Time: 11:00 – 12:45 CEST
Languages: English, Russian
The COVID-19 pandemic is far more than a health crisis. It is affecting societies and economies at their core. While the impact of the pandemic varies from country to country, it has increased poverty and inequalities at a global scale and made achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development even more urgent. To support countries in their efforts to address the crisis, the United Nations developed a UN framework for the immediate socio-economic response to COVID-19, which highlights the need to “empower local governments; scale up community and city level resilience” as core components for recovery. To implement this framework, the UN Regional Economic Commissions (UNECE, UNECA, UN ESCWA, UN ELCAC, UN ESCAP) together with UNCDF and UN-Habitat are working on a joint project: “Building Urban Economic Resilience during and after COVID-19”. This project promotes the “recovering better” principle by developing measures for planning and building resilient cities, advocating for an approach that is multi-hazard, multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder; promoting the green and circular economy; overcoming inequalities; and assisting the most vulnerable groups. Tirana is one of the pilot cities in the project.
This Online Local Validation Workshop in Kharkiv was organized by UNECE in the framework of this project with participation of representatives of the UN Resident Coordinators Office in Ukraine, the City Government of Kharkiv, private sector, and academia. It presented the findings and recommendations of the “Diagnostic and Planning Tool Report” for the city of Kharkiv and validate that document with all the relevant stakeholders.
More specifically the main objectives of the workshop were:
- To present the findings and recommendations of “Diagnostic and planning tool report”.
- To validate the findings and recommendations of the “Diagnostic and planning tool report” with all relevant stakeholders in the city of Kharkiv.
- To facilitate a discussion on the actions needed to overcome the socio-economic impacts of the COVID-19 crisis in the city of Kharkiv.
- To introduce the “Economic Resilience Building Plans” and the next step of the project.
Report - Diagnostic of City Economic Recovery Performance: City of Karkhiv