Updated October 2026: this post was first published in May 2017 to share the brief. We have expanded it with a summary drawn from the brief and talking points.
On the sidelines of the Somalia Conference in London on 11 May 2017, DFID, IGAD and the EU convened a ministerial meeting on how the international community could improve its collective response to refugees in the Horn and East of Africa. The New York Declaration of 2016 had agreed on the need for greater responsibility sharing in hosting and supporting refugees; the question was how to turn that into a clearer roadmap for countries and communities hosting refugees, covering asylum space, integrated access to services, inclusive economic opportunities and infrastructure. The meeting followed the March 2017 IGAD Summit, came ahead of the June Solidarity Summit in Uganda, and fed into discussions under the German G20 and Italian G7 presidencies and preparations for the UN General Assembly in September 2017. We prepared a brief and talking points for it.
The scale of displacement in 2017
According to the brief, at the end of March 2017 almost 13 million people were displaced in the region, including 4 million refugees, mostly from South Sudan and Somalia, and at least half of them were children. More than one million children had fled the violence in South Sudan, almost one in five of the country’s children. Uganda hosted 1.2 million refugees, the largest refugee population in Africa, more than 62 percent of them children, and in the last month of 2016 it took in more refugees than the total number of refugees and migrants who crossed the Mediterranean into Europe that year.
Our key messages
Displacement in the region is mostly protracted, and few refugees have any realistic prospect of a durable solution. Voluntary repatriation, local integration and resettlement are processes rather than solutions in themselves; the goal is (re)integration, which is why development actors have a central role to play. That in turn needs new ways for humanitarian and development actors to coordinate. The Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF) pilot must go beyond business as usual, and the Global Compact on Refugees should give member states a clear roadmap and a reason to act. In the spirit of the New York Declaration, ReDSS members committed to work together and to be held collectively accountable for what they promised.
Five commitments
Members committed to support the integration of displacement and durable solutions into national development plans and into peace negotiations and agreements; to develop national and regional solutions frameworks with common outcomes, joint analysis and better data, citing the IGAD Nairobi Plan of Action and the Somalia Durable Solutions Initiative as examples; to strengthen self-reliance through freedom of movement, the right to work and integrated programming for displaced and host communities, moving away from care and maintenance; to work in localised ways that build local ownership, relevance and social cohesion; and to invest in young people and in solutions in urban areas.
What we asked of the international community
The brief asked the international community to show solidarity with IGAD member states through responsibility sharing and higher resettlement quotas; to provide long-term, predictable political and financial support to countries and communities hosting displaced people; to extend the IGAD Nairobi Plan of Action to the South Sudanese refugee crisis; and to make sure the CRRF pilot went beyond business as usual and that the Global Compact on Refugees gave member states a clear roadmap.
A month later we developed these commitments further for UNHCR’s NGO consultations, in our brief on the CRRF process.
Read the full brief and talking points.
References
ReDSS (2017). Brief and talking points for the DFID, IGAD and EU ministerial meeting on supporting refugees and host communities, London, May 2017. Regional Durable Solutions Secretariat. https://www.regionaldss.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/ReDSS-Brief-London-Conference-May-2017.pdf
