New UNHCR publication for municipalities across Europe seeks to galvanise existing efforts on refugee inclusion and integration

More municipalities across Europe than ever are hosting refugees. In a new brief, UNHCR brings together fresh insights and workable solutions on areas of pressing concern to municipal actors: Funding, Affordable Housing, Multistakeholder coordination on holistic integration responses and policies, effective population distribution, boosting the attractiveness of declining municipalities, and enhancing data on integration on inclusion.

While municipalities remain at the forefront of the refugee response, this brief outlines the essential role stakeholders across multiple sectors must play – as enablers, investors, and innovators – to enhance refugees’ access to rights and opportunities and maximize their potential to contribute to the future prosperity of towns and cities of Europe. 

The publication features:

• Recommendations, practical advice, and a synthesis of expert knowledge and policy advice based on long-term regional-level analysis and the on-the-ground daily work of UNHCR operations with governments, local businesses, other frontline local actors, and forcibly displaced and stateless people.
• A featured section on housing solutions, including a repository of scalable models/practices, and a selection of recent key research and guidance on fair and affordable housing for refugees and host populations alike.  
• Insights and recommendations for topics high on the agenda of municipal authorities and their key interlocutors across levels of government and society: access to funding for refugee inclusion and integration and inclusive urban development, boosting the refugee-integration potential of smaller and medium-sized cities, and many more.
• Essential guidance on integration policy and practice, informed by over a decade of UNHCR’s strategic engagement on refugee integration in Europe, including following peak 2015-16 arrivals, across subsequent ongoing refugee arrivals into Europe, and now with the process of socioeconomic inclusion of refugees from Ukraine.
• New promising practices on refugee inclusion and integration from Poland, Bulgaria, Italy, Cyprus, Moldova, Lithuania, Finland, Slovakia, and Romania. 

Interspersed throughout the brief are useful links to manuals, handbooks, and methodologies developed in collaboration with refugees, city administrators, integration practitioners, and local service providers, to bring energy, innovation, hands-on expertise, and a participatory and inclusive approach to the design of solutions.