Podcasts about refugee livelihoods

The launch of Red Cross Denmark’s Fast Track programme, which focuses on early refugee employment, offers an opportunity to explore the relationship between local employment of refugees and the sustainability of rural life.

Some displaced people and their host communities have benefited economically from the consequences of conflict in Syria’s Raqqa province. Others need support – and the type of support needed will change as circumstances change.

Refugee doctors face a number of barriers to practising medicine, despite the significant contributions that they can make.

Our research with rural grocery store managers in Denmark suggests that the integration of asylum centres into the local social and economic life in rural areas is a key factor in successful refugee reception.

The granting to Syrian refugees in Turkey of the right to access formal work was a first step towards their economic integration but a number of challenges remain.

Organisations supporting recently resettled refugees to find employment should focus on providing them with the tools to navigate the employment market in a sustainable way that leads to their personal development.

Host countries need to assess the potential for opening their labour markets to refugees, and enhancing access to decent work.

In our main feature, authors explore the complex interactions of the constraints and opportunities involved, drawing on case-studies from around the world and highlighting the roles of new actors, new technologies and new-or renewed-approaches.

Those seeking to support economic development for internally displaced people in Colombia need to understand how and why many IDPs collaborate with armed groups and criminal organisations.

The majority of Germany’s refugees and asylum seekers rely on government welfare and face serious obstacles to self-reliance. Integration policies must eliminate these obstacles to promote mutual long-term benefits for refugees and their new communities.

In Rwanda, Congolese refugees have the same freedom of movement and right to work as Rwandans but the experiences and economic activities of these two populations are very different.

References are often made to forced migrants’ digital literacy, including use of smartphones to organise journeys and communicate once at their destinations. Other digital skills, including those relating to the workplace, are of greater relevance.

Investing in refugees’ well-being is a global public good, and the international community should work to reduce malnutrition and increase access to education for refugees in order to help build human capital and achieve better economic outcomes for all.

Showcasing refugees’ skills connects refugees to global work opportunities, and also shifts narrative from one of refugees being burdens to host countries to one in which refugees are recognised as skilled workers for whom countries should be competing.

Qualification certificates play a central role in the labour market integration of highly educated refugees but validating them presents considerable challenges. Sweden and Norway have introduced some positive developments to address such difficulties.

The international community is increasingly emphasising the need to bridge the humanitarian­–development gap. But what does this mean on the ground in terms of refugees’ livelihoods and economic inclusion?

A new study on the effects of humanitarian assistance in response to the Syria crisis finds significant positive impacts for regional economic growth and job creation.

Multi-sited fieldwork in Uganda allows for an exploration of the complex patterns of engagement between refugees’ economic activities and local economies, in urban, emergency and protracted settings.

Research with Syrian women refugees in Jordan suggests that, despite significant challenges, the gig economy has some potential to help refugees participate in host communities and to bolster their economic participation.

Improving access to work, as well as livelihoods programming itself, is required if the lives and livelihoods of Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia are to improve.

The refugee assistance regime that prevails today seems to insist that the best, or only, solution to protracted refugee situations is firmly rooted in improving access to employment.

Analysis of the implementation of the Jordan Compact offers three key lessons: governmental approval is important but not sufficient, the incorporation of critical voices is crucial, meeting numeric targets is not the same as achieving underlying goals.

The continued evolution of the humanitarian innovation concept needs a critical engagement with how this agenda interacts with previous and contemporary attempts to improve humanitarian action.

It is difficult to speak convincingly of ‘new’ or innovative practices towards refugees, especially in refugee livelihoods assistance, while there remains a significant gap in historical knowledge and institutional memory.

Innovative approaches in Lebanon aim to address, in two very different ways, the particular needs of the most vulnerable among the refugee and host populations.

Humanitarian actors will have to adapt to a changing world but it will not be easy or straightforward. Operations are changing as a result of innovations which bring many improvements but also throw up challenges.

Since 2007 a partnership between UNHCR, the Government of Uganda and ‘MakaPads’ inventor Moses Musaazi has helped provide affordable sanitary pads for thousands of refugee girls and women.

‘UNHCR Ideas’ aims to enable collaborative problem solving and idea generation among an online community.

Conversations with multiple stakeholders in the US help to highlight barriers to economic self-sufficiency for resettled refugees and opportunities for innovative approaches.

In order to make a living, refugees have to be innovative, and refugees in Uganda have contributed tremendously to entrepreneurship and innovation in the country.

From the editors

Doing innovation well presents challenges for how we can work better together as organisations and with displaced people, and how we can break down traditional barriers between actors – all while upholding ethical principles and protection standards.

The purpose of innovation is to make humanitarian work more effective and more reflective. We do innovation to improve human lives by doing things better. Innovation, for UNHCR, is a humanitarian imperative to be carried out with partners.

A collaboration between UNHCR, Ennead Architects and Stanford University uses settlement design to promote innovation and further development in the refugee protection model but collaborators initially face a steep learning curve.