The Global Governed? Refugees as Providers of Protection and Assistance The global governance of forced migration is generally used to refer to the response of governments and international organisations to displaced populations; rarely do we think of refugees as the providers of protection and assistance. Yet understanding the ways in which refugees themselves engage in forms of refugee-led social protection ways in which offers an opportunity to fundamentally reconceive support for the displaced in more sustainable and empowering ways.   The dominant response to refugees in the developing world is to provide almost indefinite humanitarian assistance in camps in ways that often lead to dependency, and limited assistance in urban areas. Yet alongside these 'top-down' assistance models, refugees often mobilise to help themselves. They are not simply passive victims but often actively engage in the provision of protection and assistance within their own communities. In Uganda, for instance, YARID (Young African for Integral Development) and the Bondeko Refugee Livelihoods Centre are refugee-led community organisations providing a range of services such as trauma counselling, livelihood training, language instruction, and microfinance. However, little is known of the ways that refugee communities mobilise for social protection, nor how refugee-led social protection initiatives benefit the social welfare and economic development of the host countries they reside in.   This proposal aims to carry out inter-disciplinary, mixed methods, comparative research in Kenya and Uganda (across urban and rural areas) on the diverse and neglected ways in which refugees engage in the provision of protection and assistance to their own communities.  It seeks to identify the diverse forms, scope, and functions of refugee-led social protection (e.g. refugee community organisations, informal insurance such as Somali aiutos, and religious-based giving such as zaqat); to understand and explain the historical emergence and evolution of particular forms of refugee-led social protection; and to test the degree to which refugees' sources of security are derived from external assistance or from their own community-led initiatives. It also seeks to build the capacity of refugees themselves through training refugees as peer researchers and enumerators.  This research will be the first attempt to systematically and comparatively explore the role of refugee-led social protection in developing countries. It will integrate social science with historical methods in order to build policy-relevant and academically pioneering insights into the capacities of refugees themselves to offer an alternative to 'top-down' humanitarian assistance in contexts of protracted displacement. Our impact will occur in part through academic articles, stakeholder workshops, webinars for practitioners, and a podcast series and public seminar series for the public at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford. By identifying ways in which international development assistance can better complement the initiative of refugees themselves, we aim to contribute directly improving the welfare of both refugees and host communities in East Africa and around the world. The Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) supports cutting-edge research to address challenges faced by developing countries. The fund addresses the UN sustainable development goals. It aims to maximise the impact of research and innovation to improve lives and opportunity in the developing world.