Over the last two decades, conflicts and crises have increasingly threatened global peace and stability, as well as sustainable development.… Read more Violent conflict has become more transnational and protracted, impacting both low- and middle-income countries. The world continues to face the largest forced displacement crisis ever recorded, with 79.5 million forcibly displaced people worldwide. Furthermore, climate change is a threat multiplier that can intensify fragility and conflict. Additional risks, such as those posed by technological change and demographic pressures, can pose challenges to even the most resilient societies as well. In 2020, fragility, conflict, and violence globally further intensified as a result of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) crisis, posing a major obstacle to the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals and the World Bank Group's twin goals to end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity. The devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic pushed an estimated 19 to 30 million additional people in fragile and conflict-affected settings into extreme poverty, while threatening to double the number of food insecure people to 270 million globally. In the face of these global challenges, countries already threatened by conflict and crisis are among the most vulnerable. In 2020, many lacked the tools needed to respond to the pandemic’s far-reaching impact because of pre-existing vulnerabilities and gaps in social safety nets, health systems, deep regional disparities, and low levels of public trust. In several countries, the crisis has therefore exacerbated risks and grievances, leading to greater deprivation and social unrest. Read less ...

Often considered to be one of the most vulnerable countries to the climate change, Bangladesh faces threat to its natural… Read more resources, livelihood security and general wellbeing of the people owing to its topography and geographic position. Moreover, vulnerability increases because of the challenges the country faces in adapting to the changing climate and in mitigating the responsible climatic factors. Some regions of the country, such as Char, are more vulnerable to the changing climate than the other parts. Therefore, giving due attention to such areas becomes a mandate for the development partners working along with the governments. To address the livelihood vulnerabilities of the extreme poor population of the Char areas in Kurigram district, Concern Worldwide implemented the project named “Empowering Women and Youth through Graduation and Financial Inclusion (EWYGFI)” in two Upazilas (sub-district)—Kurigram Sadar and Ulipur. The field operation was implemented by Rangpur Dinajpur Rural Service (RDRS), while Trickle Up supported the project to channelize the funding from MetLife Foundation with their technical assistance in implementation. While implementing, the project perceived the necessity to understand the climate change-induced impacts on program participants in the project implementation area. Consequently, this study titled “Understanding the impact of climate change on poor and vulnerable Char people” was commissioned to DM WATCH. The purpose of the study was to identify specific climate-induced impacts affecting poor and vulnerable people living in the Char regions of Bangladesh and make recommendation on how future programming could better help people mitigate or manage climate-induced risk. Read less ...

A brief on the Graduation Approach from the "Graduating to Resilience Initiative."  An initiative being implemented in the Kamwenge District… Read more of Western Uganda by the AVSI Foundation, in collaboration with Trickle Up and AIR (formerly IMPAQ International). The project is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development's (USAID) Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA). Read less ...

How the Graduating to Resilience Activity responded to the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in Uganda, highlighting the methodology used to engage… Read more with participants and how the pandemic impacted them in various areas, from the amount of food they were able to store to the negative effects of the temporary closure of their businesses. Read less ...

This report provides an overview of the work of the Refugee Economies Programme during the last five years. Its aim… Read more is to offer accessible summaries of the Programme’s publications and other activities. It highlights the ways in which the Programme has collaborated with other organisations in order to ensure its research has impact. Refugees and forced displacement are among the defining issues of our time. Every year, conflict and persecution cause millions of people to flee their homes and communities. In the context of climate change and the economic legacy of COVID-19, numbers will increase. Meanwhile, the willingness of countries – rich and poor – to receive refugees is threatened by rising populist nationalism. This creates a major policy challenge: how to create sustainable forms of refugee protection, which can enable a growing number of displaced people to access their full range of human rights. Read less ...

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on the lives and livelihoods of women globally. Women affected by crisis… Read more and displacement have been hit by a ‘triple disadvantage’ of Covid-19, displacement and gender discrimination. Our findings from research in Jordan, Greece and Nigeria show clear gender differences in the ability to earn an income, be employed in salaried formal work and take on responsibility for unpaid care work throughout the pandemic, with women hit hardest. Key barriers to economic opportunities include restrictions on freedom of movement and access to financial services, formal employment and social protection. Despite this ‘triple disadvantage’, the specific challenges facing women affected by crisis and displacement are rarely a policy focus. In particular, our research highlights that an over-emphasis in policy on supporting women-led businesses and women’s entrepreneurship in stable settings risks neglecting the most marginalised women in countries affected by crisis and displacement. We argue that there is inadequate policy attention to displaced women’s labour market access, inclusive social protection and social norm change to address stigma and discrimination. Restoring resilient futures for women in crisis and displacement settings relies on multi-stakeholder action and inclusive economies. The Covid-19 global recovery presents an opportunity for renewed attention to a comprehensive and inclusive approach to women’s economic empowerment, rebuilding economies by prioritising the right to safe and decent economic opportunities, financial services, social networks, social protection, redistributed unpaid care and laws supporting refugee inclusion and gender equality. This report, from ODI and the International Rescue Committee (IRC), is based on in-depth surveys conducted with 725 IRC clients in Greece, Jordan and Nigeria, as well as analysis of relevant policy and financing initiatives. It aims to better understand the economic impact of Covid-19 on women affected by displacement, before making policy recommendations to support their economic empowerment. Read less ...

The WBG blog unpacks the differential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on refugeesm and their economic recovery in Uganda compared… Read more to the host population Read less ...

Today, addressing food insecurity increasingly means addressing conflict and violence. Hunger is on the rise for the first time in… Read more decades, with conflict as a key driver, and conflict is on the rise too. Resilience and food security investments are increasingly focused on conflict-affected countries, from protracted crises in places such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Nigeria, to the outbreak of new conflicts in places such as Ethiopia and Mozambique, to gang violence in Guatemala or Honduras. USAID has developed a policy brief to frame USAID work in this important space. Key takeaways include: 1. Fragile and conflict-affected contexts are areas—sometimes enveloping a whole country, sometimes highly regionalized or localized—of often violently contested governance where state capacity to provide order and public services is low and the social contract between citizens and government is either absent or broken. 2. Food insecurity and conflict are part of a vicious cycle, with conflict begetting food insecurity and food insecurity begetting conflict and fragility. Food insecurity can drive conflict by facilitating extremist or rebel recruitment with the promise of steady meals and employment or negative consequences for livelihoods among food producers and resultant conflicts over resources like land and water. Food insecurity and high food prices can catalyze urban protest and rioting, and inadequate policy responses to food crises erode government legitimacy. 3. Conflict can drive food insecurity through active food denial by parties to the conflict, mass displacement that leads to missed planting seasons or unharvested food, and disruption in access to markets through inaccessible roads and infrastructure. Given the nature of rising food insecurity today, it is important to lean into these contexts whenever development and humanitarian workers can, but doing so requires new approaches such as practicing conflict sensitivity. This means carefully understanding the context and the two-way relationship between activities and the context. Adapting reduces harm but also helps maximize opportunities for peace. There are time periods or regions of relative stability in the midst of conflict and fragility where development and humanitarian practitioners can find creative ways to leverage what is working well. 4. Development and humanitarian practitioners should work with and through local systems and partners. This might mean both formal and informal markets, as well as more kinds of informal governance and non-traditional local actors, including private sector actors. 5. Development and humanitarian practitioners should promote coherence across humanitarian, development, and peace assistance. This is crucial for working in fragile and conflict-affected places. 6. Development and humanitarian practitioners should think about success and related measurement approaches in new ways. Does the context shift development goals and theories of change? Does context shifts change which approaches make the most sense? Those goals might be more modest or focused on preventing backsliding for instance. Read less ...

There are two views as to why people stay poor. The equal opportunity view emphasizes that differences in individual traits… Read more like talent or motivation make the poor choose low productivity jobs. The poverty traps view emphasizes that access to opportunities depends on initial wealth and hence poor people have no choice but to work in low productivity jobs. We test the two views using the random allocation of an asset transfer program that gave some of the poorest women in Bangladesh access to the same job opportunities as their wealthier counterparts in the same villages. The data rejects the null of equal opportunities. Exploiting small variation in initial endowments, we estimate the transition equation and find that, if the program pushes individuals above a threshold level of initial assets, then they escape poverty, but, if it does not, they slide back into poverty. Structural estimation of an occupational choice model reveals that almost all beneficiaries are misallocated at baseline and that the gains arising from eliminating misallocation would far exceed the costs. Our findings imply that large one-off transfers that enable people to take on more productive occupations can help alleviate persistent poverty. Read less ...

With the support of the MetLife Foundation, Trickle Up delivered a multidimensional intervention with elements of financial inclusion to economically… Read more empower vulnerable and marginalized women in Bangladesh, Mexico, and Vietnam. In Mexico, the project Empowering Women and Youth through the Graduation Approach and Financial Inclusion was contracted in September 2017, but due to operational and contextual challenges was implemented between July 2018 and May 2021 among indigenous communities in the states of Chiapas and Yucatan. This research brief outlines the main results and lessons from this project, emphasizing insights for replication and scaling in the Mexican context. These include targeting and selection methods, coaching models, productive activities, gender issues and empowerment. Read less ...