employment
SUPPORT
DRC MENA livelihoods learning programme 2017-2019
Danish Refugee Council
MENA Regional Office
14 Al Basra Street, Um Othaina
P.O Box 940289 Amman, 11194
Jordan
+962 6 55 36 303
www.drc.dk
Men work in a livelihoods programme in Sanad, Azraq Camp, Jordan. August 2017. Photo by: Louise Wateridge/ DRC
DECEMBER 2017
The Danish Refugee Council (DRC) is a humanitarian, non-
governmental, non-profit organisation founded in 1956 that works in
more than 40 countries throughout the world. DRC fulfils its mandate
by providing direct assistance to conflict – affected populations –
refugees, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and host communities
in the conflict areas of the world and by advocating on their behalf
internationally and in Denmark.
DRC MENA LIVELIHOODS LEARNING PROGRAMME 2017-2019

DRC began a three-year learning journey in 2017 in the Middle East region, aimed at better
understanding the roles that an international NGO can best play in supporting the livelihoods of
conflict- and displacement-affected people. DRC has started to face big strategic challenges by
building up an evidence base about how its projects are working and the impact that they are having.1

Final conclusions cannot be drawn at the end of the first year of the journey. However, DRC
believes that reflections stimulated by its own learning journey may be relevant to others – often
running similar interventions for supporting livelihoods, and facing similar challenges. This paper
on business support, and a companion paper on employment support, should be seen not as
recommendations for the sector, but rather as food for thought, containing as many questions as
they do suggestions for answers.

Introduction:
DRC’s employment support interventions in the Middle
East
Employment support provided by DRC in the region typically starts with a registration process
combined with individual counselling and/or group legal awareness sessions. Referrals to training
and/or open vacancies for internships or paid jobs are then facilitated. Training is short-term,
from a few days to 3 months maximum. It is focused on employability skills (e.g. language, CV
development, interview preparation, etc.) or on the development of technical skills (either through
formal vocational education or through private teachers and coaches). DRC subsidise internships
(up to USD 400 per month paid to the intern) and in some cases, supports job placements through
wage subsidies, temporary coverage of social security costs, payment of part or all costs associated
with obtaining a work permit. Protection monitoring, through checking on working conditions
and facilitating the dialogue between employers and employees, is also part of most employment
support projects.

Project duration is commonly 6 to 12 months, with a few projects lasting up to 18 months. On

average per project, DRC provides legal information to 1500 to 2500 people, individual counselling
to 250 to 500 people, training to 1500+ (employability) and 50-200 (technical) people. For
subsidised internships or job placements, DRC usually reached about 50 to 100 people per project.

Technical/implementation issues
Monitoring
Even when project monitoring has been comprehensive, little data has been available on
key questions which affect how programmes are designed and managed. In particular, more
information is needed about job retention over time (how many people stay for how long in
positions after a period of subsidised placement or training). Any meaningful analysis about what
impact can be expected for any given programme budget needs this information to understand
how to translate analysis of the cost-efficiency of placements (how much does it cost to match a
client with a placement?) into an understanding of cost-effectiveness (how much does it cost for
each person who is retained in a job and for how long?). A challenge is that this data cannot be
collected during the lifetime of a project, because the question of job retention may only arise as a
short-term project is ending, and its budget closed.

1 For more information and lessons about DRC’s learning journey, see www.drc.ngo/livelihood-learning- journey

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Our thinking so far:

• Where funding horizons are short-term, mechanisms have to be found for

programmes to incorporate longer-term monitoring beyond their own lifetimes.
If projects are treated more as stages in a multi-year programme, implementing
organisations can put M&E mechanisms in place to assess the programmes rather
than the projects.
• M&E works most usefully when M&E staff and project managers see their
relationship as one of service provider and ‘clients’ (the programmes), with
information being supplied according to demand. (This is different from a
relationship where M&E is gathering information by central management about
project implementation, e.g. for donor reporting.)

Market information
DRC has tried to ensure that decisions on investments in technical training and internships were based
on the best available knowledge of conditions of the employment market. Using (labour) market stud-
ies proved to be more difficult than anticipated: projects knew that it was important to understand
markets, but did not necessarily know what information they needed or how to incorporate it into
decisions making. Any general market study would not be specific enough or localised enough to be
useful, but it is not clear that project staff can ever acquire the knowledge they need of every poten-
tial employment sector – and understand likely future trends. However, the alternative cannot be to
provide training without regard to what employment opportunities markets are making available.

Our thinking so far:

• A way has to be found to become more market aware without hoping to acquire
unlimited information about markets. It may be possible to combine a better
general, more qualitative understanding of how certain markets work with much
less specific data. Efficient information networks for providing that overall ‘feel’ for
markets might mean more relationships with different kinds of people. Rather than
mainly looking to professionals in formal or official positions related to markets
or partner NGOs doing similar programming, this could mean spending more
time talking to displaced people who have found work, established businessmen,
business-mentors, people who work in sectors that clients show interest in, etc.
• Individuals usually manage their lives in market economies without formal market
studies. More reflection is now needed on what information exactly will be useful and
for which specific decisions. This reflection will also need to consider which decisions
are ultimately made by DRC and which by clients – and if informed decisions are going
to be made, who is responsible for being informed about the market.

Application system
The number of people whom DRC can ever potentially help is inevitably small in relation to the
number which needs assistance. Information systems (including word of mouth, and social media)
within displacement-affected communities have meant that the opportunities offered by projects
have been widely known, and there have been fewer complaints or misunderstandings about
selection procedures than might have been imagined. The selection process has thrown up instead
different challenges. It appears that in some countries at least, some refugees have felt it a shame
to request assistance from an INGO: paradoxically, these may be just the sort of people whom an
agency most wants to help. Less direct assistance, aimed at making it easier for them to find work
for themselves, might be more useful to them.

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Information collection was a heavy workload, for two reasons. Information was collected about all
applicants, and in some cases far more people applied than could ever have been helped. Secondly,
not all the information collected has been obviously useful, and it has been recognised that the
information given is not always accurate or truthful. The whole process of questioning and counselling
shapes the relationship and the set of expectations and responsibilities between the prospective
client and the aid agency, e.g. creating an expectation by the client that DRC would find them a job.
However, the interaction with clients was designed mainly by instrumental needs (collecting the
information that DRC needed, providing the information clients needed to engage with DRC, etc.),
rather than using the whole engagement to shape the relationship in a particular way.

Our thinking so far:

• More reflection will be given to the design of the interaction with clients and
prospective clients. The agency has to gain the information it needs to best help
applicants and clients, but this should be done in a way that reduces the data burden
on the organisation and which helps to create the relationship which is wanted,
especially regarding expectations, roles and responsibilities. As DRC reflects on the
role that it wishes to play in the lives of displacement-affected people (see below),
it may be possible too to consider how different interactions with clients could
create expectations and relationships that better fit with how DRC wishes to share
responsibilities with clients.
• A counselling process has become a standard part of all interactions between clients
and DRC, and which pathways they are helped to follow has been derived from this
process. DRC now wants to understand much better how much has counselling
helped in helping clients to know their best options, or helped DRC to understand
how best to help them. All people are not the same: so for which kinds of clients
does counselling make a difference to their outcomes?

Workload
Current modalities place a very heavy burden on agency staff. Just to find a reasonable number
of internship or employment openings requires knocking door-to-door to speak to possible
employers. At the other end is an equally intense effort to assess potential interns, because
DRC takes responsibility for matching their skills with employers’ needs. Although this burden
may reduce in future years if relationships with employers continue, this cannot be guaranteed,
especially because some employers resent or are suspicious of the degree of questioning that DRC
feels obliged to engage in, if clients are to be protected from potentially exploitative or abusive
situations. This is one factor that has contributed to limiting the number of clients that DRC has
been able to help, typically less than 100 per project.

Our thinking so far:

• The goal of helping displaced people into work remains important. Employment
support has offered people affected by displacement a chance to make connections
with employers and with that, a possible route into working life.
• A review of all the individual tasks which staff are currently performing and the time
which each one takes may offer clues to how ways of working can be modified to
reduce staff workload. This goes beyond a discussion of time management: the more
fundamental question about the role of an INGO, and which responsibilities it should take
on itself, will be critical to this discussion (see below on job quality and client protection.)

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Subsidies
Some employers have said that the referral of a client by an INGO was in itself enough for them
to agree to take on unknown people whom they would have otherwise considered a risk. In many
cases, though, employers’ hesitation to take on displaced people, or certain other population groups
affected by displacement, has been countered by the incentive of a financial subsidy by DRC, usually
for 2-3 months. This has encouraged some employers to give them a chance for a period, during
which clients can establish a relationship and hopefully longer-term work. Clients’ difficulties in taking
on positions have sometimes been addressed with direct payments, e.g. allowances for attending
training, or transport allowances. Setting the level of subsidies and payments is not simple. If set too
high, it may not only prove expensive (and so reduce the number of people who can be helped), but
prove counter-productive. If employers see the placement programme simply as an opportunity for
free short-term labour, they may see no incentive to retaining the client after the subsidy ends. The
agency’s need to meet its targets may result in no net impact if it creates a situation where employers
use the scheme to replace normal recruitment. Setting subsidies levels by reference to local wage
levels may not sit easily with the commitment to seeing people able to live at a minimum standard
through their work, where market rates are very low.

Our thinking so far:

• The learning so far has not indicated any obvious direction for tackling this difficult
question. Only two obvious recommendations have been drawn so far.
• Country teams need to be aware of the issue, and to be as explicit as they can
about the rationale for giving subsidies, for the level of those subsidies and the
assumptions that underpin that rationale. These can then be tested.
• We are intending to prioritise this issue to learning in the coming year, particularly
looking at job retention, employment pathways and employer behaviour.

Training
For many, training has played a critical role in facilitating job openings. However, designing and running
training is time consuming and expensive, and it is important to get it right. Including standard training
packages as a part of a placement programme may not always be optimal. Clients vary enormously in
their levels of skill and experience. Some only underwent training in order to obtain placements, which
was a waste of their time and of scarce aid resources.

In other countries, decisions have to be taken over whether or not training should lead to
qualifications, which some clients say they need to get jobs. Short-term aid programmes struggle to
offer courses leading to certification where these take one to two years. However, if such courses
leading to recognised qualifications are worthwhile, the effectiveness of aid programmes is being
limited by project length, which has often been determined by the aid bureaucracy rather than by
what is actually needed.

On the job training or one-to-one training has often proved to be the most appreciated – but it is also
the most expensive. The tension between the desire to help more people and the desire to maximise
the welfare of a given client group has not always been explicitly recognised and discussed.
Choosing which courses to offer is also challenging. It is easy to get sucked into following years of
previous aid programming, because these have shaped the expectations and aspirations of clients
as well as project staff and others. However, it is not clear if more imaginative courses would lead
to jobs, and if so which courses those are. A particular question lies over the kind of training that
would most benefit women. These questions form part of the puzzles discussed under market
information (above) and gender (below).

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More fundamentally, recruitment relies far more on personal connections than on objective criteria
such as qualifications. This makes it difficult to know in which circumstances helping people to a
qualification is the most effective way of helping them to obtain a job (See wasta, below).

Our thinking so far:

• The challenge for DRC is to streamline the application and counselling process and
yet at the same time to get better at responding to the individuality of each client.
Thought is needed about how to assess what training would really help and is wanted
by each individual.
• DRC already tries to use placements as internship-like opportunities, with a
training element. It may be that more emphasis can be put on this dimension of
placements and internships.
• Training courses are only one way of learning or developing skills. We should also
explore how we could facilitate clients to find their own ways of improving skills.

Work permits (country specific) and the informal economy

Permits often tie a refugee to an employer, but offer some protection to the refugee. Refugees
have to balance their need for flexibility with security, and the role of a work permit can be
ambiguous, where a freelance work permit is not offered. It has been found that there are
numerous, and often contradictory, reasons why a refugee may or may not want a permit.
However, an employer can have little incentive to apply for the permit. Not only does applying
involve financial and administrative costs, but where a work permit gives a refugee employment
rights, it may undermine the very reason why an employer was willing to take on a refugee, i.e. the
ability to pay them less, and offer them no benefits. (Any fines for employing illegal have usually
been passed on indirectly to the refugee.)

DRC is in a difficult position. Not only would it prefer to see refugees with work permits from
a protection perspective, but it would struggle to be associated with assisting people to work
illegally, even when most opportunities for refugees are in the informal sector.

Our thinking so far:

• It is very unclear how DRC can or should relate to the informal sector for refugees.
DRC can look to engage more with the informal sector for IDPs (e.g. in Iraq), and it may
learn more there about what people need to find opportunities in this sector.
• Much of this discussion will inevitably link to that on broader ways of working, e.g.
when DRC should work on direct placements for clients (for which it may retain
some legal responsibility) and when it would choose to adopt approaches that
more indirectly facilitate refugees to take advantage of opportunities they find for
themselves. This latter approach would leave DRC with less responsibility for outcomes
– which means also with less possibility of mitigating risks on behalf of clients.

Wider issues
Cost and coverage
Where livelihood assistance to refugees and others affected by displacement has grown out of
protection programming, it tends to maintain to some degree the paradigm of maximising the

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welfare of each individual client. This may be understandable, but it does not sit easily with an
objective of being most cost-effective in order to offer help to as many people as possible with given
resources. Simple metrics of “unit cost per client” may be dangerous (incentivising the targeting of
those easiest to help with token support), but it is also necessary for an NGO to know, and to think
about, how much it costs to find each client a job. Some explicit discussion is needed to decide what
cost per job would be considered an acceptable price for different client profiles. Such a discussion
should lead to some exploration of the possibility of alternative models for helping refugees and
other client groups to find employment. Ideally, there would be models that would offer much
greater cost-effectiveness, without compromising client safety, and without skewing targeting.

The cost/workload burden is one factor that has limited the coverage of current working models.
A second factor has been the limited number of opportunities offered by the local economy (and,
in some cases, the competition between organisations to find those opportunities for their own
clients). The scale of need demands that responses scale up significantly. However, NGOs do not
create jobs: at best, they can address some of the additional constraints that displaced people
face in finding jobs compared to their hosts. But if job or placement opportunities are simply not
available for scale-up, this raises a deeper question: how far is an NGO project addressing the
clients’ main constraint to employment? In order to answer this question, NGOs need a much
greater understanding of how people find, choose and succeed in obtaining opportunities outside
of aid programmes.

Targeting
Two big questions have been raised around targeting. One is the common targeting debate, how
far assistance should be targeted at those most in need, or who face the most obstacles in finding
work. Is it enough just to know that clients are unemployed and employable, because they should
have the right like everyone else to work to support their families? If a more difficult target group is
chosen, then more realistic expectations have to be set: pressure to deliver results is legitimate but
the results demanded have to match the rationale of the project.

The second question is how to balance assistance to refugees and host communities. Various
quotas or targets have been set, but the rationale behind them has been political, and not based
on relative need or even the relative appropriateness of a particular form of assistance. An
argument has been advanced that, because of legal issues, self-employment is better targeted
at refugees whilst employment support better suits host communities. This raises much deeper
questions about programming and ways of working though, that have yet to be explored in depth.
Current project models, even for giving support to host communities, are derived from refugee
assistance, aimed at addressing the specific additional constraints that displacement has brought
in finding work. If targeting should be more simply on poverty grounds, ignoring the displacement
status, then the rationale for this kind of programming is less clear. In other words, if there were
no refugee crisis, would the same employment support programming be considered justified or
appropriate in those same host communities? Governments may sometimes oblige agencies to
assist citizens, but which kinds of livelihood support would be most appropriate for this?

Gender
Most programmes have tried to ensure that both men and women received training and
opportunities for placements. On its own, though, this has not meant that projects were necessarily
gender appropriate. Some women could not continue with training because the atmosphere was
‘too male’; others were unwittingly given the burden of having to find male chaperones to spend
their time sitting with them during training. Many other women did not see work opportunities
as helpful to them at all, in a society where women are expected to marry when young and then
to devote themselves to the home. Although there is often a demand for female labour (e.g. in
hotels), this was in sectors considered not to be respectable by many.

Should an INGO accept a norm that employment and economic responsibility is for men, while
women take domestic responsibilities? An INGO has to be sensitive to cultural and religious norms,

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but there may also be ways in which to assist women who want to challenge some gender norms,
e.g. on what are considered male or female professions, or to help them to overcome some of the
constraints thrown up by such norms, e.g. limited freedom of movement. It is not clear exactly
what a gender sensitive employment support programme in the Middle East region ought to
look like. Presumably, in-depth discussions over time with women (from among the displaced
populations and the host communities) should help in developing some ideas.

Job quality and client protection

A major incentive for employers in taking on refugees is to find people to do jobs that are hard to
fill, i.e. difficult work, jobs of poor quality and for low pay. This is an economic reality for refugees
and migrants all over the world. This raises two serious questions. How far are refugees glad to take
any opportunity, knowing that it at least enables them to eat and is a first step on ladder, offering a
chance to move on to progressively better work? If this is the case, then NGOs should be measuring
their impact less by looking at job retention and the duration of placements and more on what
came next, understanding why refugees chose to take on an unpleasant job and why they then left.

The second question has been a running theme through much of the learning process: where does
responsibility lie? How far is it the agency’s job to do due diligence to ensure that it is not putting
a client into a potentially exploitative situation (e.g. where they are not paid their wages), and to
ensure that the working conditions are fair and the remuneration appropriate? Or could insisting
on minimum conditions of employment result in there being fewer opportunities made available,
which potentially some refugees would have preferred to nothing? It is not easy to strike a balance
between supporting the informed choice of a client so that they can take responsibility for their
own choices with the demand not to have put a client in harm’s way. Ultimately, progress will be
possible if ways can be found to empower displaced people to challenge and stand up to abuse,
and to collectively warn each other of potential abusers, but achieving these kinds of goal will
demand longer-term strategies and much more collaboration between aid agencies.

‘Wasta’ and social capital

Most employment in the countries where DRC has worked is found through connections and
relationships (‘wasta’) rather than through western models of objective, criteria-based recruitment
selection. This poses challenges for a project which, although wasta is obviously well understood by
the staff, is designed for a more western style employment environment. It raises questions about
approaches to training, if skills are ultimately secondary in gaining employment; it may limit the
interest of employers in their interns to the period of the subsidy, i.e. the clients may only be cheap
labour for unpleasant work, since real jobs are given to people the employers know.

However, taking on board wasta may also offer opportunities for interventions. An INGO can help
people acquire skills: can it also facilitate their acquisition of wasta or ‘social capital’? This may mean
finding placements for clients which are designed to help them build connections, or it may be
working with them to acquire social networks that enable them to find their own jobs. Although
working with wasta might challenge an INGO on issues around accountability and transparency, it
might be possible to frame this around building social capital for refugees (the positive meaning
in wasta), giving them greater power in negotiations, rather than simply as leveraging wasta in the
sense of nepotism. In order to see if this can be made to work, DRC will have to understand in much
greater detail how successful refugees have found work, how jobs are applied for and won, which
kinds of personal contact are useful in which ways – in short, the detailed mechanics of how wasta
works among refugees and in the societies where they are living.

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