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Panel 1: Realizing protection and solutions within North America

This roundtable will be the first of two panels hosted by LERRN as part of the virtual global academic conference organized by UNHCR and GAIN for the 70th Anniversary of the UNHCR Statute. Panel 1 will examine the past, present and future of realizing protection and solutions within North America. It will consider challenges to protection (admission agreements, asylum access, detention, border practices) and solutions (integration, sponsorship, pathways to citizenship) in the North American context. It will consciously take a regional approach and include perspectives from Canada, the US and Mexico. It will consider differences and lessons from these various national contexts, from the perspective of state practice, civil society actors, the private sector, and sub-state actors, including cities and provinces or states.

In looking forward, the panel will consider future opportunities to realize protection and solutions in a hemispheric approach to displacement, including the potential to support regional approaches such as the MIRPS and identify examples of innovation that can be taken to scale. It will also reflect on the diversity of North American perspectives to understand how differences can be understood and approaches designed that speak to this diversity. This panel’s timing a day after Inauguration Day in the United States will provide a critical moment to consider how challenges can be addressed and future opportunities pursued.

The panel will conclude with a discussion of a future-looking agenda to advance protection and solutions within the North American context.

Co-moderators:
• Jennifer Hyndman, Associate Vice-President Research, York University
• Michaela Hynie, Professor, York University

Panelists:
• Alejandra Macías Delgadillo, Asylum Access Mexico
• Delphine Nakache, Associate Professor, University of Ottawa
• Eskinder Negash, President & CEO, USCRI

Jan 21, 2021 12:30 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)