World Bank charts social safety nets for refugee populations in Great Lakes region

The World Bank has produced a working paper analyzing how to build or strengthen social protection systems—cash assistance, healthcare, food support—that serve both forcibly displaced people and the host communities receiving them in the Great Lakes region of Africa. This matters because refugee crises have traditionally split aid between displaced populations and locals, creating tension and inefficiency; treating them as a unified system could reduce both conflict and cost.

For decades, humanitarian aid to refugees and development aid to host countries have operated as separate programs with different budgets and rules—creating perverse incentives where locals resent newcomers and governments struggle to absorb strain. A unified social protection system would mean one set of eligibility rules, one benefit level, one administration—which changes how scarce aid money actually flows and who has political incentive to support refugee presence.