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Displacement is lasting longer, and global displacement remains at record levels, and the systems designed to respond are under serious strain. Official Development Assistance fell sharply in 2025 — the largest annual contraction on record — with further cuts expected.  

For the low- and middle-income countries that host the majority of the world’s refugees, this is not an abstract fiscal trend. It means national education, health, and social protection systems are being asked to do more, for more people, with less support. The December Global Refugee Forum Progress Review underscored the urgency: progress on refugee protection and inclusion — hard-won over years of policy engagement — is now at risk as financing tightens. The gap between the scale of displacement and the resources available to address it has never been wider. 

Many displacement situations are not temporary. Refugees are living and working in host communities for years or decades, while barriers linked to legal status, restricted mobility, services, and exclusion from economic life accumulate over time, compounding vulnerability and limiting the life prospects of millions of people. This underscores that supporting households’ ability to meet their needs requires more than short-term relief; it depends on access to work, stable income, services, and functioning local economies.  

Recent policy progress in Ethiopia, where sustained JDC-supported engagement helped expand refugees’ access to work, and in Thailand, where the government granted long-staying refugees from Myanmar the legal right to work last year, shows what is possible. But employment alone is not enough. Insecure or poorly paid informal work often fails to cover basic needs, and legal access to a labor market means little without documentation, childcare, language support, and access to services. 

JDC-supported socioeconomic analysis in Moldova illustrates this precisely: 14 percent of Ukrainian refugees were employed, despite high levels of education and prior work experience.  In South Sudan, JDC-supported research found that access to agricultural land helps displaced households mitigate hunger but falls short of guaranteeing food security when poor infrastructure, climate shocks, and limited access to agricultural inputs and markets erode its value. Taken together, these findings point to the same conclusion: self-reliance requires more than a single intervention or policy change to be sustainable.   

As financing tightens and displacement becomes more prolonged, governments and partners are increasingly moving beyond parallel humanitarian structures toward integrated, development-led approaches that treat displacement as a long-term socioeconomic reality. In several countries, governments and partners are working to strengthen refugees’ inclusion in national systems while expanding economic opportunities for refugees and nearby host communities.  

What this looks like in practice will vary across contexts. But there is growing recognition that greater economic inclusion, stronger national systems, and better alignment between humanitarian and development approaches will be central to more sustainable responses. In this context, robust socioeconomic data and evidence will remain essential for understanding which approaches are proving most effective, where barriers persist, and how limited resources can be targeted most efficiently. 

Highlights 

2025 ODA data  

Global Refugee Forum Progress Review 2025 

Expanding Development Approaches to Refugees and Their Hosts in Ethiopia  

Socio-Economic Assessment of Refugees and Host Community in the Republic of Moldova 

Lowering Barriers to Refugee Access to Public Services in Moldova  

Catalysing the Integration of Ukrainian Talent into the Moldovan Labour Market 

Access to land, agriculture and food security in South Sudan 

The World Bank’s Window for Host Communities and Refugees 

Aissatou Maisha Dicko

Head of the World Bank-UNHCR Joint Data Center on Forced Displacement

Our literature review explores recent research on forced displacement in Ethiopia, Jordan, Rwanda, and Chad, focusing on themes such as self-reliance, economic inclusion, labour market participation, and social protection.