Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a major global health threat, particularly in low- and middle-income countries such as Nigeria. Forced displacement may accelerate its spread. Due to a paucity of clinicians and nurses, task shifting had extended prescription rights to health extension workers. This study assessed antimicrobial prescription patterns and knowledge of AMR among primary healthcare workers in humanitarian settings. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among primary healthcare prescribers in 39 primary healthcare facilities in refugee-hosting communities using a structured digital questionnaire. The study was reviewed and approved by the Cross River State Health Research Ethics Committee and granted ethics number CRSMOH/HRP/REC/2024/488. Data were analysed with SPSS v29. Knowledge of AMR was assessed through 10 binary questions and categorized as poor (0–50%), moderate (51–70%), or good (71–100%). A total of 112 respondents participated, including 94(83.9%) females, with a mean age of 36.6 years (SD = 9.7). Participants comprised 50(44.6%) CHEWs, 34 (30.4%) nurses/midwives, 15 (13.4%) CHOs, and 13 (11.6%) JCHEWs. Only 36(32.1%) had AMR-related training in the past year. While 109(97.3%) correctly defined AMR and 102(91.1%) acknowledged its link to mortality, gaps remained. Thirty-four (30.4%) believed antibiotics treat viral infections, 19(17.0%) prescribed antibiotics for influenza, and 79(70.5%) co-prescribed them for malaria. Overall, 39 (34.8%) had poor knowledge, 39(34.8%) moderate, and 34(30.4%) good. Knowledge differed significantly by age (p= .017) and cadre (p= .018), with nurses/midwives and CHOs scoring higher. Commonly prescribed antibiotics were amoxicillin (12%), metronidazole (11%), ciprofloxacin (10%), and gentamicin (9%). Despite high awareness, irrational prescribing and knowledge gaps persist. Targeted training, revised standing orders, and strengthened antimicrobial stewardship at the PHC level are urgently needed to curb AMR in Nigeria.

Refugees living in camps may be particularly vulnerable to infectious disease outbreaks because of factors such as overcrowding, inconsistent preventive healthcare, and limited water, sanitation, and hygiene services. Due to...

WKS 5: Navigating Challenges: Supporting and Strengthening Refugee Aid Workers, Auditório B1 (FCSH), September 3, 2025, 15:45 - 16:45Rationales and PurposeWith ongoing global migration, refugee aid workers (RAWs) operate in high-pressure environments, making critical decisions while navigating systemic barriers, resource constraints, and ethical dilemmas. Often working under unstable conditions, balancing competing needs and witnessing profound suffering, they face chronic stress, burnout, anxiety, depression, and PTSD. These risks can undermine their well-being and, ultimately, the quality of care provided to refugees and migrants. This workshop aims to identify the specific needs of RAWs, foster interprofessional collaboration, and define key priorities and actions to support and strengthen this essential workforce.Workshop ProcessThe workshop will follow a roundtable format. After a brief introduction by the facilitator, panelists—experts from various countries, institutions and international organizations—will share research findings and field experiences on the needs of aid workers supporting displaced populations. A panel discussion will explore necessary actions to address these needs and strengthen the workforce.Participants will then split into three groups for interactive discussions focused on:identifying unmet needs of RAWs;actions required at organizational, institutional, individual, and systemic levels;evidence and support needed to implement these actions and inform decision-making across these levels.The session will conclude with short group presentations and a final wrap-up.Projected Learning OutcomesParticipants will critically reflect on the challenges and needs of RAWs, identify unmet needs and key priorities, and explore collaborative strategies and actions required across multiple levels to strengthen the workforce and support informed decision-making.

Abstract The United Nations General Assembly affirmed the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) in December 2018, after two years of extensive consultations led by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) with member states, international organizations, refugees, civil society, faith-based actors, parliaments, the private sector, and academicians. The GCR is a framework for more predictable and equitable responsibility-sharing, recognizing, on the one hand, that a sustainable solution to refugee situations cannot be achieved without international cooperation, multilateralism, multi-stakeholder engagement, and partnerships. On the other hand, the GCR is rooted in a value-based approach to preserve the dignity and rights of every refugee. Considering the growing global forced displacement crisis, this chapter aims to explore the spiritual and ethical capital that can help in addressing this global and humanitarian challenge. Since no single actor has the capacity, resources, and expertise to address the complex challenges of displacement on their own, the GCR invites to an all-of-society approach including refugees' meaningful participation. Aware of the shared ethical and religious narrative about the respect for human dignity and the solidarity with the most vulnerable people, this chapter will look at engagement with faith-based actors, as organizations, local communities, and leaders, into the response to the ongoing humanitarian crisis and needs, including conflict prevention, reconciliation, and peacebuilding.

Household consumption or income surveys do not typically cover refugee populations. In the rare cases where refugees are included, inconsistencies between different data sources could interfere with comparable poverty estimates. We test the performance of a recently developed cross-survey imputation method to estimate poverty for a sample of refugees in Colombia, combining household income surveys collected by the Government of Colombia and administrative (ProGres) data collected by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 2019 and 2022. We find that certain variable transformation methods can help resolve these inconsistencies. Estimation results with our preferred variable standardization method are robust to different imputation methods, including the normal linear regression method, the empirical distribution of the errors method, and the probit and logit methods. Several common machine learning techniques generally perform worse than our proposed imputation methods. We also find that we can reasonably impute poverty rates using an older household income survey and a more recent ProGres dataset for most of the poverty lines. These results provide relevant inputs into designing better surveys and administrative datasets on refugees in various country settings.

ABSTRACT The age of polycrisis – including the COVID-19 pandemic, climate related disasters, the war in Ukraine and related pressures on the global economy – is well known to have negatively impacted global socioeconomic outcomes. Due to time lags in data reporting, the full impact of the multiple crises is not yet reflected in the 2024 SDG Index. This work aims to fill this gap by providing a framework for tracking progress towards specific SDGs and measuring dimensions of resilience of national socioeconomic systems. We assess the progress of countries around the globe towards achieving SDG targets before and after the COVID period for five SDGs where data is available. We find for SDG 1: End Poverty; SDG 2: End Hunger; SDG 4: Education and SDG 5: Gender equality that both in the short (2020–2022) – as well as the medium (2020–2026) term following the COVID period, all countries experience persistent negative setbacks in achieving SDGs resulting in an increase in estimated time to complete targets for all income groups when compared to the 2012–2019 period. We find for SDG 3: Health – similar results; though only for Low and Lower Middle-Income Countries do we find negative setbacks to achieving SDG 3 targets post-COVID.

Data, guidelines and ethics for managing flood risk when people are already forcibly displaced, Hawker, Laurence, Trigg, Mark A, Kruczkiewicz, Andrew, Bernhofen, Mark, Katsi, Luckson, Paterson, Ruby, Speight, Linda, Van Den Hoek, Jamon, Balfour, Nancy

ABSTRACTThe present qualitative study aims to reveal the lived experiences of 20 Turkish university students (10 male, 10 female) regarding their stress factors and how they coped with challenges faced during the first 3 months of the lockdown period amidst the COVID‐19 pandemic. The participants, aged between 19 and 24, were recruited from different state and private universities employing convenience and snowball sampling methods. Grounded in a descriptive phenomenological approach, inductive content analysis (ICS) was employed. The data were collected via in‐depth interviews in May 2020, and analyzed by using Nvivo. The findings showed that the experiences of the participants gathered around five main themes namely, general impact on daily life, impact on various life domains, coping strategies, contributions, and post‐pandemic future. Participants reported their concerns regarding disruptions in daily life and routines caused by precautionary measures, and their expectations as to post‐pandemic life as well. Various adaptive also maladaptive coping strategies were adopted. Notably, participants appraised the pandemic process as an improving experience attributing this to having more spare time for themselves and an increase in their self‐awareness. Findings are discussed in light of the available literature.

The State adopted the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) in 2018 to consolidate the International Refugee Protection Regime (IRPR). Drawing on International Relations (IR) theories and international law, different perspectives can be taken on the nature of the GCR and the IRPR, and their legal and non-legal relationship. The lack of a universally accepted definition for the IRPR allows for various interpretations, ranging from narrow positivism to broad global governance and self-organisation approaches. Similarly, the legal status of the GCR can be seen as non-law, soft law, or fully binding law depending on the criteria used. Applying realist, liberal, and constructivist theories, this article argues that the GCR’s anticipated legal and political development and its impact on the IRPR will be influenced by the chosen IR paradigm, reflecting different views on the rule of international law and power dynamics among stakeholders. By examining the case study of Kenya as a host of a protracted refugee operation, the article provides a practical illustration of how different IR lenses offer divergent perspectives on international burden and responsibility sharing in the Global South. This analysis aims to provide a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the complex relationship between the GCR and the IRPR.