Beyond Care and Maintenance: Rebuilding Hope and Opportunity for Refugees

For many of the 65 million individuals who were displaced around the world as of 2015, 21 million of whom are refugees, the three principal pathways to a long-term resolution—repatriation, resettlement, or local permanent integration—are stretched thin or blocked entirely. Yet with few exceptions, refugees and asylum seekers in first-asylum countries receive only the most basic forms of assistance and have no realistic hope of returning to something resembling a normal life, leaving them in limbo. Opportunities for formal permanent settlement and consequent integration in low- to middle-income countries of first asylum are typically limited by a dearth of capacity, namely the political, social, and capital resources to absorb large numbers of newcomers.