UN Displaced People Reconstruction Report: Ukraine Needs $588B

The United Nations' top expert on internally displaced people told the General Assembly this week that rebuilding war-shattered countries must be judged by whether displaced families can recover their lives in safety, not by how many buildings go back up. Paula Gaviria Betancur, the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons, said reconstruction is about far more than bricks and mortar: it is about restoring rights, rebuilding institutions and reviving public trust. This displaced people reconstruction report frames post-conflict rebuilding as a human rights test, warning that decisions taken while violence and displacement are still underway will shape the futures of millions. According to the UN human rights office, the real measure is whether internally displaced people can return voluntarily and live with dignity, integrate locally, or settle elsewhere by choice.

The financial scale of the task is unprecedented. Reconstruction needs exceed $71 billion in Gaza, $11 billion in Lebanon, $216 billion in Syria and some $588 billion in Ukraine, the report says. Yemen, Sudan and South Sudan face immense reconstruction demands as well, alongside countries struck by disasters rather than war. With sums of that size at stake, the rapporteur argues, choices about who funds recovery and what gets prioritised have become decisive for the futures of millions of displaced people.

Reconstruction Is Never Neutral

Speaking to reporters in New York after the presentation, the rapporteur said reconstruction has to be about strengthening social cohesion and giving displaced people the conditions to move beyond displacement toward lasting solutions. The displaced people reconstruction report argues that return, local integration and settlement elsewhere should all be genuine options, and that judging recovery by building counts alone misses what recovery is actually for.

Reconstruction is never neutral, Gaviria Betancur told the Assembly: who decides, who pays and who benefits determines whether rebuilding repairs harm or deepens it. A recovery reduced to buildings and budgets can entrench displacement rather than end it, she warned, rewarding those who profited from destruction and producing cities that former residents cannot return to. When physical recovery is disconnected from the needs of the people who lost their homes, the cranes can rise while the displaced remain stuck in limbo.

Too often, the report finds, reconstruction moves forward without meaningfully including displaced communities. Internally displaced people must be placed at the centre of the process, the rapporteur said, treated not as passive recipients of aid but recognised as rights holders and partners in the decisions that shape their future. Without that inclusion, rebuilding risks reinforcing the inequalities, patterns of exclusion and old grievances that helped drive displacement in the first place. That is why this displaced people reconstruction report puts community participation at the heart of its recommendations rather than treating it as an optional extra.

The warning lands hardest where fighting continues during rebuilding. In places where violence and displacement are still underway, a blueprint drawn only from budgets can prolong upheaval, channel investment toward the powerful and leave communities facing deeper exclusion or renewed displacement. The report calls this the central trap of modern recovery: treating a human catastrophe as a construction project. It notes that past recoveries too often produced glossy new districts that the displaced could neither afford nor access, a pattern the displaced people reconstruction report urges governments to break by putting returnees and residents on the planning bodies that allocate the money.

A Rights-Based Blueprint

Instead, Gaviria Betancur calls for a rights-based approach that pairs repairs with safety, livelihoods, justice and functioning public institutions. Durable solutions, she said, mean displaced people can recover their housing, land and property, find decent work, reach basic services and take part in public life without discrimination. Reliable data and rigorous monitoring are also needed, the displaced people reconstruction report adds, to make sure reconstruction actually delivers for the people it claims to serve. She argued that displaced communities hold the local knowledge that outside contractors lack: which neighbourhoods are safe, which markets can be revived, and where returning families will actually choose to live.

The ultimate test, in the rapporteur's framing, is not a skyline count but a human one: whether people can rebuild their lives without fear of being uprooted again. As recovery efforts gather pace across continents, the report argues that putting displaced communities at the heart of the planning is the difference between a rebuild that ends displacement and one that simply cements it in concrete.

Sources: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/10/reconstruction-can-end-displacement-or-deepen-it-says-un-expert

Sources: https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/other/3996865-un-expert-urges-reconstruction-that-helps-displaced-people-rebuild-lives-in-safety