provision of public goods and gender-sensitive services add to the challenges and barriers to achieving sustainable livelihoods women face. As a consequence, gender, displacement status, and their intersectionality continue to strongly determine the livelihood opportunities women can attain (Young and Ismail, 2009).

## **1.4 El Fasher**

The Abu Shouk and El Salam camps in North Darfur are prominent settlements of IDPs in the Darfur region, located in peri-urban areas of El Fasher, the capital and economic center of the region (Minnear, 2004). Since 2003, population size has grown from less than 200,000 residents to over 500,000 (Nugent and Zambakides, 2009). Abu Shouk was initially created and opened by the Ministry of Planning in 2004, assigning a 10 x 10-meter lot to every IDP family. As most displaced persons had come from rural areas, traditional structures were recreated in the camps and new housing was constructed in a way that somewhat resembles housing at the places of origin (Ali et al., 2016).

Evidence on camp development over time is scarce, but a recent study highlights key challenges IDPs experience in the camp, including small residences, small plots, lack of firewood, lack of food or inappropriate food, poor hygiene conditions, difficulties of accessing local labor markets, lack of productive assets, and high levels of insecurity in the camp (Ali et al, 2016). Some of these challenges have been somewhat mitigated via the gradual transition towards a permanent solution for Sudan more broadly, which also stimulated economic integration to El Fasher. This includes building more homes from solid material, integrating markets in camps and attempts at diversification of livelihood activities. Moving to the city is possible without major restrictions, in the city public transport is available, and IDPs can (in theory) commute to work (JIPS, 2019a). Tensions between IDPs and non-IDPs appear to be moderate. Our own calculations suggest that 79% of IDPs and 85% of nonIDPs agree somewhat or strongly that locals and IDPs have good relations.

The transition from a rural to an urban or peri-urban setting poses significant challenges for many IDPs. IDPs in El Fasher, and women in particular, appear to face many of the challenges and barriers to achieving sustainable livelihoods described more generally above, including endowment, institutional, and safety challenges, which often interact with the gender dimension (Bello and Baig, 2014). At the same time, coming to El Fasher also offers improvements and opportunities for some, such as the provision of public goods and services that had not been available in many places of origin, including high-quality education of children.

More generally, transitioning towards durable solutions is a highly complex, multi-actor endeavor, which also directly involves IDPs. In 2017, El-Fasher was chosen as a ‘case study’ for a concerted effort of governmental and non-governmental actors to achieve fostering local integration. The JIPS durable solution profiling exercise, which produced the survey data we analyze in this paper, was a part of this effort (JIPS, 2019a). The objective was to obtain better information on the displaced, to identify their needs and to provide a common basis for decision-making (JIPS, 2019b), as part of a five-stage process towards durable solutions.<sup>12</sup> After initial enthusiasm, the process ground to a halt due to control and authority issues (Davies and Jenner, 2020). In the meantime, the African UnionUnited Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) mission came to an end in December 2020, as planned in the peace agreement. The government is now in charge of taking over certain responsibilities currently fulfilled by NGOs, which specifically includes identifying new pathways to durable solutions.

# **2 Empirical strategy**

## **2.1 Key indicators**

> 12 For details on the five-stage durable solutions process, see - <u>https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/fles/resources/durable_solutions_in_practice_ _handbook_sept_2017.pdf</u> (accessed June 30, 2021).

6