Description

The UN General Assembly endorsed the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) in December 2018. (Note that it also approved a separate Global Compact on Migration.) The GCR is the result of consultations with many stakeholders and pilot efforts at implementation in more than a dozen countries, many of them African. The GCR’s objectives are to enhance support to refugee-hosting states, the majority of whom are in the global South, through better collaboration between humanitarian and development actors, support for host communities, enhanced support for refugee self-reliance, and more efforts to find permanent solutions for refugees. With 85% of the world’s refugees in the global South, spending an average of 20 years as a refugee, and with the number of forcibly displaced persons in the world at the highest levels since World War Two, finding solutions for the world’s refugees could not be more timely. Canada played a significant leadership role in the GCR’s development.

Join the CIC National Capital Branch’s Africa Study Group at this event that will explore the challenges and opportunities for Canada in supporting the implementation of the GCR, especially in the African context, now that it is in place.

Speaker’s Biography

James Milner is Associate Professor of Political Science at Carleton and Project Director of LERRN: the Local Engagement Refugee Research Network, a partnership between researchers and civil society actors in Canada and developing countries, focused on supporting local actors who engage with the global refugee regime. He has worked on the global refugee regime, global refugee policy and the politics of asylum in the global South. In recent years, he has done field research in en Afrique et en Asie, and has presented his findings to stakeholders around the world. He has been a Consultant for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). He is the author of Refugees, the State and the Politics of Asylum in Africa (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), co-author (with Alexander Betts and Gil Loescher) of UNHCR: The Politics and Practice of Refugee Protection (Routledge, 2012), and co-editor of Protracted Refugee Situations: Political, Human Rights and Security Implications (UN University Press, 2008)

Registration

To register for this event please contact: Bruce Montador
Chair of the CIC National Capital Branch’s Africa Study Group
Email: bruce.montador@uottawa.ca