Updated October 2026: this post was first published in December 2017 to share the brief. We have expanded it with a summary drawn from the brief itself.
In late 2017, as states negotiated the Programme of Action for the Global Compact on Refugees, a group of operational NGOs set out joint recommendations on durable solutions. Their starting point is that forced displacement violates human rights and undermines human dignity, and that ending it benefits societies and states as well as the people displaced. Durable solutions, the brief argues, are both a catalyst for development and a way of limiting the harm that prolonged displacement does. It draws on the authors’ experience as operational organisations, their engagement in global policy dialogue, and their work in countries piloting the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework and beyond.
The scale of the gap
The brief notes that only 741,000 refugees were supported to return or resettle in 2016, out of 22.5 million refugees worldwide, and that UNHCR had identified 1.2 million refugees in need of resettlement. Citing the World Bank (2017), it puts the average length of displacement at about ten years and notes that half of all refugees live in protracted displacement, often in fragile and conflict-affected host countries. Citing UNHCR (2017), it reports that 3.5 million refugee children were out of school. Against that backdrop, it asks member states to expand access to all three durable solutions and to make sure the solutions on offer are of high quality.
Protecting asylum as the basis for solutions
The first group of recommendations concerns asylum itself. The compact should affirm the prohibition of refoulement, with global guidance on how it applies and procedural safeguards for vulnerable groups. Responsibility for asylum should be shared by the international community, through principles for a binding responsibility-sharing mechanism adopted by UN member states. And the quality of asylum should be raised, by reaffirming the New York Declaration’s commitments on self-reliance and support to host communities, backed by standards and benchmarks for inclusion. The logic is that people who are safe, included and able to support themselves during displacement are better placed to reach a durable solution afterwards.
Return, resettlement and local integration
On return, the Programme of Action should promote voluntary and sustainable return with quality standards covering human rights, voluntariness, safety, dignity, return assistance, gradual return, collaboration with diaspora, and the prevention of future displacement. On third-country solutions, it should set targets for resettlement and complementary pathways, establish joint multi-year planning, and create a mechanism to give technical help to states building resettlement programmes. Complementary admission pathways should meet minimum protection safeguards, with priority for family reunification and targets for children. On local integration, the durable solutions section should keep the option open and draw on lessons from contexts where it has worked.
Participation and children
Two recommendations cut across all three solutions. The Programme of Action should set out mandatory ways for refugees and host communities to take part in the policy and programme decisions that affect them, rather than leaving participation to the discretion of each response. And it should include child-sensitive measures, since more than half of the world’s refugees are children: prioritising children in status determination and resettlement, making education available within the first month of displacement, and giving guidance to those caring for unaccompanied children.
After the compact
The UN General Assembly affirmed the Global Compact on Refugees in December 2018. The brief remains a record of what operational NGOs asked for at the drafting stage, and a benchmark for judging what the compact has delivered since.
Read the full policy brief.
References
Joint NGO recommendations on durable solutions for the Global Compact on Refugees’ Programme of Action (2017). Shared by the Regional Durable Solutions Secretariat. https://www.regionaldss.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NGO-4_policy-and-recommendations-for-PoA_Durable-solutions_FINAL.pdf
UNHCR (2018). The Global Compact on Refugees. https://www.unhcr.org/about-unhcr/overview/global-compact-refugees
