After a two-year project, the report “Urban Refugees and IDPs in Secondary Cities: Case Studies of Crisis Migration, Urbanization, and Governance” has now been published as part of the MSP Cities Alliance program “Cities and Migration”, which reflects the current reality of urban refugees and forcibly displaced people in East African cities.

Cities Alliance is a global Multi-Stakeholder-Partnership (MSP) to fight urban poverty and support cities to deliver sustainable development. Urbanization and the associated migration and displacement within a country play a major role, to which the Cities Alliance program “Cities and Migration” is responding. Especially in East African “secondary cities”, i.e. cities that are not the respective capital, urbanization represents a major challenge. Many municipalities in particular are confronted with questions of financing or have to recognize urban needs. 

This starting point was the basis of a 2-year project jointly implemented by the Cities Alliance, the University of Oxford, and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), from which the report „Urban Refugees and IDPs in Secondary Cities: Case Studies of Crisis Migration, Urbanisation, and Governance“ originated. Among other things, this report discusses the research gap in the area of IDPs (Internally Displaced People), whose presence in secondary cities in East Africa often goes unnoticed, and the role of partnerships between local, urban actors, state institutions and civil society organizations in this context. This culminates in a final discussion on the future of urban displacement and results in several recommendations for further engagement of humanitarian, governmental and other urban actors in helping forcibly displaced people.