See bigger map

By Roger Zetter
Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford.

Each crisis presents major new challenges - modes of action, rights-based norms to guide interventions, protection issues for the forced migrants, accountability to beneficiaries and so on. These challenges are by no means unique to IOM. But they are particularly demanding for IOM given its distinctive role, in three respects: its mission to tackle the human mobility dimensions of humanitarian crises; its action at the epicentre of the forced displacement of highly vulnerable populations; and its response to the needs of all migrants.

Of course, humanitarian and human rights norms guide IOM’s operations; but IOM does not have an explicit international mandate in this context such as ICRC or UNHCR. As a result, it has often been open to the charge that it is an operationally-led, not normative-based, organisation. Yet, in the last couple of years or so, IOM has been developing its thinking, its principles and the means to respond to these challenges, guided by normative perspectives. Initiatives such as the Migrants Caught in Crisis and the Migration Crisis Operational Framework (MCOF) demonstrate how conceptual and operational needs are gradually being consolidated into a principled approach to tackle the dynamics of forced migration.

However, more remains to be done to establish a robust and coherent framework for principled humanitarian action.

To this end IOM has now embarked on the next stage of a pioneering process for an intergovernmental organisation.  IOM’s Humanitarian Policy initiative work is a timely one as the humanitarian regime is undergoing a period of major reconfiguration in which protection and rights, in the context of population mobility and forced migration, are central concerns.

Amongst the many components of the review are: Rights Up Front, Local2Global, the IASC Transformative Agenda as well as its ‘Whole System Review of the Centrality of Protection in Humanitarian Action’, urban refugees and IDPs, the post-2015 draft Development Goals (and the inclusion of migration among the goals) and, on the horizon, the World Humanitarian Summit. IOM’s initiative both reflects and will make a significant contribution to this wider reform agenda.

Even if they cannot be inviolable, clear and robust norms and principles are essential to guide intervention in today’s complex emergencies. The outcome of the IOM policy development will provide the organisation with a comprehensive framework, ensuring a much needed consistency and transparency of norms to guide its humanitarian interventions.