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In honour of World Refugee Day on Monday, June 20th, we’ve invited Neil James Wilson Crawford, author of The Urbanization of Forced Displacement: UNHCR, Urban Refugees, and the Dynamics of Policy Change to write a guest blog.
UNHCR and global refugee policies have come to play an increasingly important role in the governance of global displacement. The Urbanization of Forced Displacement sheds new light on how the organization works and how it conceives its role in global politics today.
Common images of refugees still commonly centre the refugee camp. A quick Google Image search for “refugees” immediately displays a number of pictures of rows and rows of tents, alongside other commonly used images of movement – packed boats and walking crowds. Yet, over 60% of refugees and over 80% internally-displaced people live in towns and cities. The majority of Ukrainians – the largest new refugee population of 2022 – fleeing to neighbouring countries are moving to urban areas, staying in hotels and hostels, with family or other hosts. While this situation reflects double-standards in global refugee protection, with borders open to some seeking refuge and firmly closed to others, it also reflects broader trends in where refugees move to, and an increased willingness to provide protection and assistance in these places.
Towns and cities provide opportunities often less available in other sites – greater access to money making opportunities and personal autonomy – which are necessary when causes of displacement are not quickly overcome or other solutions, such as resettlement, are unavailable or involve long-delays. However, cities also have heightened risks for refugees, including arrest, discrimination, and exploitation. In countries that imposed strict measures to curb the spread of COVID-19, urban refugees were particularly vulnerable, losing access to their already limited livelihood opportunities. For example, in Uganda, which has the third largest refugee population in the world and whose capital city hosts over 80,000 refugees, many urban refugees struggled to pay their rent or afford food. Often purposely for security, urban refugees comparatively blend into the broader environment around them, but with can come the risk of being forgotten or wrongly assumed to not require help or support.
Knowledge of, and assistance to, refugees in urban areas has greatly increased in recent decades. In the mid-1990s, less than 2% of refugees were thought to live in urban areas, around a decade later this had shot up to over 50%, and even higher now. The Urbanization of Forced Displacement traces this seemingly rapid shift and the response of the United Nations’ Refugee Agency, UNHCR, who are charged with providing protection to refugees around the world. The book shows how a community at once best forgotten, at worst maligned, became a focal humanitarian issue in the late 2000s. Despite that, and new pieces of global refugee policy that emerged, urban refugees around the world are often in difficult positions, heightened in recent years by the consequences of COVID-19 and cost of living crisis’. This World Refugee Day urban refugees – with their often particular challenges and resilience strategies – should be given due attention and adequate support.
Neil James Wilson Crawford is a research fellow at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom.
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