A Global Broadband Plan for Refugees
There is increasing recognition that the world’s growing refugee population requires investments that go beyond emergency response and focus on long-term solutions that allow refugees to improve their lives. In today’s connected world, this should include initiatives that increase refugee access to broadband networks.
Access to mobile networks and the Internet can assist refugees in key ways, allowing them to be in touch with families and communities, remain safe in transit, support livelihoods, and deliver health and educational services.
A new Migration Policy Institute policy brief proposes a framework for a global broadband plan for refugees. Drawing from the authors’ experiences working with refugee relief, developing the U.S. national broadband plan, and analyzing the economics of broadband networks, the brief outlines ways to improve broadband connectivity for the world’s more than 21 million refugees. This would help meet a goal set by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for mobile and Internet connectivity for all refugees and the communities that host them.
Although there are individual efforts within the private sector and beyond to address refugee connectivity needs, these responses are unlikely to scale to meet the larger, long-term needs of refugee communities and host countries alike, write authors Blair Levin, Paul De Sa, and T. Alexander Aleinikoff.
“The key is … a series of targeted actions that create economic advantages for host countries, that lower the cost of deployment and access, and that take advantage of new technologies to provide essential services,” they write. “In light of the work that has already been done on national broadband plans, many of the necessary pieces of the puzzle are already on the table. Now is the time to put them together.”
KJ