By Refugees, for Refugees: Refugee Leadership during COVID-19, and beyond

Abstract

The speed with which COVID-19 has spread around the globe has been as extraordinary as the impact it has had on communities. This includes refugee communities, but in very particular ways. From refugees in remote and isolated camps, to refugees living in precarious conditions in urban settings, to all whose movement has been blocked by the closing of borders and increased State controls, scores of refugees have been significantly affected both by the arrival of the virus and by government policies implemented in response. On 8 April 2020, the Global Refugee-led Network (GRN) hosted a conference with more than 100 refugee leaders participating from around the globe. We heard how refugees have been excluded from health-care systems in hard-hit countries like Iran, how the shut-down of the economy in Uganda has made previously self-reliant refugees destitute and desperate, and how asylum seekers in Greece remain in cramped conditions ripe for the rapid spread of the virus.1 Similarly, in Amman, Jordan, refugees previously reliant on the informal economy are no longer able to feed their families.2 Anxiety is high in remote refugee camps, like Kakuma in Kenya,3 and in urban contexts, like Dar es Salaam in Tanzania,4 due to a lack of information, basic sanitation, and any capacity to respond to the pandemic. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has issued guidelines in response to the challenges it expects to be faced by refugee women, older persons, survivors of gender-based violence, children, youth, persons with disabilities, and LGBTQI persons in the midst of the pandemic.5 Clearly, there is a need for urgent action for refugees. But equally important is the need to recognize, support, and amplify the action already being undertaken by refugees. Around the globe, refugee leaders and refugee-led organizations have mobilized to provide support and essential information in response to the pandemic within their regions. From East Africa to Europe and North America, the Middle East, South-East Asia, and beyond, refugees are providing information and training, direct food distribution, legal support, online mental health support, arranging transportation for those in need of medical care, and filling critical gaps in basic services from health to education, protection, and economic empowerment. Refugees are also mobilizing to raise awareness of how their fellow refugees are being affected by both the virus and governments’ responses. At a time when so many actors are constrained in their ability to respond, crucial support for refugees often cannot be provided without the effort and innovation of refugees themselves. For example, in Lebanon, Basmeh & Zeitooneh and Molham Volunteering Team are working to support some 10,000 families in need, including through the provision of food baskets, hygiene kits, and monthly rents.6 Elsewhere, the Asia Pacific Network of Refugees, just one of the GRN’s regional chapters, has showcased the many refugees and asylum seekers serving as health-care providers on the front line of the pandemic response. It has drawn on this expertise to host live online events featuring health-care providers answering questions in Farsi, Dari, and other languages to help refugees.7 These localized responses, by refugees for refugees, are just the latest examples of how refugees are typically first responders to crises that affect their communities. These responses will need to be more fully understood and supported if we are to effectively meet the critical challenges facing refugees during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially where international actors – United Nations (UN) agencies, international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and governments – are constrained by regulations that require them to shelter in place. In fact, when the UN launched the Global Humanitarian Response Plan for COVID-19, it noted that the response would emphasize ‘the importance of involving and supporting local organizations’ especially as the crisis is ‘increasingly being characterized by limited mobility and access for international actors’.8 Yet the US$6.7 billion requested from donors is being directed to the very multilateral actors that are constrained in their ability to respond. Yet again, refugee-led organizations, even those with proven capacity to manage donor funds and mount effective responses, are not being included in the response to COVID-19 in a direct, meaningful, and substantive way. This marginalization of refugee-led organizations comes just over a year after the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) was affirmed by the UN General Assembly. The stated purpose of the GCR is to ‘provide a basis for predictable and equitable burden- and responsibility-sharing among all United Nations Member States, together with other relevant stakeholders … including … refugees themselves’ (paragraph 3).9 In late 2019, at the Global Refugee Forum (GRF) in Geneva, governments, international organizations, and a host of other actors reaffirmed the importance of meaningful refugee participation.10 Many took the GRN’s Refugee Participation Pledge.11 These commitments to refugee participation need to be honoured and implemented, now more than ever. It is not only the right thing to do – given normative commitments from the GCR, the Grand Bargain,12 and the New York Declaration13 – but it is also a good thing to do. Research from the Local Engagement Refugee Research Network,14 Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre,15 and the Refugee Hosts project16 has painted detailed pictures of the many contributions refugees make to responding to the needs of their communities. These contributions are valuable and complementary to the responses of international actors, such as UNHCR. Their significance needs to be more fully reflected in research, policy, and practice. In practice, donors and humanitarian actors should collaborate closely and directly with refugee-led organizations in developing and implementing their responses to COVID-19. This should include direct funding to refugee-led organizations with the capacity to deliver and report on their impact. Refugee-led organizations should also be included as part of the multilateral response to COVID-19, not only as implementors, but as equal partners in the planning of responses. In policy, refugee-led organizations need to be equal partners in discussions of how government responses to COVID-19 are affecting all communities, including refugees. They also need to be part of the planning for how the international community will continue to pursue global goals, such as the Sustainable Development Goals, both during and after the pandemic.17 As detailed in the GRN’s Guidelines for Meaningful Refugee Participation,18 this involvement in policy processes must be substantive, with the capacity to affect outcomes, not cosmetic. Likewise, research on the impact of COVID-19 on refugees must include refugees in all stages of the research process, from design to data collection, data analysis, and the presentation of findings. The inclusion of refugees will lead to research that is better informed by the realities it seeks to explain and more likely to alleviate the suffering it studies. These are important lessons not only for our response to COVID-19, but beyond. It remains to be seen if governments, international organizations, NGOs, and other actors will emerge from the pandemic willing to recognize the role that refugee-led responses can play, or will simply default to the old model of viewing refugees as the passive recipients of assistance. As the global refugee regime seeks to rebuild from this pandemic, it will be important to recognize how strong, meaningful, and substantive refugee participation can help to ensure that we build back better.

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