World Refugee Week & The 75 years of the Geneva Convention
This year’s World Refugee Week coincides with the 75th anniversary of the 1951 Refugee Convention, also known as the Geneva Convention[i]. The humanitarian system established in 1951 was designed as a top-down response mechanism, where decisions were made by international actors often far away from the realities of displacement. For more than six decades, despite many recorded successes in different crises across the globe, displacement has spiralled out of control, becoming one of the greatest threats to our civilization. Today, we face unprecedented human suffering, with ripple effects across societies, economies, and geopolitics.
The World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) in Istanbul on May 2016 sought to reshape humanitarian aid delivery and introduced the Grand Bargain, a commitment to make aid more efficient, transparent, and locally-driven. Later that year, the UN Summit for Refugees and Migrants in New York in September 2016 produced the New York Declaration, a global commitment to dignity, rights, and responsibility-sharing. This declaration laid the foundation for the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR), adopted in 2018, which remains a cornerstone of international refugee protection today.
Paragraph 34 of the GCR states: “Responses are most effective when they actively and meaningfully engage those they are intended to protect and assist.”
This recognition of refugees as key actors represents a paradigm shift, from a paternalistic, top-down model to a bottom-up approach that values refugee agency and leadership.
For decades, humanitarian responses treated refugees as passive recipients. Decisions about our lives, what we ate, wore, or how we lived, were made far away, often in Ney York or Geneva, without our input. As Mahatma Gandhi[ii] wisely said: “What you do for me, without me, you do against me.”
A striking example of the failure of top-down approaches was highlighted in a 2018 Guardian study: Mosquito nets distributed to combat malaria were being used for fishing, endangering ecosystems. Communities had not been consulted in project design. Had they been meaningfully included, the intervention might have budgeted for both mosquito nets and fishing nets, or with anything aligning better with local livelihoods. This illustrates how exclusion undermines effectiveness and sustainability.
In humanitarian work, as in many fields, translating pledges and policies into reality is fraught with challenges. Refugee inclusion in decision-making often risks tokenism, where presence in meetings does not translate into influence. True participation is not about being in the room; it is about holding power in the room. Refugees are the experts of their own challenges and know best what responses fit their needs.
As Dr. Ahmed Karadawi[iii] told refugees in Sudan in the 1980s: “Probably the first lesson would be, in order to achieve self sufficiency, NOT to think that UNHCR is our father and our mother.” His words remain relevant today, reminding us that self-reliance and agency must be central to humanitarian practice.
Since 2019, nearly 3,500 pledges have been announced at the Global Refugee Forum (GRF) and its Progress Reviews. Among them, the Meaningful Refugee Participation Pledge (MRP) and the Multistakeholder Pledge on Advancing Localization in Displacement and Statelessness Responses cut across all commitments, promoting right-based, community-driven partnerships. These pledges are not just symbolic; they represent a growing recognition that refugees must lead if responses are to be effective and lasting.
The humanitarian system today stands at a crossroads. The sharp and sudden funding cuts imposed by the US Administration, combined with the dissolution of USAID[iv] in January 2025, have caused severe disruption across the global humanitarian ecosystem, disturbances that continue to undermine the effectiveness of responses worldwide.
The 75th anniversary of the Refugee Convention should therefore not only be a moment of reflection but also a call to urgent action. It is crucial to move beyond rhetoric and symbolic gestures to ensure that refugees are not merely consulted but are genuinely empowered to shape the decisions that affect their lives. True reform means shifting from token participation to meaningful leadership, where displaced and stateless communities hold real power to influence policies.
When refugees lead, change lasts!
About the Author
Paul B.B Kithima is a transformational CEO with over 9 years of experience leading RLOs and 13+ years of humanitarian service. He is the CEO of Bondeko Refugee Livelihoods Center in Uganda and Co-lead of the Multi-Stakeholder Pledge on Localization in Geneva. With lived experience of forced displacement, Paul brings authenticity and unique insight to his leadership. As a global speaker and advocate for displaced and stateless persons, he champions Localization, Meaningful Refugee Participation in decision-making processes, financial inclusion, grassroots empowerment, and sustainable impact by mobilizing organizations and building strategic networks worldwide.
[i] The 1951 Convention was adopted by a United Nations Conference on the Status of Refugees and Stateless Persons, convened in Geneva in 1951. The convention was approved on 28 July 1951, and entered into force on 22 April 1954.
[ii] Mahatma Gandhi, born Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in 1869 in Porbandar, India, was a central figure in the Indian independence movement against British colonial rule, best known for pioneering the philosophy of nonviolent resistance, or satyagraha. After studying law in Britain, he moved to South Africa, where he began advocating for the rights of Indian immigrants subjected to discrimination, laying the foundation for his lifelong commitment to justice, equality, and peaceful resistance.
[iii] Ahmed Abdel-Wadoud Karadawi, (19 October 1945 – 20 November 1995), was born in Western Sudan. He joined the commission for refugees in Khartoum in 1970. He promoted the integration of refugees in host societies. His ideas affected aid policy across the globe. The seventies and eighties were crucial to African refugee policy, and his contribution forced a rethink of the role of refugees.
[iv] Founded in 1961, it was once the world’s largest foreign aid agency, but in 2025 it underwent major cutbacks, with its remaining functions transferred to the United States Department of State.