There is no one-size-fits-all approach to refugee livelihoods. Interventions must be adapted to the local context. Factors such as whether refugees reside among the local population or stay in camps, whether they live in urban centres or rural ar- eas, fundamentally change the way livelihood interventions should be designed. A joint effort by UNHCR and ILO, this guide provides a framework for assessment to help practitioners determine the right combination of interventions to arrive at a holistic livelihoods approach that is well adapted to the local context and labour market.

A decade since the start of the Syrian crisis, nearly all Syrian refugee families in Lebanon live in poverty and struggle to meet their basic needs. As part of their response, the World Food Programme (WFP) provides multi-purpose cash (MPC) assistance to 23,000 Syrian refugee households in Lebanon, supporting some of the most vulnerable refugees in meeting their basic needs. Conducted by the Overseas Development Institute in partnership with the Cash Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning Organisational Network (CAMEALEON).

If humanitarian assistance is not sufficient to meet people’s most important needs, it is even less effective in achieving economic self-sufficiency, for which the lack of economic and livelihood opportunities is the primary grievance for the vast majority of survey respondents. In protracted situations, people want economic autonomy, not prolonged assistance.

This desk review focusses on the impact of refugee presence on Tanzanian populations. It was conducted against the backdrop of the new global commitments made to protecting refugees and better supporting the countries and communities that host them. The review covers a brief history of refugee policy and practice in Tanzania, an overview of some mediating factors that influenced impacts, including pre-existing livelihood strategies in various refugee-hosting districts and immediate policy responses to the refugee influx, such as camp locations.

The 2018 Global Compact on Refugees includes “enhancing refugee self-reliance” as one of its
four main objectives. While the humanitarian community generally supports this aspiration, it is widely
recognized that there are few tools to measure progress toward this objective. In 2016, RefugePoint and
the Women’s Refugee Commission convened a Community of Practice (CoP), now known as the Refugee
Self-Reliance Initiative (RSRI), to address this gap, leading to the joint development of the Self-Reliance

Blog post on behavioral, social and emotional side of refugee integration into the labor market that is often overlooked

This case study explores the experience of UNHCR Zambia and its implementing partner Self Help Africa (SHA) adapting and implementing the Graduation Approach to a UNHCR refugee settlement in North-Western Zambia.

Measuring self-reliance is challenging as it cuts across sectors and agencies. It attempts to gauge the total impact on a household of
various inputs, regardless of their source. And it attempts to do so longitudinally,
measuring change from the baseline assessment to the achievement of self-reliance, and beyond to ensure sustainability. A group of fifteen agencies formed a community of practice in 2016 to tackle these challenges. A global mapping exercise of self-reliance measurement tools turned up excellent tools for targeting assistance to

Although self-reliance has been promoted as a major
assistance strategy for refugees in recent years, there
have been limited attempts to rigorously measure
it. This has practical and academic implications, as
studies on refugee self-reliance use varying
and often imprecise indicators, meaning it is
impossible to compare the success of refugee
self-reliance across contexts and strategies. Instead,
most humanitarian work is measured according to
specific sectoral outputs or outcomes over the course

The ‘SPEC Webinar 7 - Seeking Economic Inclusion for Refugees: A Case Study of the Graduation Approach in Ecuador’ took place on 5 June 2018 and discussed the synergies between social protection and sustainable employment programmes, focusing on the graduation approach that was employed by Ecuador to ensure the economic inclusion of refugees in the country.

Powerpoint slides providing an overview of evidence on graduation programs in refugee and conflict-affected settings

Low and middle-income countries host approximately 85% of all refugees in the world. In many of these countries, refugees often face legal barriers to start and operate their own businesses – preventing them from building their livelihoods. Even in countries where refugees can start businesses, laws are often implemented inconsistently and to the detriment of refugees.

The paper examines labor market outcomes for IDPs in protracted displacement in Georgia. Using 13 years of Integrated Household Surveys, the authors find that labor market outcomes for IDPs are much worse than those of local residents and ‘voluntary movers’ with similar observable characteristics, and disparities persist over time. Specificslly, IDPs are 3.9 to 11.2 percentage points less likely to be in the labor force, depending on the period and duration of IDP status.

The Southern Africa Graduation Approach (SAGA) learning workshop was organized within the framework of the Building Self-Reliance for Refugees (Building Self-Reliance) program – a three-year learning and implementation initiative between Trickle Up and UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), with support from the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (BPRM).

This policy paper is a product of Cesvi’s need and wish to further its understanding of the role of resilience in fragile and conflict-affected areas by analysing its approach to livelihood and community
resilience in complex contexts, based on experience in Somalia and Zimbabwe.
This paper focuses on four key elements of transformative change in resiliencebuilding suggested by an initial review of the documentation:
1. Resilience pathways and outcomes (community and livelihood resilience).
2. ‘Enabling environments’: internal and external factors enabling or obstructing

The COVID-19 pandemic is upending millions of people’s lives and have devastating health and socio-economic consequences on humans and societies. The restriction on movement, the slowdown or even the halt in economic activity are having a severe impact on refugees’ abilities to work and generate income. Many refugees have seen the business they run or work for, often as day workers, forced to close.

This operational guidance to livelihood programming is aimed primarily at UNHCR Field Operations, starting with representatives and senior managers in field operations; at Multi-Functional Teams (MFT) that include Protection, Programme, Community Services, Field and Livelihoods Officers, where applicable; and at government counterparts and operational and implementing partners, including potential new partners that may include
microfinance institutions, the private sector, foundations and academic institutions.

Concept note on UNHCR's global strategy for refugee livelihoods and economic inclusion. The New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants1
and its Global Compact on
Refugees (GCR) including the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework
(CRRF) call for the enhancement of refugee resilience and self-reliance, as well as
the need for and benefit of taking on a whole-of-society approach. Based on the
learning from the roll-out of the CRRF, the development of the GCR, in addition to
experience built internally through the Minimum Criteria for Livelihoods Programming,

In collaboration with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), BRAC rolled out its flagship ultra-poor graduation (UPG)” program in Ukhiya and Teknaf sub-districts of Cox’s Bazar, targeting the ultra-poor households from the host community living in Cox’s Bazar who are facing a crisis due to the influx of the Rohingya refugees. In our study, we evaluate the impact of the program on the lives of the targeted ultra-poor households in the 2018 program cohort in these two sub-districts, using a quasi-experimental design.

The objective of this report is to present the main results achieved in the framework the
“Graduation Model” (GM) project, implemented by the UNHCR in partnership with The Association of International Consultants and Advisors (ACAI) in Costa Rica over the period 2014-2016. The present document analyzes the main quantitative results of the project, based
on the systematization of the information gathered from the files of each individual case. It
presents the impact that the initiative achieved in the cases that already successfully
completed the process.