Making refugee participation meaningful has been at the forefront of discussions within the protection community. At the global level, refugee participation has increasingly become an important part of preparations for dialogues, policy fora, and convenings; national governments have begun to set up advisory boards and consultative mechanisms to better incorporate refugee perspectives and voices into decision-making. These developments are relatively new, however, and there has been little systematic evidence gathering or evaluation to determine whether these opportunities are truly meaningful and how effective they have been in terms of influencing policy and programming. 

As opportunities for participation proliferate, in particular in the run-up to the 2023 Global Refugee Forum, there is an opportunity to set the framework for evaluating future efforts at facilitating refugee participation. This would allow stakeholders to better understand the effectiveness of policies that result from meaningful engagement, as well as distinguish between tokenistic and meaningful participation. In this webinar, key stakeholders discuss what makes refugee engagement meaningful and how this links to improved policies, how meaningful participation can be evaluated, and what lessons learned should be implemented.

The conversation showcases findings from the publication Building Meaningful Refugee Participation into Protection Policymaking from the Beyond Territorial Asylum: Making Protection Work in a Bordered World initiative led by MPI and the Robert Bosch Stiftung.