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Rwanda + 2 more

3rd Joint UNHCR/WFP Post Distribution Monitoring for Refugees in Rwanda - March 2023

Attachments

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

KEY FINDINGS

The overall household vulnerability to food insecurity as assessed in this survey has remained at similar levels compared to September 2021 but was found to fluctuate extensively.

Since September 2021 (Round 2), the proportion of highly vulnerable households has remained at about 60 percent, thus no substantive deterioration has been observed since targeting implementation.

Non-assisted households and those receiving reduced transfers are most likely to be highly vulnerable, possibly pointing towards fewer and unsustainable capacities and resources at hand for meeting essential needs, compared to those being assisted with a full ration.

Against the background of rising market prices, climatic challenges and the livelihood-deprived environment refugees live in, coupled with the reduction in cash transfers, vulnerability levels were found to fluctuate. Resilience is generally low with half of the population resorting to negative livelihood coping strategies to make ends meet.

Thus, in the absence of blunt, alternative investments that provide opportunities to build self-reliance, household vulnerability levels are likely to continue to change over time, depending on the contextual challenges households are confronted with in the future.

Mahama camp – including the “old” residents and the newly relocated who transferred from Gihembe at the end of 2021 - hosts the largest shares of highly vulnerable households up to 70 percent.

Household food consumption has worsened and variations between assisted and non-assisted households have become evident.

Household food consumption has worsened since pretargeting times with 62 percent of households having acceptable, 32 percent borderline and 6 percent poor food consumption. Non-assisted households are more likely to have poor and borderline food consumption and also tend to engage in food-related coping strategies when confronted with food shortages. In all camps acceptable food consumption has been declining since September 2021.

Not having any livelihood or income source remains the reality for half of the refugee population and is most common among households receiving assistance.

Livelihoods continue to be difficult to come by. The 50 percent of households that have an income predominately engage in casual labour or small businesses and are most likely unassisted households. Nevertheless, the comparative advantage of having a livelihood/income source does not equip households with sufficient resources and resilience to uphold a certain level of well-being over time by default: households receiving less and no assistance demonstrates low resilience by frequently adopting livelihood coping strategies, including emergency coping, which tend to mostly undermine already limited resilience capacities.

While households´ economic capacity to meet their essential needs using their own resources remain largely limited overall and across all eligibility groups, household food and non-food expenditures covered by credits have seen an alarming increase.

The average amount of credit used on food rose by 240 percent between September 2021 and May 2022 and credit on non-food items increased by 30 percent during the same period. The average amount of debts households accumulate has also increased substantially and is highest among non-assisted households. At the same time, households’ ability to use their own resources for meeting their essential needs, including cash and self-produce, continues to be limited. Due to the rising market prices for both food and non-food items and scarce livelihood opportunities, the overall economic vulnerability has worsened among refugee households. Up to 88 percent lack a sufficient level of economic capacity, while the share that does dropped from 36 percent to merely 12 percent of households.

Among the three eligibility groups, households receiving no assistance are those that have more cash and self-produce at hand than those receiving either full or half rations.
However, they are also the ones that tend to accumulate higher debts more frequently, which potentially undermines their already limited resilience.

Following an extensive information campaign, by May 2022 refugees´ knowledge and understanding of the targeting approach had significantly improved since September 2021.

Similarly, increased awareness of the availability of appeal mechanisms, their functioning, and their purpose, was also evident. Gaps and challenges, however, remain and will need to be addressed, including the population´s difficulties in understanding and endorsing the correlation between some eligibility criteria and vulnerability and long waiting times to receive responses after having appealed.

Speaking from their experiences thus far, refugees consider targeted cash-based assistance most effective in improving their livelihoods and gradually building self-reliance.

This impact has been felt significantly less among the few households participating in livelihood support programmes, currently covering about 5 percent of the population.
Nevertheless, against the background of increasingly difficult economic constraints at national and local levels, coupled with the introduction of targeted assistance, refugees point out a number of challenges they have been confronted with, ranging from reduced quality of food consumed, to rising school drop-outs, general inability to save money, and an increasing sense of insecurity, to mention a few.