Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration Julieta Valls Noyes convened the second Senior Officials Meeting of the Resettlement Diplomacy Network (RDN) on the sidelines of the Global Refugee Forum in Geneva, Switzerland on Thursday, December 14, 2023. Today’s meeting built on progress made at the RDN’s ministerial meeting, chaired by Secretary Blinken at the U.N. General Assembly in September.
Government officials from Australia, Canada, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, and the United Kingdom, along with representatives of the European Commission, participated. The Governments of Brazil and Germany attended as observer states.
This meeting provided an opportunity for RDN members to reconvene at a senior level, reflect on the RDN’s work, and discuss priorities for 2024. The discussion focused on the RDN’s Emergency Coordination Platform, global emergency transit infrastructure, and strategic collaboration on shared priorities. The Emergency Coordination Platform has become a critical mechanism for states to coordinate and discuss emergent refugee crises, such as Afghans in need of resettlement.
At the Global Refugee Forum, as part of the multi-stakeholder pledge on resettlement, the United States committed to chairing and regularly convening the RDN at both the Senior Officials and Ministerial level in 2024 and beyond. The United States is committed to using the RDN for high-level strategic and diplomatic engagement to strengthen the global system, expand access to refugee resettlement and complementary pathways worldwide, and coordinate on emergency situations.
The United States launched the RDN in September 2022. The Refugee Hub and the Migration Policy Institute support the U.S. chairmanship of the RDN, as co-hosts of the RDN secretariat.
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