NGOs in Ukraine’s Multi-Scalar Asylum Governance – Between Influence and Dependence on State Authorities

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the role of NGOs in asylum policies in the 2010s in Ukraine – a country often considered merely of transit for migrants. Which dynamics characterised the relationship between NGOs and the administration in a context of relative retreat of the state and low politicisation of asylum issues? While in Western Europe the state is frequently responsible for a large part of the funding of NGOs providing services to it, asylum NGOs in Ukraine received funding exclusively from international organisations and foundations. Better funded than the Ukrainian administration and following the norms of their donors, these NGOs took over tasks traditionally considered to be the responsibility of states. NGOs used their resources to gain access to the administration, with the aim of supporting some asylum seekers and more broadly to influence administrative practices in line with international asylum norms. While these resources seemed to place NGOs in a strong position, NGOs sought to maintain consensual relations with the authorities, depoliticising their work and avoiding to publish their criticism. By highlighting the ambivalent place of NGOs between influence and dependence on the administration, this study contributes to research on the role of NGOs in national and international migration regimes.

KEYWORDS:

• Asylum
• migration
• Ukraine
• NGOs
• multi-level governance
• European Union

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For a more detailed discussion of the legislative adoption of international asylum norms in Ukraine see (Mützelburg 2022, chap. 3).

2 The recognition rate dropped suddenly in 2002 (mostly between 0 and 5 per cent until 2008), then increased again (10–37 per cent 2009–2015). In the following, it strongly fluctuated (2–25 per cent between 2016 and 2022).

3 This study was carried out under the framework of the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, which did not foresee an evaluation of studies through an ethics committee. All information about human informants has been thoroughly anonymised to avoid any negative implications.

4 Refoulement refers to the forcible transfer of people to a place where they face a risk of serious human rights violations or abuses. Refoulement is prohibited (non-refoulement principle) by international refugee law and other human rights treaties (Amnesty International 2013: 6).

5 IOs train employees of NGOs (namely UNHCR subcontractors) on how to write ECHR complaints, helping to make this approach more widespread.

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Notes on contributors

Irina Mützelburg

Irina Mützelburg is a political scientist and postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS) in Berlin, at the German-French (ANR-DFG) project LimSpaces. Her research interests include education, migration and asylum policies in the EU and its neighbourhood, namely Ukraine, norm and policy transfer, and interdependencies between state and non-state, international and national actors. Currently, she studies the educational situation of Ukrainian pupils displaced to Germany, including education policies and families’ choices. Before coming to ZOiS, she worked as a lecturer and research assistant in political sociology at Sciences Po Lyon (2019–2021) and at the Master of European Studies at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt/Oder (2018–2019) Until 2019, she did her PhD at Sciences Po Paris on the transfer of international asylum norms to Ukraine. Her book “Transferring Asylum Norms to EU Neighbours. Multi-Scalar Policies and Practices in Ukraine” has been published in 2022 by Palgrave Macmillan.