United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: Resettlement and Early Integration Consultant

Background

The IRC’s focus on crisis has led to its work with displaced populations in multiple contexts. The IRC currently provides urgent humanitarian assistance in high refugee-producing countries including Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and in countries currently hosting refugees including Greece, Pakistan, Kenya, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. The IRC also has extensive operational experience of, and policy expertise on, resettlement. We have resettled more than 370,000 people from 119 countries across the United States (US) over the past four decades.

The IRC’s policy and advocacy teams are concerned with finding and proposing solutions to an increasing global displacement crisis. The IRC understands that resettlement is not the only solution to the scale and urgency of the global refugee crisis, but it is one critical and operational pathway for providing desperate and vulnerable refugees with safety and a future. As political leaders look toward the UN General Assembly High-level Meeting on Refugees and Migrants, and President Obama’s Leaders’ Summit on the Global Refugee Crisis in September 2016, the global refugee crisis demands bold, practical and long-term solutions, of which resettlement must be part.

The deficiency of global solutions for refugees has become increasingly visible in Europe. As such, the European Union (EU) is revising and exploring new policy approaches to migration. In March 2016, the IRC released the report Pathways to Protection: Resettlement and Europe’s response to a global refugee crisis that called on European states to make a realistic long-term commitment to resettlement, resettling 108,000 refugees a year over five years.

Purpose

The IRC would like to build on its Pathways to Protection report by producing a second report that reflects upon existing European, US and Canadian resettlement policy and approaches to identify principles or elements of “good” resettlement and early integration that may be applicable to the EU context.

The report will provide useful policy content at a time when the EU is seeking to introduce a resettlement framework and re-define its current asylum and migration framework. The IRC will seek to use the report to influence EU institution and Member State policy makers.

Objectives

1. 
   

   To outline EU political and policy environment, including resettlement and early integration policy opportunities

   
   


2. 
   

   To identify existing European state (EU Member States, Norway, Iceland and Switzerland) approaches to resettlement, including numbers of refugees resettled, state policies on resettlement/private sponsorship, and major resettlement and early integration schemes.

   
   


3. 
   

   To identify approaches to resettlement in the US and Canada, including numbers of refugees resettled, state policies on resettlement/private sponsorship/blended visas, and major resettlement and early integration schemes.

   
   


4. 
   

   To identify possible principles and elements of resettlement a) policy b) approaches (in both Europe and US/Canada) and those which may be applicable to a cross-national European policy framework.

   
   

Key Stakeholders and Relationships

• Accountable to Mike Buckley and Anny Bhan


• Close working relationship with IRC United States Programs team, IRC policy and advocacy teams in London and Brussels


• External stakeholders engaged in European resettlement. May include European Resettlement Network, European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE), Migration Policy Institute (MPI), International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC)

Core Consulting Tasks

· Desk research/literature review

o Policy dimensions may include:

§ Legal status afforded

§ State led/private resettlement/blended visas

§ Criteria i.e. humanitarian/vulnerability vs. “employability”; state vs. refugee expectations/preferences

§ Processing mechanisms and engagement of UNHCR

§ National/cross-national coordination and management i.e. role of European Asylum Support Office

o Approaches/schemes may include:

§ Placement mechanisms

§ Early integration (i.e. access to services, housing, preparing receiving communities, language courses, education)

• Interviews with internal and external stakeholders


• Drafting the report

Key outputs

• A workplan submitted seven days after signing of the contract


• A written report approx. twelve pages in length – exact content to be agreed with the consultant

Timelines

• Deadline for expression of interest: 29 July 2016


• Signed contract : 4 August 2016


• Workplan submitted: 8 August 2016


• Draft report: 26 August 2016


• Comments by the IRC: 31 August 2016


• Final report: 2 September 2016