respondents reporting ‘not to have any household member currently working’ increased drastically from 44 per cent to 70 per cent between March and May 2020.52 With lockdowns in Lebanon implemented in the midst of a financial crisis, where there was already a dearth of job opportunities and increased numbers of people have accumulated debts, everyone is affected by the crisis, but for Syrian refugees, this is yet another crisis within the crisis. Daily wages have been devalued by the collapse of the Lebanese Lira and prices of basic goods have spiralled, while there have been reports of refugees facing difficulties withdrawing cash assistance due to bank restrictions.53 Inside some of the Palestinian camps, lockdown measures have largely reinforced pre-existing movement restrictions implemented for security reasons and the economic hardship induced by recent employment restrictions rules for foreigners (including Palestinian refugees) dating from June 2019. Post-lockdown, forcibly displaced populations may face discrimination in accessing the same livelihood opportunities as before the epidemic and a heightened risk of labour exploitation. 54 Food: Food prices have also increased exponentially in East Africa at the same time as stay-at-home orders have harmed peoples’ capacity to provide for themselves. In already economically-depressed and food insecure South Sudan, hungry people without access to land or other productive resources may be forced to reorganize their livelihoods dramatically or migrate in search of food, work or aid. 54 Recent reports indicate that refugees and IDPs in Lebanon and Iraq cope with recent financial difficulties by reducing food purchases and changing their food consumption.52 International aid: Restrictions on access to nearby markets have damaging consequences for people living in camps who are reliant on petty trade for income. While camps and settlements serve as a useful way to organise populations to deliver humanitarian aid, the chronic underfunding of the global humanitarian response system means that people living in camps rarely receive enough food or cash to meet their daily needs. Financing COVID-19 responses and maintaining commitments for ongoing humanitarian crises, including emergency relief for vulnerable people, has challenged most humanitarian actors and governments. Aid to South Sudanese refugee settlements in Uganda, for example, was reduced by 30% in April.55 Here, business women who can no longer sell goods in the market have been advised to ‘go back’ to agriculture. Uganda has a long history of constraining the repertoire of refugee survival strategies and expecting refugees to be self-reliant through farming, despite not providing refugees with enough land of sufficient quality to do so. Not only does this feel like a return to old ways of discussing refugee well-being, such advice is quite impractical given how swiftly both livelihoods and rations have been impacted. Government relief: The African Union has pointed out that most states have not considered the needs of migrants in their national COVID-19 responses.56 In Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia, refugees, asylumseekers and migrants have been left out of host governments’ vulnerability criteria for government-led food distributions.57 While UNHCR has concentrated their efforts on camps and settlements, emergency initiatives to distribute cash to urban refugees have been much slower and have achieved incomplete coverage, leaving many refugees stranded without food or drinkable water. KEY CONSIDERATIONS: COVID-19 AND FORCED DISPLACEMENT IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND EAST AFRICA Contact: a.wilkinson@ids.ac.uk 11