A/HRC/32/35 including food production and processing, small scale manufacturing, debris and waste removal, re-establishing markets and stimulating local economies by encouraging local production and procurement. Vocational training was provided through entrepreneurship promotion activities, with a special focus on vulnerable groups, including female-headed households, persons with disabilities and young people.17 The monitoring and documentation of such programmes is necessary to ensure that they improve self-reliance in a sustainable way. 52. Although they require initial funds and resources, such projects can become selfsustaining and income-generating and may provide a stepping stone towards the local integration of internally displaced persons and help to rebuild local economies. UNDP notes that such projects can strengthen capacities to cope with the shocks and negative impacts of a crisis. Internally displaced persons may be able to move out of collective shelters into rented accommodation and reduce their reliance on humanitarian assistance, therefore allowing such assistance to be targeted elsewhere. They can contribute to building social cohesion and assisting local integration. Various social groups may be involved in common activities that can build a sense of community. They may strengthen the capacity of and empower local civil society partners to maintain projects and replicate them in different locations. Working with local partners helps to shift the focus of projects away from the distribution of aid towards the delivery of services and the building of local resilience, by helping people to enhance their positive coping mechanisms.18 53. A key message to States and the international community is that it is necessary to maintain and enhance attention to internally displaced persons beyond the realm of emergency humanitarian responses and to transition towards self-reliance as soon as possible, even in situations of protracted conflict in which achieving durable solutions is deemed impossible. The challenge remains to bridge the relief-to-development gap and ensure that development actors are engaged early on in crisis and displacement situations. Early recovery, resilience and livelihood initiatives envisage an early engagement and response by the development community at a stage when humanitarian partners are still fulfilling an essential role. 54. The potential of the Global Cluster on Early Recovery to help internally displaced persons move beyond aid dependency has yet to be fulfilled. The early recovery and livelihood sector is consistently neglected and underfunded. A Brookings Institution report19 found that, in three countries studied with protracted displacement, namely, Somalia, Colombia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the early recovery cluster was not active, despite obvious opportunities for early recovery programmes. The appropriate approach is to improve the incorporation at the very beginning of early recovery principles and programmes into other sectors, such as protection, food, shelter, health, education, and livelihoods, as this provides the impetus to achieving durable solutions. 55. A frequent challenge is to overcome the traditional relief-to-development gap, progress towards which is constrained by frequent severe funding shortfalls in the area of early recovery. An integrated approach involving humanitarian and development partners 17 18 19 See United Nations Development Programme, 365 Days of Resilience in Syria (2014). Available from http://www.sy.undp.org/content/syria/en/home/library/poverty/365-days-of-resilience-in-syria.html. Ibid. See Brookings-London School of Economics Project on Internal Displacement, Ten years after the humanitarian reform: how have IDPs fared?, p. 23 (Washington, D.C., 2014). Available from www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/ papers/2014/12/29-idp-humanitarian-reform-reports/introduction-to-final-report-idp-study-final.pdf. 13