The Trust Fund supports research specifically targeted to address forced displacement in 5 thematic areas: education, gender, health, jobs, and social protection. Grants are given to top research institutions to produce analyses exploring:
Education: Building the Evidence for What Works
Improving educational access and quality in countries with populations affected by conflict—especially providing access to displaced children—is a development priority. But displaced children face numerous challenges, including limited resources, uncertain and protracted length of the displacement, as well as the need for intensive psychosocial support. Already strained education systems in developing countries struggle to support new populations in host communities. Research shows that to achieve improved education outcomes, as well as stability and peace-building efforts, it is important to fully integrate the education programming within a humanitarian framework.
The research will focus on the implementation, impact, costs, and cost-effectiveness of education interventions for forcibly displaced populations and host communities, as well as what programs and policies are needed to provide inclusive, quality education for forcibly displaced populations.
Gender: Building the evidence base on gender specific vulnerabilities in forced displacement contexts
Women and children who are forcibly displaced due to conflict, violence and natural disasters are highly vulnerable to experiencing hardship and human rights violations. According to available data, in 2019, 51 percent of the displaced were women, and 48 percent were children. But currently there is little quantitative data on trends and associations between the socio-economic characteristics of forcibly displaced persons and poverty compared to host communities. More research is needed to inform policy and program responses.
A major focus of the program is gender inequality, which will be addressed through a series of new empirical analyses across a range of settings that looks at the gender dimensions of forced displacement. The analysis goes beyond gender differences in outcomes (gender gaps), approaching gender inequality from the premise that it is rooted in power inequalities between women and men. As a result of such power inequalities, women lack agency in many important areas of life, from high prevalence of intimate partner and other forms of gender-based violence to biased laws and norms that prevent women from owning property, engaging in paid work and making decisions about their own lives.
Health: The Big Questions in Forced Migration and Health
In fragile and conflicted-affected situations, the influx of large numbers of refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) can severely stress health systems. In response to this challenge, global implementing partners are often able to set up parallel systems to deliver health care to displaced populations. But if the crisis becomes protracted and IDPs become part of the host community, development support requires careful coordination with the national system to ensure that the health needs of both IDPs and host communities are being met.
The research provides practical programming and policy guidance to national and international actors who are involved in directing and funding health responses in situations of forced displacement. It will identify optimal approaches that respond to the health needs of displaced populations while also strengthening health systems for the host populations.
Read the Knowledge Brief : Preventing and Mitigating Indirect Health Impacts of COVID-19 on Displaced Populations in Humanitarian Settings,
Jobs: Global Questions on Forced Displacement and Jobs
The number of people who have been forcibly displaced have reached unprecedented levels, with more than 29 million people displaced internationally (refugees or asylum seekers) and 41 million people displaced internally (IDPs) due to persecution, conflict, violence and human rights violations. Although the average duration of displacement is 10 years, this increases to more 20 years for those who have been away from their home country for more than five years. Because of the lengthy duration of displacement, a policy shift is underway from focusing on humanitarian aid to development funding to include livelihood-oriented funding. This approach focuses on long-term, positive socio-economic impacts for both displaced and host communities. It emphasizes self-reliance for refugees and realizing their own ambitions.
The research will examine the cost effectiveness of proposed livelihood interventions in a displacement context and the high-level advocacy and policy or legal changes required to make refugees self-reliant.
Social Protection: Social Protection Responses to Displacement and Integration
Traditionally, humanitarian assistance has provided immediate emergency needs to those impacted by displacement during times of crisis. But today, this approach is poorly suited to address the longer duration and urbanization of displacement situations. In response, there is a growing interest in linking humanitarian assistance to national social protection systems to meet the needs of people impacted by displacement and build capacity to support national programs. Currently there is little research that focusses specifically on how social protection and humanitarian systems can work together in situations of displacement.
The research will address this knowledge gap by better understanding how social protection systems and humanitarian systems can work together to meet the needs of displaced populations—including vulnerable households in host communities —and how these systems can improve social cohesion between these two groups. By providing clearer guidance about when, how and why different forms of integration might promote more sustainable and development-orientated solutions that adequately meet the needs of both displaced populations and their host communities.
In 2020 the program also launched two new research studies that build on a series of articles commissioned to external researchers:
· Preventing social conflict and promoting social cohesion in forced displacement contexts. This study examines how public policies can address social inequalities that lead to or are the consequence of forced displacement crises. Through the lens of social inequalities, the study looks at the roots of social conflicts and population displacements, how forced displacement crises can be prevented or how they can be quickly stabilized during the early stages before they become chronic phenomena that require complex sustainable solutions. The study will focusing on critical inequalities such as income inequality, inequalities of opportunities, inequality of access to services or gender inequalities considering inequalities between and within displaced populations and host communities. The call for proposals for these studies closed on July 30th, 2020.
· Preventing food insecurity and price volatility and promoting self-reliance in forced displacement contexts. This study focuses on the early stages of food and displacement crises when conflict, population and public expenditure shocks generate price instability and food insecurity with potential severe consequences for the well-being of the forcibly displaced and host communities. This research focuses on monitoring prices, food security and nutrition to pick up early signs of market failure, food insecurity and undernutrition for the forcibly displaced and their hosts. It also studies the role of policies related to price, food and aid in fostering self-reliance during the period leading to a crisis and during the early stages of a crisis to reduce long-term food aid dependency. The objective is to provide indications of policy measures that could help to predict food insecurity and mobilize funding and programs early to avert spikes of food insecurity and undernutrition and promote self-reliance measures.