Contemporary states both fear and desire global governance of international migration, viewing it simultaneously as a necessity and an impossibility. They seek it, recognizing that optimal outcomes from international migration are beyond their reach as unilateral actors. They fear it because they know that other actors required for cooperation may have different and often incompatible goals. The research below examines the existing thin layer of multilateral governance (e.g. regional consultative processes) and discusses the purposes and possible forms for cooperation.
With global displacement at a post-World War II high, the international community made some advances on refugee protection in 2016, but there were also steps backward. The United Nations held the first-ever refugee summit and some countries, including the United States and Canada, increased their resettlement commitments. Meanwhile, conflict intensified in some hotspots and publics turned against refugees, as this Top 10 article explores.
2016 saw the emergence of a "whole-of-society" approach to the refugee crisis, with a number of new actors, including many from the private sector, engaging with humanitarian protection issues in creative ways. This engagement and the energy and diversity of these partners, in the tech sector and beyond, creates both opportunities and challenges for governments and more traditional civil-society organizations.
One month ago, world leaders gathered at the United Nations for a summit to discuss movements of refugees and migrants, however the absence of concrete commitments in the resulting New York Declaration disappointed many observers and the slow progress on multilateral cooperation around migration has particular salience for the European Union, since the arrival of more than 1 million asylum seekers to Europe in 2015. This panel brings officials together from a range of institutions mandated to consider the future of cooperation, whether bilaterally, regionally, or at the global level, and asks: What is possible, what is desirable, and what is likely?
Marking the release of All at Sea: The Policy Challenges of Rescue, Interception, and Long-Term Response to Maritime Migration, this book discussion explores the different facets of maritime migration and the challenges governments, civil society, the private sector, and international organizations face in tackling this issue together. Presenters discuss the overwhelming Mediterranean crisis and movements across the Bay of Bengal/Andaman Sea, the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden, in the Caribbean, and the waters around Australia; and the particular challenges for policymakers in each of these cases.
The movement of more than 1 million refugees across the Mediterranean in 2015 brought much-needed attention to the inadequacy of the global humanitarian system and starkly underlined the need for new approaches to protection. This policy brief examines the extraordinary series of refugee-related international summits and meetings convened in 2016, their accomplishments and limitations, and outlook for future action.
MPI experts discuss outcomes from the UN Summit for Refugees and Migrants, the Leaders Summit on Refugees, and related private-sector meetings and how these efforts may gain momentum to change international responses to the complex threats refugees and migrants face.
Back from a recent trip to the region, Human Rights Watch researchers discuss the situation of refugees at the Dadaab camp in Kenya and findings from on-the-ground interviews, along with recommendations for the Kenyan government and international community.
World leaders convened two summits in New York last week focusing on multilateral responses to the growing challenge of refugee crises and unmanaged migration flows, which have surged to the top of the agenda at the highest levels of government around the world. While score cards for these types of events are difficult to keep, it is clear that the summits offered reasons for both disappointment and hope.
Global Refugee Summits Offer Reasons for Both Disappointment and Hope