Our March Humanitarian Leader paper is ‘Rhetoric vs. reality: The meaningful participation of migrants in humanitarian action’, by Nicole Hoagland and Magdalena Arias Cubas, from the Red Cross Red Crescent Global Migration Lab.
"While there is ample rhetoric asserting that meaningful participation of migrants is essential to the design and delivery of humanitarian action, a real shift in power is yet to occur. The focus of many stakeholders – including States and humanitarian organisations - is often on the passive participation of migrants."
This article unpicks the gap between the theoretical commitments by the humanitarian sector for the meaningful participation of migrants in their work, and the lack of real action in practice. Drawing on an analysis of models of meaningful participation in the context of migration-related work in the humanitarian sector, as well as learnings from the Red Cross Red Crescent Global Migration Lab, this paper argues that concrete action on the meaningful participation of migrants requires systems change to break down persistent barriers in humanitarian policy and processes and enable a rebalance of power.
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