Women's Refugee Commission, Inc.

A few years ago, recognizing the increasingly protracted and urban nature of forced displacement and how the humanitarian system was barely succeeding in keeping refugees alive, I focused on how can we transform humanitarian response.  I've worked on supporting refugee livelihoods for years but always at the front end - how to conduct market assessments, design programs that match market needs, and utilize and capacitate refugees' existing skill sets.  A few years ago, I realized that no one was focusing on the backend - what is the impact of these programs? Are they assisting refugees to rebuild their lives with dignity through decent, sustainable work?  With co-collaborators, I developed the Refugee Self-Reliance Index, a simple tool that captures change in refugee households' journey towards self-reliance and ending dependence on erratic, inadequate humanitarian aid. In 2020, we piloted the Index in four countries, validated the tool for reliability, and began rolling it out more widely in early 2021.  The aim is to reach 5 million refugees in 5 years with self-reliance programming with impacts measured.  The funding would be used to assist the initiative to expand, go to scale, develop the evidence base for advocacy with donors and host governments.

I've worked in the humanitarian field for thirty years - from developing emergency assistance and livelihood programs for refugees to working at the policy level in Geneva and now, at the Women's Refugee Commission (WRC), a research and advocacy organization that works to improve humanitarian response especially for those most marginalized.  My vision is to use the myriad of lessons coming out of those years of work experiences to focus on how to transform humanitarian response to make it more effective, efficient, responsive, and protective.  I believe there are three ways to push this agenda forward:  tapping refugees' skills and experiences to shape and lead program responses and solutions; promoting gender equality and equity to multiply our impacts; and, to promote dignified, sustainable livelihoods for refugees early in an emergency, with everyone and everywhere.  Leaving refugees in protracted limbo relying on assistance and handouts that barely meets their most basic of needs for years on end must change. Refugees want to work, they want opportunities and choices about where and how they live, what they eat, and the ability to plan for their children's futures. We have, as an international humanitarian community, the responsibility to help them achieve those aims.  

80 million people are currently displaced by conflict - internally or as refugees. Of the 26 million who are refugees, more than 60% live in urban areas where there are functioning markets and employment opportunities. And yet, humanitarian response has focused on meeting their most basic of needs and has not embraced the collective objective of promoting refugee self-reliance.  

The WRC has always been about improving the lives and protecting the rights of the most marginalized among the displaced. We listen to their stories, research their needs, develop tools, guidance and recommendations to address those needs and through our organizational partnerships, through piloting new approaches, and via our advocacy and communications colleagues, we amplify uptake and provide technical assistance to operational agencies who are taking our approaches forward in their own operations.  WRC aims to influence the entire humanitarian system from practitioners, to policymakers, to donors. 

Based on this model, we launched the Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative at a UN General Assembly side event in 2018 to bring about change in how humanitarian practitioners implement, measure, and learn from their economic interventions. The Initiative is a collaboration with RefugePoint and includes NGO, UN, academic and donor partners. 

The Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative (RSRI) is trying bring about change  through a three-ponged approach - measure the impact of livelihood programs (through the Self-Reliance Index we developed), based on  evidence developed - identify criteria for successful programs, and identify which programs work best, where and with whom - and then use that evidence to advocate with host governments on the expansion of refugee rights such as the right to work and with donors on funding livelihood interventions early and everywhere. To create broad buy-in and maximize collective efforts, we've established a Community of Practice which currently has 40 organizations participating.  We have developed a learning agenda and a research working group.  At present, 10 organizations are implementing the Self-Reliance Index in 8 countries reaching over 1,000 refugee households with further expansion planned in 2021 and beyond. 

Our new approach focuses on the use of a simple tool to capture impact, the generation of global learning across multiple contexts, fostering cross-organizational collaboration, re-focusing humanitarian response on refugees' lives, dignity, and livelihoods, and, ultimately, reaching 5 million refugees with self-reliance programming in 5 years. The Initiative aims to transform humanitarian response  - changing how we work and focusing on a collective objective. 

The WRC work model is research, re-think, resolve.  We research the needs and priorities of traditionally marginalized displaced populations - women, children, adolescents, youth, LBGTQ persons, and persons with disabilities. We learn first from them - listening to their stories (research).  We then assess what can we as an organization do that will  have the greatest impact on the most people (re-think)  - what is our value-add and do we have the expertise.  From there we promote the resulting guidance, tools, trainings, and recommendations to the wider array of humanitarian actors - donors, policymakers, and practitioners through webinars, briefings, trainings, social media - to get uptake and investment in new the approaches proposed.  

For this Initiative, we engaged multiple agencies in the development of the Self-Reliance Index; we have made the Index open source; we provide potential users with training; we analyze the data and interpret the results for them; and we have an open Community of Practice for sharing learning across all organizations and individuals interested in refugee self-reliance.  Next, we  will establish a Steering Committee for the Initiative composed of international and local civil society actors and refugee-led organizations who will provide guidance, oversight and develop future strategy.