Our Impact
Refugees International works with partners around the globe to create a more welcoming world for people seeking safety. For more than 45 years, our work has improved policies toward migration and displacement, bolstered humanitarian responses, helped build new protection pathways, and ensured that displaced people themselves have a seat at the policy table. Amid our ongoing advocacy efforts, here are some of our most recent advocacy wins.
LGBTQ+ Rights
In 2024, our joint advocacy with IRCA Casabierta, a refugee-led organization in Costa Rica, helped push the Costa Rican government to repeal a problematic decree that limited asylum seekers’ right to work. We also helped support a more favorable environment for LGBTQ+ asylum seekers and refugees to obtain formal jobs in Costa Rica through advocacy with the private sector and policymakers.
Pathways to Safety
In 2024, we worked closely with U.S. Senator Markey’s office to draft the Destination Reception Assistance Act, which would provide federal grants to local governments and nonprofit organizations providing reception services to asylum seekers, including workforce development, rental assistance, and legal services that promote the self-sufficiency, reduce costs from extended emergency shelter and maximize benefit to new arrivals and receiving communities alike.
The bill – a productive way forward on asylum that affirms shared federal and local commitment to dignified reception of those seeking safety and enables asylum seekers to integrate and contribute to the U.S. economy – was introduced in July with double-digit co-sponsors in the House and Senate and endorsements from city and county governments across the country.
Our intensive advocacy with the U.S. government on the need for protection pathways for displaced Haitians helped ensure Haiti’s inclusion in a humanitarian parole program that was announced in January 2023. We also successfully helped defend the program from attack in U.S. federal court. By July 2024, more than 200,000 Haitians had arrived through the program to be welcomed to safety in U.S. communities.
Sudan
In 2023 and throughout 2024, we have partnered closely with local Sudanese and diaspora groups to raise the alarm about the war in Sudan and its resulting displacement and humanitarian crisis, including a push for the U.S. government to make an atrocity determination and to appoint a special envoy to lead diplomatic efforts to end the war—actions which the Biden administration has now taken.
Shifting Power
In 2023 and 2024, our work to organize and elevate advocacy by local Ukrainian NGOs led to the formation of the Ukraine Humanitarian Alliance, a new advocacy network that has already helped unlock tens of millions of dollars for local Ukrainian partners.
Refugee Fellows Program
In 2023, we launched our Refugee Fellows Program, the first-of-its-kind fellowship designed to support refugee leaders worldwide who advocate for their communities. The inaugural cohort included six fellows from Venezuela, Sudan, Myanmar, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. The fellowship provided capacity building, access to policy venues and decision-makers, as well as support for fundraising efforts. Refugees international welcomed our second cohort in August 2024.
Climate Advocacy
In late 2023, our coalition advocacy at COP28 led to recognition of displaced groups and calls for addressing displacement, planned relocation, and migration in the context of climate change impacts in the first global stocktake of the Paris Agreement. Our continued engagement with the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage has centered the perspectives of affected communities and the need for direct access to funding for community-based organizations.
Rohingya Refugees
In 2023, we partnered with The Azadi Project, an NGO in India, to raise the alarm on mistreatment and arbitrary detention of Rohingya refugees there—leading directly to a legal challenge against those arbitrary detentions that is now pending before the Indian Supreme Court.
Syrian Refugees
In 2023, Refugees International partnered with Syrian-led NGOs in Turkiyë to push back against efforts by the Syrian government to close cross-border humanitarian aid to earthquake-impacted communities in Northwest Syria.
Since 2023 in Lebanon, the Lebanese Armed Forces have abusively deported Syrian refugees to unsafe conditions in Syria. Our high-level advocacy with the U.S. government in partnership with local and regional NGO partners has helped create pressure on the Lebanese Armed Forces to cease these illegal deportations and strengthen protection for Syrian refugees.
Palestine
The war in Gaza has pushed 2.2 million Palestinians and the remaining Israeli hostages into catastrophic humanitarian need. Our intensive advocacy with the U.S. government on the need for expanded humanitarian access, protection, and services has helped create pressure on Israel to take steps to improve the humanitarian environment inside Gaza.
Pakistan
In the summer of 2023, we spotlighted a diplomatic impasse between the United States and Pakistan that had derailed commitments to resettle Afghan activists – many of them prominent women – to the United States. Following our advocacy and engagement around potential solutions, the United States restarted processing these Afghans for resettlement, in line with our recommendations.
Every day, on every issue, our team works tirelessly to achieve successes like these. And crucially, we are working to do so in close and mutual partnership with refugees and local leaders themselves.
Featured Image: Refugees International stands alongside members of Sudanese Diaspora groups at the United for Sudan rally calling on President Biden to speak out on Sudan on April 15, 2024.
Take Action
Let Asylum Seekers Work
When asylum seekers work, our communities don’t just grow—they flourish. Tell your member of Congress to support the bi-partisan House Asylum Seeker Work Authorization Act (H.R. 1325) today.
