“PACCI GOES TO GENEVA”
December 15 - 17, 2025
Geneva, Switzerland
PACCI participated during the Global Refugee Forum (GRF) Progress Review 2025, held from the 15th – 17th of December 2025 in Geneva, Switzerland, marked a significant milestone in the implementation of the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR). Serving as a mid-term stocktaking exercise between the 2023 Global Refugee Forum and the next full Forum in 2027, the Progress Review assessed achievements, remaining gaps, and emerging priorities in international responsibility-sharing for refugees. The event brought together governments, United Nations (UN) agencies, international and local civil society organizations, faith-based groups, donors, and refugee-led organizations from across the globe.
A defining feature of the 2025 Progress Review was the strong and visible participation of refugees and persons with lived experience of displacement and statelessness. More than 200 refugees took part as speakers, panelists, moderators, organizers, and contributors to policy discussions, reflecting a growing recognition that refugee responses must be shaped with refugees, not merely for them. Supported by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and other partner organizations, refugee participation reflected diverse regional, gender, age, and displacement contexts, reinforcing the GCR’s commitment to inclusive and representative engagement.
Meaningful Refugee Participation (MRP) was embedded as a cross-cutting principle throughout the Forum. Refugee representatives contributed directly to plenary sessions, high-level panels, and thematic discussions, sharing firsthand perspectives on protection challenges, access to education and livelihoods, community inclusion, and durable solutions. These interventions highlighted persistent gaps between policy commitments and realities on the ground, while also showcasing refugee-led and community-based innovations that contribute to sustainable responses.
The Progress Review further reinforced that meaningful refugee participation is not symbolic, but essential to effective, accountable, and sustainable refugee responses. Refugee engagement improves the relevance and quality of policies and programs, strengthens accountability of states and humanitarian actors, promotes refugee-led solutions, and recognizes refugees as rightsholders, leaders, and agents of change. By centering lived experience, the Forum helped bridge global commitments with the everyday realities faced by displaced communities.
Parallel sessions and side events further emphasized the role of refugees as contributors to host communities and economies, particularly through access to education, skills development, and decent work. These discussions challenged narratives that frame refugees solely as beneficiaries of assistance, instead recognizing their potential as partners in development and social cohesion.
As the global refugee community looks ahead to the Global Refugee Forum 2027, the GRF Progress Review 2025 reaffirmed its overarching focus on building upon country-, regional-, and global-level stocktaking efforts to sustain momentum and assess progress in the implementation of pledges made under the Global Compact on Refugees. The Review underscored key priorities, including expanding support for refugees and host countries, advancing the implementation of GRF pledges through a multi-stakeholder framework, and directing collective action toward areas requiring further support. In this context, the Forum emphasized the centrality of meaningful refugee participation as a critical enabler of effective responsibility-sharing. The outcomes of the GRF demonstrated that the inclusion of refugees and refugee-led organizations, such as PACCI, contributes to more responsive, accountable, and sustainable refugee responses and strengthens the translation of global commitments into concrete action.
