Ukraine
From the onset of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, most refugee arrivals have been women and children, creating unique challenges for integration. The share of women among adult refugees is around 70% in most host countries and many have arrived with children, with the share of minors around 30%. Most OECD countries are supporting the socio-economic integration of Ukrainian refugee women through their pre-existing mainstream integration systems. Refugee integration policies have been, however, often created with different gender and educational profiles in mind, which may weaken outcomes in the longer term. There are some promising targeted measures available in OECD countries to support the socio-economic integration of Ukrainian refugee women. These include counselling, networking opportunities, training, and work placements, but also general community-building activities aimed at women.
Since the onset of Russia’s large-scale war against Ukraine, millions of people have been forced to flee their homes in search of a safe haven. This report synthesises the findings of the Survey of Arriving Migrants from Ukraine (SAM-UKR), conducted by the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA) in collaboration with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), covering prevailing themes of forced displacement from Ukraine. These themes encompass demographics, reasons for departure, experiences along the journey, life in the host country, return intentions, and future aspirations. In addition to presenting survey results, the report draws on over 1 500 personal testimonies provided by respondents to offer a more direct insight into the decision-making process and emotional state of displaced persons, thereby illuminating their struggles, anxieties, hopes, and aspirations resulting from their displacement.
The chapter examines undue recognition of learning achievement of students in Ukraine: intentional over-marking or under-marking by teachers for personal gain, such as money, gifts or services to the teacher or the school. Serious weaknesses in the assessment of learning outcomes, combined with a culture of acceptance of gifts, provide teachers with opportunities to mismark - and parents with the expectation that marks are negotiable. All sides involved have reasons to engage in the integrity violation: parents in the conviction that better marks can secure admission to good higher education, schools because of their dependence on parental contributions and teachers because of their unsatisfactory income.
This chapter examines undue recognition of academic achievement in higher education. Undue recognition is widespread and it is manifested in over-marking in return for payment and services, marking students based on the work done by other people, assessment in absentia and nepotism. Teachers and students have clear incentives to engage in over-marking: teachers are reluctant to invest in rigorous and time-consuming assessment because it could jeopardise their routine of holding multiple jobs, while students are keen to benefit from over-marking, and have weak intrinsic motivation to study and low awareness of and attachment to norms of academic integrity. Opportunities for malpractice are facilitated, in part, by opaque assessment principles and by assessment criteria that are not disclosed to students.
The paper presents the understanding of and attitudes towards climate change and climate policies in Ukraine, using a survey on a representative sample of more than 1 500 Ukrainians. The survey was carried out between October 2021 and February 2022 and presents the situation before Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine. The survey tests support for three main climate policies in detail: a green infrastructure programme, a carbon tax with cash transfers and a ban on combustion-engine cars. It shows that support for climate policies depends on three key factors: how people perceive the effectiveness of the policies in reducing emissions, how they perceive distributional impacts on lower-income households (inequality concerns), and if they think their household will gain or lose from the policy. The survey also shows that when citizens receive information that specifically addresses these concerns, they exhibit stronger support for the policy. How the policy is designed also matters: Ukrainians widely accept a carbon tax when its revenues finance green investments and/or compensate lower-income households. The paper highlights seven considerations for Ukraine policymakers to design measures that are effective and supported by citizens. Following Russia’s war of aggression and once conditions are right, Ukrainian policymakers can also use the survey results to guide the reform of the environmental tax system- one of the goals in Ukraine’s recovery and reform agenda.
The survey in Ukraine that the paper describes was conducted as part of a large-scale OECD international survey of attitudes toward climate policies carried out on over 40 000 respondents in twenty countries.
This chapter examines recent advances in Ukraine’s territorial development policy, and how it could be strengthened post-2022. First, it looks at how Ukraine has overhauled its legislative framework for regional development since 2014. Second, the chapter takes stock of how recent changes to the country’s multi-level governance system have affected the state’s capacity to design and implement regional development policy. In particular, it evaluates the effectiveness of existing co-ordination mechanisms to ensure vertical and horizontal policy coherence. Third, the chapter explores advances in and challenges to the design of Ukraine’s multi-level regional development planning instruments. Finally, the chapter assesses how constraints related to the production, analysis and dissemination of territorially-disaggregated data hamper evidence-based decision making.
Ukraine faces several large-scale challenges stemming from the conflict in the east of the country and a long-standing absence of key reforms. Its economy has been stagnant since 2012 and in deep recession since mid-2014, and is a major constraint for the development and implementation of SME support policies. Progress since the 2012 SBA assessment has therefore been modest in most areas. Nevertheless, a major deregulation programme is currently being implemented and key measures have been introduced to simplify business registration, expand e-government services, strengthen entrepreneurial learning and vocational training, address technical barriers to trade and adopt EU standards.