Responding to protracted displacement in an urban world

Project findings

The project’s findings for each country are set out in a series of working papers. There is also a policy brief for each country with recommendations derived from these findings.

Across the four countries, we found that:

• Displaced people in urban areas have better health and greater food security than their counterparts in camps, but there are pockets of extreme deprivation among urban populations, and
• Camp economies are largely artificial, and encampment policies significantly restrict the development of dynamic local enterprises, but policies and the behaviour of the local authorities also limit displaced people’s livelihoods potential in urban areas.

These findings demonstrate a clear need for decision makers to consider an ‘urban first’ approach – in which displaced people are integrated socially and economically into urban centres, rather than camps.

They also demonstrate the imperative to relax movement restrictions on encamped populations, so they can more easily take the first step towards ‘self-reliance’. 

Wellbeing findings

As well as debunking the ‘myth’ that camps provide a safety net for vulnerable people, we found that bodily and economic wellbeing are higher in urban areas than in camps. Displaced people also rate services in cities higher for quality and availability. 

The study highlighted high levels of food insecurity in camps, homelessness and inadequate maternal health services. The research also demonstrates how camps are poor value for money. They absorb the bulk of humanitarian funding for displaced populations – in most contexts, urban refugees do not receive any assistance. 

However, much needs to be done to improve life for displaced people in cities. While some urban refugees and IDPs had high levels of wellbeing, we found pockets of extreme poverty, particularly among women.

Our findings on social, political and psychosocial wellbeing were not so clear cut, and varied between countries. In urban areas many displaced people feel they lack representation, are denied their rights and are limited in terms of the life they would like to lead by the costs of rent and transport. 

Livelihoods and enterprise findings

In cities, restrictions on employment push some refugees into low-paid work with very poor conditions, with women often engaged in the most risk-prone activities and locations. Despite hostile regulation, many urban refugees and IDPs were working, often informally, either self-employed or in small enterprises. 

Having previous work experience or household savings were predictors of self-employment. This is important, as many refugee populations include young people entering the labour force for the first time without savings or previous experience, so policy must find ways to bridge this gap. 

In refugee-hosting countries, we found urban refugee-entrepreneurs working in partnership with hosts, so they could register their businesses, a relationship that can be positive but is sometimes exploitative. 

In camps, the few jobs available were often more secure than those in cities, but these were frequently short-term opportunities provided by NGOs, paying below market rates.

Key outputs

All of the project’s publications, plus podcasts, blogs and articles, are available via the protracted displacement website. 

We worked with a photographer to create a photostory covering the lives of Somali refugee women in Kenya, and youth film-makers to document the lives of refugees in one of Nairobi’s informal settlements.  

We have edited a special issue of Environment and Urbanization, with contributions from many members of the research team.

Participatory forums

The partners established participatory forums in each city, which were convened five or six times over the course of the four years. Their overarching aim was to bring displaced people into conversation with local authorities and service providers, to raise awareness of the challenges they were facing living in cities, as evidenced by the research. 

The forums evolved in different ways in each location. Particular progress was made in Nairobi and Addis Ababa, where the discussions helped draw attention to the potential role for municipal authorities to respond to the needs of urban refugees. In both cities discussions and forums are continuing, with the support of new donors, and Nairobi city is developing a new strategy for inclusive planning for refugees.  

In Afghanistan the model is being extended by international agencies to other areas, to encourage greater dialogue between local officials and internally displaced people.

Next steps

We are promoting debate locally and internationally on innovations in hosting urban refugees and IDPs. Through new action research in Nairobi we are encouraging municipal authorities to take the lead in providing urban services to displaced people and other vulnerable populations. 

We are also working with partners in Kampala to integrate refugees into existing participatory planning forums.

With new donor support, we are also refining our wellbeing framework, carrying out further pilots and validating results with displaced people.

We aim to create a tool that can support municipal authorities to design responses to displacement based on needs and capacities of vulnerable urban populations, and to monitor development towards more inclusive, resilient cities.