This report is the third publication by the International Rescue Commitee (IRC) on the incidence of gender-based violence (GBV) among Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Previous reports include The Shadow Pandemic: Gender-based violence among Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh (June 2020) and GBV Trends Among Rohingya Refugees in Cox’s Bazar: COVID-19 Update (January 2021). Using data collected from IRC’s Integrated Women’s Centres and integrated GBV-health programme sites across Cox’s Bazar, alongside evidence from interviews with IRC’s GBV case workers, this report offers two sets of findings. The first section provides the consolidated findings of IRC’s GBV screening data over a 24-month collection period, from 2019 – 2021, revealing the continuity of reported GBV rates in this time period. The second and third are the findings of both IRC GBV screening data and GBVIMS data from October 2020 – June 2021, showing the most recent trends in GBV reporting.

The Parents Make the Difference project in Liberia aimed to promote the wellbeing of young children aged 3 to 7 through reducing harsh punishment, improving parenting practices, improving child development, and increasing malaria prevention behavior. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) and research partner Duke University found that the intervention reduced harsh punishment and improved parenting practices and caregiver–child interactions, but had no impact on malaria prevention or early childhood development outcomes.

EU leaders must live up to their commitments to European values in responding to migration, more than 160 NGOs said today in a joint statement. The organisations are calling for strong leadership to uphold the rights and values that have been the founding principles of the European Union for 60 years. The statement comes ahead of this week’s EU summit, following months of policies aimed at shutting migration routes across the Mediterranean at any cost. Just last month EU leaders in Malta backed an Italian migration deal with Libya that exposes people to suffering and death. The 162 organizations and networks from more than 20 states – including Oxfam, Save the Children, Care, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM) – call for leadership that both defends human rights and addresses people’s fears, rather than fuelling them. It also calls for EU leaders to go beyond rhetoric and deliver on their commitments to defend the human rights of men, women and children on the move. “Strength doesn't mean turning away those most in need. Strength is about showing a way forward that upholds values,” the letter reads.

To respond to the specific needs of adolescent girls in humanitarian settings and to address the gap in evidence of what works to promote the health, safety and empowerment of adolescent girls, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) has invested in a robust adolescent girl programming and research agenda. As part of this effort, the IRC partnered with Columbia University over a three year period (2014–2017) to develop, implement and evaluate the Creating Opportunities through Mentoring, Parental Involvement and Safe Spaces (COMPASS) program, funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID). COMPASS was implemented with refugees living in camps on the Sudan/Ethiopia border, conflict-affected communities in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and displaced populations in north-west Pakistan.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) implemented an anticipatory action cash-distribution pilot among six agro-pastoralist communities in Northeast Nigeria, focused on reducing the damaging effects of flooding. Prior to the flood season of 2022, the IRC set up an early warning system with local hydrometeorological agencies to trigger pre-flooding cash distribution to resource-constrained communities vulnerable to flooding. The program aimed to improve the adaptive capacities of these communities through improved systems for information sharing about climate risks and severity, and resource access to undertake mitigation measures. Researchers measured the cost-effectiveness of a pre-flooding cash distribution triggered by the early warning system, as compared to traditional post-shock resource disbursement. 1,450 households were randomly assigned to receive pre- or post-shock distributions. Low cost transfer ratios, in addition to positive impact evaluation results, suggest that the pre-shock modality may be more cost-effective than business-as-usual post-shock transfers. The Anticipatory Cash project cost $695 per household receiving pre-shock cash transfers, which drops to $610 per household without system set-up activities. 71% of total group costs went to the cash grant itself. Similar cost-transfer ratios between pre- and post-shock groups suggest that the anticipatory cash response is just as cost-efficient as the post-shock modality.

Today, more than half of the world’s 59.5 million forcibly displaced people live in urban areas and their average length of displacement is over a decade.2 In Asia, the world’s fastest urbanizing continent, countries like Iran and Pakistan are among the top-10 major refugee-hosting countries in the world, while Afghanistan remains the second largest source of refugees globally behind Syria.3 In Southeast Asia, Thailand serves as the region’s primary destination for refugees and asylum seekers, with over half a million people of concern living in the country in 2015. These trends have significant implications for cities within the region, including heightened challenges for providing basic services to the city’s existing inhabitants as well as new residents. They also impact the changing humanitarian landscape, where traditional humanitarian responses have been most often designed for camp or rural/remote contexts. In order to better understand these issues, to learn from challenges and successes, and to identify more appropriate ways of working, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) hosted an Urban Practitioner Workshop on Meeting Needs in a Context of Urban Displacement in Asia. The aim of the workshop was to bring together humanitarian, international development, community organizations, and local municipal actors called into action by various urban crises within the region.