BY YIFAN POWERS
Yifan Powers is a second-year International Development student from Boston, MA. She is passionate about monitoring and evaluation in development as well as her hometown, Boston.
Xavier Devictor, Practice Manager in the Fragility, Conflict and Violence Group at the World Bank presented a new approach to the global refugee crisis at the fourth Development Roundtable of the 2019-2020 academic year. There are an estimated 70.8 million people who live in forced displacement, including 25.9 million refugees depending on the data source. While 25.9 million is an extraordinarily large number, Devictor emphasized that the global refugee crisis is not an unmanageable one for the international community. The numbers roughly represent the population of a global megacity – metropolitan Karachi has around 23 million people currently– so providing services and security to this number of people is not without achievable solutions.
The traditional model for dealing with refugees, however, is wholly inadequate for the type of crisis we have now. The idea that refugee status is short lived and can be dealt with just through humanitarian aid like the provision of camps is no longer true. Around 12 million refugees have been in exile for more than five years and most live outside of camps, fleeing from the same ten protracted conflicts which have created the majority of refugees since 1991. As refugees tend to cross only one border, this means the cost of the refugee crisis has disproportionately fallen on the same host countries year after year.
Simply providing humanitarian aid does not address the long term issues of economic livelihood and service provision which refugees need as they try to assimilate into their new homes. Additionally, host countries are often located in lagging regions and have the difficult task of providing for their refugee population with severely limited resources and weaker institutional capacity. This is where a developmental approach to the global refugee crisis can step in to complement more traditional “brick and mortar” humanitarian assistance. The World Bank has created two financial products specifically meant to help host countries address the long term solutions needed for the refugee crisis. These are the Global Concessional Financing Facility (GCFF) for low and middle income countries and the IDA18 Refugee Sub-Window for low income countries. These two products shift the solutions framework from just crisis response to risk management, supporting not just refugees but their host communities as well. In close partnership with the UNHCR, the World Bank uses the GCFF and the IDA18 Sub-Window to work with countries on their own refugee strategy, creating complementary solutions for refugee socioeconomic inclusion.
In a conversation before the Development Roundtable, Devictor shared more insight on this new developmental approach as well as the global refugee crisis in general. The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Perspectives: What has been the trajectory of refugee aid to date?
XD: We are at a turning point. Since 1951, the refugee crisis has been dealt with as essentially a humanitarian and legal problem. People flee violence, they cross a border, they are provided security in a neighboring country, the international community feeds them and then they go back. The one flaw with this model is that it doesn’t work. Refugees tend to stay for a prolonged period of time in host countries, and many conflicts have no clear end in sight. Such a prolonged presence of large numbers of people raises a number of development issues from access to services, to jobs, to te environment. So in the last 3-4 years, there has been an effort by the international community to complement the humanitarian approach to the refugee crisis. I want to emphasize the idea of complementing; the idea is not to replace current humanitarian aid, but to complement it by providing refugees with socioeconomic opportunities and supporting host communities as they deal with this influx of people.
Perspectives: What does this new developmental approach look like?
XD: The main difference is that we focus on the socio-economic dimension of the problem and try to support the leadership of host governments in addressing these issues. So, this looks like trying to strengthen national systems; for example, to be able to provide quality education to both refugees and host communities. Or helping create job opportunities in refugee-hosting regions, because only when host communities prosper can they provide a sound environment for refugees to live in. We also try to look beyond projects: a sustainable response depends on sound policies and effective institutions.
Perspectives: What are the major contributors to the refugee crisis today?
XD: I will be controversial. I don’t think we have a crisis; we have a problem to resolve and the issue, or the cause, of us having a problem to resolve is that we have provided the wrong response thus far. The numbers are big, but not unmanageable. David Miliband of the International Rescue Committee, for example, has stated that this is a problem that the international community can resolve. About 17 million refugees live in non-OECD countries. As a comparison, this is about the population of a megacity. I am not suggesting this is easy, but this comparison helps illustrate the scale of the problem.
Perspectives: How does climate change play into the global refugee issue?
XD: Climate change is creating lots of negative impacts on a lot of people who will have to move. What we need to be careful about is that there is a fundamental difference between a refugee and an economic migrant. A refugee flees their country because his or her life is at risk. Economic migrants seek better opportunities. They have different profiles and have different outcomes. “Climate refugees,” in most cases, are much closer to economic migrants. They have a plot of land, experience less yield whether due to the effects of climate change or market prices, can no longer survive and must move to a city or new country. There are, of course, people moving because of natural disasters – these are usually less political issues, however, and can be dealt with using more traditional “brick and mortar” strategies.
Perspectives: Humanitarian aid, as you stated, cannot be replaced but rather complemented by a more developmental approach. You worked with the UNHCR in the former Yugoslavia delivering food aid; what does that process look like since it has to remain part of the solutions toolkit?
XD: Delivering humanitarian aid is a great thing to do at some point in your life; it’s deeply, deeply gratifying. The process is relatively straightforward. We had trucks carrying wheat and flour, with local or international drivers depending on where we were going. In front of the convoy we had a small four wheel drive car. Once you get close to the border and entered into less and less safe areas, you get a military escort added to the convoy. In Yugoslavia, when we arrived at the frontline, we would get out of the truck and call our colleagues who were at the enclave to negotiate a cease of fire right then at that moment. Then someone would have to test the cease of fire, so if you were in the head of the convoy you’d ride ahead and call back for the rest of the convoy once you’d safely made it across.
A lot of people ask why I went – the answer is I wanted to be useful, wanted to understand what was really happening and how people can treat each other with this level of bestiality. And the issue is that while you are doing good, there are consequences of you doing it. Aid like what I was delivering makes it possible for people to keep fighting. The sense of adventure goes away after the third or fourth time you’ve been shot at and it can be extremely dangerous, so there’s a moment when you’ve understood you’ve done as much as you can.
SAIS Perspectives is grateful to Xavier DeVictor for taking the time to speak with us, and to the International Development program for organizing the Development Roundtable. To read about other Development Roundtable events, click here.
PHOTO CREDIT: "Portrait of a Refugee" by babasteve is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0