The Global Refugee Work Rights Scorecard: This scorecard is part of the 'Global Refugee Work Rights Report 2022'. The report examines refugees’ work rights in law and in practice across 51 countries that collectively host 87 percent of the world’s refugee population, including all of the top 22 refugee-hosting countries. The scorecard is available here: https://refugeeworkrights.org/scorecard/

Gender responsive resource recovery and reuse (RRR) innovations for home gardening, agroforestry and cooking energy: This ‘RRR in refugee context in Africa’ initiative is being implemented in four refugee settlements and their surrounding host communities in Kenya and Uganda by a partnership among CGIAR centres, UN bodies, academia and NGO’s with funding from BMZ-GIZ and USDA-NIFA. Since late 2021, over 2,200 households are involved 70% of whom are women and an additional 1,600 will be reached in 2023. Indirectly the project will reach 200,000 people. Project websites (https://worldagroforestry.org/project/gender-responsive-innovations-soil-rehabilitation-alternative-fuel-and-agriculture: https://rrr-refugee.iwmi.org/) Contacts: Dr Mary Njenga (CIFOR-ICRAF) M.Njenga@cifor-icraf.org and Solomie Gebrezgabher (IWMI-Ghana) S.Gebrezgabher@cgiar.org. Resource Recovery and Reuse in Refugee Settlements in Africa. Kakuma-Kalobeyei Settlements, Kenya. Watch video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA84H0MpaeU

New IFC and UNHCR initiative to boost private sector engagement for refugees and their host communities: The International Finance Corporation (IFC) and UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, today announced a joint initiative to create inclusive economic opportunities that will benefit refugees and their host communities. Among other goals, the initiative aims to mobilize private sector projects over the next five years to demonstrate the viability of investments in forced displacement contexts. Read the press release here: https://bit.ly/3Y8PNDG

World Bank: Kenya’s Economic Recovery Remains Strong, Although Slowed by Drought and Inflation: Kenya’s economy continued to rebound from the pandemic in 2022 with real gross domestic product (GDP) increasing by 6% year-on-year in the first half of 2022, driven by broad-based increases in services and industry. This recovery was dampened by global commodity price shocks, the long regional drought, and uncertainty in the run up to the 2022 general elections. Read more here: https://bit.ly/3Y8GhAs

Seizing the Agri-Food Opportunity in Eastern and Southern Africa: With more than 66 million people projected to experience food stress, emergency, or famine this year across Eastern and Southern Africa, it is imperative that we help unleash the potential of the agri-food sector—to not only put an end to hunger, but to also establish economic prosperity across the region. Read more here: https://bit.ly/3BktlO7

UNHCR - The 2022 High Commissioner’s Dialogue on Protection Challenges, which will be held on 07 and 08 December, will focus on the theme of development cooperation aimed at advancing protection, inclusion, and solutions for forcibly displaced and stateless persons as well as host communities. Read more here: https://bit.ly/3HcPWQx

World Bank - Burundi: Certifying Land Ownership Protects the Landscape and Women as Well. The $30 million project Burundi Landscape Restoration and Resilience Project aims to restore land productivity and increase community resilience in targeted, degraded landscapes. But in its early stages, its component on land certification, designed to address some of the issues that comprise a large number of the legal cases brought before Burundian courts, has brought the project’s biggest gains. Read the feature story here: https://bit.ly/3Vlis6z

WB – Environment and Natural Resource Management as a Pathway to Peace : On 31/10, the WB published a report exploring environment-conflict dynamics with a view to helping integrate them more broadly into WB’s intervention in fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCS). Climate change, environment degradation and conflict are strongly correlated. Natural resources were a source of contention in one out of four global crises and conflicts in 2014-2020. Furthermore, 70 percent of the most climate-vulnerable countries are also among the most fragile. The report also offers an in-depth analysis of the interplay between environment, climate change, fragility and gender. Find the report here: https://bit.ly/3NvMH7I

UNHCR celebrates DAFI’s 30 years of refugee scholarship support: This month, the UNHCR celebrated 30 years of providing scholarship opportunities through the German-backed DAFI scholarship program to displaced persons, transforming their lives and prospects. Over 21,500 refugee students’ lives have been positively impacted through Albert Einstein German Academic Refugee Initiative (DAFI) scholarship program. These students have majored in diverse fields ranging from medicine to business administration, social and behavioural sciences, mathematics, and computer sciences. During the celebrations, the UNHCR urged for more investments in refugee tertiary education in order to achieve the 15 by 30 target – to ensure that 15% of eligible refugees can access tertiary education by 2030. Read more here: https://bit.ly/3FyQnDO

A total of 2,159 individuals in 557 families were assisted to voluntarily repatriate to DRC in September. Cumulatively, 5,807 individuals in 1,653 families had repatriated since the start of the second phase of the voluntary repatriation on 18 July 2022.