Leight, Jessica; Karachiwalla, Naureen; Hirvonen, Kalle; Rakshit, Deboleena
Somalia is one of the poorest countries in the world, and severe poverty, ongoing armed conflict, and recurring droughts and floods have created a humanitarian crisis characterized by a high level of inter nal displacement. Baidoa city—the site of this evaluation—hosts 517 sites for internally displaced per sons (IDP), with almost 600,000 households, and 64 percent of the individuals living in these sites are women and girls. According to the second Somali High Frequency Survey (Pape and Karamba 2019), IDP settlements (along with rural areas) face a particularly high level of poverty, exacerbated by high unemployment rates and the absence of income-generating opportunities.
This brief reports on endline findings from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) evaluating the project Building Pathways Out of Poverty for Ultra-poor IDPs and Vulnerable Host Communities in Baidoa, an ultra-poor graduation (UPG) intervention implemented by World Vision and funded by the United States Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA). The project seeks to enable ultra-poor internally displaced households to graduate from extreme poverty and begin the upward trajectory to self-reliance for displacement-affected communities by enabling gender-sensitive, context-appropriate, and sustainable livelihoods in an urban setting. IFPRI is collaborating with World Vision to conduct the trial.