Global South reflections on a routes-based approach to protection: Perspectives from Latin America and North Africa Webinar

Wednesday, December 11, 2024 from 9:00 am to 10:30 am

In-person event

Contact
LERRN, lerrn@carleton.ca

Google Calendar Apple Calendar Office Calendar

In June 2024, UNHCR proposed a “routes-based approach” to advance protection and solutions. This new approach is potentially a paradigm shift in humanitarian responses to migration because of how it restructures protection support from a siloed country-based to integrated routes-based programming. According to UNHCR, the approach offers “rights-based alternatives to externalization proposals and expulsion practices, while helping States to manage the challenges around irregular movements, including return, in line with their international obligations.” A stated goal is to better manage “mixed flows” by helping to alleviate global North asylum systems while encouraging expansion of legal pathways for migrants. A related goal is to reduce the threat and harm occurring along the routes.

While a whole-of-route approach is a step forward in the coordination of multilateral and multistakeholder responses to increased mixed flows towards the Global North, it also raises important questions from a Global South perspective.

This webinar will explore these perspectives by fostering a discussion between UNHCR and three IDRC Research Chairs based in two regions of the Global South most implicated in the development and implementation of this new approach: Latin America and North Africa.

The webinar will consider a series of related questions:

What is involved with a “routes-based approach” to protection and solutions?
How can localized knowledge from implicated regions of the Global South contribute to discussion of the route-based approach?
How might localized knowledge from the Global South challenge existing Gloibal North narratives about migration?
How can Global South research, knowledge systems, and networks contribute to the development of a route-based approach and its potential implementation?

Specific areas of Global South questioning include (a) whether the route-based approach is a viable new approach given Global North priorities relating to border management and outsourcing to third countries, which pushes the limits of the safe third-country concept; (b) challenging the distinction between refugees and migrants within the mixed flows given more expansive definitions of protection in the global South (e.g., OAU 1969 Convention, 1984 Cartagena Declaration), (c) the evolution of protection needs and claims as a result of the journey itself; and (d) the implications of bracketing migration routes to the Global North at the expense of South-South migration routes and associated programming needs.

Recognizing the important strategic moment for global displacement responses, this webinar seeks to contribute to the debate over how to craft and implement a routes-based approach by broadening our understanding of the routes-based programming to ensure that the preservation of rights-based approaches is balanced with increased relief in a way that serves the “mixed flows” of people from origin, asylum, transit and destination.