Host Communities and Refugees in the East

49 1 P A R T I Host Community Impact and Refugee Opportunities in the East and Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes By Jedediah Fix, Senior Economist, Regional Bureau for East and Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes, the UN Refugee Agency and Masud Rahman, Economist, Kenya, the UN Refugee Agency ABSTRACT This JDC Digest explores the impacts of forced displacement on host communities in the EHAGL regi. [...] Over time, the socioeconomic impacts may be negligible, but in the short and medium term the impacts depend largely on initial conditions, the number and demographics of new arrivals and responsiveness of policy.8 The studies discussed here focus on three main types of impact: markets, services and social cohesion, and economic and development outcomes. [...] The reemergence of the conflict in South Sudan and use of distinct cutoff dates to settle refugees between the sites in 2015-17 allowed MacPherson and Sterck (2021) to compare and contrast the “traditional” humanitarian assistance model used in Kakuma with more flexible forms of cash assistance distributed largely through mobile applications in Kalobeyei. [...] The 2015/16 also includes information on the migration history of parents and geo-referenced data on the location of each household cluster, making it possible to assess the intensity of the refugee shock based on the distance between households and each of the 13 historical refugee camps. [...] Even though hosts recognize the role of refugees in the expansion of service delivery, inequities in the quality of services that can be accessed by hosts and refugees remain sources of tension, especially due to the real and perceived environmental, economic, and social pressures associated with hosting refugees.