Harmonized Database of Forcibly Displaced Populations and Their Hosts 2015-2020

This multi-country harmonized dataset concerning forcibly displaced populations (FDPs) and their host communities was produced by the World Bank’s Poverty and Equity Global Practice. It incorporates representative surveys conducted in 10 countries across five regions that hosted FDPs in the period 2015 to 2020. The goal of this harmonization exercise is to provide researchers and policymakers with a valuable input for comparative analyses of forced displacement across key developing country settings.

There have been recent efforts to close data and evidence gaps in a representative way by including displaced populations in national household surveys (for instance, in Chad, Niger, and Uganda) or by generating data on specific populations and displacement events (for example, Syrian refugees in the Mashreq or Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh). Since 2015/16, some 12 countries have sought to systematically include refugees and other forcibly displaced populations in key surveys.

Building on these country-level efforts, investing in creating comparable data through an ex-post harmonization is an important step to help cross-country comparisons and support analytics that can inform policies at the global level. Recognizing this need, the World Bank Poverty and Equity Team has engaged in a data harmonization effort across 10 countries, designed to support analytics that can highlight how country conditions, including diverse refugee policies and programs, may shape outcomes. The results obtained can orient future policy. The data harmonization effort builds on important seed investments, while recognizing that an adequate evidence base on forced displacement remains an aspirational goal.

The displacement events and context considered are diverse is nature. Venezuela is going through one of the deepest economic crises in history. Its Gross Domestic Product per capita halved between 2013 and 2018 and by then 9 out of 10 people lived in poverty.1F A combination of factors led to the mass exodus of Venezuelans out of their country. Three countries in Latin America host 72 percent of displaced Venezuelans: Colombia (1.4 million), Peru (1 million), and Ecuador (400 thousand). However, Venezuelan migrants represent only between 2 and 3 percent of the local populations in those countries. In 2017, many Rohingya displaced arrived in the Cox’s Bazar district of Bangladesh, fleeing violence from Myanmar. Within a period of four months, some 724,000 newly arrived persons joined other Rohingya who had fled earlier waves of violence. By the end of 2018, nearly 2,000 campsites in Cox’s Bazar hosted around 912,000 Rohingya, more than doubling the population living in the Cox’s Bazar sub-districts of Teknaf and Ukhia.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the protracted crises worsened in the years 2013 and 2015. With refugee populations of more than one million each, Uganda and Ethiopia are currently the third and sixth largest refugee-hosting nations in the world. In Sub-Saharan Africa, most refugees settle in camps located in areas bordering their country of origin, some of which also suffer from domestic conflict. While some displacement crises in the region date from decades ago, the influx of displaced people between 2014 and 2018 almost doubled the number of asylum seekers in Eastern Africa. By contrast, the number of Syrian households in the three countries of origin covered in this exercise has remained stable since 2013. The Syrian crisis has caused one of the largest episodes of forced displacement since World War II. In effect, more than half of Syria’s prewar population has been forcibly displaced. As of 2016, five years from the start of the conflict, almost 5 million Syrians were registered as refugees in other countries, a number that has increased to 5.4 million by 2023. A handful of Syria’s neighbors, like Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon, continue hosting the bulk of Syrian refugees.

The selection of variables included in the harmonized dataset is oriented toward building the evidence needed to support the pivot from the humanitarian to development response in refugee policy. As with any harmonization effort, there is a substantial tradeoff between broadening the set of variables included and the ability to compare across many settings. In this case, the variables selected for harmonization may be considered a minimum common denominator which would be needed to be able to contrast different displacement contexts. The harmonized variables include key demographics (e.g., age, gender), welfare indicators (e.g., housing and access to basic services), human capital indicators (education), and economic variables (e.g., labor, sources of income, assets). Such indicators are important for the design of policies oriented toward the protection and self-sufficiency of FDPs and to mitigate real and perceived risks to hosts.

This type of harmonization exercise conducted ex-post poses substantial challenges because of the diversity of displacement contexts considered and the differing strategies for generating statistics from appropriate surveys. The surveys included in this exercise differ in their objectives at the time they were implemented. For instance, while some were designed to understand the implications on crises as they were ongoing (Syria, Venezuela, Rohingya), others were designed to include displaced populations into national data collection efforts (such as in sub-Saharan Africa). Just as there is significant heterogeneity within FCS, so there is also heterogeneity among forcibly displaced populations. We observe substantial variation in legal status and protection; pre-displacement socio-economic characteristics; policy environments and other contextual conditions in the hosting country; and the potential for integration in the host society and/or for return to FDPs’ home country.

While variables such as demographics and labor market participation have been harmonized across numerous datasets globally, standard definitions are lacking for some categories related to forced displacement. For example, the definition of “host” can range from designating only persons who live near a refugee camp to including any national of a country hosting refugees. The notion of forcible displacement is also relative to the specific country context. In working to harmonize the dataset, this complexity calls for particular attention to the way we categorize households and individuals as hosts, refugees, asylum seekers, displaced immigrants, or internally displaced people (IDPs). Finally, certain survey modules, such as those on consumption expenditure, are not harmonized.

he datasets included in the harmonization effort cover key recent displacement contexts: the Venezuelan influx in Latin America’s Andean states; the Syrian crisis in the Mashreq; the Rohingya displacement in Bangladesh; and forcible displacement in Sub-Saharan Africa (Sahel and East Africa). The harmonization exercise encompasses 10 different surveys. These include nationally representative surveys with a separate representative stratum for displaced populations; sub-national representative surveys covering displaced populations and their host communities; and surveys designed specifically to provide insights on displacement contexts. Most of the surveys were collected between 2015 and 2020.