Building Communities of Practice for Urban Refugees - Americas Regional Workshop Report

This paper is the third in a series of five reports on workshops designed to broadcast and replicate good practices for urban refugee programmes. The workshops are the result of the Building Communities of Practice for Urban Refugees project funded by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau for Population, Refugees, and Migration (BPRM). A workshop has taken place in each of the five geographic regions. In addition to the workshops, there will be a roundtable event in a particular city in each region.
The Building Communities of Practice for Urban Refugees Workshop in São Paulo hosted 37 participants (15 UNHCR staff, 22 partners) from 11 countries as well as three refugees. There were a total of 17 panels on urban refugee related topics including: residence and naturalisation, social protection initiatives, and cross-cultural and livelihoods programming, among others. The overall findings from the workshop’s good practice presentations are anchored in one simple concept: support, starting with the notion of supporting governments in their efforts. Governments across the region have committed to establishing more sophisticated reception and assistance mechanisms by strengthening coordination structures amongst different levels of government, with a special emphasis on the municipality, as well as to promote quality asylum procedures. UNHCR’s role in bolstering these efforts cannot be emphasized enough. This general goodwill amongst host governments in the Americas is evident in the inclusion of refugees and asylum-seekers in social protection schemes that promote their gradual integration. Achieving full legal integration is critical in this process and, to assist in this, many governments in recent years have begun introducing more flexible procedures that provide refugees access to national services. The panel of refugees only validated the need for such initiatives.