# **1. Introduction**

As of December 2019,<sup>1</sup> UNHCR estimates that nearly 80 million people were forcibly displaced due to conflict and violence, or as a result of natural disasters. Among them, close to 46 million people are internally displaced in their home country, and 26 million are living as refugees<sup>2</sup> in a host country (UNHCR 2020). Some have moved for short periods, while others have been forcibly displaced for years or decades. In 2019, fewer than half a million forcibly displaced individuals had returned to their homes – signaling the chronicity and longevity of displacement that has increased throughout the last decade, partly due to political instability in North Africa and the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa and in countries such as the República Bolivariana de Venezuela, Afghanistan or Myanmar. And while the displaced population only amounts to 1% of the global population, these communities are disproportionately affected by deprivation, often chronic. UNHCR (2020) estimates that over 80% of all displaced people reside in countries and areas affected by acute food insecurity and malnutrition, and many of the internally displaced and refugee families live in temporary housing or camps with basic living conditions and limited access to services and employment.

Many governments and organizations are searching for solutions to respond to the growing number of displaced people within and across countries and to address concerns around human well-being and safety. Such attempts require timely and representative data on internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees that accurately reflect their unique situation and capture specific issues related to forced displacement. While various studies have looked at poverty among refugees and IDPs from a monetary perspective, they do not capture the overlapping deprivations experienced by many in forced displacement, such as lack of access to education, food insecurity, and inadequate housing. Forcibly displaced individuals may be more likely to live in overcrowded houses with poor infrastructure, leading to poor health outcomes (IOM 2013). They also might have difficulty accessing social services or schooling because of a lack of identification or other barriers. These challenges also differ based on the gendered experience of the individual. Labor market integration and social integration – two major considerations for forcibly displaced communities – feature long-standing gendered concerns (Blau, Kahn, & Souza 2003, Blau, Kahn, & Papps 2011, OECD 2018). Women may struggle more than their male counterparts to find opportunities for decent work (ILO 2009). Women and girl IDPs may also become more vulnerable to other forms of exploitation and marginalization as a result of their deprivations, such as human trafficking, child marriage, and sexual-based violence (IOM 2020, Kelly 2021, Kelly et al. 2021). Despite this, to date, there have been very few studies that have looked at multidimensional poverty among forcibly displaced populations (Temgoua Noumedem et al 2020, Loaiza Quintero et al 2018), and even fewer that then apply a gendered lens.

This paper adds to the emerging scholarship by developing a tailored Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) for a multi-country study of refugees and internally displaced populations in subnational regions of Ethiopia, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan. The aim is to better understand differences between the forcibly displaced communities and host communities with

> [†] World Bank, Washington, D.C

> [‡] Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative

> [§] Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, D.C, USA

> 1 Provisional estimates from UNHCR suggest it is likely that the 80 million figure has been surpassed as of mid2020.

> 2 Throughout the paper we refer to refugees as inclusive of refugees and people in refugee-like situation, as per the classification by UNHCR.

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