Guillaume Binet, Agnès Dherbeys, Olivier Laban-Mattei, Stéphane Lagoutte, Pascal Maitre

The Covid-19 crisis has been a human tragedy and dealt a blow to the economy more serious than any other since World War II according to the World Bank. But the impact has been very different from country to country and depending on the individuals concerned, for those who were already vulnerable in the past have been more exposed when caught in the Covid storm.

Refugees and displaced persons forced to leave their countries because of violence and poverty are some of the most vulnerable people in the world, and any additional blow makes their plight even worse, taking them from a level of insecurity to a struggle for basic survival. The pandemic has closed borders, breaking bonds with their home countries, depriving them of the informal economy so essential to their subsistence living, and weakening even further their tenuous hold on health and access to basic requirements.