in making financial services, such as savings-and-loan circles and self-help groups, accessible for the poor. This expertise can be adapted to the circumstances of camp residents to safeguard families from harmful debt cycles. More research is also needed to better understand the debt economy in the camps, including the potential for predatory moneylending practices and their interaction with trafficking and other illicit activities. IMPROVING WELL-BEING AND ECONOMIC RESILIENCE Expand livelihood opportunities for camp residents. Opportunities to work and earn a living must be dramatically expanded to improve the self-reliance of camp households and their ability to weather financial shocks and invest in their future. Some organizations are making significant steps towards this goal: for example, a World Bank–funded livelihoods scheme announced in March 2020 will employ members of some 84,000 camp households.37 Other donors should be encouraged to follow suit. Expanded opportunities for home-based income generation would be a way to engage more women in the workforce and increase household income. Anticipate the impact of the current economic downturn on remittances. As the global Covid-19 pandemic drives a worldwide economic downturn, the World Bank has predicted the steepest global decline in remittances in recent history.38 This will inevitably affect the financial health of the 20 percent of camp families who rely on remittances to make ends meet, not to mention the wellbeing of senders in the diaspora. Aid agencies should seek ways to mitigate these impacts. Further research would also clarify the role of remittances in the camp economy; for example, as seed capital for income-generating activities. Include Rohingya voices in decisions that affect them. Camp residents interviewed for this study explained their situations and concerns in great detail, but avenues for Rohingya voices to actually influence the policies and programs affecting them are few. Current calls for the localization of aid—the process by which aid resources and responsibility are transferred from international to national and local actors—represent an opportunity to involve Rohingya representatives and community-based organizations in program design and planning, and to promote a more participatory approach to implementation in general. Invest in sustainable development solutions for host communities. Current directives stipulate that a quarter of aid should be allocated to host communities. While this has been useful in the short term, it could stunt local markets by creating aid dependency in communities that have so far maintained a certain degree of self-sufficiency. Instead, investments should address the longer-term development needs of these communities, such as vocational training or sustainable-livelihood schemes supporting regional economic and environmental resilience. Improve access to financial services to mitigate debt. This study found that debt is prevalent in the camps. Bangladesh development actors possess valuable expertise Rohingya children gather near their shelters to watch the nightly news on a smartphone. 42

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