Forcibly Displaced: Toward a Development Approach Supporting Refugees, the Internally Displaced, and Their Hosts

Abstract

This work is a product of the staff of The World Bank with external contributions. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this work do not necessarily reflect the views of The World Bank, its Board of Executive Directors, or the governments they represent. The World Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this work. The boundaries, colors, denominations, and other information shown on any map in this work do not imply any judgment on the part of The World Bank concerning the legal status of any territory or the endorsement or acceptance of such boundaries. The term "country," used interchangeably with "economy," does not imply political independence, but refers to any territory for which authorities report separate social or economic statistics. Nothing herein shall constitute or be considered to be a limitation upon or waiver of the privileges and immunities of The World Bank, all of which are specifically reserved.

On the Relationship between Violent Conflict and Wages in Colombia

“…Under these assumptions, we apply Propensity Score Matching (PSM) techniques, and find that forced displacement is related to decreases of between 10% and 29% of the wages of males, and between 18% and 37% of the wages of females, compared to their counterparts. These results are consistent with existing evidence showing that forced displacement has negative outcomes for individuals in Colombia (Ibáñez & Moya, 2006, 2007Ibáñez & Velásquez, 2008;Ibáñez & Velez, 2008).…”

“…The PSM approach has traditionally been used to evaluate employment and education programs (Dehejia & Wahba, 1999, 2002Fraker & Maynard 1987;Heckman, Ichimura & Todd, 1998;Jalan & Ravallion, 2003;Lalonde, 1986;Rosembaun & Rubin, 1983), and is especially suitable in cases when an experimental design is infeasible, which allows the matching of individuals in one treatment group to others who did not participate, but have comparable characteristics. 4 The PSM method employs a predicted probability of group membership (treatment vs. control group), based on observed predictors usually obtained from a logistic regression to create a counterfactual group.…”

“…In this paper, we analyze how the forced displacement of individuals due to violence is related to the wages of workers in Colombia. This phenomenon, displacement due to violent conflict, is emerging as an important developmental challenge, as extreme poverty is now increasingly concentrated in those who flee from conflict and violence (The World Bank, 2017). Although it may seem that the refugee crisis in MENA countries, especially in Syria, has pushed the interest in this topic, research on this topic has been present for several decades (Baez, 2011;Bakewell, 2000;Bauer, Braun & Kvasnicka, 2013;Black, 1994;Card, 1990;Calderón-Mejía & Ibáñez, 2016;Chambers, 1986).…”

Measuring self-reliance among refugee and internally displaced households: the development of an index in humanitarian settings

“…In recognition of the increasingly prolonged conflicts in recent decades, the humanitarian community has expanded its approach from focusing solely on the provision of assistance to actively working to ensure resilience and self-reliance for IDPs and refugees [2,[5][6][7]. UNHCR defines self-reliance as the 'social and economic ability of an individual, a household or a community to meet its essential needs in a sustainable manner and with dignity' [8].…”

“…The humanitarian community's shift toward selfreliance comes in part in response to more traditional emergency response frameworks' failure to adapt to the needs and realities of current refugee and IDP populations [7]. Emergency response models have cast refugees and IPDs as vulnerable and in need of assistance instead of as resilient and capable, and have simultaneously increased their dependency on aid and decreased their ability to exercise their agency and skills [5,8].…”