“I call the children one by one to see what it is inside the box,” explains Amer,* an educator with the International Rescue Committee. “I explain to them that they will find the picture of a very important person inside the box, someone who set up his or her goals and achieved them.” Amer is one of IRC's educators who provide street and working children in Beirut, including Syrian refugees fleeing from war, with psychosocial support, recreational activities and basic literacy and numeracy classes. Educators facilitate a number of games, such as the mirror box, to help children improve confidence, creativity and thinking skills.

George Rupp will step down at the end of August after 11 years as president of the IRC. In a recent interview with the IRC’s publications director Steven Manning, Rupp reflected on his tenure.

This paper argues for an improved humanitarian response to urban displacement crises by working directly with municipal authorities and through a resilience lens. It draws on the International Rescue Committee (IRC)’s collaboration with 100 Resilient Cities – Pioneered by The Rockefeller Foundation (100RC) and engagement with two municipal authorities, the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) and the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA). The IRC first worked with Amman, a member of the 100RC network, to support their city resilience planning. While Kampala is not in the 100RC network, the IRC replicated its approach in Amman with KCCA to support their own plans and strategies and bring an urban resilience lens to displacement within Kampala. By discussing these relationships and the process behind them, this paper highlights how humanitarian-municipal partnerships can achieve the following benefits: 1. Strengthening coordination, sustainability, and impact of multi-stakeholder responses to urban displacement; 2. Linking humanitarian programming to long-term development goals of the city; 3. Improve the understanding of municipal authorities in relation to the needs and preferences of urban displaced; and 4. Ensure the inclusion of displaced and marginalized residents in municipally-provided public services. Urban displacement cuts across city and humanitarian sectors. It is the collective responsibility of the international community and the localities we serve to strengthen city resilience in the face of urban displacement, and we cannot do so without relying on both humanitarian and municipal actors. Whereas humanitarians have the expertise to respond to crises, municipal actors have the mandate to build from them. Urban resilience asks for both; that we learn to not only respond to displacement crises and aid the communities they affect in equal measure, but, in doing so, to improve those communities to be better prepared for future crises and have a higher overall quality of life; especially for displaced and marginalised city residents.

While systematic evidence on violence against LGBTQI people in conflict and humanitarian settings is limited, local LGBTQI serving organisations and international humanitarian organisations have documented and exposed the threats to the physical and psychological safety, human rights, health, and economic security of LGBTQI individuals as they navigate conflict and displacement. Nevertheless, humanitarian responses continue to exclude LGBTQI people and communities, subjecting them to even higher risk of harm. In an effort to improve our approach as a humanitarian agency to reach, support, and advocate with and for LGBTQI people affected by humanitarian crises, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) undertook research to better understand the experiences of LGBTQI people in conflict and humanitarian settings.

Earlier this year the IRC in Greece hosted cooking workshops for refugee and local women living on the island of Lesvos. Learn Koteu's Spinach and tuna with African fufu recipe.