Female Head of Household
Global Policy Tracker

What It Is

Across conflict and displacement settings, female-headed households and displaced single mothers are often treated as part of a broad “vulnerable populations” category. That makes it easy for the most common barriers they face to stay hidden in plain sight.

The Global FHH Policy Tracker is a country-by-country tool that monitors how laws, policies, and public systems shape the lived reality of displaced female-headed households, also known as single mothers, including refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs). It is built to answer practical questions:

What protections exist on paper?
What can women actually access in real life?
Where are the gaps, exclusions, and contradictions?
What reforms are realistic now?

The tracker is designed for policymakers, program teams, funders, advocates, researchers, and journalists who need a clear snapshot of what is helping, what is blocking, and where change is possible.

How The Tracker Works

Each country page includes: Status Chips

A quick “at-a-glance” summary using three chips:

Policy Environment: Enabling / Restrictive
Trajectory: Improving / Stalling / Regressive
Coverage: National / State / Pilot

24 indicators grouped into two sections:

Core Policy Risks 12 indicators
These capture common policy and systems barriers.

Policy Windows and Reforms 12 indicators
These capture opportunities, reforms, and policy openings that can improve access, safety, and stability.

Written in plain language and backed by sources, separating what policy says from what implementation looks like.

Methodology

Updated on a rolling basis as laws, policies, and program rules change, and as new, credible evidence becomes available.

Countries are included based on:

presence of conflict, insecurity, or disaster-linked displacement
scale and visibility of refugee and IDP populations
likelihood policy shifts are actively affecting households
geographic diversity and distinct displacement dynamics

Sources and Evidence

Country pages draw from a mix of:

national laws and policy documents
government program rules and eligibility
UN and NGO operational reporting
research and policy analysis
local partner input and structured notes

Three Status Chips and Twenty.four indicators:

Policy environment trends: expand access and protection or restrict it.
Trajectory reflects changes: improvement, stagnation, or rollback.
Coverage reflects: applied nationally, limited to sub-national jurisdictions, or confined to pilots and time-bound.
Limits and Integrity
This tracker is not a ranking of countries, and it is not a substitute for on-the-ground case management or protection assessments. It is a structured snapshot intended to support better questions and better decisions.

The Tracking Teams

Youth-Led Research Model

A core feature of this project is its research model. Country analysis is supported by students and early career professionals working in their own countries, with guidance from The Refugee Archive and external mentors. Most of our researchers join the project from affiliated universities located in developing countries. Others are recent graduates interested in developing policy and analysis research portfolios and experience.

This team demographic type strengthens local accuracy, builds accountability at home, and creates a practical training and portfolio pathway for emerging researchers.

Meet the teams on the FHH Policy Tracker country pages: