In December, IDS’ Cities Cluster hosted a hybrid seminar examining the challenges and opportunities presented by the growing phenomenon of urban internal displacement in the global South.
Moderated by Cities Cluster lead, and urban displacement expert, Dr Dolf te Lintelo, the event offered a snapshot on the state-of-the art in research, policy and operational work on the often over-looked facet of urban internal displacement in so-called ‘protracted crises’. Such crises are defined by long durations, and often entail multiple, overlapping crises (e.g. conflict, forced displacement and disasters).
The convening of the seminar reflects the strong interest in urban forced displacement at IDS, notably through the Displacement, Placemaking and Wellbeing in the City (DWELL) and Wellbeing, Housing and Infrastructure in Turkey (WHIT) projects.
While robust data remain elusive, it is generally agreed that the majority of the estimated 76 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) around the world live in cities and towns (instead of remote ‘camps’ that have long dominated popular imaginations of displacement). Despite this urban complexion, responses from both affected governments and international partners often fail to consider the unique challenges — and opportunities — posed by IDPs living within towns and cities. Thinking and practice has too often been locked into rural, camp-based and humanitarian mindsets and approaches. New thinking is clearly needed, particularly as urbanisation continues to transform societies across the global South and as crises become more protracted.
Happily, the seminar highlighted that these tendencies are beginning to change. Each of the four presentations at the event highlighted a loose but like-minded constellation of research initiatives, policy analyses, and programme evaluations, which are all making the case for change.
Here are four key takeaways from each of the presentations:
1. Urban displacement myth-busting
The first presentation, by Dr. Lucy Earle, Director of IIED’s Human Settlements Group, presented lessons-learned from IIED’s recently-completed four-year, four-country Protracted Displacement in an Urban World (PDUW) study. PDUW represents the first large-scale comparative study examining protracted displacement in camps versus cities. It analysed the wellbeing and economies of refugees, returnees and IDPs in both camp and city contexts in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Jordan and Kenya, to produce evidence and recommendations on the pathways to a more strategic urban response to protracted displacement. As discussed by Dr. Earle, this required first countering several powerful ‘myths’ that have tugged at policymakers’ imaginations.
The first myth is the assumption that since most displaced people in cities do not receive humanitarian assistance, they must be ‘self-reliant’. In fact, PDUW researchers found that while some displaced urban households in the researched cities are doing well, others are quite poor and barely subsisting. Second, PDUW pointed to the shaky evidence underlying a common belief that non-camp displaced tend to be younger and better educated, indicating that they are relatively ‘upwardly mobile’. In fact, the picture is a good deal more mixed, with better educated households in some countries unable to or unwilling to enter the informal labour markets of their new areas of residence and instead remain in camps at higher rates than their less educated compatriots.
A third myth that should be busted is that camps are unquestionably ‘safe havens’ for displaced households and individuals. Instead, PDUW documented cases of acute food insecurity and homelessness, among other struggles, for some camp residents – particularly in Ethiopia and Kenya. Finally, seminar attendees learned about the assumption that camps possess the necessary social and economic features to evolve into stand-alone cities or towns. Instead, PDUW data indicated that the location of an existing camp plays an inordinate — and possibly insurmountable — role in determining whether camps can be cost-effectively converted into viable cities or towns.
2. What’s (not) working in humanitarian responses
The seminar’s second speaker was Lewis Sida, co-Director of IDS’ Humanitarian Learning Centre. He was lead author of the recent Independent review of the humanitarian response to internal displacement, which evaluated the UN’s Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) humanitarian system response to internal displacement. Based on six country case studies (Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Honduras, Mozambique, Nigeria and Yemen), the review provides detailed evidence of how current humanitarian response mechanisms and approaches fail to adequately address the global internal displacement crisis.
Read more about the Humanitarian Learning Centre
Specifically, Mr. Sida and co-authors found that there is a tendency for such responses to be too slow to respond, too fragmented, overly concerned with internal processes, and unable to sufficiently harness IDPs’ agency and capacities. Importantly for this seminar, the review also pointed to a lack of focus on internal displacement in urban areas.
The review also pointed towards solutions to these shortcomings, including: empowering in-country humanitarian response leaders to take more nimble and rapid decisions; greater empowerment of IDPs in programming; and a more concerted focus on urban areas and the particular challenges found there. Echoing messages coming from other seminar participants, the review called for an urban strategy paper for the UN Inter-Agency Standing Committee system to help do so.
3. Exploring a ‘People-in-Place’ approach for development interventions
The seminar’s focus then shifted from immediate, emergency needs of urban IDPs to longer-term development requirements. Dr. Soraya Goga, Lead Urban Specialist, Urban, Resilience and Land for Eastern and Southern Africa at the World Bank followed with reflections on how development actors such as hers can and should respond to urban internal displacement.
Drawing on a recent internal World Bank white paper entitled, “Forced Displacement: An Agenda for Cities and Towns”, Dr. Goga explained why urban forced displacement requires a tailored approach from development actors. Specifically, she noted that urban areas have significant existing networks, including infrastructure and services, dynamic labour and land markets, complex social dynamics and thick layers of (formal and informal) institutions managing services. Moreover — unlike less dense rural areas — the influx of displaced populations can have marked spatial effects that profoundly alter the ways in which cities grow in the future.
To grapple with this complex challenge, the white paper puts forward a ‘people-in-place’ approach that attempts to balance the individual- and household-level needs of vulnerable IDPs with the larger urban development needs (economic, social and governance-related) of the city and its existing systems.
4. Towards inclusive solutions to urban displacement
Finally, Filiep Decorte, Chief of Programme Development Branch at UN-Habitat, and I offered reflections on UN-Habitat’s forthcoming ‘Global Framework’ on solutions to urban internal displacement. Developed by UN-Habitat and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), the Framework aims to provide new directions for how we should think about and address the issue.
To do so, the Framework presents three critical ‘shifts in mindset’ necessary for more effective programming, five operational principles that grow out of this new mindset, and a detailed discussion of six essential programmatic elements, which must be considered in any successful response to urban internal displacement.
Most fundamentally, the Framework advocates for a shift in how national and local-level governments and international aid agencies should conceive of urban internal displacement crises:
- From “delivering durable solutions for IDPs in cities” to “facilitating pathways to inclusive urban development”
- From emergency crisis to development challenge… and opportunity
- From IDPs as a “humanitarian caseload” to IDPs as urban citizens within larger Displacement Affected Communities
The hope is that, armed with these new mindsets, actors across the humanitarian and development continuum can provide responses to urban internal displacement that are more sustainable, scalable and transformative. Such shifts are urgent, given worrying trends in the global (urban) internal displacement landscape, including rising numbers of IDPs, reduced or insufficiently flexible funding flows, and a challenging global geopolitical context.
