Updated October 2026: this post was first published in June 2017 to share the brief. We have expanded it with a summary drawn from the brief itself.
In June 2017, ahead of UNHCR’s annual consultations with NGOs, ReDSS members set out how they would support the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF), which was then being piloted in the region following the 2016 New York Declaration. The brief starts from the scale of the problem. According to its figures, at the end of May 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 South Sudan. Uganda alone hosted 1.2 million refugees, the largest refugee population in Africa, and in December 2016 it received more refugees than the total number of refugees and migrants who crossed the Mediterranean into Europe that year.
Why the CRRF had to change practice
Displacement in the region is mostly protracted. People have been displaced for years or decades, yet few have a realistic prospect of returning home, integrating locally or resettling elsewhere. The brief argues that structures and systems have to change so that agencies do more, and work better together, and that the CRRF pilots must move beyond business as usual. That requires political resolve, long-term investment and multi-sectoral programming grounded in both rights and needs.
What ReDSS members committed to
Members made four commitments. The first was to help bring displacement and durable solutions into national development plans, and into peace negotiations and agreements. The second was to develop national and regional refugee frameworks for joint accountability and analysis, with better data and less secondary displacement, taking the IGAD Nairobi Plan of Action as a model. The third was to strengthen self-reliance through freedom of movement and the right to work, using integrated programming for displaced and host communities, moving away from care and maintenance and involving the private sector. The fourth was to work in localised ways: engaging local actors, investing in local and national capacity, and putting accountability to displaced people at the centre.
What we asked of governments and donors
We asked governments to strengthen their capacity to lead and coordinate at national, regional and local levels; to involve national planning authorities and line ministries, not only refugee agencies; to include refugees and returnees in sectors such as health, education and governance; and to make sure the Global Compact on Refugees offered a clear roadmap for action. We asked donors and development partners for long-term, predictable political and financial support to host countries and communities, for multi-year, multi-sector financing in line with their Grand Bargain commitments, for joint funding mechanisms such as a multi-donor trust fund, and for higher resettlement quotas shared with African states.
How CRRF processes should work
For the CRRF itself, the brief proposed a secretariat in each pilot country, led by government and the UN Resident Coordinator’s office, with UN agencies, national and international NGOs, donors, the private sector and academia represented. It called for common criteria for mapping exercises and good-practice surveys, which differed from country to country; joint country frameworks that balance short-term results with longer-term strategies; engagement of local NGOs, community and faith-based organisations and cultural leaders; and safe, meaningful participation of displacement-affected communities in the decisions that affect them.
Country notes
The brief also set out where ReDSS was working. In Ethiopia we were about to start a solutions analysis of refugees who had lived in the country for 20 years or more, later published as Local integration focus: refugees in Ethiopia. In Tanzania we were finalising an analysis of local integration for the 1972 Burundian caseload. In Somalia, under government and UN Resident Coordinator leadership, joint solutions analyses were informing area-based action plans in areas of return, and the brief called for a separate CRRF secretariat under IGAD and the UNHCR Special Envoy. It also asked for the IGAD roadmap and Nairobi Plan of Action to be extended to the South Sudanese refugee crisis, and noted learning events held in Kampala and Nairobi.
Read the full brief.
References
ReDSS (2017). ReDSS brief on the CRRF process, UNHCR NGO consultations, June 2017. Regional Durable Solutions Secretariat. https://www.regionaldss.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/ReDSS-Brief-CRRF-process-UNHCR-June-2017-1.pdf
