Abstract
At the global level, COVID-19 not only shut down many services that national governments provide to public, but it also severely limited the ability of international organizations to deliver services during humanitarian crisis. We suggest that the absence of governments and INGOs creates a vacuum for informal institutions to increase their reach. In this research note, we present novel phone survey data on education services in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh with host communities and refugees. We show that the number of households without access to education decreased during lockdown, but that the impact was different for the refugee population and the host population. This is because the refugee community relied on their prior ties to informal education, whereas the host community did not have the same ties to multiple informal options. Overall, we show that informal institutions provide a substitute for governments and international organizations when they shut down.
Highlights
International organizations such as United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), International Organization for Migration (IOM), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and others regularly work with partners and donors to provide services to refugees around the world
Using the example of educational services, a sector for which both governments and INGOs are responsible in refugee camps and/or local host communities, we evaluate the effect of a sudden absence of formal educational services due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh
We posited that access to education would be more diverse for the Rohingya refugees in comparison to the host population, in order to compensate for deficits in each individual service
Summary
International organizations such as United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), International Organization for Migration (IOM), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and others regularly work with partners and donors to provide services to refugees around the world. The literature suggests that variations in service provision by international organizations and host governments sometimes cause conflict between the refugee and host communities (Alix-Garcia et al, 2018). Has the COVID-19 pandemic shut down governments all over the world, but it has severely limited the ability of international organizations to deliver services during humanitarian crisis.. We posit that refugees and the local population turn to the informal sector to receive the services they need, but that refugees will have more success in finding alternatives to service provision than the host population. This is because refugees tend to have
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