantee of access. And you know, despite all humanitarian notification systems, request and you know, asking the other side access to a number of barriers in the contact line or beyond the contact line and so on, this is not happening or it's not happening on the scale that we want. So there is a problem. But yeah, putting ourselves in the shoes of Ukrainian, of course neutrality is something even to fight against, rather than even tolerate and so on. But the question is, in the context itself, at the end of the day, if you keep your, let's say, position for yourself, which is obvious, at the end of the day it's not that easy to breach the neutrality because, you know, you won't have access anyway to a number of people. And, you know, the risk is really, in some of the very, very, very close belt on the contact line, where there is -- and this is becoming an issue, obviously, for whoever goes there frequently as we used to do -- the society is fragmented there, there is, there is an, you know, it's not holding, as it was holding some months ago. And there's a lot of accusation between between locals about who did tolerate the presence of the Russian forces, who did not, who collaborated, who not, who is paying for waiting for something, and who is not, and so on. There, luckily, is a limited amount of what can go wrong in terms of principles, because we're talking about -- take Bakhmut, I think, if I'm not wrong, a city of 50,000 people is now down to 2000 people. Right? So the damage to principles that you can do is really a fraction of what the needs in Ukraine are, we are talking about 17, 18 million people. And in the belt, because of the circumstances, there is a very limited amount of people which require all our effort that is going on every day in order to make sure there are the basic essential for life-sustaining there, life-saving. But yeah, they... We are talking about a fraction of the -- it's probably not a nice way to put it but -- of the target, humanitarian target in terms of people we want to reach. And thanks to Lars for raising the point on on trust, I've raised it, it is exactly about trust in the partnership. So I'm less interested in the connotation, definition about localisation in the way we sometimes we put it in this panel, the Grand Bargain and so on, and the World Humanitarian Summit and all these things and so on and rather, as I started, focusing on effectiveness and accountability of the response, and this will come, and also responding to your question on the perspective of the future, will come with trust in the partnership. And again, in our stocktaking as a size partnership, I mean, trust is slowly increasing. We didn't know each other, not in these, in this size, at this scale of the response. We knew each other at 20 million, a 20 million HRP, a small response for people that were very expert in the response there, they were very like regional and knowing what was going on. Now the situation is completely different, the whole circus of humanitarian response is there and it takes time to create this trust. It's an avalanche, it's really a wave that comes into a society no matter how vibrant it is to accept and so on. Luckily for internationals, Ukrainians are very tolerating, very, let's say, accommodating of, and very patient also of some mistakes and so on, and I think it's just coming -- I don't want to be over-positive of course, or optimistic, but it's coming along nicely, I think; in the future, we will have more positive elements than negative.

VAL HAMBYE-VERBRUGGHEN: 1:13:54

Great, thank you very much, Marco. So there is another question in the chat to you, Marco specifically: based on your experience of funding quality and coverage in different settings, can you elaborate? But I would like more details on what the question actually is, if the person who asked the question could please complete that further. And in the meantime, I'd actually like to put the question of how do we scale trust building to Yuliia, please.

YULIIA CHYKOLBA: 1:14:22

I mean, I think I would agree with Marco, to some extent we are slowly moving in the right direction. But at the same time, definitely not as fast enough and not as effective enough. Trust comes with a trust on both sides and at minimum equal partnership. Because if there is no equality in the relationship, there's no trust. Like when the, you know, big brother comes to kind of take care of a small aid brother, then it's not -- that's not where the trust comes from. Trust comes from respect, trust comes from hearing. And I think this is important part because we all talk about the Ukrainian voices, speaking out loud and being very prominent and vibrant, but at the same time, and I think the kind of international society in general, starting getting there, and it's very important to be heard. So and this is, this is something that enables trust and this is something that enables this relationship-building, to hear about the needs of each other, to hear about perspective and challenges of each other, to make sure that, like, we are there kind of having a common understanding, common goal.

VAL HAMBYE-VERBRUGGHEN: 1:15:44

Thank you, Yuliia. And yes, I think I would be remiss if I didn't address the fact that we are having this panel without a representative from a Ukrainian civil society organisation to speak for themselves, which is, yeah, ironic, for lack of a better term. Um, so Marco, the question in terms of funding is: can you elaborate on the funding situation between Ukraine and other countries? Is that something that you can offer any insights on? And just to -- just before you go ahead, please, if there are any further questions, you should put them in the chat now, because I think we are reaching the time to wrap up slowly. There's still time, but just, yeah. Marco, please.

MARCO ROTELLI: 1:16:23

Yeah, no, I think the short dimension, the magnitude of the response and the funding allows for some quality of the funding some, I wouldn't call it flexibility, but some room for maneuver and so on. I brought the example of the UHF: I think it was a first globally to, you know, to allocate some envelopes directly for national NGOs, then we saw what direct means, which is the indirect but not too indirect, and so on. So there are some some elements there. I think the quality, where we have to work better is to harmonise a little bit more the informal funding with the formal one, there is a lot of a hybrid, international versus national, local, volunteer groups particularly that do have, you know, interesting, non-trivial budgets, I would say. And for us, it's difficult to map it, to know what it is about, to know what are the overarching goals that they have, and so on. Now, for donors, the quality there comes, I think, in probably trying to walk the talk, I think you, Val, you said the about if not in Ukraine wher? And I agree, I mean, donors still have a very, very clear narrative around localisation, absolute support and advocacy to localisation, but then if you look at the, you know, how they allocate funds, how they, you know, this budget funds is exactly what I was describing there is almost always an intermediary or an enabler, and so on. So they need to try to see if something else -- I mean, if it's not coming from institutional donors, certainly it's not coming from recipients of institutional donors, the UN or the INGOs, you know, we're already a step too far from where the magic can happen, right? They need to try to do. And I found them a little bit, not in the defensive, very personally, as persons very adamant to try but then they say, "Look, I'm not, you know, the person that can change policy from Washington, from London", just to mention two, from Brussels, to mention three, just to -- not to name names, but to give you some hints, and so on. So I think there is where we can work.

VAL HAMBYE-VERBRUGGHEN: 1:18:39

Great, thank you very much for that response. And I think we have a question, which I think brings the panel quite nicely to a close. So I'll read it out loud and then I think if any of you want to react, just raise your hands, I'm not going to allocate this one. And the question is as follows: Why should the issue of a more equal partnership be reduced to the metric of effectiveness? That is the justification of the INGO, and it has a perfect track record of maintaining power. Why should local and national NGOs have to show effectiveness in their house? Isn't this primarily a question of ethics? So I don't know if anybody feels particularly strongly about responding to this question. I see Yuliia. Yes, Yuliia, please,

YULIIA CHYKOLBA: 1:19:19

I have a very short answer, like it shouldn't. Like, I totally agree with the concept and it shouldn't.

VAL HAMBYE-VERBRUGGHEN: 1:19:28

Hey, well, if anybody else wants to take the floor on this.

MARCO ROTELLI: 1:19:31

I'm perfectly fine with ethics but I'm more interested in what happens to the affected population. So my, my -- what keeps me awake at night is to make sure that people do have the right assistance and protection and I'm less inclined to take, you know, other philosophical elements into the equation. That will help us to move the policy forward, so it's absolutely necessary to have the conversation but when it comes to the ground operation, I think we need to -- we're talking about effectiveness and not efficiency by the way. So it's also you know, what is really happening now? Not you know, what is what is cheaper, what is, let's say more or more respectful, also of the taxpayers money and so on. So these all things come together; at the end of the day what matters, and it's difficult to argue against I hope, is: are we, we, collectively and complementarily, serving the needs of the people? Period. Of course, it's not a period and it is open to debate and so on but it's what I think is important to highlight.

VAL HAMBYE-VERBRUGGHEN: 1:20:33

Thanks, Marco. Robert, would you like to react to anything that's been said in relation to this question? And unmute yourself first?

Robert Serry: 1:20:45

I thought you would do that. No, well, you know, I certainly also -- on the question of ethics, and that question that was raised, I feel sympathy for the question and the way it was was put, but I am, I have been, always been a more practically-oriented men and so I'm looking for solutions. And I was noticing, by the way, another question, which we got in the chat, which was addressed for all of us, all of us, which was actually asking us whether we should, if I recall it well, whether the government, which is now administering this fund, the UHF as it is called, whether we can rely on the government that it actually trickles down to the to the NGOs or stays with maybe more with local governments? And I found that actually a quite good question. Because we all know, that that is very often the problem also, with NGOs, NGOs, are sometimes not very friendly, on friendly terms with local authorities, or with the government itself. So I found that it is an interesting question also to a little bit reflect on. Brings me again, to the need for maybe another structure, where the established international aid organisations providing a fund, a fund for local organisations, and a mechanism, and it needs to be monitored. But something like that, which would open up more of that money straightaway to civil society and to the active, indeed many active humanitarian organisations in Ukraine. And I also agree with, I think, what was said by by one of us already, that as the war goes on, we should not only concentrate on the pure humanitarian activities, but also on the next stage, which is early recovery, early reconstruction. And I've already been telling you that that's where specifically we have become active.

VAL HAMBYE-VERBRUGGHEN: 1:23:02

Great, thank you very much, Robert. I think the need for more creativity within the humanitarian sector, while somewhat of a platitude, is a good place to conclude this. I'm also quite mindful of time so unfortunately, I think now is the time to wrap up. I would like to thank all three of you, so Yuliia, Marco, and Robert, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with me this evening and to share your perspective on all of these questions. I would like to thank Trumanitarian, again, for co-producing this panel and for their support in setting it up. If you're interested in further engaging with your Geneva, we are going to be dropping our contact information in the chat box. And I also really encourage you to check out the Trumanitarian podcast series on Ukraine as well. Although for those of you who have attended tonight, don't listen to episode five, because it will be very redundant for you. But definitely check out the first four. And yeah, thank you to all of the participants for taking the time to join me, to join us this evening and I believe that with that we can bring this panel to a close -- Sorry, no and thank you to Marzia and Freda for tech support. But yeah, thank you to all of you for for attending. It's really appreciated. Thanks.