High Commissioner's Dialogue 2017

The tenth annual High Commissioner’s Dialogue on Protection Challenges is set to take place on 12 and 13 December 2017 at the Palais des Nations in Geneva Switzerland.

With the adoption of the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants on 19 September 2016, the international community reaffirmed the importance of strengthening the response to large movements of refugees and migrants.

Together, the commitments agreed by Member States that apply to refugees reflect an understanding that protecting those who are forced to flee, and supporting the countries and communities that shelter them, are shared international responsibilities that must be borne more equitably and in a more predictable manner. With this in mind, the New York Declaration called upon UNHCR to initiate the application of a comprehensive refugee response framework (CRRF) and develop a global compact on refugees, which will be presented in 2018.

This year’s Dialogue on the theme of “Towards a global compact on refugees” will serve as a “stocktaking” to assess outcomes of the extensive consultations held with a wide range of actors in the course of 2017.  The Dialogue will bring together the lessons learned from the application of the CRRF in various contexts, paving the way towards the global compact on refugees.