Impact case study database

The underpinning University of Oxford-led research provided a robust data platform for policy advocacy and design in Peru. In 2014, UNICEF asked Young Lives to synthesise the evidence in order to support an official legislative initiative on corporal punishment in schools that had encountered parliamentary resistance. This research evidence was used by UNICEF and local NGOs to lobby the Peruvian parliament with eventual success. The new law, passed in 2015, caused a significant reduction in violence experienced by children at school. This experience then generated a new UNICEF strategy to counter child violence in Italy, Vietnam and Zimbabwe as well as Peru itself; and important initiatives elsewhere in Latin America.

Providing reliable data for advocacy

The Peruvian Inter-Ministerial Committee on Child Protection (IMCCP) drove a focus on improving educational outcomes as a key priority for the Peruvian Government in 2015. Since two previous attempts to pass legislation on corporal punishment had failed, the IMCCP informed UNICEF that sound evidence that corporal punishment had a negative impact on schooling would be critically important for successful advocacy for legal change. From an interview with a local UNICEF Child Protection Specialist, the Young Lives Peru team knew that a proposal to ban corporal punishment had recently been debated in the Peruvian parliament but rejected on grounds of religious ethics and lack of evidence. The UNICEF Peru team knew the bill would soon be re-introduced for debate and approached the Peru Young Lives team to ask if there were any findings on corporal punishment that could be used for advocacy purposes [ C1].

Young Lives had conducted data collection during 2007-2014 in four communities across Peru with children and their caregivers. UNICEF Peru then disseminated an advocacy document, drafted by Young Lives using this data and analysis, showing the link between corporal punishment and negative educational outcomes [ C2]. The document states that it is based on “longitudinal data and analysis from the Young Lives study led by the University of Oxford”.

Lobbying the Peruvian parliament

This advocacy document was used by UNICEF in parliamentary lobbying of ministers who had previously voted against the corporal punishment ban; and the data were also cited by the Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations (the ministry responsible for national child protection policy and a key UNICEF government partner) in parliamentary speeches, as well as in parliamentary debates on the anti-corporal punishment legislation [ C1]. A Peruvian consortium of children’s NGOs also used these data in their individual meetings with ministers as part of further efforts to lobby the government to support passage of the law [ C1].

In December 2015 the Peruvian Congress finally passed a law to prohibit all corporal punishment of children [ C3]. UNICEF is convinced that the Young Lives data were crucial because it was the only study on the impact of corporal punishment on educational outcomes, noting that the Young Lives data and the Multi-Country Study on the Drivers of Violence Affecting Children project made a significant difference and enabled better, evidence-based drafting of the new legislation [ C1]. A subsequent formal evaluation of this achievement by UNICEF recognises Niños del Milenio as a key partner [ C4, p4] and the importance of the University of Oxford-led evidence in the advocacy campaign, citing statistics from R3 on the majority of children who experience corporal and other punishment at school and the educational consequences.

The impact of the legislation on child violence in Peru An independent impact assessment of the Drivers of Violence project commissioned by the University of Edinburgh shows that the Young Lives data had made the key difference. The assessment gathered data directly through interviews and questionnaires from 33 government officials, staff from UN agencies and key stakeholders; it also collected 13 testimonials and examined 36 pieces of evidence during in-country fieldwork. This assessment states that: “There was broad agreement among interviewees that the research influenced the change in law. Some people saw [a] direct link while others felt the study sped up the process. UNICEF staff said, ‘The study process empowered the political and technical [ministerial] teams to push more to make the law change the first priority’” [ C5, p24].

Comparing the data collected on violence against children in Peru’s National Survey on Social Relations before the law was passed in 2015 with data from the round conducted four years later shows the proportion of children aged 9-11 who had experienced physical and/or psychological violence in the school setting fell from 82% to 66% between the 2013 and 2019 surveys; the proportion of adolescents aged 12-17 experiencing such violence fell from 84% to 69% [ C6]. In 2019 the first age group totalled 1.7 million and the second 3.4 million, meaning that some 700,000 children may have become beneficiaries. The Peruvian Ministries of Education, of Social Protection, and of Women and Vulnerable Populations are currently all working with UNICEF to design capacity development programmes for individuals and organisations working with families and young people, to provide them with new tools of positive discipline and nurturing care [ C7, which cites R3].

As a result of the productive collaboration with Young Lives that led to this legal change, UNICEF Peru have for the first time signed an agreement to support the implementation of the next round of Young Lives data collection in Peru. UNICEF are also working with Young Lives to use existing data to review their work on violence, adolescents and community development [ C5]. Having seen the importance of Young Lives data in bringing about the legal change in Peru, UNICEF are also strengthening their use of academic research through Young Lives to continue to reduce violence against children in Peru [ C8].

Wider international impact

Young Lives was also tasked to write a background paper on children’s experiences of violence for the Global Learning Initiative (an international NGO consortium led by UNICEF) on preventing violence against children, which was featured heavily in the flagship report [ C9]. Young Lives researchers were also invited to a consultation of global experts on bullying and cyberbullying where they presented the UNICEF research. Their findings on types of bullying and who was most likely to experience it ( R4) were also cited by the UN Secretary-General in paragraph 19 of his report to the General Assembly on Bullying [ C10].

Further, the UNICEF study to which Young Lives data has been integral has informed National Action Plans for Children that are now being implemented in four countries (Italy, Peru, Vietnam and Zimbabwe). A UNICEF report on the Multi-Country Study states that: “national budget allocations were shifted in the course of the project to fund violence prevention research in all four countries [including Peru]; national action plans for children were updated and revised with the findings; and over 50 national actors have received hands-on training and have increased their capacity to analyse, interpret and synthesize quantitative and qualitative data” [ C11, p84] .

The change of law against corporal punishment in Peru was swiftly followed by a change of law in Paraguay, prohibiting the use of corporal punishment and any kind of cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of children, which UNICEF believe to have been a knock-on effect of the law change in Peru: “A concrete example of how Paraguay has been influenced by the work of the Peru study is that following the corporal punishment law in Peru, Paraguay also passed a law to prohibit corporal punishment in all settings in September 2016. According to an email from the UNICEF office in Paraguay, the study assisted with the ‘advocacy process’. In another email from July 2016, the UNICEF Paraguay Representative wrote that ‘they look forward to re-using the Peru report ( R6) as much as possible’” [ C5, p25].

Finally, the research has also had wider reach in Latin America as a whole, for example R3 was cited by the Global Initiative to end corporal punishment in their Peru country report [ C12] and by the Pan American Health Organization in a section on violence in a report on Health in the Americas [ C13].

The Diffusion of Innovation in Low Income Countries (DILIC) research project had found that increasing technological capabilities in LICs needed to be seen by researchers and policymakers as an essential means of development and not just as a desirable future outcome of development. The original research site was Ghana, so the first goal was to ensure policy and institutional changes there and elsewhere in Africa. The second planned step was to ensure a change of view in the wider development community concerned with industry and technology in LICs – particularly the United Nations agencies: “Oxford University set the foundation for a policy-focused project engaging policymakers and relevant stakeholders from the project’s inception. Policymakers in response accepted the project’s objectives and agreed to consider them in their work plan” [ C1]. The third stage – difficult to foresee initially but feasible after the second step – was to transform UN institutions themselves so as to permanently embed this new view of innovation in international development doctrine.

Building government capacity for innovation in Ghana and Africa

The Minister of Environment, Science and Technology in Ghana acknowledged the importance of the Ghana Innovation Survey programme [ R1, R2] for Ghanaian industrial strategy and implemented one of its main findings – that better links between university and industry were needed to facilitate innovation in Ghana – in a programme to strengthen university-industry collaboration [ C1], [ C2]. Later in 2014, at a DILIC dissemination conference held in Accra, the same minister called on African governments to “take innovation seriously and work to track innovation performances in their countries” and hoped that “the research activities of the DILIC Project would be mainstream[ed] into national programmes after the three-year lifespan” [ C3].

The second Ghana Innovation Survey [ R1, R2], undertaken in 2015, asked business about their collaborations with universities in the period 2013-14. The survey showed that collaboration with universities and research institutes had increased since 2012: 50 firms (out of a total of 495) were collaborating with universities, 19 more than in the previous survey. More than 60% of the collaboration was established proactively by a university, which was a significant change in comparison to the initial survey, covering the period 2010-12, when there was no collaboration initiated by a university [ R1: p110 and 114].

As the Director of CSIR-STEPRI acknowledged, the survey work undertaken by the team “filled a knowledge gap by examining in-depth the diffusion of innovation in Ghana” [ C1]. They also acknowledged how their staff had benefitted from data collection training: “the DILIC project enabled the Oxford University to enhance CSIR-STEPRI’s research and project implementation capacity. Certain basic research skills were improved” [ C1].

Following online training by the DILIC team, Ghanaian researchers from the CSIR-STEPRI team went on to train researchers in Tanzania to apply the innovation survey methodology [ C1]. The DILIC findings also informed government policies in Tanzania on the provision of training and subsidies to support innovation .

As a result of this work in Africa, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) approached DILIC for a methodology that was more appropriate for LICs, and used the survey instrument in Uganda: “WIPO had been approached by Uganda to do some study work on both formal and informal aspects of innovation in the agri-food processing sector …I then asked … whether we could work together on this, and use some of [DILIC’s] methods in survey collection of data. … The DILIC methodology was more appropriate for LICs than previously existing innovation survey methodologies … due to its specific focus on characteristics of the informal innovator and informal innovation clusters. As a result of this collaboration, in 2016, DILIC’s survey methodology (as first trialled in Ghana) was adopted by WIPO in the Uganda research process on innovation in the agro-processing sector. The data gathered in Uganda has gone on to benefit associated national innovation policy-making and evidence on how to apply these surveys in sectoral developing country contexts. This kind of data collection has transformed our thinking/practice as to how we think about innovation in developing countries. WIPO member countries took to these findings with great interest – more of this type of work is expected to do justice to novel and different form[s] of informal cluster innovation” [ C4].

Changing the understanding of innovation in LICs internationallyThe DILIC project findings thus transformed policymakers’ understanding of the potential for and barriers to innovation in LICs, and through UNCTAD (the lead UN organisation in this field) were disseminated across the developing world. According to the Director of the UNCTAD Technology Division, the project contributed to filling a “vacuum” in research on the innovation process in low-income countries with “valuable, coherent and consistent data” [ C5].

Professor Fu was invited to address the UN General Assembly meeting on “Fostering science, technology & innovation” in New York in 2014, which was a preparatory event for the third UN International Conference on Financing for Development, due to take place in Addis Ababa the following year. At this session, drawing on results from DILIC, Professor Fu provided an overview of the state of science, technology and innovation in developing countries. She noted that despite significant catching up with developed countries, progress had mostly been concentrated in middle-income countries. Gaps between low and middle-income developing countries were evident in the lower levels of patent applications, journal papers, and investments in research and development in the latter.

Grounded in her research, she noted that most of the innovations carried out in developing countries, for example in firms in Africa, were low-cost innovations ( R1), with a lack of finance as a critical constraint, particularly for larger-scale innovations. In terms of policy actions, she suggested that both public and private financing would be needed at the national level to provide different types of finance for different stages of the technology cycle. Education, training and stronger linkages and collaboration among firms and universities were also key [ C6]. Subsequently, the Economic Affairs Officer at the Financing for Development Office, United Nations Department of Social and Economic Affairs (UN DESA), wrote that “it was very evident that your intervention was most relevant and will certainly inform the upcoming intergovernmental process in the lead up to the Addis Ababa conference” [ C7]. This recognition was then reflected in an invitation to lead a symposium at the UN Development Cooperation Forum in April 2015 in South Korea. The third UN International Conference on Financing for Development took place in Addis Ababa in July 2015. The outcome was the “Addis Ababa Action Agenda”, which included “Science, technology, innovation and capacity-building” as one of seven “action areas” for UN Member States [ C8]. In this “action area”, the influence of the DILIC project can be seen clearly, for example: “We will encourage knowledge-sharing and the promotion of cooperation and partnerships between stakeholders, including between Governments, firms, academia” ( R2) [ C8].

The Addis Ababa Action Agenda fed into the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which was agreed at the UN Summit on Sustainable Development in New York in September 2015. Both UNCTAD (which had been a partner in DILIC) and UNIDO had already been pushing for innovation to be given a higher priority in the SDGs. Professor Fu’s involvement in the preparatory meetings before the New York summit meant that DILIC findings and recommendations contributed significantly to the formulation of SDG9 (“Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation”) and SDG17 (“global cooperation in a cumulative and collaborative way”).

Specifically, a Senior Economic Affairs Officer from the Division for Sustainable Development Goals states that, “Paragraph 70 of General Assembly resolution A/RES/70/1 (‘Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’) … is unusually detailed and considered most of the principles and recommendations arising from Prof. Xiaolan Fu’s DILIC project work [and] followed a fully multi-stakeholder format which constituted an entirely new working model for the UN. It goes without saying that General Assembly resolutions do not typically cite particular research projects, but the intellectual source can be traced directly to Prof. Xiaolan Fu’s research and engagement” [ C9].

Helping to develop UN mechanisms to support innovation

The Addis Ababa Action Agenda also called for the establishment of a Technology Facilitation Mechanism (TFM) in order to support the implementation of the SDGs. The TFM facilitates multi-stakeholder collaboration and partnerships through the sharing of information, experiences, best practices and policy advice among Member States, civil society, the private sector, the scientific community, United Nations entities and other stakeholders. Professor Fu was appointed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to the ten-person advisory team of the TFM [ C10] in 2015 and DILIC’s local partner in Ghana, Dr George Essegbey, in 2016. A key task of the TFM was to create an online platform for technology facilitation for innovators, policymakers and entrepreneurs from developing countries and in 2016, Professor Fu was elected leader of the online platform’s independent review working group. The resulting platform, 2030 Connect, was launched in July 2020 by the UN’s ICT Office [ C11].

In recognition of the importance of the Oxford research, Professor Fu was also appointed by the UN Secretary-General to the Governing Council of a new UN Technology Bank for Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in 2017. The new UN bank aims to implement the TFM by supporting technology access, acquisition and utilisation in LDCs and promoting research networking among their science, technology and innovation communities. The bank (hosted by Turkey) started work in 2018 with the statutory aim of achieving SDG Target 17.8 (“Fully operationalize the technology bank and science, technology and innovation capacity-building mechanism for least developed countries by 2017 and enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology”).

Overall, the significance of the contribution made by the DILIC project is well summed up by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs official: “Prof. Xiaolan Fu’s engagement and research project’s findings have greatly contributed to the emergence of a completely new and constructive discourse on science, technology and innovation at UN headquarters that has ultimately triggered policy and institutional change” [ C9].

OPHI’s mission is to build upon its innovative research on poverty measurement by encouraging the development and implementation of multidimensional poverty measures by national governments and international agencies, such as the United Nations, to enable more effective poverty reduction policies and programmes.

Since 2014, more than 20 countries have developed national Multidimensional Poverty Indices (MPIs) using the AF Method, including Afghanistan, Chile, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sierra Leone and Vietnam. The early implementation of MPIs had mainly been in Latin America, but the dissemination of their results led to greater interest and application in Asia and Africa after 2014 [ C1, C2]. These national MPIs are specific to the country contexts, using indicators and thresholds that are relevant for the understanding of poverty in those contexts. They are then used by national- or state-level governments to allocate budgets, target geographic regions, evaluate poverty reduction programmes, and report progress towards national development plans and the SDGs [ C3- C9].

The growth in national MPIs since 2014 is partly due to the activities of the Multidimensional Poverty Peer Network (MPPN), which was co-founded by OPHI and the governments of Mexico and Colombia in 2013 in response to the overwhelming demand from policymakers for information on multidimensional poverty measures. The MPPN is a South-South network of senior officials from 60 national governments and 20 international agencies (including the World Bank, World Food Programme, Organisation of America States, African Development Bank, OECD, the Commonwealth, and the Islamic Development bank, among others) that exchanges information and provides support and encouragement in the design and implementation of new poverty measures. It meets annually, conducts quarterly teleconferences, hosts high-level side events, organises thematic webinars, and publishes a magazine, Dimensions.

Countries typically approach either OPHI or a funder, who then approaches OPHI, to express their interest in developing a national MPI. Often this is because the representative from the country had attended an MPPN or other OPHI event or one of the Summer Schools that OPHI organises, both in Oxford and in partner countries. OPHI then discusses a workplan for the project with the country and funder. This workplan usually includes capacity building (both technical and conceptual training) as well as technical assistance to develop, analyse and validate the measure. Most national MPIs take a year or more from start to launch.

Widescale adoption of MPIs in Asia

The UNICEF Regional Social Policy Advisor for South Asia explains that “at the country level, OPHI’s work has led to the development of national Multidimensional Poverty Indices (MPI) in Afghanistan, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, with further measures soon to be launched in Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. A remarkable change in just a few years, as South Asia has gone from one country having a national measure of multidimensional poverty in 2015, to soon every country having such a measure. This expansion in South Asia is a testament to the level of interest in and usefulness for OPHI’s MPI method” [ C1].

In addition, the 11^th Malaysia National Development Plan for 2016-2020 stated that it would use an MPI to complement the income poverty line measurement to improve social mobility and reduce vulnerability to poverty [ C3].

Changing governmental understanding and planning concerning poverty in Africa

The Statistician-General of South Africa serves on the Steering Committee of the MPPN. As he writes: “Since I joined, I’ve seen a significant growth in engagement from countries in Africa, with Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Seychelles, Ghana, and Nigeria all launching national measures in recent years. … This expansion of work in Africa has shifted the regional understanding from thinking of poverty just as lack of money. Regional meetings now regularly feature discussions on multidimensional poverty, particularly applications of OPHI’s methodology. … It's been remarkable to see the swift change in thinking about poverty that has resulted from Dr Alkire and OPHI’s research” [ C2].

The Statistician-General also states that “the research of Dr Alkire and OPHI has had a tremendous impact on poverty measurement in South Africa and around the world. …. In 2014, Statistics South Africa launched the South African Multidimensional Poverty Index (SAMPI), which used the Alkire-Foster method of multidimensional poverty measurement developed at OPHI. … In 2017, when I became Statistician General of South Africa, I committed to updating the SAMPI with new data and encouraging its use for policymaking and national planning” [ C2]. The SAMPI uses census data, so will be updated once new census data is available.

The other leading country in the region, Nigeria, participated in the MPPN from its inaugural meeting in 2013, culminating in the launch of its own national MPI in 2018 as part of the publication of the National Human Development Report 2018 [ C4.1]. Following this, the Minister for Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development presented on the MPI at the 2019 UN General Assembly: “With the support of the President, we use the MPI data to foster governmental accountability to citizens by indicator tracking of ministerial performance”, and “In collaboration with the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning, we will use the MPI data to improve budget allocation by sector and state, with the aim of better targeting beneficiaries of the 100 Million Out of Poverty mandate” [ C4.2].

Reducing poverty in Latin America

Costa Rica launched its national MPI in 2015 and then announced a Presidential Decree establishing that national budget allocation must be aligned with the national MPI [ C5]. Carlos Alvarado Quesada, President of Costa Rica, explains: “I was Minister of Human Development and Social Inclusion and worked directly with OPHI to develop Costa Rica’s first official measure of multidimensional poverty in 2015. … The AF method enabled the construction of a method that paid special attention to traditionally marginalized populations… (and) helped Costa Rica to better address the difficulties they face to ensure that no one is left behind. … As president, I have continued to institutionalize the impact of the new paradigm brought about by Dr Alkire and her team. The Government not only coordinates all its poverty programs using the MPI, but the national budget allocation has to align to the MPI. The MPI is also used to evaluate poverty reduction programs … (which) led to a reduction of multidimensional poverty from 21.8% of households in 2015 to 19.1% in 2018 and 16.6 % in 2019. And these numbers represent thousands of people who now are not poor since we are now able to measure with the Alkire Foster method and use the resulting data for targeted poverty reduction” [ C6].

Panama’s Voluntary National Review for the UN on progress towards the SDGs in 2017 said that its national MPI is an “indispensable instrument for reporting on progress towards SDG 1 [Ending Poverty]”; ... “With this tool, the Government has initiated a process of reorienting social spending and adapting policies, plans, programmes and social interventions to reduce poverty in all its dimensions nationwide” [ C7].

In Colombia, government officials turned to the MPI as part of the rapid response to the COVID-19 pandemic, as demonstrated in a video interview with the national Head of Statistics [ C8]. Within the framework of an emergency decree, they used the indicators of their national MPI to target resources, providing cash transfers to vulnerable families who were not beneficiaries of existing cash transfer programmes and depended on informal work. They also used administrative records to link multidimensional poverty to health records to identify households with greater vulnerability, so mayors could target their public health programmes and implement a VAT refund strategy for vulnerable households [ C8].

Changing the definition and measurement of poverty internationally, at the UN and beyond

OPHI research has also influenced the poverty discourse of international agencies. The Director-General of Sustainable Development Policy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Spain, states: “I was overseeing … the whole SDG process as part of the Executive Office of the Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, for 4 years. In this position I have witnessed the crucial contribution OPHI has made… I cannot overstate the impact of the OPHI research on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. … Until 2014 the conversations on poverty were dominated by the World Bank and focused on income poverty. It was only by late 2014 that the discussion on poverty was broadened to include the many dimensions of poverty – not just income. There is no doubt in my mind, as an actor close to the decision-making process on the SDGs, that OPHI and the MPPN … were crucial on the definition of SDG1 as “ End poverty in all its forms everywhere” … (and) … Target 1.2 “ reduce by at least one half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions” … In my view, it is evident that this would not have happened without the intellectual background of OPHI’s research. … The MPI has had a direct impact on the lives of millions of poor people in countries as diverse as Chile, Nepal, Vietnam, and Sierra Leone. I am now engaged within the Spanish government in conversations that we expect will lead to Spain adopting a multidimensional measure of poverty” [ C9].

Many countries are now reporting either the global MPI, jointly calculated by OPHI and the UNDP’s Human Development Report Office – as in the case of Egypt [ C10] – or a national MPI, as in the case of Panama [ C5] – to track progress towards SDG indicator 1.2.2 (“Proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions”). As of the 2020 UN High-Level Political Forum, 40 countries have reported progress on multidimensional poverty reduction as part of their Voluntary National Reviews as well as feeding their data into the SDG indicator database.

A Regional Social Policy Advisor at UNICEF explains that “the Alkire-Foster Method has also changed how UNICEF measures child poverty. In addition to collaborating with OPHI on MPIs to look at multidimensional poverty among children, UNICEF has also developed its own methodology – the Multiple Overlapping Deprivation Analysis – that builds on this work, using a variation of the AF Method” [ C2].

The World Bank as an institution has traditionally focused on income poverty, but, due in part to OPHI research, it has begun to include multidimensional poverty in its conceptual framework. Alkire and Foster were appointed to the Advisory Board for the World Bank’s Commission on Global Poverty, led by Sir Tony Atkinson [ C11]. The commission’s report recommended that the World Bank should develop a “multidimensional poverty indicator based on the counting approach”, and specifically report the adjusted headcount ratio, based on the work of Alkire and Foster. The World Bank’s subsequent 2018 Poverty and Shared Prosperity report follows this recommendation by building a multidimensional poverty measure that uses the AF method, and states that: “The efforts of the UNDP, OPHI, and most governments build on influential research by Sabina Alkire and James Foster… The efforts here are also indebted to these previous efforts” [ C12, p.89].

The World Bank is also helping countries report their national MPIs for SDG indicator 1.2.2 to the SDG global indicators database by providing the technical infrastructure for reporting (essentially acting as a go-between between each country’s SDG focal point and the UN Statistics Division), further showing their newfound support for multidimensional poverty measures.

Official recognition in the UK for OPHI impact

OPHI’s work was recognised in the UK by a Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education in 2020, for “a unique framework for tackling global poverty”. The prizes “celebrate excellence, innovation and public benefit in work carried out by UK colleges and universities”. The prize website notes that “… OPHI’s creation of the MPI has brought about a more comprehensive view of poverty and is achieving impact at the highest levels of international governance” [ C13].

The results of the Uganda research ( R1, R2) had enormous impact within the region and eventually across the world. Influencing policymakers by changing their perception of refugees as potentially contributing to the local economy (rather than being a burden on taxpayers and aid agencies) had been the explicit objective of the research project, but the outcome far exceeded expectations. First, Betts built on the Uganda experience to influence policymakers in other countries through the United Nations as a forum, particularly in collaboration with the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Second, the King of Jordan became aware of the research and called on Betts to explain his results, and with the UK government initiated the ‘Jordan Compact’ to integrate Syrian refugees into his country. Third, this initiative in turn had significant international influence, leading to major World Bank funding for the implementation of the model, and Betts’ involvement in similar initiatives in Ethiopia, Colombia and Kenya.

Building on the Uganda experience to transform policymaking and capacity building in the region

Betts presented the Uganda findings ( R1, R2) at the UN General Assembly in September 2016 on a panel that included the Ugandan Minister for Refugees and the UN Secretary-General [ C1]. The Ugandan government also presented this research at the World Humanitarian Summit in May 2016. In response to the research, the Ugandan government worked with the UN High Commission for Refugees and the World Bank to develop a new multi-year livelihood strategy for refugees, including a focus on the market-based opportunities highlighted by the research, which will benefit over 100,000 refugees. This led to the UNHCR and the World Bank jointly publishing a 2016 report, titled An Assessment of Uganda's Progressive Approach to Refugee Management, in which one of the conclusions is that “[a] shift in the philosophy of refugee assistance is also crucial: refugees should be viewed as economic actors in charge of their destiny” [ C2, pxii] and the ten-page literature survey cites Betts and Omata 43 times.

The value of the research has been recognised by the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) of Uganda, noting that it has elevated their policymaking by providing a previously unavailable evidence base: “The research conducted by Oxford [on] the refugees’ economic activities has made a significant contribution to the development of the OPM and joint self-reliance programme [the multi-year livelihood strategy for refugees] in Uganda…The analysis and data provided by Oxford have become a significant underpinning of our policy making in the area of refugees’ self-reliance and have also enabled us to conduct evidence-based policy-making” [ C3].

In a statement from 2016, the effect of the research was also recognised and valued by the UNHCR, with the then-Deputy High Commissioner stating that the work has been transformative for the way in which policymakers understand the contribution refugees can make: “The Refugee Studies Centre’s work [on refugee economies in Uganda] has fundamentally altered the debate on the impact of refugees in countries of asylum, demonstrating the capacity of refugees for self-reliance and their ability to contribute to hosting societies” [ C4].

In July 2018, Betts co-organised a visit of World Economic Forum (WEF) Young Global Leaders (YGLs) to the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya. The group included government ministers, company CEOs, and journalists. The visit culminated in the creation of a new WEF initiative to support public-private partnership for refugees, launched in Davos at the WEF Annual Meeting, at which Betts presented his work. In July 2019, this in turn led to Betts co-organising the first ever Executive Leadership course in a refugee camp, in Kakuma, in collaboration with the WEF and UNHCR for 30 refugee entrepreneurs, who subsequently embarked on a virtual mentorship programme pairing them with YGLs from around the world [ C5].

The “Jordan Compact”

Aware of the Uganda research, the Jordanian royal family invited Betts and Professor Paul Collier (Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford; and at that time adviser to the Cabinet Office on fragile states) to explore ways to include Syrian refugees in Jordanian labour markets. Based on the Uganda research, Betts and Collier proposed allowing Syrians to work in Jordan’s existing Special Economic Zones (SEZs); previously they had not been permitted to take any employment. They presented the model to the Jordanian royal family, senior cabinet ministers, and relevant UN agencies in Amman in April 2015 and subsequently drafted a white paper for the Jordanian government (later published as an article in Foreign Affairs) [ C6].

In September 2015, King Abdullah presented the ideas in the white paper to then-UK Prime Minister David Cameron, and the model was adopted and developed by DFID, forming the basis of the so-called “Jordan Compact”, an agreement between the Jordanian government, the World Bank, and the European Union, reached in February 2016. The compact states that it “allow[s] Syrian refugees to apply for work permits both inside and outside of the zones…Syrian refugees will be allowed by the summer to formalise their existing businesses and to set up new, tax-generating businesses, including access to investor residencies, in accordance with the existing laws and regulations” [ C7].

The proposal by Betts and Collier, based on Bett’s original research [ R1 and R2] , is widely recognised in the NGO community as being a key “trigger” [ C8.1 p.2] for the compact, and also in the specialist media: an article from The New Humanitarian in July 2016 states that: “The use of [the King Hussein Bin Talal Development Area, one of the key zones under the compact], and SEZs more broadly, follows on from an influential proposal made last October by two Oxford University professors, Paul Collier and Alexander Betts. In it they pointed out that 60 percent of the world’s displaced were concentrated in just 10 haven countries, including Jordan. While granting citizenship to such large numbers was not currently feasible, the targeted use of SEZs might offer the right to work and transform them from a burden to an asset” [ C8.2]. In 2016, the European Commission agreed to grant Jordan market access to encourage firms to produce there, as recommended in the white paper [ C6] – its first ever refugee-related trade concession.

The Jordan Compact led to work permits being provided to over 180,000 Syrian refugees. IKEA and Walmart as well as Syrian companies have invested in the 18 special economic zones in which refugees are now employed. In just one example, in the Sahab Economic Zone, the Al Fayhaa Plastics Company employs 82 refugees among its 313 staff, with 40% of its sales being exports to the EU under the Jordan Compact.

Expanding international policy support for refugee economies

Jordan was the first case ever of the World Bank funding a middle-income country to host refugees. Soon afterwards, in 2016 the “Jordan model” was adopted by Ethiopia [ C9]. In fact, British backing for the “Ethiopian Jobs Compact” was Theresa May’s first foreign policy announcement as UK prime minister [ C10].

Betts’ research ( R1, R2, and work-in-progress research in Kenya later published as R3, R4) was presented to the World Bank by Collier, as he had formerly been the Bank’s Director of Research. The Bank subsequently created a new USD2,000,000,000 fund to support other refugee haven countries, initially 12 in Africa and two in Asia. Priority areas for the funding included to "promote refugee's welfare and inclusion in the host country's socio-economic structures" and support "formal labor force participation" [ C11]. The original RSC research in Uganda and the Jordan Compact formed the basis of a book for a general readership, Refuge, by Betts and Collier [ C12], which led to further invitations to work directly with governments around the world, including Denmark, Austria, Norway, and Colombia. The book sold over 10,000 copies; was named by the Economist as among the best books of 2017; was widely reviewed, including by the Times Literary Supplement, the Wall Street Journal, the Sunday Times and the Financial Times; and was shortlisted for the Estoril Global Issues Distinguished Book Prize 2019.

Given Betts’ expertise on migration in Africa and the Middle East and his pioneering work on refugee integration, he was invited to Colombia by the presidency in 2019 for advice on what lessons could be drawn from elsewhere in the world to help the country cope with the presence of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who had fled their own country. Betts gave presentations relating the Uganda, Syria and East Africa research to the Venezuelan/Colombian context [drawing on R1, R2, R3, R4 and R5] at the Presidential Palace to UN and donor agencies, as well as interviews and opinion pieces for the press. In particular Betts’ suggestion that the country convene a multi-stakeholder “solidarity summit” was taken up [ C13].

In October 2019, the European Commission convened an International Solidarity Summit on the Venezuelan Refugee and Migrant Crisis in Brussels, in collaboration with UNHCR and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). The event was attended by 120 delegations, including EU institutions and member states, the most affected Latin American and Caribbean countries, donor countries, UN agencies, the private sector, NGOs, civil society organisations and development actors. It focused on principles of solidarity such as access to asylum, combatting xenophobia, and the need for responsibility-sharing. Explicitly not a pledging conference, it nevertheless led to EUR120,000,000 of additional contributions from EU member states, plus EUR50,000,000 of additional EU funding [ C14].