Over 70 million people worldwide have been forced to leave their homes, displaced by conflict or persecution. At least 25 million of these people are refugees who fled their countries to seek safety in another country. The remaining 45 million are internally displaced people who were forced to flee their homes, but remained in their own country.
The financial industry has largely overlooked this population as a viable segment, perceiving them as too risky. A major misconception is that refugees are constantly on the move and will only remain for a short while in their host country. However, 78 percent of all refugees are in protracted refugee situations, meaning populations of 25,000 or more refugees from the same nationality who have been in exile for five consecutive years or more in a given host country. And mounting evidence shows that refugees are as credit-worthy, with repayment rates as high as those of non-refugees.
What can you find in this Topic Hub?
Curated by FinDev editors, this Topic Hub offers you access to key resources contributed by organizations around the world who work on the topic of financial inclusion and microfinance services for refugees. Our latest blogs and publications on this topic are featured here (in the Resources Tab above), and you can find a collection of papers, case studies and guides to explore further. When there are upcoming webinars, events and recent news on this topic, they will be featured in the Topic Hub as well, so make sure to come back regularly for the latest on this topic. Finally, we’ve selected some key additional resources, which are listed on the right here, where you can learn even more about this topic.
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Featured
Over 164 million migrant workers make a living in a foreign country, and almost 26 million refugees have been forced to flee due to conflict. Unfortunately, while migrant workers are on the move, their data is not, often preventing them from accessing financial services or better jobs. Developing a digital identity system is one potential solution to this problem.
Large numbers of vulnerable communities continue to flee their home countries due to war and conflict. Settling in refugee camps, they are perceived by many financial institutions as too risky to serve. VisionFund International explores the opportunities and challenges in serving refugee communities in West Nile, Uganda.
Home to more than 600,000 Syrian refugees, Jordan hosts the second highest ratio of refugees in the world - 89 refugees per 1,000 inhabitants. In this blog post, Amarante Consulting shares what they learned from evaluating the Dig#ttances project, which explored digital solutions for refugees and the unbanked in Jordan.
