The Global Compact on Refugees, an international agreement adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 2018, aimed to make the responsibility for helping refugees worldwide more equitable and predictable.

Three years on, and ahead of the first mid-term review of progress at a high-level meeting in December 2021, the International Rescue Committee in collaboration with Danish Refugee Council and Norwegian Refugee Council, have commissioned a report to assess progress on the Compact’s objectives and commitments.  The report – The Global Compact on Refugees Three Years On: Navigating barriers and maximising incentives in support of refugees and host countries – finds that lack of political will and leadership is challenging the achievement of more equitable and predictable responses to forced displacement. Developing countries continue to shoulder the bulk of the responsibility by hosting 86 per cent of the world’s refugees.

Top report recommendations:

  1. The international community must show stronger support for the Global Compact as a whole and urgently prioritise more equitable and predictable responsibility-sharing towards refugees before the next Global Refugee Forum in 2023. Donor governments must intensify their political and diplomatic efforts to support responsibility-sharing pledges made at the 2019 Global Refugee Forum. Host states must take a more consistent approach to ensure the Global Compact is being applied in all refugee-hosting contexts.
  2. Donor governments should take immediate steps to ensure responsibility-sharing towards refugees beyond foreign policy and international financing. Donor governments’ progress on the Global Compact on Refugees should also be assessed against their role in upholding international refugee protection at home, including by safeguarding the asylum space and supporting third country solutions.
  3. Existing resettlement targets globally are woefully insufficient, both substantively - to address massive protection needs - and symbolically - as a reasonable demonstration of solidarity and responsibility-sharing with countries that host the majority of refugees, even when accounting for COVID-19 setbacks. As a priority for 2022, governments should commit to raise their resettlement targets. UN agencies and civil society must work together to hold states accountable against a further erosion of resettlement commitments.

Other recommendations and report findings are available at these links:

The Global Compact on Refugees Three Years On: Navigating barriers and maximising incentives in support of refugees and host countries

Available documents & links