Christina Lowe3 and Jessica Hagen-Zanker4
With displacement occurring at record levels and often on a protracted basis, there is increasing interest in the potential to link humanitarian displacement responses with social protection systems. This article discusses how social protection and humanitarian systems can work together to meet the needs of displacement-affected populations, based on the findings of a three-year research project that drew on global literature alongside mixed-methods data collected in 2021 in Cameroon, Colombia, and Greece. The article discusses five lessons: (1) displaced populations’ distinct needs and implications for social protection design and delivery; (2) inadequate social protection for host communities and implications for social cohesion; (3) the priority basis for evaluating linkage approaches; (4) the need for sustained international financing; and (5) the general importance of greater transparency and collaboration. It concludes with recommendations for further research to build the nascent evidence base on this topic.
Social protection, humanitarian, displacement, refugees, IDPs, crisis, conflict, welfare, safety net, assistance.
Forced displacement today is at the highest level ever recorded, passing the 100 million mark in 2022. While most displaced people reside within their own countries as internally displaced people (IDPs), around 40 per cent are refugees or others seeking asylum in another country. The vast majority – over 75 per cent of refugees and 99 per cent of IDPs – are hosted in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Displacement is frequently long term and those affected often live among host communities, increasingly in urban areas (Park 2016; UNHCR 2023; IDMC 2023).
These shifts in the nature of displacement have required those supporting displaced people to move away from the traditional humanitarian model – based on immediate relief of emergency needs – towards development-oriented solutions. Interest has therefore grown in the potential role of national social protection systems in displacement responses (UNHCR 2019; SPIAC-B 2022). This has created a need to better understand when and how humanitarian assistance can effectively link with social protection systems to support displacement-affected populations (Peterman et al. 2018).
To help address this knowledge gap, an ODI-led consortium undertook a research project from 2020 to 2022 to explore the overarching question: What are the optimal approaches and key insights for linking humanitarian assistance and social protection to respond to forced displacement in different contexts?
The rest of the article is organised as follows. Section 2 outlines the project methodology and framework for conceptualising the different linkages. In Section 3, we discuss the five key findings. Section 4 presents reflections on future research priorities.
Conducted in collaboration with the Centre for Applied Social Sciences Research and Training (CASS-RT) in Cameroon, Universidad de los Andes in Colombia, and the National Centre for Social Research (EKKE) in Greece, the research focused on six research sites, selected to cover a range of geographies, income levels, social protection systems, displacement situations, affected population profiles, and assistance models. The sites were:
Quantitative data was collected through a survey of approximately 1,500 displaced and host community members in each country in early 2021. Qualitative data came from focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with up to 200 members of displaced and host populations, and around 25 representatives of government, UN, donor, and non‑governmental organisations in each country.5
The case studies were complemented by two pieces of global analysis: a literature review on humanitarian–social protection links (Gray Meral and Both 2021) and a review of existing microdata on social protection coverage of displaced and host populations (Salomon and Hagen-Zanker 2022).6
The research used – and refined – an analytical framework for conceptualising different approaches for linking humanitarian assistance for displaced populations with social protection systems.7 As illustrated in Figure 1, linkage options occur on a spectrum, ranging from zero linkages at one extreme (parallel programming) to full integration (state-led programming) at the other end. In between these two extremes, the approach may be humanitarian led, but aligned with (informed by) the social protection system, or actively leveraging (directly involving) the system or the state. Links can be made to different degrees at different points in the social protection system (e.g. for policy, programme design, and operational delivery).
Source: Adapted from Lowe, Cherrier and Holmes (2022). Copyright © ODI. Click here to access a high-resolution version of this image. This work is licensed under CC BY‑NC‑ND 4.0. Readers are encouraged to reproduce material for their own publications as long as they are not being sold commercially. ODI requests due acknowledgement.
There are therefore many possible approaches for linking humanitarian assistance for displaced populations with social protection systems.8 In the next section, we discuss five overarching lessons for actors engaged in – or considering – linkages between humanitarian and social protection systems in displacement settings.
Refugees, asylum seekers, and IDPs have often lost or exhausted their income, assets, and savings before, during, and upon arrival from their displacement journey (Hagen-Zanker et al. 2022; UNHCR 2021a; World Bank 2017; IDMC 2018). In their new place of residence, they typically have more limited access to employment, livelihoods, land, secure housing, networks, and public services. Consequently, they generally have higher poverty and vulnerability rates, on average, than the host population.
Displaced populations are also likely to face certain unique risks and challenges due to their displacement (Hagen-Zanker et al. 2022; Andrade, Sato and Hammad 2021; Holmes and Lowe 2023). They may have developed physical injuries or disabilities, experienced trauma, or have other mental health conditions, and may also face specific forms of stigma, discrimination, and exclusion, heightened by language and cultural barriers, security concerns, and restricted freedom of movement in the host context.
Some of these challenges will result in chronic long-term needs. Others could theoretically reduce over time, but in practice often persist for many years.9 All this means that even in protracted crises, people who are displaced will generally require higher average levels of support than host populations, often for a long time, if their needs are to be met. Displaced populations will also likely need specific types of programming, such as psychosocial support, child protection, and gender-based violence services, as well as tailored strategies to help rebuild their livelihoods and overcome the multifaceted disadvantages they face.
Displaced households in our sample were often significantly less aware of social protection programmes than host populations, and also faced specific challenges accessing registration, payment receipt, and accountability mechanisms (Lowe et al. 2022a). In many cases, these challenges were even greater for refugees (as non-citizens) than IDPs and were further exacerbated by gender and other inequalities.
Our research highlighted wide-ranging operational measures needed to address barriers to social protection (ibid.). These include partnering with civil society and humanitarian organisations that represent and routinely work with the displaced community; providing translation and interpretation for relevant languages; extending service points to geographically isolated or mobility-restricted populations; providing in-person and manual alternatives to electronic mechanisms (while facilitating digital and financial inclusion of displaced populations where feasible); removing national ID card and proof of legal residence requirements; and ensuring reliable documentation provision for displaced individuals. As well as adjusting explicit eligibility restrictions,10 steps are needed to overcome indirect exclusion from scheme selection due to biases in community-based targeting or in the socioeconomic assessments and social protection databases used to allocate provision.
In addition to promoting accessibility for displaced people, these efforts have the potential to strengthen inclusiveness and service quality more broadly, since other marginalised groups in the host population may experience related access barriers (ibid.).
Countries hosting displaced populations are overwhelmingly low- and middle-income economies, where social protection covers only a fraction of the population (OECD and EBA 2022). In our analysis of microdata from 13 displacement settings, the proportion of host community respondents receiving state transfers was frequently negligible (typically 5 per cent or less in the sub-Saharan African countries with data available) (Salomon and Hagen-Zanker 2022).
In the minority of cases where social protection is available for the host community, transfer adequacy is frequently very low (and transfer values are often much lower than for humanitarian assistance to displaced households) (McLean et al. 2021; Barca, Sharpe and Flower 2021). For example, until shortly before our study in Cameroon, the poverty-targeted social assistance scheme provided 10,000 FCFA11 (or US$17.50 at the time of the research) per month, representing about 8 per cent of the national poverty line. Even after it was increased by half, the value still equated to around 70 per cent less than the equivalent value of World Food Programme (WFP) food assistance for displaced households in the Far North region.
Limited social protection for host communities, including in relation to potentially greater humanitarian assistance for displaced communities, has raised concerns regarding social cohesion in displacement-affected areas. This has sometimes led to assumptions that reducing support to displaced populations to align it with social protection for host communities will lead to better inter-community relations.
However, our research showed that this assumption about the presumed cohesion benefits of aligning transfers often does not hold. First, differentiated levels of support may not actually be of concern to host communities – either because assistance levels are unknown to them or because they accept that displaced households’ needs are different from their own. For example, host communities in Cameroon often did not have a clear sense of how much support displaced households were getting, and the specific value of assistance did not seem to be a notable source of tensions (Levine et al. 2022). The survey showed that hosts were significantly more likely than refugees to say that vulnerable members of the other community should receive support. This was true even though hosts were significantly more likely than displaced respondents to state that vulnerable households in the other community already received more support than those in their own community. Whether host community respondents received assistance themselves made no difference to whether they agreed with these statements (Lowe et al. 2022b).
In other cases, transfer values may indeed contribute to tensions, but tensions may be rooted either in misconceptions about the generosity of provision (so the actual transfer value is somewhat irrelevant) or may persist even after attempts to align transfer values – as occurred in Greece (Tramountanis et al. 2022; Lowe et al. 2022b).
Moreover, assistance provision can indirectly strengthen displaced–host relations, when it is spent in the local economy, shared between communities, or perceived to reduce theft or begging. These examples were repeatedly highlighted by qualitative research participants in Cameroon and Colombia (Lowe et al. 2022b). Higher-value transfers to displaced households may therefore increase economic and community benefits accruing to host populations, while lower-value transfers may reduce these indirect benefits.
That said, there are undoubtedly cases where social tensions do exist regarding assistance provision. However, our research suggests that these tensions are unlikely to have been caused by the assistance itself. Rather, assistance may fuel existing tensions, where social discontent among the host community is already present – often for reasons only loosely linked to immigration – and where institutions are perceived to be failing to address those concerns (due to weak social protection provision, alongside gaps in wider state services, infrastructure, and employment opportunities).
Frustration is likely to be most pronounced in situations where assistance to displaced people is perceived to be directly diverting state resources away from vulnerable citizens. In our research, this was the case among some Colombians, as concerns about the cost of the progressive state-led support for Venezuelans became intertwined with existing social tensions relating to widespread inequality and the perceived failure to attend to vulnerable citizens’ needs (Ham et al. 2022; Lowe et al. 2022b).
Such cases call for measures that address the root causes, rather than the symptoms, of existing social discontent, including investing in improved social protection for host populations. Given major financial constraints faced by LMIC host countries, efforts need to be bolstered by substantial international support, to enable assistance for displaced households to be rolled out while maintaining or stepping up existing provisions for vulnerable host community households (see Section 3.4).
Humanitarian assistance is guided by humanitarian principles, the first of which is to address human suffering wherever it is found, protect life and health, and ensure respect for human beings (OCHA 2012). Decisions about whether and how to link humanitarian assistance with social protection in displacement settings must therefore be carefully considered in relation to the ability to address the displaced population’s suffering. Linkages should not be pursued where the lives, health, and dignity of displaced households will be jeopardised as a result.
This means that state systems should not be relied upon as a primary vehicle to assist displaced households in situations where those households’ safety may be endangered by presenting themselves to the state.12 Agencies assisting displaced populations should also not pursue the alignment of humanitarian and social protection transfer values as the objective in itself (Hagen-Zanker et al. 2022). If host and displaced recipients have similar needs and if programmes have similar objectives (such as poverty reduction in both communities), similar support may be appropriate. But in many cases, displaced households have differentiated needs, justifying higher levels of support.
That said, humanitarian actors must also consider wider priorities, including ‘doing no harm’, and supporting local and national responses. This includes systematically assessing entry points for linking with state social protection systems and building on opportunities to strengthen existing systems wherever feasible (SPIAC-B n.d.). Where social protection systems provide effective access to support, inclusion in such systems may enable more consistent access to assistance for displaced households in the long run – a necessary consideration for actors seeking to secure their wellbeing over time.
For example, in Colombia, international efforts to assist IDP and Venezuelan populations have generally looked to bolster the nationally led response. One innovative example comes from WFP’s pilot with the government in the Arauca region, which provided additional support for host and Venezuelan populations to directly complement the government’s Covid-19 response (WFP 2022). The pilot initially aimed to use state databases (including the SISBEN13 social registry) to identify and support Venezuelans and vulnerable host community households. In practice, very few Venezuelans were included in the registry and even when they were listed, their entries were often outdated. This reduced the state database’s value for the pilot itself but became an opportunity to discuss improved system shock-responsiveness, triggering a subsequent initiative that increased SISBEN registration among vulnerable Venezuelan households (WFP 2023).
Governments worldwide have committed to share responsibility for displacement challenges through various global agreements and frameworks.14 Supporting displaced people through national social protection systems should not be viewed as a means for the international community to neglect existing commitments and moral obligations by placing the financial cost of assisting displaced populations on LMIC host governments. Instead, social protection systems offer a potential alternative mechanism through which international financing can be channelled. In some cases, this may be more cost-efficient, depending on the specific context, design, and delivery of the assistance. It may also fulfil additional objectives of donors, such as strengthening national social protection systems.
Failure to provide international support to host government systems when they take on newly displaced caseloads can be a recipe for undermining the sustainability of the government’s response, from a financial, operational, and societal perspective.
In our research, this was best demonstrated by the Colombian case study, where the government adopted a highly progressive response to the Venezuelan influx but where international financing was clearly needed – and has since been increased – to ensure this strong nationally led response could be maintained (Ham et al. 2022). Although citizens overall demonstrated striking solidarity with Venezuelans, there were growing social concerns about resources being diverted to Venezuelans at the expense of vulnerable citizens (a narrative also fuelled by various influential public figures) (ibid.).
In many displacement situations, social protection systems have not historically been used to assist displaced populations, whether due to the generally limited coverage of such systems or specific practical, legal, financial, or political obstacles. Consequently, ODI’s global review of social protection provisions in major LMIC displacement settings found few examples of refugee inclusion in state programmes (Gray Meral and Both 2021).
What is striking, however, is that where refugees have been explicitly included, this has often been linked to specific international financing strategies, notably the World Bank’s IDA-18 and IDA-19 Window for Host Communities and Refugees (World Bank 2022). Through this channel, US$6bn of resources have been provided to lower-income refugee host countries since 2017, to create development opportunities for both refugees and host communities, while promoting refugees’ socioeconomic inclusion and strengthening state capacity to manage additional refugee flows (World Bank 2023).
A substantial proportion of the overall window’s funds has been dedicated to the social protection sector, with recipients being allocated grants or low-interest loans to enhance their overall social protection system on the condition that refugees be included in the expanded coverage. Consequently, several recipient countries (principally in sub-Saharan Africa) have now begun to include refugees in their social assistance programmes for the first time (Gray Meral and Both 2021).
UNHCR goes so far as to call these World Bank investments ‘game changers’ across the countries where they are implemented, helping to make an attractive business case to the government by strengthening the state social protection system through an area-based approach that benefits both host and displaced populations (UNHCR 2021b: 13). Such investments also highlight the potential benefits of flexible financing arrangements that can coordinate funding across multiple donors.
However, it can take many years to scale up social protection programmes and build systems. While it may be possible to include all current refugees in state databases (e.g. a social registry) within the lifespan of a five-year project, the proportion of refugees projected to receive benefits through the World Bank-funded projects did not exceed 50 per cent and was often less than 20 per cent15 (UNHCR 2021c). Caution is therefore needed regarding the role these social protection programmes can play in replacing humanitarian programming in the short- and medium-term.
Greater dialogue, transparency, and collaboration among the multitude of actors working both within and between the humanitarian and social protection systems are an essential pre‑condition for progress on system linkages. They are also valuable pursuits in their own right in most cases (exceptions include cases where engaging with the state might legitimise actions that violate international humanitarian or human rights law, where the state is hostile or non-complicit, or where humanitarian principles of neutrality, independence, or impartiality would clearly be jeopardised).
Even if no direct links with social protection systems are currently planned, open communication and understanding of other actors’ policies and programmes may help to avoid undesirable duplication or clashes in activities; highlight potential needs or opportunities for new approaches should circumstances shift; and improve coherence from the perspective of affected populations. For example, information-sharing mechanisms can allow humanitarian agencies to inform communities about social protection programmes, whether or not they link directly to them.
Yet promoting meaningful collaboration and transparency between the many actors involved in displacement responses and social protection is no easy task. Within both the state and international systems, there are typically mixed incentives among individuals and organisations regarding sharing of information, delegation of programming funds and responsibilities, and prioritisation of who should be supported, when, and how. Even where the overarching goal of collaboration has been agreed, these incentives may preclude actors from taking steps that reduce their own prominence or neglect their priorities (Smith 2021). In some cases, concerns about fundamental principles such as protection of vulnerable households’ data may create an impasse on certain forms of cooperation.16
On a practical note, numerous challenges emerge from the basic fact that there is far less coherence within ‘the social protection system’, ‘the displacement response’, and ‘the humanitarian sector’ than their neat unifying labels imply.
For example, in social protection, programming is often split between many ministries and national and subnational agencies, all of whom may receive funding from different international partners. While there may be a national social protection policy or strategy in place, the objectives, programmes, procedures, and administrative systems of these different entities often have not been streamlined to complement or work with one another.
Furthermore, although displaced populations may in some cases be referenced in a national social protection strategy, the state’s displacement response – and international funding to support it – is typically managed by a distinct ministry or agency, which may not have incentives to hand over responsibility and management for displacement funding to other government branches.
At the international level, too, there are generally dozens of UN and non-governmental agencies involved in a displacement response. While these organisations will – at least officially – be coordinated by humanitarian system structures and country response plans, there is nevertheless likely to be variation between different entities’ databases, procedures, and administration, as well as notable divergence in respective agencies’ key priorities and objectives.
Given the degree of fragmentation present within and across the humanitarian and social protection systems, important gains could be realised by supporting the various actors involved in assistance for displaced or host populations to communicate more effectively with one another, reduce duplication in programming where it exists, and share information and resources (where doing so will not pose privacy or protection risks to the populations involved).
Yet initiatives to link humanitarian and social protection systems sometimes risk sidestepping this fundamental work to promote inter- and intra-system transparency and collaboration. Instead, the focus is often placed on narrow concerns, such as aligning a specific humanitarian transfer value with a social assistance scheme. As argued by Levine (2022), these ‘quick wins’ might feel like progress towards the goal of linking systems. But they are unlikely to result in meaningful improvements in provision for displacement-affected communities and may instead distract from the longer-term efforts needed to develop a coherent overall assistance strategy and system.
As well as generating new evidence and insights from diverse contexts, the research also indicated some priorities for future research.
First, since social protection provisions and humanitarian–social protection links have often only recently been established, there is a clear need and opportunity to expand the evidence base on the extent and outcomes of inclusion efforts and system linkages. This should explore effects in the short, medium, and long term, through continued monitoring alongside in-depth evaluations of pilot and nascent schemes.
Second, there is a particular need for further quantitative research on the above topics, given the sparsity of such data. Salomon and Hagen-Zanker (2022) specifically call for (1) supporting more and better data collection on displaced populations and their access to social protection and humanitarian assistance; (2) supporting improved interoperability and responsible data-sharing between relevant data(bases) on social protection and displaced populations; (3) collecting and preparing more disaggregated data to understand dynamics between different subgroups; and (4) adding more standardised and detailed questions on social protection and humanitarian assistance in surveys covering displaced populations, including nationally led data collection exercises.
Finally, much of the research on this topic has been driven by questions arising from international actors or, in fewer cases, national governments. There is therefore a crucial need for more participatory research to be conducted, and for the views of refugee- and IDP-led organisations to guide the future research and policy agenda.
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Copyright © 2024 The Authors. IDS Bulletin © Institute of Development Studies | DOI: 10.19088/1968-2024.126
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited, any modifications or adaptations are indicated, and the work is not used for commercial purposes.
The IDS Bulletin is published by Institute of Development Studies, Library Road, Brighton, BN1 9RE, UK. This article is part of IDS Bulletin Vol. 55 No. 2 October 2024 ‘Reimagining Social Protection’; the Introduction is also recommended reading.