The Global Refugee Regime and UN System-wide Reforms

WRC Research Paper No. 16

June 11, 2019

This paper considers how responsibility for ensuring refugee protection and access to solutions can be shared more reliably across the United Nations’ system, by examining entry points beyond traditional humanitarian actors (including peace and security actors in the United Nations), as well as the role states can play in supporting a broader response from the UN system. It draws upon a range of literature and concepts, including the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, offering a mapping and analysis of the proposed UN reforms within the humanitarian, development, financial, and peace and security sectors. It then considers how these reforms might be relevant to responsibility sharing in displacement situations and lays out some of the broader challenges to greater responsibility sharing. Finally, the paper provides recommendations for how to more fully engage these other actors — within the United Nations and beyond — to improve the prevention of, response to and resolution of displacement.

Part of Series

World Refugee Council Research Paper Series

Research papers are policy documents commissioned by the World Refugee Council from world-renowned experts to help inform the work of the Council and its final recommendations. The measures and concepts in these documents do not necessarily reflect the views of the World Refugee Council.

About the Author

Sarah Deardorff Miller is a senior fellow with Refugees International, and adjunct faculty for Columbia University and the University of London. She consults on issues of forced migration with non-governmental organizations, think tanks and academic institutions.