Reconstruction without graft will determine Ukraine’s future
LITTLE BLUE MEN
This is going to be a short newsletter this week because I am in London running from meeting to meeting, including this one, which is dedicated to the oversight of Ukraine’s reconstruction efforts. It is obviously crucial for the success of Ukraine’s rebuilding program and for its continued legitimacy in the eyes of both Ukrainians and others that the money sent to pay for it is not stolen. If even a small amount of money does end up buying houses in London instead of rebuilding them in Mariupol, international donors and Ukrainian citizens alike will get fed up quickly.
Perhaps of even greater significance, a well-run reconstruction program would not only rebuild the bridges, roads, factories and houses that Vladimir Putin’s war has destroyed but could also help build the solid and accountable institutions necessary for a robust democracy, which oligarchs have undermined in the past.
- “There is a widespread view that the savvy and strategic use of reconstruction funds can set Ukraine on this path, but that without strong oversight in the use of these funds, international financial support risks reversing the country’s progress in fighting corruption,” is the view of this pithy analysis from Transparency International’s Helpdesk.
There are differences of opinion (of course) on how to make that happen, with an inevitable tension between democratic legitimacy at home and international supervision abroad. Balancing those two competing demands is easier to call for than to actually implement. There has been some progress in strengthening Ukraine’s anti-corruption institutions over the past year, so international donors will hopefully be willing to trust officials in Kyiv a bit more than they might have done in the past. But the recent competition for a new head of Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, which returned a candidate with whom the country’s leading anti-corruption activists were unhappy, is a reminder that oversight remains necessary. There is a colossal amount of money at stake, as well as the future of a civilization, and stuff like that, so the pressure is on.
On a slightly more frivolous note, I’m giving a solid 8 out of 10 to whoever came up with the name “Supervising and Monitoring Ukraine’s Reconstruction Funds” for the civil society oversight program and the acronym that results from it.