U.S. State Department: Funding to Support Innovation in Response to Refugees in Urban Areas

On June 2nd, the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration released a new RFP seeking innovative approaches and tools to help improve humanitarian response to refugees in urban areas. Rather than working under the assumption that the State Department is in possession of all of the best ideas for solving this major challenge, they are looking to the public for a new path forward.

Excerpted from the Call:

PRM seeks to support the development of new approaches and tools to strengthen response to urban and other non-camp refugees globally. In 2009, UNHCR issued a new Policy on Refugee Protection and Solutions in Urban Areas, and in 2011, PRM issued Principles for Refugee Protection in Urban Areas. Both documents recognize the new challenges posed by urban/non-camp environments and point to a range of new strategies needed to meet the specific needs of vulnerable populations in these settings. Consensus has formed around the need for humanitarian actors outside of camps to undertake entirely new models of assistance, moving away from service-delivery to facilitating access to existing services and from material assistance to efforts to foster self-reliance. In many cases, this requires new roles for humanitarian actors: to serve more as facilitators, advisors, and advocates than service providers. Although a number of new strategies have been identified in principle, and guidance and best practices are steadily accumulating, the international humanitarian community still struggles to put these tools into practice, systematically and coherently, in non-camp settings around the world. Additional tools and models of assistance need to be developed, tested, refined and adapted to help humanitarian actors respond effectively outside of camps.

PRM is seeking the development and piloting of new tools and models of assistance that will enable the humanitarian community to address one or more of the following challenges and needs unique to urban/non-camp settings:

• Identifying, counting, and assessing the needs of urban refugees, as well as targeting the most vulnerable for assistance, and creating tools to rapidly and regularly update this information
• Conducting area-based context mapping that assesses markets, legal frameworks and rights, governance structures, land issues, and infrastructure, and creating tools to facilitate emergency context mapping that can be conducted quickly and updated regularly
• Mapping and vetting existing services (including legal aid), establishing referral systems, conducting capacity-building of referred service-providers, and conducting follow-up to ensure that both refugee needs are met and service providers are prepared to accommodate larger caseloads
• Disseminating reliable information to refugees about registration, refugee rights, available services, assistance, and other relevant issues through the use of information and communications technology, data management, and/or other outreach activities, and maintaining ongoing communication with refugee (and where relevant, host) communities
• Improving coordination among a range of stakeholders (including municipal and development actors, international organizations, and international/local NGOs), engaged in responding to refugee and host community needs
• Using a case management approach that assesses assets, networks, and resources and designs appropriate interventions on an individual or household basis, with the ultimate objective of improving refugee self-reliance
• Developing and deploying urban specialists or technical units trained to comprehensively address a range of urban challenges
• Developing evidence-based advocacy tools for use with host governments and other development actors, with the goal of promoting integration of non-camp refugees into ongoing or future development programming and recognizing the particular protection needs of refugees
• Building capacity of local government and civil society responses to urban refugees