Refugee Compacts’ Salient Solution Crush

A year-long joint global displacement study group by the Center for Global Development and International Rescue Committee cast the issue as a “protracted crisis” and lauded the new aid compact approach with host countries, while urging comprehensive revamp of supporting economic data and policies. Low and middle-income economies host 90 percent of the 20 million refugees fleeing conflict, who are away on average a decade. Only 25 percent are in camps, and humanitarian and development funding and tools have not matched the duration and severity in a “fractured system.” In 2016 governments, bilateral and multilateral agencies and civil society and private sector representatives met at consecutive conferences to channel billions of dollars to Jordan and Lebanon in initial compact pilots, with a separate pledging session for Syria and the region in London and launch of a concessional loan facility led by the World Bank, allocating $700 million to date, with an associated $2 billion poor country refugee influx window. These pacts work with the UN Commission and other performance based deals kike the EU’s EUR 3 billion to Turkey for Syrian repatriation from Greece and select onward resettlement. Education and job creation have been the main goals and the track record is early but standardized methods and outcome measurement are lacking.

The model of a public-private sector implementation board combining political and technical expertise, as adopted for the US Millennium Challenge anti-poverty program, is absent and impedes shared analysis and planning and rapid negotiation and disbursement timeframes can frustrate lasting results. Social service provision must take into account their scarcity for the existing local population, which typically also has steep joblessness. Refugees are often pushed to the labor market “shadows” and children denied school entry. In Lebanon classes are run in shift for citizens and newcomers, with quality suffering for both amid overcrowding. Jordan committed to issuing tens of thousands of migrant work permits in exchange for World Bank cash and EU duty free import access, but the number has not been reached and only 5 percent are to women. The process is bureaucratic and business startup is also “difficult” with minimum local partner and capital criteria, according to the report. The “right actors” have not been at the table, with limited local non-government input and private sector mobilization at home and abroad. They could be instrumental in putting rigorous assessment and procedure in place and creating an inclusive stakeholder mechanism. Basic information gaps endure across the board, from refugee numbers to job and school enrollment, and cost and impact evidence of integration steps is scant and far from the authors’ ideal of an umbrella policy index. The private sector can inject knowhow, resources  and innovation, but collective action like the Partnership for Refugees started under the Obama administration is nascent, with no cross-border coordination capacity. Business and financial firms are equipped to take long-term risk and crisis fundraising could extend beyond philanthropy to commercial sources. Donors could join in sponsoring ventures such as practiced by USAID’s ideas lab. Skills training and infrastructure building are two areas of competitive advantage where compacts could better deliver on promise with enlarged vision scrapping the humanitarian-development divide, the two study backers argue.