World Bank Program: Building the Evidence on Forced Displacement

Deadline: 30-Jul-2020

The UK Department for International Development (DFID) has invested £13 million over seven years (2016-2023) for the development of new research on protracted forced displacement through a joint partnership between DFID, the World Bank Group and UNHCR. This program will generate evidence on what works to ensure future investments are well targeted and represent good value for money.

• To improve the wellbeing of the forcibly displaced and of host communities by improving global knowledge on the effectiveness of policies and programs that target these populations.
• This will be achieved by financing research and impact evaluations that cover policies and programs for refugees, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), returnees and their host populations, and by disseminating findings among policy makers, beneficiaries and the public at large.

Activities

The program consists of five activities that will contribute to different aspects of research that are critical to build the evidence base on protracted forced displacement situations:

• Shedding light on global questions: This initiative will finance large multi-country and multi-partner research projects that address questions of global interest related to forced displacement in four strategic thematic areas: jobs, health, education, and social protection. Through a global tender, grants will be allocated to lead research institutions to produce analyses that shed light on these global questions.
  • Education: Building the Evidence for What Works
  • Health: Big Questions in Forced Migration and Health
  • Social Protection: Social Protection Responses to Displacement and Integration
  • Jobs: Global Questions on Forced Displacement and Jobs
  • Gender: Building the evidence base on gender specific vulnerabilities in forced displacement contexts
• Improving programs through impact evaluations: This initiative supports World Bank, UNHCR and DFID operations that require research to answer specific questions that constrain operational delivery. Grants finance impact evaluations that address one or more specific questions and are expected to produce results that can be used directly to improve existing operations and feed into program policies and design. The program currently includes 14 impact evaluations:
  • Afghanistan: Impact evaluation of the Targeting the Ultra Poor graduation program
  • Afghanistan: Assessment of the socio-economic outcomes, movement patterns and reintegration challenges of Afghan returnees
  • Bangladesh: Impact evaluation of a child protection program in Rohingya refugee camps
  • Cameroon: Impact evaluation of a program to prevent intimate partner violence among refugees and host communities (Social Safety Nets project)
  • Ethiopia: Impact evaluation of health and educational outcomes for the Development Response to Displacement Impacts project
  • Ethiopia: Impact evaluation of labor outcomes of the Ethiopia Economic Opportunities Hybrid Program for Results
  • Iraq: Impact evaluation of the role played by the government Public Distribution System in mitigating welfare loss for internally displaced populations
  • Jordan: Impact evaluation of the Providing Opportunities with Education for Refugees and Jordanians program
  • Kenya: Impact evaluation of health and educational outcomes for the Development Response to Displacement Impacts project
  • Lebanon: Impact evaluations of teacher support programs (Reaching All Children with Education initiative)
  • Lebanon: Impact evaluation of the National Poverty Targeting Program graduation model
  • Niger: Impact evaluation of the Forcibly Displaced Support Project
  • Nigeria: Impact evaluation of different strategies to improve health workers outreach and health outcomes for pregnant women and women with children in areas affected by the Boko Haram insurgency (Additional Financing for the Nigeria State Health Investment Project)
  • Uganda: Impact evaluation of an entrepreneurship program for refugees and host communities in Kampala.
• Complementing research with targeted studies: This initiative will synthetize lessons emerging from the entire research program, and complement the program with additional studies. Research activities will include literature reviews, desk research, meta-analyses of existing literature and original studies complementing research financed under activities 1 and 2. Highlights:
  • Estimating Poverty for Refugee Populations: Can Cross-Survey Imputation Methods Substitute for Data Scarcity?
  • The Economics of Forced Displacement : An Introduction
  • Optimal Targeting under Budget Constraints in a Humanitarian Context
  • Risk Preferences and the Decision to Flee Conflict
  • Social Cohesion and Forced Displacement
  • The Impact of Forced Displacement on Host Communities
• Supporting young and senior fellows: Another major bottleneck related to research on forced displacement is the scarcity of researchers specializing in this field. This component of the program aims at expanding the number of researchers focused on forced displacement through two initiatives. The first is the creation of a Young Fellowship Program designed to provide postdoctoral scholars with a one-year fellowship to study forced displacement situations. The second is the establishment of a research network of senior and junior scholars working on forced displacement with microdata. Highlights:
  • Intergenerational Impact of Population Shocks on Children’s Health : Evidence from the 1993-2001 Refugee Crisis in Tanzania
  • Estimating Poverty among Refugee Populations : A Cross-Survey Imputation Exercise for Chad
  • Effect of Armed Conflict on Intimate Partner Violence : Evidence from the Boko Haram Insurgency in Nigeria
  • Understanding Decisions Made on Asylum Applications in Host Countries
  • Understanding the Socioeconomic Conditions of Refugees in Kalobeyei, Kenya
• Improving the quantity and quality of microdata: One of the bottlenecks related to research on forced displacement is lack of microdata – data on individuals and households collected via registries, censuses and surveys that allow for detailed socio-economic analyses of refugees, IDPs and their hosts. This component of the program aims at improving the quantity and quality of microdata available to researchers leveraging the institutional capacities of the World Bank and UNHCR. Examples of this activity include expanding national household surveys to refugees and IDPs, designing new surveys, improving existing registries, and developing methodological material for microdata collections among refugees and IDPs (sampling, questionnaire design, data collection methodologies). As of 2020, the activities under this pillar have been transferred to the World Bank-UNHCR Joint Data Center.

• Labor markets and self-reliance. This includes labor demand and supply policies such as work permits, training schemes, support to start-up activities, targeted investments, wage policies, retraining and other policies that foster the transition from social protection to self-reliance.
• Social protection and targeting. This includes cash programs, food voucher programs, disability programs, programs designed to foster the transition from assistance to work and other forms of social protection programs administered by humanitarian and development organizations and of relevance in a forced displacement context.
• Primary services. This includes the provision of health and education including primary and secondary health provision, nutrition programs, pre-school, primary, secondary, tertiary and adult education programs.
• Gender. Gender will feature prominently in the work under this program. All research funded under the program is expected to have a gender dimension and provide insights into gender inequalities whereas specific gender studies are financed in critical unresearched areas such as Gender-Based Violence in forced displacement situations.

• The program will finance up to 25 papers. Each paper will be awarded a grant of $25,000 regardless of the number of authors. Grants will be paid in the form of Short-Term Consultancy contracts with the World Bank. The terms of the contracts will be agreed with each contracted scholar, with the total amount of contracts per paper limited to $25,000.

• Research will target five groups including the population of origin, refugees, IDPs, hosts and returnees. The questions addressed by research proposals may relate to one of these populations, to several of these groups or to the relations between groups.

• Priority geographical areas include Sub Saharan Africa with a focus on the countries located immediately South of the Sahara desert, the North Africa and Middle East region with particular emphasis on the Mashreq countries and South Asia with particular emphasis on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

For more information, visit https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/fragilityconflictviolence/brief/building-the-evidence-on-forced-displacement-a-multi-stakeholder-partnership