The workshop facilitated knowledge sharing between Ukrainian cities and the city of Helsinki. Helsinki has been building a network of bomb shelters since the 1960s that can now host more than the capital’s population. There are approximately 5,500 civil defence shelters with approximately 900,000 places. There are enough places to cover the need of those living in but also of those visiting Helsinki. Modern civil defence infrastructure offers shelter from military threats, collapsed buildings, ionising radiation and toxic substances.

The workshop:

1. Presented best practices in the provision of the civil defence shelters in the city of Helsinki, Finland;
2. Presented the experiences of the Government of Finland in developing the legal and institutional frameworks for the civil defence shelters;
3. Discussed legal, institutional, financial and technical challenges to building and maintaining civil defence shelters in the cities of Kharkiv and Mykolaiv;
4. Formulated recommendations for approaches to design new master plans that will provide access to people in cities of Ukraine to civil defence shelters, which would also support the implementation of the Ukrainian National Recovery Plan.

The workshop built on the expertise of the Finnish government and Helsinki City on civil defence shelters.

The workshop was held in-person only and included a field visit.