Displaced Populations, Humanitarian Assistance and Hosts: A Framework for Analyzing Impacts on Semi-urban Households

SummaryThis paper presents a framework for understanding the impacts of civil war, displaced populations, and humanitarian assistance on host populations in semi-urban areas. Our model shows that under conditions of conflict where populations flow from rural to urban areas and food aid follows, changes in food, housing and labor markets result in changes to local prices which will potentially impoverish consumers but provide earning opportunities for property owners and suppliers of non-tradable goods, and that the price dynamics are likely to induce significant land use change. We combine satellite, price, aid delivery and population inflow data with qualitative interviews from Nyala, Darfur. The data confirm the hypotheses, and the paper discusses possible policy responses.