Source: Authors’ calculations based on data from the High Frequency Surveys of Ethiopia (2017), Nigeria (2018), Somalia (2017), South Sudan (2017) and Sudan (2017).

As the Sudanese sample surveys IDPs living in the Abu Shouk and El Salam camps, we must understand these deprivations with the background that these settlements were created as emergency and crisis responses rather than durable, long-term solutions (Sudanese Government’s Joint Mechanism for Durable Solutions 2019). Although Sudan does have a national electric grid that supplies electricity to the urban and peri-urban areas of the nearby city El Fasher, IDP communities living in the camps report limited connection to the city’s electricity supply, reflected in the high deprivations in the electricity and cooking fuel indicators. The ad-hoc construction of dwellings in the two camps explains why 71% of the IDP households in Abu Shouk and 65% in El Salam live in tukuls or other permanent mud or wood structures (Sudanese Government’s Joint Mechanism for Durable Solutions 2019: p.50), both of which register as unimproved housing types. Bank branches in El Fasher have limited capital for small businesses as their headquarters in Khartoum regard the area as too great a risk and IDPs themselves as riskier investments than their host community peers (UNHABITAT 2009: p.8). Exposure to unclean cooking fuels and inadequate housing can lead to poor health outcomes, while lack of access to electricity and a bank account further excludes individuals from labor market integration and livelihood opportunities that would empower forcibly displaced persons to overcome their multiple, overlapping deprivations. Clearly, displacement status puts individuals at a greater risk of poverty than their host community neighbors, and we can unpack those risks in greater detail using the MPI.

Results can also be broken down to show the percentage contribution of each indicator to multidimensional poverty (see Figure 2). Among refugees in Ethiopia, lack of a bank account is the largest contributor to poverty, while among host communities, the largest contributor is years of schooling. While in absolute terms, the proportion of refugees who are MPI poor and experience deprivations in years of schooling is 27.9%, compared to the host community’s smaller proportion of 10.0%, the indicator contributes more to poverty among the host community population, due to the weighting structure of the index and the lower levels of deprivation among the other indicators. This distinction reveals the complex, varied, and overlapping deprivations experienced by the poor when displacement status is taken into account – a complexity that is otherwise overlooked in monetary headline figures. Physical safety, early marriage, and legal identification are also larger contributors to poverty among refugees than among host communities. The gap in deprivations of physical safety by displacement status is particularly stark; in absolute terms the proportion of refugees who are MPI poor and experience deprivations in physical safety is 30.2%, compared to the host community’s near-zero proportion of 0.9%.

_Figure 2. Percentage contribution of each indicator to the MPI, by displacement status in Ethiopia (2017)_ 15