Assessing shelter damages in Donetsk

With the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine having entered its sixth year, millions of civilians in Donbas continue to bear the brunt of a protracted and complex crisis.

Since the conflict began in 2014, over 50,000 residential buildings on both sides of the contact line have been damaged, leaving a large number of families struggling in desperate conditions with their resilience stretched to the limits. Despite the decreased scale of clashes between the parties to the conflict, violations of the ceasefire happen regularly, resulting in newly damaged or destroyed housing.

In 2019, in a partnership with the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) conducted an assessment of the damage caused by the armed conflict to civilian housing in districts along the contact line in the government-controlled area of Donetsk Oblast. Following this assessment, NRC prepared a consolidated report with key findings which will serve as a useful tool to allow authorities, humanitarian actors and donors to adapt responses to the evolving humanitarian needs of the conflict-affected population in eastern Ukraine.