The number of people forcibly displaced worldwide continues to grow. At the end of 2019, the total population of concern (refugees, internally displaced, stateless and asylum seeking) in the Asia Pacific region stood at 9.5 million people. Responses and solutions to forced displacement remain grossly inadequate. Only 19 out of 52 states in the Asia Pacific region are signatories to the 1951 Refugee Convention and/or 1967 Protocol. In 2019, a meagre 0.4% of refugees in the region attained a durable solution.1 The capacity of the humanitarian system is also severely constrained. In 2019, the UN Refugee Agency received only 50% of its budget requirements for its operations in the Asia Pacific region. The result is that most refugees2 in our region live in protracted displacement situations with few protections and little formal support.

Despite these challenges, refugees are not passive recipients of humanitarian assistance, but are willing and active agents of change. Wherever there are refugees, there are people within refugee communities with knowledge, motivation, and capacities to find solutions to the diverse challenges they face. In many countries in the Asia Pacific region, it is refugee-led initiatives that provide displaced communities with some access to education, health, legal and social support. At the same time, refugee-led initiatives are chronically under-resourced and receive little support or recognition from other stakeholders for this important work. Importantly, refugee representatives are often left out of decision-making processes and are given little space to voice and contribute to the identification, design, and implementation of solutions. This is despite the 2018 Global Compact on Refugees acknowledging that ‘responses are most effective when they actively and meaningfully engage those they are intended to protect and assist.’ Although there has been recognition of the need for refugee participation for some time, the movement to include refugees in decision-making processes or as providers of protection has only recently gained momentum, and there are still significant gaps between the rhetoric of refugee participation and practices at a local, national, and regional level. To improve responses to forced displacement, we need refugees at the table and empowered to act.

APNOR’s vision is for all forcibly displaced persons in the Asia Pacific region to be able to access their human rights and full potential, for diverse refugee communities to be empowered and supported to respond to their own challenges and needs, and for refugees to be systematically included and represented in decisions affecting their own lives. Our vision is to build a regional network of initiatives led by refugees to bolster their ability to make meaningful contributions to decision-making processes. APNOR aims at advocating refugee agency, strengthening the collaboration between initiatives and other stakeholders to guarantee positive changes in the humanitarian system and the refugee response at the local, national, regional, and international level.

110,361 refugees returned home and 7,651 departed through facilitated resettlement program (UNHCR Global Trends 2019, p.76; UNHCR Projected Global Resettlement Needs 2021, p.66) 2 When we refer in this document to ‘refugees’, we refer to all persons of concern to the international refugee regime – refugees, asylum seekers, IDPs and stateless persons.