Nansen Initiative

The Nansen Initiative was a state-led, bottom-up consultative process launched in October 2012 by Switzerland and Norway to address a gap in international law: the absence of a framework protecting people displaced across international borders in the context of disasters and the adverse effects of climate change. The 1951 Refugee Convention does not generally cover such movements, and the Initiative sought to identify effective practices rather than negotiate a new treaty.

The Initiative was steered by a group of states including Australia, Bangladesh, Costa Rica, Germany, Kenya, Mexico, the Philippines, and Switzerland and Norway as co-chairs, with a secretariat based in Geneva. Between 2013 and 2015 it convened five regional intergovernmental consultations covering the Pacific, Central America, the Horn of Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, drawing on input from affected communities, civil society, UN agencies, and academic experts.

Its main output, the Agenda for the Protection of Cross-Border Displaced Persons in the Context of Disasters and Climate Change (the "Protection Agenda"), was endorsed by 109 states at a Global Consultation in Geneva in October 2015. The Agenda compiles effective practices in three areas: humanitarian protection measures for cross-border disaster-displaced persons, managing disaster displacement risk in the country of origin, and enhancing the use of migration as a form of adaptation.

The name honors Fridtjof Nansen, the Norwegian explorer and first League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, who created the "Nansen passport" for stateless people in 1922 and received the Nobel Peace Prize the same year.

In 2016 the Nansen Initiative was succeeded by the Platform on Disaster Displacement (PDD), which continues to implement the Protection Agenda. Its findings also informed references to disaster and climate displacement in the 2018 Global Compact for Migration and the 2018 Global Compact on Refugees, and the work of the UNFCCC Task Force on Displacement under the Warsaw International Mechanism.