As the global pandemic, COVID-19 hits the world, every category of society is affected in several devastating ways.  This has pushed governments and international organs to take several measures outside their normal routine. Some of these measures relate to the period of the pandemic while some even more important aspects cover the post-pandemic period. The most prominent of these post-pandemic measures is that of economic rebound after the unavoidable loss of livelihoods, especially for those who have been working in the private sector and those of the informal sector.

In Nigeria for instance, the government is already taking steps towards providing business stimulus to registered private organizations, amongst other palliative measures to uphold the country’s economy per sector.  It should be noted that refugees are amongst the class of residents who either work in the private sector or the informal sector and are hence amongst the populace whose livelihoods are most hit by the government measures against COVID-19.

It is the responsibility of the UNHCR in partnership with the Federal government of Nigeria (as per the National pledges on the Global compact for refugees submitted by the Nigeria Federal government at the Global refugee Forum in Geneva in December 2019) to provide livelihood support (amongst other areas of intervention) to all refugees, or at least the registered ones, who as at this date are about 60,000 in Nigeria, notwithstanding the unregistered ones. This responsibility has been shared or is being shared by NGOs and INGOs which work directly or indirectly with UNHCR and the Nigerian government as operational partners or implementing partners.

During this COVID-19 pandemic there has been a remarkable drop in any form of livelihood support to the refugees by the operational partners since most of their efforts have been on assisting essential workers to help keep the rest of the world’s population alive in the face of this deadly pandemic.  

Also, the Federal government of Nigeria is facing a huge challenge to handle survival of her citizens during and after the pandemic and it is easy to understand that even though they have shown significant level of compliance with the engagements made at the global compact for refugees, like every nation, they will have to put citizens first and then look up to the UNHCR and partners to assist the refugees and asylum seekers.

This therefore means that if the UNHCR and partners (implementing and operational partners) don’t act proactively on behalf of the refugees during this period of the pandemic, there will be a serious livelihood crisis amongst the refugees, far beyond what was being experienced before the pandemic.

In such a time it takes the input of all well-meaning global citizens to brainstorm together on how this Post-COVID-19 livelihood crisis can be avoided.

Click on the link below to partake in the brainstorming session so that we can get the right thing done early enough.  

https://crrimissions.org/post-covid-19-economic-self-reliance-for-refugees-survey/