Highlights
• In 2021, UNHCR will work to maintain the same levels of responsiveness, adaptability and flexibility in response to COVID-19, whilst strengthening resilience as staff and people of concern adjust to living and working with COVID-19 in the medium term. UNHCR published a supplementary appeal to respond to these needs.
• In a joint press release, IOM and UNHCR chiefs stressed that COVID-19 underlines the urgent need for universal health coverage that includes migrants, refugees and internally displaced and stateless people.
• In a recently published study, the World Bank and UNHCR estimate that 4.4 million people in host communities and 1.1 million refugees or internally displaced persons in Lebanon, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and three governorates in Jordan have been newly pushed into poverty by the pandemic.
• UNHCR and IOM jointly launched a USD 1.44 billion regional plan to respond to the growing needs of refugees and migrants from Venezuela and the communities hosting them. The onset of COVID-19 has dangerously strained national and local capacities across the region. Many refugees and migrants and their host communities now face a myriad of new challenges that worsen their already precarious conditions.

Source: UN High Commissioner for Refugees