January 11, 2018

The tenth annual High Commissioner’s Dialogue, which took place on 12 and 13 December 2017 at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, was dedicated to taking stock of progress made towards the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR). The GCR is an ongoing attempt by the UN to give emphasis to the principle that refugees are a shared responsibility of the international community, which should therefore be more equitably and predictably borne in the future. It is expected that the GCR will be finalized by the end of this year, as stated in the 16 September 2016 New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants. The conclusions of this dialogue will allow for the zero draft of the programme of action accompanying the GCR, which will be circulated for consultation among states in the coming weeks.

The two-day discussions also covered lessons learned with regard to the practical application of the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF) that UNCHR is leading in a series of countries, with a view to more effectively and comprehensively addressing challenges associated with hosting a large number of refugees. The RRI will take into account the discussions held in this forum to integrate the perspectives of the relevant stakeholders; for example, the implementation of a whole-of-society approach will be systematically incorporated into the RRI analytical framework. Moreover, as stated by Daniel Endres^[1] in the Dialogues, “greater predictability and transparency in burden- and responsibility-sharing is critical.” The RRI is aimed at mapping, assessing and monitoring countries’ response to refugees to better inform responsibility-sharing.

[1] Daniel Endres is the Director for Comprehensive Response in UNHCR, source: Remarks by Daniel Endres, Director for Comprehensive Responses, to the Special Session on lessons learned and good practices in applying the comprehensive refugee response framework