For decades, the response by the international community to mass movements of people fleeing war or political persecution has been to provide humanitarian assistance in camps. Despite highly-charged debates on the negative impact of maintaining people in often remote regions and dependent on humanitarian assistance, camps remain the default response to new displacement crises.
Camps are not, however, the choice of the majority of the world’s displaced people, and estimates suggest that over 60% of refugees and at least half of internally displaced persons (IDPs) now live in towns and cities.
The overall aims of this research project were to:
- Build an evidence base for national and local governments, humanitarian agencies and donors on the opportunities and challenges of hosting displaced people in camps vs. urban areas.
- Assess current responses to urban protracted displacement, raising awareness of unmet need and the potential economic and social contributions of refugees and IDP for host cities.
- Support municipal authorities, displaced people, NGOs, organisations of the urban poor and other local actors to use participatory planning to co-produce innovative, inclusive solutions to forced displacement.
The importance of a camp-urban comparison
Camps have captured the attention of the media, relief organisations and academia. But as short-term emergencies turn into protracted displacement, camp living can erode residents’ dignity and increase aid dependency. In response, displaced people are increasingly moving to cities, avoiding camps to seek autonomy and opportunities over dependency and isolation.
The different impacts of camp and urban environments on the lives and livelihoods of refugees, returnees and IDPs had not previously been systematically evaluated. There is still relatively little known about how displaced people in cities interact with local people, institutions, and economies (informal and formal), or how cities can better respond to their needs, and this project has started to address that knowledge gap. This understanding is critical if we are to move towards displacement responses that promote rights, dignity, and wellbeing, and facilitate displaced people’s economic contributions to their host settings.
Key findings
The project focused on two main themes: wellbeing, and the economies and enterprises of displaced people.
Displacement is now increasingly protracted, with many refugees and IDPs unable to return home for years or even decades. However, data collected about displaced people is often driven by tools designed for use in emergency contexts, which centre on meeting basic needs or on income. Instead of relying on these narrowly conceived vulnerability analyses, we developed a new framework based on displaced people’s own understanding of what it means to live a good life in exile. This measures wellbeing along five dimensions: bodily, economic, social, political and psychosocial.
The study also compared the difference that urban and camp settings make to refugees and IDPs’ ability to achieve self-reliance through work, and their potential wider economic contribution to host communities and economies. We defined the displacement economy as ‘the collective economy created over time by refugees and IDPs through their livelihood activities, enterprise, need for services and consumption, and through their mutual support and diaspora inputs’.
We found that:
• Displaced people have better health and greater food security in urban areas compared with in camps; but there are pockets of extreme deprivation among urban populations;
• Camp economies are largely artificial and encampment policies restrict the development of dynamic local enterprises; but local authorities’ policies and behaviours also limit displaced people’s livelihood potential in urban areas.
The findings demonstrate a clear need for decision makers to consider an ‘urban first’ approach of integrating displaced people socially and economically into urban centres rather than camps. The findings also show the imperative to relax movement restrictions on encamped populations so they can more easily take the first step towards self-reliance.
Promoting participatory and inclusive city planning
A central component of the research programme was to promote interaction between urban refugees/IDPs, the urban poor, municipal authorities and other local actors. In addition to quantitative and qualitative research, we supported a participatory and inclusive planning process in each country, convening regular stakeholder forums throughout the project. These ensured that beneficiaries were involved in the validation of findings and creation of co-produced solutions that support self-reliance, wellbeing and productive livelihoods in cities.
