COUNTRY ISSUE BRIEFS | Development Approaches to Displacement

COUNTRY ISSUE BRIEFS | Development Approaches to Displacement

September 14, 2016

Since 2011, UNDP has been engaged in 125 displacement related initiatives in over 45 countries with an overall funding envelope of about USD 1.3 billion. Displacement was announced by the UNDP Senior Steering Committee in September 2015 as a corporate priority.

UNDP, as the leading development agency, balances short-term responses to displacement impacts through sustainable development interventions. This includes for instance addressing root causes of displacement and drivers for forced migration. UNDP promotes a resilience based development approach. The resilience-based development approach brings together humanitarian and development interventions in crisis and post crisis situations and supports both short-term responses and long-term sustainable development pathways.

 

The Syria 3RP response provides a prime example of how this approach has worked in practice with UNDP and UNHCR (along with other partners) working side by side and in a complementary way to address the immediate needs of refugees (UNHCR) and support the resilience of host communities through livelihoods, the delivery of basic services and waste management (UNDP).

While building a foundation for resilience through immediate life-maintaining and/or life-sustaining actions, in the areas of livelihoods, youth employment, reconstruction, social cohesion and local conflict management, the resilience-based approach also includes, from the start, a longer term perspective on issues such as rule of law, core government functions and disaster risk reduction.

These issue briefs have been developed to highlight a number of UNDP’s country level flagship programmes responding to displacement. The briefs have been developed also with a specific focus on our cooperation with UNHCR and other partners on displacement.