With more people displaced from their homes than ever before due to persecution, conflict, and environmental changes, there has never been a more critical moment for the legal community to join forces and work with refugees and other displaced people. The Global Refugee Forum (GRF) Legal Community Pledge harnesses the expertise, passion, and influence of legal professionals worldwide to drive meaningful change with and for displaced people globally and to ensure that refugee rights are upheld and strengthened.
First launched at the 2019 Global Refugee Forum (GRF), and reaffirmed at the 2023 GRF, this multi-stakeholder pledging initiative aims to unite the legal community around a shared goal of working with refugees and other forcibly displaced people to advance their access to rights, justice, and lasting solutions to their displacement.
So far, 118 legal and refugee rights actors have pledged one million hours of free legal assistance to displaced people and refugee rights organizations. Join us in this critical commitment to protecting refugee rights.
2023 Global Refugee Forum
PILnet and its delegation were in Geneva for the 2nd UNHCR Global Refugee Forum and presented the 2023 Legal Community Pledge. 118 legal and refugee rights actors pledged one million hours of free legal assistance to displaced people and refugee rights organizations.
What is the Pledge
With support from PILnet and the Core Group, this multi-stakeholder pledging initiative:
- Mobilizes organizational pledges by civil society and private sector stakeholders to provide services, resources, expertise, and policy solutions that facilitate access to rights, justice, and solutions for refugees and other displaced people.
- Builds an integrated legal community that works locally and globally to maximize resources and impact, supports the building of effective partnerships to address local needs, and centers the meaningful participation and leadership of refugees and other displaced people.
- Resources and supports the localization of legal practice and advocacy, including direct resourcing of host community and refugee-led legal initiatives and support for the development of local and regionally-led coordination efforts to increase collaboration, mutual-learning, and joint legal advocacy and strategy building.
Building on the success of the 2019 Pledge in fostering a more integrated global legal community, PILnet and the Pledge Core Group have leveraged pro bono hours and are actively engaged in 2023 GRF Legal Community Pledge thus far include:
- Co-design of a legal health check for Refugee-led organizations (RLOs)
- Refugee Rights Pro Bono Workshop for RLOs and NGOs
- Refugee Rights Pro Bono Pitching Roundtables in the UK & Europe
If you are interested in joining us in advancing access to rights, justice, and solutions for refugees, then please sign on to the 2023 GRF Legal Community Pledge and develop your own organizational pledge. To be included as a contribution to the multi-stakeholder GRF Legal Community Pledge, your pledge needs to be made via the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) Digital Platform. This is to support the tracking of commitments made as part of the GRF process. Please refer to the GCR step-by-step guide for more detailed instructions on how to submit your organizational pledge.
- Review the Pledging Guidance for further information and examples of potential organizational pledges.
- Once on the Digital Platform, at the top of the page click on the ‘Submit a pledge’ button. In the first page you will fill out the information of the submitting entity. On the second page, when asked to indicate if your pledge is in support of a multi-stakeholder pledge, please select ‘Yes’.
- A list of multi-stakeholder pledges will appear; to contribute towards the GRF Legal Community Pledge you will need to select ‘Protection – PILnet – 2023 Global Legal Community’.
- When asked to input the name of the pledge you are making, we suggest ‘Global Legal Community Pledge – [Your organization/firm’s name]’.
- When asked to input your pledge/s we would suggest that you provide the strategic focus area/s under which you wish to make your pledge, followed by your pledge e.g. ‘Legal Assistance for Refugee Led Organizations(RLOs) and Refugee Rights Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)’ followed by your pledge – [Law firm, corporation] commits an annual total of [number] pro bono towards organizational, financial and programmatic matters, to organizations that support forcibly displaced people, including refugee-led organizations’.
- Finally, you will be asked to provide a one-line impact statement. To align with the purpose of the Pledge, we would suggest you use “increased legal assistance for and with refugees, asylum-seekers, stateless people, and internally and other displaced people” and/or “systemic change to facilitate access to rights, justice and solutions”.You are however, welcome to be more specific about the type of displaced people you will be working with or the systemic change you aim to advance through your pledge.
Those who have signed the GRF Legal Community Pledge have effectively mobilized themselves in an unprecedented way to deliver essential legal services to refugees and others forcibly displaced, and to work collectively to increase access to justice for refugees. This includes responses to the crises in Afghanistan and Ukraine.
From 2020-2023, private sector signatories provided more than 656,364 pro bono hours to support the legal needs of those forcibly displaced, 28% more than they pledged.
