Refugees Daily - Internal Global Press Review

Existing measures deal with immediate problems but fail to promote long-term independence, condemning hundreds of thousand to poverty, claims joint study

The World Bank and the UN refugee agency have called for a "paradigm shift" in the way the world responds to refugee crises such as the Syrian emergency, warning that the current approach is nearsighted, unsustainable and is consigning hundreds of thousands of exiled people to poverty.

A new joint report from the bank and the UNHCR claims that 90% of the 1.7 million Syrian refugees registered in Jordan and Lebanon are living in poverty, according to local estimates. The majority of them are women and children.

The refugees hosted in the two countries are particularly vulnerable as they cannot work formally and tend to be younger, less educated and have larger households. The vast majority live in informal settlements rather than refugee camps, have few legal rights, and struggle to get access to public services because of the strains the unprecedented demand has put on the infrastructures of host countries.

Although the report notes that current refugee assistance initiatives – such as the UNHCR cash assistance programme and the World Food Programme (WFP) voucher scheme – are "very effective", it says that they are not a solution in themselves.

"These programmes are not sustainable and cannot foster a transition from dependence to self-reliance," say the study's authors.

"They rely entirely on voluntary contributions and, when funding declines, fewer of the most vulnerable refugees are able to benefit. Moreover, social protection on its own does not foster a transition to work and self-reliance if access to labour markets is not available."

If refugees are to escape poverty, adds the report, they need to be economically integrated into local communities rather than merely offered short-term assistance.

"These findings suggest that the current approach to managing refugee crises in the medium- and long-term is not sustainable," it says.

"Focus must shift beyond social protection for refugees to include economic growth in the areas hosting them, so that refugees and local communities can share in economic progress. This paradigm shift requires continued close collaboration between humanitarian and development partners, in order to transform a humanitarian crisis into a development opportunity for all."

Since war broke out in Syria almost five years ago, 6.5 million people have been internally displaced, almost 4.4 million forced to flee as refugees, and more than 250,000 killed. One in every five displaced persons worldwide last year was Syrian.

Colin Bruce, senior adviser to the World Bank Group president, said that the shortfall in international humanitarian funding and the escalating conflicts in some countries meant the problems facing refugees and the nations hosting them would only get worse.

He called for a concerted global effort similar to the one that resulted in an agreement on tackling climate change at the recent Paris conference.

In addition to working together on conflict prevention and resolution, said Bruce, the international community also needed to get past what he termed "the camp mentality; having people in camps unable to work, unable to live dignified lives, unable to use their skills".

He also warned that the refugee issue could no longer be ignored by those who liked to imagine it as someone else's problem.

"Even though displacement is concentrated in developing countries – especially in Africa, in the Middle East, in south Asia – there are spillover effects to developed countries in other parts of the world," he said.

"I need not tell you about that; I think we all have seen the evidence of it ... The logic of that is that since the problem is truly global, the solution has to be global as well."

The number of displaced people – which, at almost 60 million, is now at its highest since the second world war – has put humanitarian agencies under immense pressure.

In September, the UN high commissioner for refugees, António Guterres, told the Guardian that humanitarian budgets were not sufficient to cover the demands.

"The global humanitarian community is not broken – as a whole they are more effective than ever before," he said. "But we are financially broke."

A year ago, a $64m (£42m) funding shortfall temporarily forced the WFP to suspend its food vouchers to hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees. The programme was reinstated a week later after an emergency appeal raised $88m in days.

In July this year, the WFP announced that it would have to halve the value of food vouchers given to Syrian refugees in Lebanon.