Abstract
The making and implementation of global policy are prominent areas of activity for the global refugee regime, with a specific focus on policy relating to the categories of vulnerable refugees. Recent collective efforts globally have highlighted the importance of meaningfully including refugees themselves; and a discursive shift away from the language of vulnerability towards that of empowerment in policy making, and humanitarian assistance. Despite this, efforts to implement these commitments have largely been unsuccessful, raising questions about how refugees are engaged in these processes, and in what ways the label of vulnerable continues to influence the making and implementation of global refugee policy. Using the case of Canada’s engagement with the global refugee regime, and with refugee women in particular, this article argues that the continued framing of refugee women as vulnerable has impeded progress, and that for transformative policy to be realized, refugee women must be seen as actors with capacity to participate, and must be included in all processes of policy making, implementation and evaluation. A feminist geopolitical framework is presented as a way to decenter states and institutions in favor of centering the individual embodied experiences of refugee women in global refugee policy making. By doing so, empowerment can be realized in policy and practice.
Highlights
The making and implementation of global policy are prominent areas of activity for the global refugee regime
The Global Compact on Refugees (GCR), which was affirmed by the United Nations General Assembly in 2018, highlights that “responses are most effective when they actively and meaningfully engage with those they are intended to protect and assist” (UNHCR 2018b)
The GCR calls for a multistakeholder approach, which requires greater refugee participation and empowerment, and the “inclusion of women, youth and persons with disabilities in key forums and processes” (UNHCR 2018b)
Summary
The making and implementation of global policy are prominent areas of activity for the global refugee regime. The GCR calls for a multistakeholder approach, which requires greater refugee participation and empowerment, and the “inclusion of women, youth and persons with disabilities in key forums and processes” (UNHCR 2018b) This emphasis on including refugee groups who have long been labelled as “vulnerable” signals a discursive shift towards a new model of making and implementing global refugee policy. Despite this progress at the global level, inherent assumptions relating to the vulnerability of refugees result in policies and programming that are created and implemented at the state and local level in top-down ways that are often stripped of context and focus on institutional requirements rather than individual need (Olivius 2016; Bradley et al 2019) This model continues to shape the way that a range of international actors, including the Government of Canada and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), approach the making and implementation of global policies in local contexts (Yıldız 2019; Pincock et al 2021). We can better understand how refugee women already participate (or not), which builds on, and contributes to the rich body of existing literature on participation across disciplines; and how policy makers can see refugee women’s formal inclusion as necessary part of the practical shift from “vulnerability” to “empowerment.”
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