UNOG-RUSH-NEWS The COVID-19 displaced people - World Bank-UNHCR 05AUG2021
/
41:41
/
MP4
/
294.7 MB

Press Conferences | UNHCR

UNHCR Press Conference COVID-19 displaced people - World Bank - UNHCR 05 August 2021

UNHCR

 

Subject:

The COVID-19 pandemic and the socioeconomic welfare of forcibly displaced people - expert briefing by the World Bank-UNHCR Joint Data Center on Forced Displacement

 

Speakers:  

  • Jeffery Tanner – Senior Economist, World Bank-UNHCR Joint Data Center on Forced Displacement
  • Harriet Kasidi Mugera – Senior Data Scientist, World Bank-UNHCR Joint Data Center on Forced Displacement 
Teleprompter
Good morning, everybody.
I hope you can all hear me.
I believe we will kick off.
[Other language spoken]
Perhaps there will be more people joining us as we go.
But thank you very much for joining this expert press briefing by the two experts from the UNHCR and World Bank's Joint Data Centre.
This is a centre that was established in 2019.
It was essentially set up to help transform the data landscape on the on the forced displacement.
It has become fully operational in 2020.
So institutionally, the two organisations bring together into this joint data centre the staff, resources and capacities of both organisation with the main focus on improving and supporting the collection, analysis, dissemination and the use of primary social and economic micro data and the population data that inform policy making and programming.
The paper that you have received, the link to it yesterday was already touched upon, if you like, in the Global Trends report that we issued in June 2020.
There is a couple of pages there, but now the the paper has been completed and as such released and to speak today about the main findings of of the **** frequency phone surveys that we have conducted in a number of countries.
We have two experts.
First speaker will be Harriet Khasidi Boughera.
Harriet is the senior data scientist working at the World Bank and UNHCR Joint Data Centre.
And then we will pass over to Geoffrey Tanner, who's the senior economist, World Bank also from the Joint Data Centre working on false displacement.
On that note, just to say we'll, we'll after the opening remarks, we will open the floor for questions.
I kindly ask you just to indicate your name and the organisation you work for and also to flag to whom the question is directed.
For most questions I believe both of our experts will and may have things to things to say in response.
On that note, I will now pass on 1st to Harriet and if Elma could open Harriet's microphone that'd be great.
OK, Yes, I think your microphone is now unmuted.
Harriet, please go on.
[Other language spoken]
Can you and colleagues can you hear me?
[Other language spoken]
So thank you very much Andrea and colleagues for inviting us to this press release.
So the emergence of the COVID-19 has highlighted the critical importance of having quality and timely information in effectively managing global development challenges, particularly for vulnerable populations.
The pandemic has had well documented health effects across the globe, while less well documented is the socio economic fallout of the pandemic, especially on home, on households and families.
To understand that, the World Bank initiated a series of service surveys in countries across the globe.
However, even these data collection efforts did not pick up on the populations that are potentially among the most vulnerable in the world, those who have previously been forced to flee their homes because of violence and conflict.
Late last year, the World Bank and Unity are Joint Data Centre attempted to address this step and in its first paper on the COVID-19 and forced forcefully displaced populations, the highly vulnerable and largely invisible, it concluded a near complete lack of information on these groups and called for need for more data and information.
The follow up paper, the one we're talking about today, aims to to answer this call in part by 1, presenting the data and evidence on how the pandemic as it progressed, changed the lives of the most vulnerable groups of persons and families.
Those who are forced forced to flee their homes because of conflict of violence.
The refugees, the internally displaced persons and returnees from 8 countries including Bangladesh, Chad, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Iraq, Kenya, Uganda and Yemen.
And in by conducting, where possible, the the evidence from the data gathered, gathered in the analysis and conducted in the above to by connecting, where possible, the evidence from the data gathered and analysis conducted above to policy responses to the pandemic with specific reference to access to healthcare services and food security.
So one would wonder how is it possible to collect any information during the pandemic when we could hardly leave our homes to go to supermarkets or grocery shops.
Difficult still to collect any data on this very hard to reach population such as refugees and internally displaced populations.
The information collected was done through **** frequency phone surveys.
This is a novative relatively cheap and highly flexible way of collecting information whether refugees and ID, PS and returning families were con contacted and interviewed via mobile phone multiple times and on a regular frequency in most cases on a monthly basis.
So what is the this?
What does this new information and data tell us?
The pandemic has touched every angle of the lives of families of refugees, internally displaced persons and returnees.
Starting from the very basic ability for them to move from their shelters, go to work, the ability to food put to put food on the table and to access any medical care when they fell sick.
And finally also being able to ensure learning for their own children.
What we observe in the results is that the situation of these vulnerable groups has been worsened by the pandemic and that these populations have generally fared so much worse off than their own host counterparts in these in the countries that we analysed this data, for example in Uganda, every single refugee household has had at least one negative experience during the pandemic.
To deal with these advanced experiences, these families have resorted to the extreme measures that have changed the trajectories of their lives and those of their families.
To see this better, I will pass it over to my colleague Jeff, who will walk us through some of the key elements of these experiences, the refugees, the internally displaced populations, and the returnees families faced during the pandemic.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Harriet.
Good morning colleagues.
Wonderful to be with you.
As Harriet noted, the shocks faced by these by by these forcibly displaced people were were devastating and and wide reaching.
These included increases in the price of farming or business inputs, increases in the price of food, illness or death of an income earner or any other family member, theft, looting, disruption of livelihood activities, farmer business loss, other non labour income loss and and then of course we have the government policy responses done for reasonable reasons such as stay at home orders, movement restrictions, school or clinic closures.
But all of these things could negatively, in fact negatively impact households and socioeconomic welfare.
These shocks had effects on livelihoods and well-being by affecting work income from other sources besides work, food access, healthcare access, and education access.
Families who had earlier lost their homes due to violence or persecution we're now at renewed risk of losing their livelihoods again.
For example, we see that nine in 10 refugees in Uganda and three in four refugees in Chad reported that their total income had decreased since the pandemic.
These households have two sources of income, what they earn and what they received through assistance on what they earn.
The these households employment tends to be informal and so it's more vulnerable than for hosts or the the non displaced people in the country or region where they're currently living.
They experienced employment losses at rates at least as large, if not larger than hosts.
For example, in Ethiopia in October 2020, we see that nine in 10 hosts were working, but only two in 10 refugees were.
And when they were asked why they were not working, 2/3 of those refugees not working attributed their job loss to COVID-19.
Without work, refugees and IDP households look for help from family and friends through remittances in kind help or loans.
They also tend to rely disproportionately on international assistance, especially during crises such as the current economic downturn.
For example, in Djibouti, labour income was reported by 75% of hosts but only 20% of refugees.
But on the flip side, international assistance was reported by 80% of refugees, but only 4% of host households in a cascade of family crises.
This loss of income, whether it be through wages or through assistance, can lead to or exacerbate food insecurity.
The the ability to access medical care or the potential to to continue one's education on food insecurity.
Food insecurity for the displaced is pervasive across most surveyed countries.
And it was that way, of course, before the pandemic.
But now in Chad, nearly nine in 10, nearly 90% of refugees are now severely food insecure.
That's a rate that's more than 25 percentage points higher than chatty and host households for the displaced.
In these eight countries that we surveyed, financial constraints were reported as the biggest barrier to accessing food resources and perhaps the most alarming of coping strategies.
Forcibly displaced households across Bangladesh, Chad, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Iraq, Kenya and Uganda reported reducing their food or non food consumption or both.
In Kenya, for example, adults and half of refugee households are skipping meals so that their children have food to eat, and more than 75% of refugee households decrease the number of meals that they eat at every day.
COVID-19 has negatively affected access to healthcare for many households.
This is a clear public health risk during a pandemic.
Displaced households.
Displaced people typically face greater challenges accessing medical care than National Council, Djibouti, Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya and Iraq, even when access is the same as hosts.
COVID-19 has clearly made it worse.
For example, despite the repeated I'm sorry.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
Sorry.
[Other language spoken]
For example, the slide repeated challenges faced by yet just prior to the pandemic, non displaced and internally displaced households reported identical improvements in gaining access to healthcare as the share with poor access to healthcare dropped by roughly 10% of points.
But there is a clear discontinuity at the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 that completely erased those improvements, followed by a reversal of fortune in which an increasingly large share of the population had poor access to healthcare through July 2020.
I'm sorry, Jeff, sorry.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
Don't know if everyone else is hearing, but the sound is quite broken up.
Digitally.
Andre, do you hear the same?
[Other language spoken]
I was just wondering whether whether Jeffrey, you can check whether the microphone is properly plugged in into the and if we can try and unmute.
Yes, you sounded very well before and from my side, I'm wondering if it's the batteries on your earphones that.
Might be low I.
Don't believe so.
I fully charged it last night.
It may be the Internet connection.
How would I turn off my video?
Would that help?
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
Shall we continue?
[Other language spoken]
As I was saying in Yemen, we in in terms of access to health care, we saw great improvements in the four months prior to the pandemic.
But once the pandemic hit, all hit, all of those gains were erased, and Yemen has still not recovered to the level of healthcare access that they had prior to the pandemic.
We see this sort of inferred use shape across the last year.
School closures at the onset of the pandemic inhibited learning opportunities for children from forcibly displaced households.
As well, the closures often removed protective measures, exposing them to greater risks than reducing their chances of returning to school when they reopen.
Other evidence suggests these schools may stay closed and kids may never go back.
For example, we had one refugee in Kenya tell us that because schools had closed, his sister was nearly a victim of early marriage because there were no prospects for continuing her education.
In Ethiopia, before the pandemic, only one in five young refugee children were attending primary school anyway.
[Other language spoken]
But once schools were closed, that number dropped to 1 in 20 who had any type of educational engagement, not even going to school, but just access to to any educational resources.
Similarly, only 5% of secondary school age children in Ethiopia attended.
Refugee children attended school before the pandemic.
That's down to now less than 1%.
Of course, these are only 8 countries, and although the data are representative of the host and displaced countries from which they are drawn, these countries are not representative of the world.
So there will likely be exceptions to the trends we illustrate here.
Indeed, we do see exceptions even among these eight countries.
We've talked about the example of how both ID PS and host populations in Yemen are seeing the same levels of poor access to healthcare.
In addition, we see unemployment in Iraq converge over time for post returnees and ID PS.
And we do see some positive news in Cox's Bazaar.
We actually see improvements for refugee teens educational engagement, though not necessarily their educational achievement, especially for girls.
And we see that access to medicines is now similarly **** for refugees and post households in Ethiopia.
So now on the heels of World Refugee Day, overall, we see real concern to be real reason to be concerned for families who had already lost their homes and livelihoods of violence and persecution and who now face further falling into poverty, sickness, hunger and lost economic potential due to the socio economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.
We're happy to take your questions.
[Other language spoken]
Thank you very much, Jeff.
We will now open for questions.
You can maybe try In the meantime both Harriet and Jeff, if you can open your cameras while we wait for questions.
Perhaps if I may ask you if you can both say a few words about the the methodology that you have used, the these **** frequency front surveys, how scientific this is.
If you can explain the methodology a bit and over what period of time this was happening and how many people you actually what was the size of the sample, Harriet, first to you and then to Jeff.
Thank you very much.
So as we mentioned, we we implemented the **** frequency phone surveys and where the refugee, internally displaced persons and returning families were contacted and interviewed via mobile phone multiple times and at a regular frequence for most, in most cases on a monthly basis in the course of 2020 and 2021.
Of course, this mode of data collection enabled this mode enabled collection of information where face to face interaction was not possible in this case due to the pandemic and due to restrict restriction measures of, of of movement that had been had been put in place by different countries in order to curb the pandemic.
So, so this, the information was collected via phone and it, it was we, we, we, the number of of times that information was collected varied from country to country.
In the eight countries that we, we have identified, we have at least 2 or more rounds or, or frequency or, or times in which data was collected in each of these countries.
And this was critical in order to also track progress or change in, in, in some of the, the aggregated some of the, the components that Jeff has touched on, whether it's education, food security, to also track changes in.
One of the, the interesting thing about the, the **** frequency service is that you're able to also track progress and changes over time.
So even as, as Jeff presented as schools we opened, we were able to see how how the situation was changing both for, for the these vulnerable groups as well as their, their, their host counterparts.
Thank you, Jeffrey.
I might just add that to, to the question on the sample size we have over the, the, the course of the last year, we have a total of more than 90,000 interviews that were conducted in this effort across these eight countries.
As Harriet noted, the, the, the timing didn't always line up between countries and, but, but we, we, we've been a good effort to, to try to do that as to, to cover the waterfront as much as we could.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
There is still interference in your sound.
We'll come back to that.
We have a question from Lisa Schlein.
Lisa if if your microphone could be unmuted.
[Other language spoken]
Andre, here I am.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
Nice to see you.
This is for whoever wants to answer it.
[Other language spoken]
First, how large a population, I mean, I mean you, you, how many people were actually interviewed and this encompasses?
How large a population in the 8.
Countries, I mean, do you, do you think that it the the information that you have gathered?
Is relevant.
For a much, much larger population than the numbers of people that you interviewed.
And what are you going to do with this information?
I mean, how will this be used?
You're probably giving it to governments.
How will the governments use this?
I mean, it's one thing to gather the information, but what happens with it afterwards?
And then did you find that COVID infections have increased not only among the refugee populations, but national populations?
Because if the refugee populations are being neglected and do not receive the kind of medication I well, I there are not many vaccine doses, so I don't think there are any.
Campaigns as far as that.
[Other language spoken]
But has it increased, do you think COVID infections not only among the refugees but among the general population?
Yeah, that's it for now.
[Other language spoken]
Thank you very much, Lisa.
Who wants to kick off first?
[Other language spoken]
Thank you very much, Lisa, for for the questions.
So I will start with how large the population and how relevant it is.
[Other language spoken]
So each we, we, we the, the population size that that was interviewed was was was selected for each the population of interest, whether it's IDP or refugees was selected for each, for each within each country.
And, and we used sampling strategies that ensure representativeness.
So the sample the size of of the populations.
In some countries it was 1500 families or households, in others it was 1600 and others it was it was 900.
It was very much proportionate to to the sampling frame and, and the and, and it is it was representative of to some extent of, of of of the population of concern within that country.
Of course these were phone service and, and therefore the, the, the target population or the population that we actually interviewed were those that, that had phone numbers.
But this was this component was then with our technical experience and expertise were able to, to adjust for this component.
So yes, I can say that the population that we interviewed was large enough to be to be representative and to, to be representative of, of that vulnerable group within, within the country of interest.
And how will this information be used?
I think this information as, as we, as we mentioned at the beginning of the paper, there was a huge data gap.
The, the minute there was a pandemic, not much information was, was known about access to, to healthcare even pre pandemic.
So this, the pandemic actually shed light on the fact that there's a huge information gap pre pandemic and even more so needed to be able to, to inform interventions, both by government, by other humanitarian and development actors who are working in these countries.
Given that these are very, these are the in most of these countries are the most vulnerable groups.
So they have the least access to medical care, education and access to food.
And on your last point on did did we find an increase in, in COVID infections?
Well, what, what, what we actually, we actually have a question on, on vaccine receptivity.
And of course in most in the 8, in most of the eight countries that we, we, we work in, unfortunately these populations have not yet have had access to vaccines.
But what is very interesting is that we find that a large share of, of, of these, the refugee Idps and returning populations are willing a receptive to take the vaccine if the vaccine was made accessible to them.
And of course at in some countries at, at at at a free cost.
So, yeah, so this is this is the the information we have in terms of in terms of vaccine.
Thank you, Harry.
Jeff, is there anything you'd like to add on the recommendations and the how this may inform or be used or shared with the governments in terms of the influence on the socio and social and economic policies?
[Other language spoken]
Thanks Andrea.
We have with for each of these eight countries that we have a certain interview have been in close contact with the the World Bank and UNHCR missions in those areas and who have also then relayed this information to the government.
And so, so for these eight countries, we're starting there and we are we're looking to now, now that this report is finished to to sort of roll this out more broadly.
In addition, the information that we're presenting here in this report is based on a series of briefs and individual reports for each round that has been done in each of these countries.
Each of those rounds has already gone to the governments and has gone to the the relevant development and humanitarian actors so that they can see what's going on here.
[Other language spoken]
Jeff, we have another question from Gorgie, I believe.
I don't mind if you could open Gorgie's microphone.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
First of all, I would like to know regarding what Madam Harriet Mughera has said earlier regarding the receptivity of the vaccine.
I would like to ask the problem is the receptivity or the access what and also you talk about some countries in which you are working.
I would like to know in what country you did your studies please and if ever you can send us also the resume of what you did on that so we can have our rebate addresses.
[Other language spoken]
Thank you very much.
And just to flag that we have shared with you I believe yesterday evening and again this morning.
[Other language spoken]
Maybe my emails gone somewhere else, but you can check together no problem.
Please, please, please check the the the 8:00.
There are eight countries that have been at least can remind us.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
So we will, we will share that information later again.
But perhaps Harriet, briefly over to you on the, the, the on the vaccine question.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
Thanks for the question.
So on what, what we, we are seeing is that there is there is a very **** uptake on vaccine receptivity and the uptake is very much in, in almost in all the eight countries, it is above 70%.
In some countries like Ethiopia, it's at 93%.
So we and, and for this is for the refugees, for the internally displaced persons and the returning so the vulnerable groups and in with the exception of Ethiopia in the seven countries, it is higher for for these vulnerable groups than even the the national that the non the non displaced counterpart.
So and so we, we, we are meant, we, we tend to believe that the issue is not the receptivity, but at the moment the access to, to these vaccines as in in most of these countries, even the national samples themselves have not yet or the national populations who are less vulnerable have not had access to the vaccines.
So we are hoping that the vaccines will then trickle down also to, to these vulnerable groups, the refugees, the IDPS and the returnee populations.
[Other language spoken]
Thank you very much.
[Other language spoken]
Jeffrey, is there anything you would like to add?
No, that's fine.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
I don't see which countries was the question on which countries.
[Other language spoken]
So for for vaccines, we see this in in Chad, Ethiopia, Iraq, Djibouti and Uganda.
In addition to those 5, we also have Bangladesh, Yemen and I'm, I'm dropping one, Kenya.
Thank you very much.
One perhaps question that we haven't touched upon is in terms of the findings, were there different differences in in the outcomes of the of the collection date, the data collection and the responses from the refugees that are in camps?
And as it is well known that actually most of the refugee populations are actually living within the host communities, not in, in, in settings like like refugee camps.
So was there any differences in in terms of the overall findings between the the two groups, Harriet?
Well, Herod, I can take that out.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
So we we don't have a lot of information in in that the normally the samples that we have are are not large enough to be able to disaggregate between camp and non camp.
But we do have some some very interesting information that comes from Iraq.
So in in Iraq the camped internally displaced people were twice as likely to be unemployed as the non camps, so 40% versus 20%.
However, by January those in camps were 30 percentage points more likely to be receiving help from the Iraq Public Distribution system.
Now remember these are IDP so everyone is eligible for an any government programme.
So those in camps were 30 percentage points more likely to be receiving help from that PDS system and more than 7 times more likely to receive assistance from any other source as compared to to those who are outside of camps.
But more importantly, those who are those ID PS who are outside of camps were two to three times more likely to consume inadequate diets than those in camps.
This is just one country in Iraq.
We do have some some similar information from from Djibouti and a little bit from Chad.
So we, we're not going to say anything conclusive about the, the broader world, but certainly this is something to be very, very concerned about and to really keep an eye on the, the, the level of disconnect between camped and non camped welfare here is quite stark.
Thank you very much, Jeff.
I see there is another question from Gorgie.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
I've got the extract of the study.
I've seen that there's nearly 100 countries which are denying access of refugees.
Is that correct 100 and after you put 6 come to 60 countries.
And so question is, if what I say and what I read is very correct, how this can impact the pounding me worldwide if because these people if they are not vaccinated, if they do not have access to vaccine, how would be or could the world nearly to fight against this pandemic?
And this the other question is directed directed to you, Andres for UNSUR.
You said how countries can use this study, but you as an international organisation, what would you do with that study?
[Other language spoken]
Thank you very much, Corgi.
I believe we will first go to Harriet and to Jeff.
Overall, I would just premise that with the fact that the situation is reflective of the time when the study was conducted and that the situation across the world changes in the meantime.
So bear that in mind.
But first let's go over to Harriet and then to Jeff.
[Other language spoken]
So I think you're raising an important point and one of the core objectives of this report is to to provide this information.
And, and as as you clearly said, there's a combination of restricted restriction of movement that that had been there and then and then the populations at the moment not being able to access vaccinations.
So I agree with you.
The combination of, of this information is supposed to help inform the different policy makers and, and the humanitarian.
So we need, we need this information in order to make a case for these populations of concern and say, hey, we either need to provide vaccinations or provide access to vaccination or, or allow in order to allow these populations to be able to, to allow countries to ease the, the, the the restriction movements.
So I I agree with you that the findings we show in this paper are supposed to inform in in inform the different actors in both the humanitarian and the development sphere.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
Jeffrey, is there anything you'd like to add?
[Other language spoken]
So it's important to note that we, for the data that we're presenting here, we are not tracking the the people who are trying to move during the pandemic.
That statistic that you pulled out from the paper is, is, is accurate that at, in, in the beginning, there were 99 countries that, that, that we went out and we pulled sources from that were restricting movement.
And you know, for, for reasons that are understandable, right?
If you're trying to contain a pandemic or, or, or trying to protect a, a population, that's understandable.
But that of course runs, runs counter to, to concerns about the ability of, of people to move.
And so policy makers are, we're understandably in a very difficult situation.
I think that if you read further that that number is down to that's around 60 or so countries that still have some restrictions on movement.
But I think the broader point is that it's important to remember that movement moving from 1 country to another is essentially the coping strategy of last resort.
And if families are not able to do that during a pandemic, then we're then they're being contained in areas that are are, you know, by, as we as economists, we say by revealed preference, by almost by definition, are, are harmful to them, are more harmful than it would be to, to move even during a pandemic.
So we, we highlight that number.
It's not a number that we generated.
We highlight that number just to note that this should be a concern for, for all of us.
I think that your broader concerns about, you know, what does this say about the, the, the global vulnerability to the pandemic if so many people aren't receiving vaccines?
I think that's a concern, not the, the, the, the ability to have vaccines as a concern, not just for displaced people, but as a concern for, for the, the populations in the countries to which they are fleeing.
Right.
And of course, the vast majority of places where we find displaced people is in developing countries.
It's not in the, the, the OECD type countries.
So the fact that, that nobody there or, or very, very few are still able to, to get vaccines despite this really **** level of receptivity of, of particularly among displaced people saying yes, we would have this vaccine if it were offered to us.
I think that that that, that disconnect is one that we should be concerned about at a global level.
And just to add that obviously there is a benefit for the humanitarian agencies, including UNHCR to learn from the data to find more about the needs, to give some granularity to the issues and be able to better plan and respond to, to to the needs on the ground.
The other thing is, which was mentioned at the very beginning, it's actually making this information and this data and these needs visible if, if these if these went on unregistered that no would be nobody would really be knowing about this.
So this is very important part of the work and that's one of the reasons why the joint data centre between the World Bank and UNHCR has been established.
I don't see any further questions.
I would just like to ask our speakers if there are any final comments they want to make before we break Harriet.
Suggests just to emphasise the fact that this is, this is an interim report and, and the pandemic is still ongoing and, and we are still collecting more, more data and from more countries.
So we are hoping to, to be able to have to be even provide more information beyond what we are providing in this, in this particular report to better inform our policy and, and, and also interventions was from the humanitarian and the development actors.
So there's more data and more information that will come that will be coming out in, in, in, in the coming months as, as also the epidemic evolves, we're going to be capturing even other aggregates and other information as, as, as, as it evolves.
[Other language spoken]
Thank you, Harry.
Jeffrey, I would just_the the top line message that we know that the pandemic has been bad for everyone right, we?
We we've all been stuck in our homes for for over a year and.
And that's if we were lucky you.
Know many, people have died directly because of this pandemic but, the socio economic fallout of the pandemic is also worth noting and.
That is is, widespread across all the the people in the countries that we're talking about but.
Among those people in the countries that we're talking about, the ones that if we're the ones to be really, it seems most concerned about are those who have been displaced previously by violence or persecution or the ****** of violence.
If we don't pay attention to them, then we, we risk, we, we risk losing out on, on both their current welfare.
We risk a A, you know, if I'm not an epidemiologist, of course.
But we've all seen the Delta variant come and the more people are are who are unvaccinated or who who don't have resistance and where that that virus can spread, it becomes a risk for all of us.
Moreover, the by if, if, if we don't pay attention to these populations, then we lose out on not just current welfare, but future economic welfare for these families.
If they're if the, if the schools are closed permanently, if their kids aren't able to go back to school, then what becomes of them?
And that's a real concern for all of us.
Thank you very much.
Again, thank you, Jeffrey and thank you Harriet for taking part in today's expert briefing.
[Other language spoken]
As I said, the paper itself has been published, the link you should have received in in our messages yesterday and this morning.
There is also the executive summary and obviously our speakers may also be available for interviews should there be interest after after this briefing.
Thank you all and hope to see you all in person very soon.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much everyone.