Urban Response Practitioner Workshop: Meeting Needs in a Context of Protracted Urban Displacement in Asia

Today, more than half of the world’s 59.5 million forcibly displaced people live in urban
areas and their average length of displacement is over a decade. These trends have significant implications for cities within the region, including heightened challenges for providing basic services to the city’s existing inhabitants as well as new residents.

In order to better understand these issues, to learn from challenges and successes, and to identify more appropriate ways of working, the International Rescue Committee and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) hosted an Urban Practitioner Workshop on Meeting Needs in a Context of Urban Displacement in Asia.

The aim of the workshop was to bring together humanitarian, international
development, community organizations, and local municipal actors called into action
by various urban crises within the region. Based on the workshop’s discussions, the IRC developed the following three key recommendations to meeting needs in a context of urban displacement:

1. Leverage the added value of humanitarian intervention
2. Meaningfully engage urban communities
3. Emphasize demand over supply and opportunities over challenges

At the conclusion of the two-day workshop, attendees agreed that humanitarian organizations have a critical role to play in meeting the needs of urban displacement in the region. While the exact nature of this role depends on the context and nature of the crisis, it is clear that humanitarians should be generally a.) rethinking traditional programming models and b.) acting as a part of a larger network of urban responders to collaboratively address the needs of urban crises.