Promoting safe access for refugees and host communities to the digital economy

Have you ever received an SMS advertising online job offers in exchange for a fee? While you may automatically disregard such a message as a scam, many people fall victim to this type of online fraud. This is especially the case for people in great need of employment opportunities, such as forcibly displaced people.

With COVID-19 pushing more of society into the digital world, more refugees and other forcibly displaced people are connecting online in search of digital livelihood opportunities. Major humanitarian organizations are also exploring digital solutions at an unprecedented level, with investment in a wide range of digital products and services. This parallels wider frameworks in the international community. The UN Secretary General’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation endeavours to include the world’s most marginalized and vulnerable — including forcibly displaced populations in all their diversity — through international cooperation.

For the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), digital transformation is met with an overwhelming sense of opportunity, but also a sense of concern. Concern that rapid and far reaching efforts to digitize will create new protection risks for refugees, or further exacerbate inequalities, including in the labour market. There is an absence of policy frameworks to ensure secure employment, adequate social protection, and financial access, while exposure to digital risks and legal limitations place workers in a precarious position.

UNHCR must strike a balance between delivering on the digital opportunities that refugee communities are directly telling us they’d like to see, with management and mitigation of digital risks to ensure that the benefits of the digital opportunities can be enjoyed responsibly. In turn, this will advance economic empowerment and self-reliance for refugees, whilst securing their protection.

It is to this end that UNHCR, together with the International Labour Organization (ILO), are embarking on a new project that seeks to address the negative consequences of the sector’s vigorous pursuit of digitally-enabled jobs and livelihoods by exploring ‘Digital Risk in the Digital Economy’ and ensure that refugees and host communities have safe and secure digitally-enabled livelihoods.

Promotion, Inclusion and Protection of Refugees in the Gig Economy

Supported by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs through its ‘PROSPECTS Opportunity Fund’, Promotion, Inclusion and Protection of Refugees in the Gig Economy, as this project is called, seeks to improve the working conditions of forcibly displaced people and their hosting communities when using digital labour platforms, to mitigate associated digital risks, and to work towards inclusive national and local employment strategies.

Through the Digital Inclusion programme, UNHCR’s Innovation Service has made strong forays into further understanding digital risk. In the report ‘Connecting with Confidence’ we found that many refugees in Uganda and Kenya were willing to accept some measure of digital risk in order to reap the benefits of a connected society. However, many were acutely aware that this situation was far from perfect, and if they could choose — they’d prefer a safer experience. Many told stories of vulnerable friends or family members who’d been subject to mobile money fraud and people who were offered job opportunities abroad that didn’t materialize in exchange for a fee.

A range of challenges faced by refugees and other forcibly displaced workers on digital labour platforms, ranging from freelancing platforms such as Upwork, to gig economy platforms such as Uber, have been identified in ILO’s recent report “Towards decent work for young refugees and host communities in the digital platform economy in Africa”. Connectivity barriers, such as unreliable electricity supply and unstable internet connection in refugee camps and settlements, as well as a lack of access to mobile devices to connect, disrupt refugees’ access and participation in the digital economy. Moreover, other barriers to accessing digital opportunities, particularly ID verification/Know-Your-Customer (KYC) requirements as addressed in our “Displaced and Disconnected” report, pose yet another hurdle in the ability of refugees to acquire SIM cards and to register on digital labour platforms. These barriers are compounded by restricted access to financial services such as mobile money and bank accounts, often prerequisites for participation in the digital economy.

Real-world risks extend to the high levels of competition on digital work platforms. Refugee workers in the digital economy experience discrimination by their employers due to prejudices surrounding their skills and qualifications. More importantly, due to the lack of legal frameworks for the informal gig economy at large, refugee workers on digital platforms are often exposed to precarious working conditions, meaning work is irregular, payments are unreliable, social protection is inadequate, and the rights to freedom of association and to collective bargaining are limited.

In this project, UNHCR and ILO will address these emerging issues, building on our respective expertise and work to date. We will begin by understanding the policy environments in which we’re operating and by reaching out to communities and relevant stakeholders. We’ll engage with refugees and their host communities about their prospects for digitally-enabled livelihoods and the risks they face (both real and perceived) as they pursue opportunities online. We’ll engage with community members already making use of digital economy platforms, but also those who are simply interested in doing so but may not have yet had the opportunity for whatever reason. We are keen to experiment, in partnership with policy makers in governments and the platform industry, and through promoting dialogue with communities and the social partners, around new models for work on digital platforms that are safe, secure and inclusive. By testing, documenting and sharing lessons learned, we will be able to develop approaches that help put digitally-enabled livelihoods on a pathway to scale.

A Pathway for Change

The project has three main outcome areas:

1. Policy — creating enabling environments for digital livelihoods to become a viable and safe option for refugees;
2. Capacity — improving communities’ own knowledge and abilities to engage safely in the digital economy, while also helping platform providers, humanitarian organizations, companies and others to do better at facilitating safe access;
3. Experimentation — testing new approaches with and for communities at country level, seeking to safely ensure their self-reliance with the help of digital platforms.

We believe that by addressing these three areas, we can develop a more enabling and safer environment for refugees and their host communities to access digitally-enabled livelihoods.

Over the next year and half, UNHCR and ILO will develop a portfolio of activities linked to these outcome areas across the PROSPECTS countries. We have created a dedicated project page where you can stay up to date with our latest activities, data and reports.

We would like to get in touch with relevant and interested organizations who might want to join us on this journey. Please contact us at [email protected] if you are working on or are interested in the issues discussed, in particular those organizations operating in the PROSPECTS countries of Uganda, Kenya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt.