Protracted Displacement Economies

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Around the world refugees and displaced people remain in limbo, unable to return home, unwanted where they are living and facing increasing difficulties to go anywhere else. The majority of refugees in the world have been in these situations for more than 5years, a threshold usually referred to as 'protracted'. As crises become prolonged, the limitations of the humanitarian response have long been recognised as insufficient and inadequate. Refugees and Internally Displaced People caught up in these situations often speak of watching their lives 'draining away'. The model of support offered to displaced people is known by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) as 'care and maintenance' but perhaps more accurately by advocates of a radical change to this policy as the 'warehousing' of refugees. Global policy interest is shifting from short term humanitarianism to longer term development focused responses to protracted displacement. This was most recently indicated by the Global Compact on Refugees, in December 2018. The Refugee Compact introduces positive language around the long-term self reliance of refugees. This project responds to this renewed political will to find new solutions to protracted displacement and builds on a body of research and advocacy work in this area. It investigates the replacement of the care and maintenance model with a new approach: the protracted displacement economy. The protracted displacement economy introduces two key innovations that will contribute to this original analysis as well the potential for impact. 1) A whole of society approach. The focus is not just on displaced people but the 'displacement affected community', that includes the heterogeneous 'host' population, amongst others. 2) fundamental shift in the understanding of the transactions that drive the protracted displacement economy. Financial transactions are the stuff of most economic analysis, yet key human interactions and exchanges or gifts, collective organisation, care work and mutual aid are largely non-financial. Research will involve ten countries, 5 pairs of countries each separated by an international border: The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)/Uganda, Ethiopia/Somalia, Lebanon/Syria, Myanmar/Thailand, Pakistan/Afghanistan. These ten countries encompass the most serious protracted displacement crises in the world. Research will be conducted with partners in one of each pair of countries and will be attentive to the cross-border dynamics of the protracted displacement economy. International partners are: The Group for Research and Strategic Study on the Congo (GREC)(DRC), the Organisation for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa (OSSREA)(Ethiopia), the NGOs Basmeh & Zeitooneh and Sawa (Lebanon), the think tank Covenant Institute (Myanmar) and the University of Peshawar (Pakistan). In each of these five countries, three locations will be selected for empirical research, including at least one urban neighbourhood and at least one camp in each country. Over 3 years, these 15 locations will be involved in community discussions, large scale surveys and qualitative interviews. Key stakeholders in this process from further afield will be involved in regular meetings so that every stage in the research is informed by relevant expertise. The project will introduce the new approach of video narratives, training groups of people in each location to produce five minute videos of the protracted displacement economy that will then be dubbed and shared across all research sites. These films contribute to a wide range of innovative outputs that highlight the operation of the protracted displacement economy. Displaced people develop their own economic activities, including non-financial practices such as sharing and mutual aid as well as entrepreneurial activities. With time, community organisations begin to thrive. The project aims to support this process so that displaced people can look to the future with hope