Rooted in the City: A New Vision for Refugees and Humanitarian Action

 

As global displacement reaches record levels, the majority of refugees and internally displaced people are no longer living in camps, but are instead settling in urban areas.ⁱ

This shift reflects a broader demographic urbanization trend to which humanitarian and development systems have yet to adapt.ⁱⁱⁱⁱⁱ 

The 2025 UN-initiated humanitarian reset presents a critical and urgent opportunity to align aid architecture with the evolving needs of the 60 percent of refugees who live in urban areas for extended amounts of time.^iv 

This policy brief draws on insights from the April 2025 expert convening, Urban Refugees, Self-Reliance, and the Shifting Aid Landscape, and it calls on donors, multilateral institutions, and humanitarian agencies to: 

• Prioritize an “urban first” approach^v in displacement responses in which cities are the primary, planned sites for refugees to live. 
• Strengthen success metrics to reflect economic, social, political, bodily, and psychosocial well-being. 
• Promote legal recognition and inclusion in urban areas. 
• Strengthen municipal capacity through multilateral development bank (MDB) support. 

Addressing urban displacement at scale is no longer optional. It is essential and urgent to uphold refugee protections, foster self-reliance, and build inclusive, sustainable futures for displaced populations worldwide. 

Women’s Refugee Commission, Refugees International, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), and Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative released a policy brief to inform the ongoing UN humanitarian reset, calling for an “urban first” approach to refugee response.

Endnotes

[i] Lucy Earle, “Addressing Urban Crises: Bridging the Humanitarian – Development Divide,” International Review of the Red Cross 90, no. 1 (April 2016), accessed October 7, 2025, https://international-review.icrc.org/articles/addressing-urban-crises-bridging-humanitarian-development-divide 

[ii] Diane Archer and David Dodman, The Urbanization of Humanitarian Crises, Environment and Urbanization Briefs (London: IIED, October 2017), accessed October 7, 2025, https://www.iied.org/10858iied. 

[iii] Nicholas Crawford, John Cosgrave, Simone Haysom, and Nadine Walicki, Protracted Displacement: Uncertain Paths to Self-Reliance in Exile (London: Overseas Development Institute, 2015), accessed October 7, 2025, https://odi.org/en/publications/protracted-displacement-uncertain-paths-to-self-reliance-in-exile/. 

[iv] Robert Muggah and Adriana Erthal Abdenur, Refugees and the City: The Twenty-first-century Front Line, World Refugee Council Research Paper No. 2 (Waterloo, ON: Centre for International Governance Innovation / CIGI, July 2018), accessed October 7, 2025, https://www.cigionline.org/static/documents/documents/WRC%20Research%20Paper%20no.2.pdf. 

[v] Lucy Earle and Alison Brown, “Realigning Responses to Protracted Displacement: Putting ‘Urban First’ in a ‘World without Camps,’” Environment & Urbanization 36, no. 2 (October 2024): 233–248, https://doi.org/10.1177/09562478241283868.