Addressing the Impact of Forced Displacement

As conflicts across the globe continue, the number of people displaced by conflict has reached record levels. Of the nearly 123 million forcibly displaced persons worldwide, an estimated 87 percent of them are hosted in low and middle-income countries, often by communities facing socioeconomic challenges.

Some of these displaced people face the very real prospect of never being able to return home. Data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) highlights that 66 percent of refugees under UNHCR’s mandate have been displaced for more than five years. Given the protracted nature of forced displacement, the global community is combining humanitarian assistance with longer-term development support to help refugees become more self-reliant so that they can contribute more to their own futures and to their host communities.

IFC works with other arms of the World Bank Group, and also directly with UNHCR, and others through the Prospects Partnership to identify how the private sector can engage with refugees and their host communities to promote inclusive economic opportunities and improve access to services. We aim to:

• Create jobs by boosting access to finance and entrepreneurship
• Improve the delivery of basic services like education and energy
• Encourage business-friendly policies in refugee-hosting areas
• Share lessons learned while deepening partnerships

In December 2022, IFC and UNHCR launched a Joint Initiative: Creating Markets in Forced Displacement Contexts. This Joint Initiative has a global geographic mandate and allows IFC and UNHCR to scale their efforts to help people who are forcibly displaced to live more dignified lives, while contributing to the development of local economies and markets, in alignment with the spirit of the Global Compact on Refugees.

IFC is also partnering with the Netherlands through the Prospects Partnership, a consortium of organizations, which was established in 2019 to support long-term development and service delivery for refugees and host communities in the Middle East and East Africa.