Improving Stakeholder Coordination in Refugee Resettlement: A path to more effective, inclusive programmes
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Highlights
A new coordination framework for refugee resettlement calls for stronger ties among local, national, and international actors to fix gaps that undermine programme outcomes.
- Resettlement programmes struggled to grow due to COVID-19 disruptions, political shifts, and weak coordination among governments, civil society, and international actors.
- Gaps in local-national communication led to mismatched quotas, poor refugee placement, and service duplication or gaps in post-arrival integration support.
- Emergency responses to displacement from Afghanistan and Ukraine showed that active multilevel coordination can improve outcomes even under resource constraints.
Each year, refugee resettlement programs offer a path to safety for only a tiny share of people forced to flee their country amid persecution, war, or violence. Efforts to expand these programs have largely stalled, in part because they are operating in a context of multiple crises (ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic to large-scale displacement from countries such as Ukraine, Afghanistan, and Venezuela) that have created competing policy demands.
But another major factor that has constrained resettlement programs’ growth is the difficulty of effectively coordinating the work of the many stakeholders involved in these systems. This often includes different levels of government, civil-society and community actors, and international organizations, which frequently have different priorities, are involved at different points in the resettlement process, and may not be used to working together.
This report explores the diversity of stakeholders involved in refugee resettlement, and the importance of robust coordination at all stages of the process (from program design to predeparture planning and post-arrival support). It also examines what coordination mechanisms exist—or could be created—to organize the work of these many actors. The analysis draws on interviews with local, regional, national, and international stakeholders, primarily from Argentina, Finland, Germany, Spain, Sweden, and the United States
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
2 Resettlement Programs: State of Play
3 How Do Resettlement Partnerships Work and What Are Their Challenges?
A. Making Decisions on Admission Numbers and Placements
B. Making Predeparture Preparations
C. Providing Post-Arrival Support
D. Practical Limits to Multilevel Cooperation
4 Fostering More Inclusive and Effective Partnerships
A. Coordination around Program Design and Implementation
B. Coordination at the Pre-Arrival Stage to Anticipate and Address Capacity Challenges
C. Coordination around Post-Arrival Support
5 Conclusions and Recommendations
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