Worldwide, there are now 100 million displaced people, often living among host communities on a protracted basis. To respond to this growing and evolving challenge, there is increasing interest in the potential to link humanitarian assistance for displaced people with national social protection systems, or to serve displaced people directly through these systems. Yet the practical knowledge of how social protection can accommodate this inclusion is still only emerging.

Looking in turn at each phase of operational delivery and at the factors influencing successful implementation, this paper presents empirical evidence on delivering social protection and humanitarian assistance to displaced (and host) populations. The paper draws on evidence from country case studies in Cameroon, Colombia and Greece, conducted as part of a wider project funded under the Building the Evidence on Forced Displacement partnership.

This paper is accompanied by a toolkit to help policymakers and practitioners to apply the research findings in their displacement setting, this toolkit is available here.

These outputs are part of a larger two-year research project studying approaches to assisting affected populations in contexts of forced displacement. For more information and other project outputs, see here.