Multistakeholder Pledge: Skills-Based Complementary Pathways

Overview

• The pledge aims for 200,000 refugees arriving on labour mobility and education pathways within 5 years.
• Current leadership is through the Global Task Force on Third Country Education and the Global Task Force on Refugee Labour Mobility.
• Link to GCR Objectives 1 – Ease Pressure on Host Countries, 2 - Refugee Self-Reliance and 3 - Third Country Solutions.

Key Statistics

• A total of 96 pledges focused on Skills-Based Complementary Pathways from 78 unique entities.

• Regarding thematic pledging areas, there was an even split between education pathways (46) and labour mobility (46). Other overlapping pledging areas (with 6 linkages or more) are noted above and highlight areas for collaboration. Shown below, States (23) and Civil Society Organisations (20) are the main type of pledging entities.
   

  
  

• From a regional perspective, the majority of submitting entities were from the Americas (35) and Europe (25).
   

  

Highlighted Pledges

State Pledges

• Australia committed $2 million in funding to UNHCR & IOM to support refugees access to safe labour migration pathways. They also plan to expand their skilled labour refugee pilot, improve their free, online English program, scope education pathways, support travel documents, and explore a 'train to hire' model for refugees in Indo-Pacific host countries.
• Japan will provide more opportunities for refugee higher education in Japanese universities.
• Canada pledged to make the EMPP a permanent program by 2025, support for travel documents and to explore developing an educational pathway program.
• The US pledged 75 higher education institutes to admit at least 275 students through the Welcome Corps on Campus and to admit at least 300 refugees through the Welcome Corps at Work by 2027.
• Uruguay pledged on labour mobility while Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Paraguay pledged support towards complementary pathways.
• Italy will launch a labour mobility program (PUOI) to strengthen social-labour inclusion of migrants and refugees, including a specific quota of 750 working permits for refugees and stateless persons for the period 2023-2025.
• Ireland and Belgium pledged support of skills-based complementary pathways and noted continuation of the EU-Passworld and DT4E initiatives.
• Germany committed to step up efforts around refugee labour mobility, including data and research.

Education Pathway Pledges

• Pathways Japan in collaboration with a number of Japanese universities pledged 2.7 million to grow higher education scholarship opportunities for refugees in Japan.
• The Institute for International Education will offer 120 new scholarships over the next 4 years.
• Refugee Education UK and UK Higher Education Humanitarian Group both brought together a consortium of universities in the UK to pledge on multi-faceted action to support education pathways.
• Education Pathways Programs for UNICORE (in Italy), UNIV’R (in France), DIME (in Mexico), Jusoor/Bard College (in Germany) will continue.
• SAIH in Norway, TRSN, ISOW, De Salle Brothers in Philippines, Nexus 3.0, Jigsaw Education, Refugee-led Research Hub, the Shapiro Foundation, Korean Refugee Research Network and Duolingo pledged support towards enabling and supporting education pathways.

Labour Mobility Pledges

• Talent Beyond Boundaries will establish skilled immigration pathways in 27 countries, assist over 15,000 displaced persons in labour mobility, and train 24 partner organizations.
• World University Service of Canada aims to mobilize 100 additional employment opportunities and refer 400 refugees to economic mobility pathways.
• BRAC will enact an inclusive livelihood model to engage 30,000 Rohingya and 15,000 host community households in self-reliance activities in 2024-2027 to support labour mobility.
• HIAS will facilitate the registration of at least 2,000 displaced persons in Israel and Latin America to skills databases and refer at least 700 profiles to Canadian employers.
• RefugePoint will grow labour mobility programming to at least one new destination or departure country and grow partnerships with five civil society organisations.
• Other notable actors supporting refugee labour mobility include DERES (in Uruguay), the Niskanen Center, the Shapiro Foundation, Welcome Japan, Fragomen, SSI, and ICMPD.

Sports Pathways

• WUSC, the Yusra Mardini Foundation, Olympic Refugee Foundation, Courbertin meets Dunant, and the US Olympic & Paralympic Committee have made pledges that support sports pathways.

Matching

• The following States made pledges on issuance and/or improvements towards providing refugee travel documents, including Botswana, Burkina Faso, Chad, Chile, DRC, Ethiopia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, South Sudan, and Uganda while Australia, Canada, and New Zealand pledged technical support and partnership opportunities to build capacity for refugee travel documents.
• BRAC, US Welcome Corps Program and the Government of Australia have noted commitments to labour mobility for Rohingya refugees and/or refugees in Indo-Pacific host countries that could benefit from matching/collaboration.

Recap & Analysis

• From the first GRF in 2019 to GRF 2023, there was a strong and compelling increase in pledging around complementary pathways, indicating growing interest and support of third education opportunities and refugee labor mobility.
• At the GRF, the multi-stakeholder pledge on skills-based complementary pathways was introduced on Day 1 by Norimasa Orii from Pathways Japan. Additionally, there were side events focused on Refugee Labor Mobility and the Education 15x30 Roadmap.
• Collaboration is needed with stakeholders that have linkages with skills-based pathways, including economic inclusion and social protection, education, sports, and travel documents which need to be further explored.
• A majority of the pledges were submitted from States and actors in destination countries highlighting a need to link up with hosting countries and actors.

Next Steps And Follow-up Arrangements

The Global Task Force on Refugee Labour Mobility and the Global Task Force on Third Country Education Pathways will provide leadership on pledge implementation, including planning on next steps.