Human Security within the Community Context: LDN Survey Reveals the Community Residents Main Concerns

Publication date: September 11, 2024

Author: Yuliia Bilyk, LDN Communications Manager

At the beginning of August 2024, the Legal Development Network (hereinafter – LDN) completed the field stage of a sociological survey within the framework of the project “Sense of Security, Social Cohesion and Dialogue Practices: Finding the Best Tools at the Community Level”. The project is implemented through the support of the International Renaissance Foundation and the European Union. On August 20, during the online discussion “Human Security within the Community Context,” representatives of the LDN and the teams that surveyed the Ivano-Frankivsk, Vinnytsia, and Mykolaiv regions presented the collected data. They also developed a list of influence tools that can increase community residents’ security level. Read more about the project and the results of the surveys below.

Security relevance and data collection

According to Vitaliy Okhrimenko, LDN Strategic Development Director, security is important for the organization as it is fundamental. 

“All of our activities related to community recovery plans, humanitarian interventions, development projects, access to justice, peacebuilding, and so on, tend to ask the question: with whom and for whom we work, how safe these people feel, what values of survival and development they have. Accordingly, we are now in a kind of “stretch” when we need to work with the values of survival and think about where we can build asymmetric solutions to be able to respond to the challenges of war as a society and not lose ourselves as a free society,” Vitalii Okhrimenko emphasizes.

Different communities have been selected to participate in the project: by geographical location, area, population density, and a range of characteristics and features that arose as a result of the war. These are the Kolomyia Community of the Ivano-Frankivsk Region, the Turbiv Community of the Vinnytsia Region, and the Shevchenkivska Community of the Mykolaiv Region. According to Vitalii Okhrimenko, the study of communities that are different from each other will allow us to use the experience in the future to work with other communities in Ukraine.

In each of the communities, data was collected by pre-trained local interviewers who tried to cover as many settlements as possible. In the Shevchenkivska Community, they managed to interview residents of more than half of the settlements, and in the other two communities, almost all of them.

“We covered a wide variety of people: employed and unemployed, people with and without higher education, different income levels, and health states. We also interviewed internally displaced persons. In general, we believe that under the conditions and opportunities we had, we were able to provide the best possible survey results,” says Maryna Shpiker, Sociologist and involved expert.

In each community, the team conducted 300 interviews with adult community members who are permanent residents. The questionnaires were filled out mainly on mobile devices or, in some cases, on paper for convenience.

General danger factors

According to the survey results, the greatest threat to people, regardless of which community they live in, is expected to be the war and the risks caused by it. People are worried about the threat of shelling and missile attacks, economic problems, uninterrupted utility services, especially in winter, mobilization activities, power outages due to the destruction of energy infrastructure, which causes problems such as the lack of internet and cell phone service and, accordingly, the inability to receive timely air raid alerts and the inability to study online for children.

“War has several different consequences and it is the leading concern in our respondents’ answers. More conventional security threats, such as crime or dangerous road traffic, the threat of stray animals or infrastructure problems, are also featured in the responses, but they have taken a back seat to military threats,” says Maryna Shpiker.

Nevertheless, the economic issue was also prominent in the respondents’ answers. This refers to the issue of survival in the short term, maintaining health, providing children with education, and keeping their homes in good condition.

“Although the issue of healthcare and access to medical care was not among the most pressing concerns, it was constantly mentioned in the respondents’ answers. Self-assessment of their health condition and concerns about access to medical care in all three communities had a statistically significant correlation with a sense of security and a sense of complete anxiety,” emphasizes Maryna Shpiker.

According to the Sociologist, in the three communities, a sense of security is associated with a sense of control over one’s life, the fact that a person has the ability to influence his or her life and solve the problems he or she faces, as well as to attract support for this. Accordingly, if a community resident did not have this sense of control and influence, their sense of security weakened.

Maryna Shpiker said that while processing the data, she identified three groups of respondents in the three communities based on their sense of security. 

“The first group includes people under 40, mostly men. They have somewhat better health and a higher level of economic security. They tend to worry less about security factors. The second group consists of older people, mostly women. They are a little more worried. But the third group includes the most concerned people about the most diverse aspects of their lives. These are both men and women, people of different professional statuses with different health conditions without any distinctive demographic characteristics. We cannot single out any one demographic group, such as retirees internally displaced persons, or women with children, and say that these are the people who feel most at risk. No, this is a common problem. All socio-demographic groups have their pain points, and they are mostly common, such as the consequences of the war and the economic situation,” highlights Maryna Shpiker.

What’s next

Based on the research findings, the teams will begin to develop a list of tools to improve security indicators in each of the three communities. The next step will be to work with a wider circle. Along with representatives of community activists, local governments, and law enforcement agencies, the local teams will identify several tools to improve the level of security that they consider most appropriate and start testing them.

“After the piloting of these tools, we will have another, but not quantitative, but qualitative study. It will allow us to see how local governments, the population, and public organizations were involved in the piloting process and how this all affected the sense of safety and comfort of residents in settlements,” summarizes Iryna Chaika, Project Expert, LDN Organizational Development Director.

The material was prepared with the support of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation within the framework of the joint initiative “European Renaissance of Ukraine”. The material represents the position of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the position of the European Union or the International Renaissance Foundation.

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