Understanding the root causes of displacement: towards a comprehensive approach to prevention and solutions

This briefing paper released in advance of the UN Refugee Agency’s (UNHCR) eighth annual High Commissioner’s Dialogue on Protection Challenges seeks to help re-think displacement in the context of today’s crises. The paper underscores the key elements of results-based protection, including:

• A focus on “developing new partnerships across diverse sectors and mandates to enable us to document the multiple causes, patterns and impacts of displacement and find solutions that can be truly sustainable. These partnership need to be built on a common understanding of what drives displacement risk, how displacement comes about in different situations and which actors need to be mobilized in order to address it.” This reflects the key elements of results-based protection on the essential nature of a comprehensive, context-specific protection analysis as well as a multi-disciplinary strategy for multiple actors across levels, sectors, and disciplines.
• A call for stakeholders at the Dialogue to: Acknowledge that any response to displacement must be informed by a comprehensive and contextualized analysis of its drivers and their linkages”
• Recognition that the affected populations have an important role to play in verifying and validating data on drivers and triggers of displacement.
• The use of a comprehensive analysis to look at opportunities and roles for actors beyond the humanitarian system; design for the contributions of a much broader range of actors and approaches; and ensuring coordinated analysis and programming under a common framework.