Remarks to the event hosted by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom: USCIRF Conversation on the Global Compact on Refugees.
Fuelled by ongoing persecution and conflict around the world, the global displacement situation continues to deteriorate. There were 82.4 million forcibly displaced people worldwide at the end of 2020, including 26.4 million refugees. 40% of them are children, and 68% of them come from just five countries (Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Myanmar).
In the rich world, where public discourse is often more interested in border protection than refugee protection, it is easy to overlook the fact that the vast majority — 86%, in fact — of the world’s refugees are in developing countries, which were facing enormous socioeconomic challenges before the refugees arrived, and who do not have the resources adequately to respond.
It is also important to put this so-called ‘refugee crisis’ into proper perspective.
This is a crisis for the people who have been displaced and separated from their families.
This is a crisis for a country like Lebanon, where one in every eight people is a refugee (compared with one in every 400 people worldwide).
But this should not be a crisis for the international system. When refugees make up just one quarter of one percent (0.25%) of the world’s population, it should not be beyond the capacity of the international community to ensure safety and dignity for those who are forced to flee, and to provide proper support to those who give them shelter.
This is where the Global Compact on Refugees comes in. The Global Compact is an important new tool to enhance the ways in which the international community responds to large refugee situations. It was developed in the wake of the large and tragic movements of refugees into Europe in 2015 and 2016, which many observers saw as being emblematic of an international regime that wasn’t providing sufficient support to the small number of (mostly developing) countries who host the majority of the world’s refugees.
Following a multilateral process of policy development and negotiation — which I was fortunate to work on for UNHCR — the Global Compact was overwhelmingly endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly in December 2018.
The Compact envisages a world where refugees live a life of independence and dignity; not stuck in camps and reliant on handouts, but supported to live, work and study as members of their host communities during their time of exile.
The Compact envisages a world where host countries and communities are not left to bear the vast majority of the costs of hosting refugees, but receive the support that they need from the international community.
The Compact envisages a world where more refugees are able to find a durable solution in a third country, such as through resettlement, family reunification or community sponsorship.
Most ambitiously, the Compact also calls for renewed efforts to establish the conditions in the refugees’ home countries that would enable them to return someday, in safety and dignity.
The Compact seeks to realise this vision through enhanced international cooperation, the idea being that the countries and communities that host large numbers of refugees can be supported in a manner that also expands refugees’ access to protection, rights and material assistance. To this end, the Compact calls for the engagement of a wide range of stakeholders in refugee responses, from NGOs and faith-based actors to the private sector, international financial institutions and, crucially, refugees themselves. It also promotes the so called ‘triple nexus’, where humanitarian, development and peace actors better coordinate their efforts and try to break down the silos that have existed previously.
The Global Compact establishes a range of mechanisms to bring this about, the centrepiece of which is the Global Refugee Forum, which brings the international community together every four years to announce pledges and to consider ways to further enhance the sharing of burdens and responsibilities.
After three years of implementing the Global Compact on Refugees, good progress has been made but much remains to be done. The recently released indicator report for the Global Compact concludes that bilateral aid to refugee situations is increasing, the number of actors engaged in refugee responses is growing, and refugees access to work and education is being enhanced. Unfortunately, however, responses are not keeping pace with needs, which are growing faster than the support required to address them. As a result, and driven heavily by the pandemic, two-thirds of refugees now live in poverty. Durable solutions also continue to be hard to come by: only one in every 100 refugees found a durable solution in 2020, and UNHCR estimates that 1.4 million refugees are in urgent need of resettlement.
I was recently commissioned (alongside another wonderful consultant, Catherine Osborn) by three of the world’s largest displacement focused NGOs — the Danish Refugee Council, the International Rescue Committee, and the Norwegian Refugee Council — to look at what kind of difference the Global Compact is making in specific country contexts.
Our report — entitled The Global Compact on Refugees Three Years On — finds that the picture is mixed. In Uganda, the approach that the Compact advocates has been embraced and is showing positive signs, but further support from the international community is required.
In Bangladesh, on the other hand, the government does not recognise the 1.1 million displaced Rohingya living within its borders as refugees, and so resists the application of the Compact and its promise of a dignified life in the community for the Rohingya. They thus remain in camps in Cox’s Bazar or, increasingly, in the purpose-built facility on the Bhasan Char island in the Bay of Bengal, which is frequently subject to cyclones and tidal waves.
Because of this positioning on the part of the government, other actors involved in the response — including the United Nations, donor countries and NGOs — rarely (if ever) use the Global Compact as a framework for their activities or advocacy in Bangladesh, despite its clear relevance.
Amongst major donors — including the United States, Denmark, and the European Union — there is plenty of support for and goodwill towards the Global Compact on Refugees from those in the foreign affairs and International Development communities, but not so much from those who work on domestic asylum policy. Throughout the research, we heard from government officials and NGOs about how their governments were undermining the Compact by being ‘constructive abroad but obstructive at home’.
Where do we go from here? There is an important role for the United States in ensuring that the Global Compact fulfils its promise.
Historically, of course, the United States has played a leading role when it comes to refugee protection; it has traditionally provided the majority of resettlement places available worldwide, and has made the largest financial contributions to refugee responses. Importantly, the refugee issue has traditionally been the subject of bipartisan consensus in Washington.
Whilst this consensus has frayed in recent years, the new administration is seeking to return the United States to its traditional leadership role in the international refugee regime, including by making some forward-leaning pledges at the stocktaking meeting for the Global Compact on Refugees in December 2021. The setting of a resettlement target of 125,000 re-establishes the United States as the leading resettlement country in the world, and the promise to develop a private sponsorship programme that allows communities to welcome more refugees will further this goal. Additional to support to development financing for refugee situations is also welcome, as are pledges to support meaningful refugee participation and to support refugees’ self-reliance.
But more can be done. One thing that is particularly needed is more creative refugee diplomacy, and the Rohingya situation would be an excellent place to start. Although the majority of Rohingya refugees are in Bangladesh, there are a further 150,000 elsewhere in the region, notably Malaysia.
During the course of my research into the current situation in Bangladesh, I was pleasantly surprised to hear measured optimism from a number of people working on the Rohingya response about the potential for a regional response to the Rohingya situation that brings together host governments, donor and resettlement states, NGOs and faith based groups, think tanks, academia, and Rohingya communities. Such a framework would aim to more fairly distribute responsibilities and generate improved protection outcomes for the Rohingya, in line with the Global Compact on Refugees. It could build on the Solidarity Approach for the People of Rakhine State, a diplomatic initiative launched by UNHCR in 2018.
Such a regional approach would need the buy-in of states in the region, and ASEAN would be an important forum in this regard, but the United States could also play an important role, as it has done in Southeast Asia before, when the comprehensive plan of action for indochinese refugees led to the resettlement of more than half a million Vietnamese refugees.
I will close by emphasising that it is also essential for a country like the United States to practise what it preaches when it comes to people seeking asylum at its own borders. Developing countries facing much larger refugee pressures look to being what is done in the rich world for inspiration, or otherwise.
Patrick CJ Wall 