17/02/2023, 00:17 Responding to the global refugee crisis | McKinsey & Company

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Responding to the global refugee

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17/02/2023, 00:17 Responding to the global refugee crisis | McKinsey & Company

SOCIAL IMPACT

April 6, 2016 ‑ More than 59 million people globally are classified by

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the United Nations as “forcibly displaced,” the highest number
since the Second World War. The conflict in Syria alone has
displaced at least 11 million people, around 4 million of whom have
taken refuge outside the country.

We’re working behind the scenes to support the responses of

governments, nongovernmental organizations, and not for profits in
many parts of the world. “This mass movement of people is more
than a passing news story—it’s a global phenomenon that will have
lasting effects,” says Khaled Rifai, a German-born, New York-based
partner with Syrian roots, who is coordinating our work on refugee
projects.

When the scale of the crisis in Syria started to become clear,

Markus Gstöttner, a consultant based in our London office, started
looking for ways McKinsey could help. He recalls, “After several
visits to the region and extensive research, it became clear that

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17/02/2023, 00:17 Responding to the global refugee crisis | McKinsey & Company

providing education for refugee children was an issue where our

strengths as an institution overlapped with needs on the ground.”

Today he leads a team of McKinsey volunteers on a project to

deliver schooling to some of the 500,000 Syrian children who are
refugees in neighboring Lebanon. The team, which includes Syrian
and Lebanese colleagues, is working in partnership with education
provider Bridge International Academies , local not for profit
Basmeh & Zeitooneh , and Vitol Foundation , the nonprofit arm of
the Dutch energy company. Working together, the group has
developed a tailored curriculum that can be delivered to students
by teachers using robust, low-cost tablets.

“Faced with this number of children, there simply aren’t enough

teachers available to deliver conventional schooling,” says Markus.
“The Bridge platform can be used by volunteers who wouldn’t
otherwise be able to teach. It provides structure and content right
down to the level of scripts for individual lessons.”

The model has been piloted with refugee children living on the
outskirts of Beirut, and the team hopes to reach around 1,500

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17/02/2023, 00:17 Responding to the global refugee crisis | McKinsey & Company

primary-school-age children directly by the end of this year. The

curriculum is open source, enabling other organizations to use it to
deliver education programs across Lebanon and eventually in other
countries too.

No less important, we’ve been working with the United Nations

Development Programme, the UK government, and others to
stimulate economic development in the region. In January, at the
World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, we chaired a
meeting of global business leaders hosted by UK Prime Minister
David Cameron and Queen Rania of Jordan. Our work paved the
way for a donor conference in February in London which resulted in
monetary pledges of over $10 billion—the largest sum ever pledged
on a single day.

Of course the impact of the Syrian crisis is being felt outside the
region too. European countries are struggling to deal with
hundreds of thousands of migrants seeking asylum from war or
opportunities for a more prosperous life. McKinsey teams are
working with federal and regional government agencies to
strengthen their capacity to respond.

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17/02/2023, 00:17 Responding to the global refugee crisis | McKinsey & Company

In the words of Kalle Bengtsson, a Stockholm-based partner who

leads our Public Sector Practice in Western Europe, “Our mission
is to serve our clients on their most challenging problems. For many
European governments right now there is no bigger issue than
balancing urgent humanitarian needs with the need to integrate
refugees and migrants into society.” 

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