This paper synthesizes recent evidence on refugee self-reliance in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). In these settings, traditional models of hosting and humanitarian assistance are ill-suited to protracted displacement: legal or practical restrictions on freedom of movement and work leave many refugees unable to meet basic needs independently, creating sustained dependence on aid. With humanitarian budgets shrinking and funding gaps widening, host countries are under growing pressure to consider responses that lower the costs of hosting while maximizing the impact of limited humanitarian and development financing.
The paper first clarifies the concept of self-reliance, reviews the main measurement approaches, and examines what their application reveals about levels and drivers of self-reliance across contexts. It then synthesizes empirical evidence—drawn from randomized controlled trials, quasi-experimental studies, and other sources—on the policies and programs that can support refugees’ economic participation and self-reliance, before turning to evidence gaps and implications for policy makers.
Main findings:
- The concept of refugee self-reliance has evolved from a narrow focus on subsistence to a broader agenda linking humanitarian responses with development policy and financing. Refugee self-reliance is defined as the sustained capacity of refugee households to meet essential needs independently of external assistance, drawing primarily on their own income. Global agreements, including the 2018 Global Compact on Refugees, have elevated self-reliance to a core objective, positioning it as an organizing principle for coordinated policy and financing across humanitarian and development actors.
- Two primary measurement approaches are in use, each suited to different purposes. The poverty-line approach—which defines self-reliance as the ability to generate income at or above a specified poverty threshold independent of aid—is simple and scalable for cross-country comparisons and fiscal impact analysis, but captures only monetary dimensions of self-reliance. Multidimensional tools such as the Self-Reliance Index (SRI) and Rwanda’s Refugee Self-Reliance Measure (RSRM) score households across both monetary and non-monetary dimensions and are well suited to case management, but are resource-intensive and difficult to scale.
- Self-reliance rates vary substantially across settings, with the lowest rates consistently recorded in camp-based populations. Countrywide refugee self-reliance rates vary dramatically across host countries ranging from 14-15 percent in Uganda and Ethiopia to 73 percent in Costa Rica, but in all cases, refugee self-reliance rates are lower than those of host communities. In Chad, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, and Jordan, refugee self-reliance is far higher in the capital cities than in refugee camps and settlements.
- In high-informality settings, regularization alone is unlikely to substantially shift labor force participation, overall employment, or formalization in the short term, even though labor income can rise with legal status. In Colombia, regular status nonetheless delivered large welfare gains—higher consumption, increased labor income, improved health, and greater resilience to shocks—primarily through expanded access to social protection, health care, and financial services. Regularization can also spur entrepreneurship and can be fiscally beneficial in the short run, as higher tax revenues and more efficient use of services reduce net public costs.
- Work permits can support economic participation but are not a complete solution. In certain settings, work permits can raise income and spending, reduce poverty and negative coping strategies, and improve job quality through greater formalization, more stable employment, and better access to benefits, with particularly large gains for vulnerable groups. However, evaluations of work permit programs capture the effects of easing legal restrictions, not the outcomes that would arise with full, unrestricted work rights.
- Freedom of movement is associated with refugees’ economic participation. Cross-country analysis finds a strong association between fewer mobility restrictions and higher refugee employment, stronger even than the association with the right to work. Evidence from Jordan, Uganda and Kenya suggests that out-of-camp residence can be associated with higher income, asset ownership, and improved subjective wellbeing.
- Land allocations in rural, land-abundant settings are associated with substantial gains in self-reliance. In Uganda, refugees with access to land have higher incomes, better food consumption, better dwelling quality, and greater asset growth. Access to at least 0.05 hectares per household member is associated with self-reliance rates approximately double the average.
- Active labor market programs, including vocational training and job-matching services, tend to yield modest, short-term employment gains at high cost per beneficiary. In Jordan, even small unconditional cash transfers were associated with a 3.6 percentage point increase in employment and a 65 percent increase in earnings, suggesting that liquidity, rather than skills or information, may be a binding constraint for some refugee populations. Credential conversion and measures that align refugees with jobs matching their existing skills may amplify these returns.
- Bundled economic inclusion and graduation programs are associated with larger and more sustained welfare improvements than stand-alone interventions. In Uganda, multi-component programs combining asset transfers, training, coaching, and consumption support were associated with productive asset gains of 40–88 percent, household income increases of 32–45 percent, and per capita consumption gains of 18–25 percent. A large-scale cash transfer and employment support program in Mozambique was similarly associated with gains in financial security driven by higher take-home pay, greater savings, higher household income, and improved ability to cover unanticipated expenses.
- Entrepreneurship support can deliver short-run gains in livelihoods and financial resilience. Evidence from Niger’s PARCA program produced meaningful short-run gains in income, food spending, utility spending, non-farm profits, livestock ownership, and size of rented farmland, with positive spillovers to non-participants. Generalized trust also improved, but host–displaced tensions rose over land and water access.
The paper concludes that enabling policies—secure legal status, freedom of movement, and the right to work—are the foundational conditions for refugee self-reliance, and programmatic interventions are most effective when these rights are already in place. Host governments should ease legal barriers to movement and work, regularize status, and provide documentation that unlocks access to services, finance, and formal employment. Investments in national social protection systems can expand coverage to refugees alongside poor hosts and create pathways from vulnerability to self-reliance. Policies should be adapted to context: in urban areas, the evidence points to language training, credential recognition, and job intermediation in sectors with labor demand; in rural, land-abundant settings, to land allocation paired with agricultural inputs, extension services, and market connectivity. The paper also calls for embedding rigorous evaluation in government-led programs to identify the most cost-effective combinations for different labor markets and to generate the longer-term evidence needed to inform scaling.