Where The Refugees Are

Another year. 

Another World Refugee Day.

Another set of headline numbers.

There were more than 117 million people living in forced displacement at the end of 2023.

Over 37 million of these people were refugees, having crossed an international border in search of a solution to their plight. 

If you’ve had the dubious honour of living through recent European elections you might be forgiven for thinking that this amounts to “out of control migration” as populist parties would have you believe, a wave of refugees seeking asylum that will overwhelm national and European systems and culture.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The United States and Europe host just 8% of the world’s refugees. Low to middle income countries host 75%, while 21% are hosted in countries with the least developed economies. Across this spectrum, fully 69% of refugees are hosted in a country neighbouring the place from which they fled.

So this World Refugee Day, I’d like to reflect on a couple of countries that do host many refugees, and look at some of the work that we at the International Rescue Committee have been doing to help refugees and host communities find solutions to the challenges that forced displacement brings.

Colombia hosts over 6 million Venezuelan refugees. Individuals and families arriving in Colombia struggle to regularise their documentation, access services and generate income. At the same time service delivery systems can be placed under severe strain: for example, between 2018 and 2019 there was a fivefold increase in the number of new Venezuelan students in Colombian schools.

While most arrivals choose to stay in Colombia, many do not, traveling onwards to other destinations in Latin America, such as Peru and Ecuador, or making the perilous journey on foot across the feared Darién Gap into Panama and onwards through Central America. Over 400,000 people made the journey along this inhospitable and dangerous route in 2023. Children make up a significant and growing proportion of the travelers, with over 80,000 crossing the Darién between January and September 2023, compared to approximately 20,000 in the same period in 2022.

While government ministries, service providers and local community associations are going above and beyond to host and care for refugees in extremely precarious situations, the specific needs and challenges of people on the move require innovative solutions and partnerships. Traditionally we think of the education challenges of refugees as one of integration into host systems, but how do you help tens of thousands of children on the move to acquire key developmental skills that can set them up for success wherever they find themselves?

This is the challenge that the International Rescue Committee is working on, in partnership with the Colombian Government Agency for Children and Family Welfare and the The LEGO Foundation . The result: Jugar para Soñar (Play to Dream), a programme that supports children’s education on the move. Based around a storyline with a set of characters that children can follow throughout their journey, this programme promotes the development of core emotional, social, physical, cognitive and creative skills. The content is delivered in portable form – a backpack with pedagogical materials that follow the storyline – and via “play centres” strategically placed along the main walking routes to help guide children and adults through the material, offering a safe and encouraging space in which to develop and hone the core skills.

Just like Colombia in South America, Uganda is the largest refugee hosting country in Africa, with some 1.6 million refugees from South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia and beyond. Uganda has one of the most welcoming policy environments for refugees, aligned with the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework launched at the first Global Refugee Forum in 2019.

However, with significant conflicts in neighbouring states producing a steady stream of new arrivals, coupled with diminishing humanitarian and refugee-related funding, service delivery to both refugees and host populations are under strain. The effect of climate change is exacerbating pressure on livelihoods and food security, and contributing to further onward migration towards urban areas.

Women and girls are disproportionally exposed to violence, sexual assault, and poverty. Attitudes towards gender-based violence are a significant part of the problem, with 73% of respondents in a survey in Bidibidi camp in January 2022 expressing that women should tolerate any kind of violence from her husband to keep her family together.

Tackling this issue requires a multi-faceted approach, addressing concerns around safety, health and economic opportunities. The International Rescue Committee , in partnership with the United States Bureau of Population Refugees and Migration, has worked with both women and men to address harmful norms around violence, worked with women and girls, including many survivors of sexual and gender-based violence to provide case management and safe pathways to access specialized and appropriate health care services, and worked with host communities to unlock communal land for agricultural use. We have worked with farmer groups on climate smart agricultural techniques and helped establish village savings and loans associations (VSLAs) to provide rotating credit to help kickstart micro-businesses.

We have seen women grow through this set of interventions to become respected community leaders, and we have seen households come from very desperate financial conditions to running thriving businesses. The VSLAs are going strong and provide a sustainable model for scaling micro-economic activities that make a fundamental difference to women’s lives and to those of their household. Integrating services like this makes sense when dealing with the complex, inter-related challenges faced by displaced and host communities. It also makes sense from a service delivery perspective, allowing us to scale services more efficiently to people in need.

Ultimately, whether we look at Colombia, Uganda, or most of the other states hosting the majority of world’s refugees, the most important effort is provided by host governments and host communities. This solidarity and generosity is something we can all learn from. The best that we can do, as “outsider insiders” in humanitarian and development organisations is to bring expertise and resources to bear to help build joint solutions. Solutions that are adapted to the context and needs of those forcibly displaced, and that draw on evidence of what has worked in other contexts.