The United Nations Democracy Fund has published the final 2019 newsletter. The program Transparent cities was among the most successful projects. In particular, they focused on the success stories of Mariupol.
The Fund noted that Ukraine has taken important steps to motivate its 100 largest cities to become more transparent and participate in the fight against corruption at the local level. The transparency rating created an incentive for municipalities to improve their grades, image and access to international funding.
The experience of Mariupol is given as a successful example of creating a transparent and open city. The municipality has made a lot of efforts to become leaders in the transparency rating. ‘In two years, the city was able to increase its number of transparency points and rating from 28.1 points and 57 places in 2017, to 76.4 points and 2 places in 2018,’ the UN Democracy Fund information report says.
With the support of UNDEF Transparency International Ukraine has developed a methodology for rating transparency of cities, compiled two transparency ratings of the 100 largest cities and wrote three analytical reports in the framework of the project ‘Development of transparency in Ukrainian cities’.