Norwegian Dissemination and Communication Network on International Refugee Protection and the UN Global Compact on Refugees

"The Norwegian Dissemination and Coomunication Network (NORCOM) on International Refugee Protection and the UN Global Compact on Refugees" draws on the Horizon 2020-project "The Right to International Protection. A Pendulum between Globalization and Nativization? (PROTECT)". PROTECT is a research and innovation project which is led by the University of Bergen with the participation of 12 universities in Europe, Canada and South Africa. PROTECT's ambition is to assess how the UN's Global Compact on Refugees can be a window of opportunity to improve the international refugee regime. It focuses especially on the norms, governance mechanisms, and discourses that have served this purpose and asseses their transferability between countries. In this connection, Norway is a central international actor which can shape and contribute to the UN's and EU's efforts to develop a new inter-state collaboration and responsibility-sharing system to help the refugees in more effective ways. NORCOM's main objective is to disseminate results from PROTECT that are particularly relevant for Norway and that can be used by the Norwegian authorities, organizations, and citizens both to influence and contribute to the UN's and EU's refugee and asylum policies.

-

PROTECT-NORCOM aims to provide high-quality dissemination and communication of research-based knowledge on international refugee protection toward Norwegian stakeholders. The University of Bergen is leading PROTECT, an international research project which receives full funding from the EU's H-2020 Framework Programme. In compliance with the H2020 call, the target groups of PROTECT's planned dissemination and communication activities are global (UN, UNHCR, IOM, OHCHR) and regional (EU, AU, OAS) authorities as well as transnational non-state organizations. In order to facilitate exploitation of our findings in Norway, we propose additional, special measures: As a first measure, we will build a Norwegian dissemination and communication network on international refugee protection and the UN's Global Compact on Refugees. This network includes authorities, non-state organizations, and academics, who will come together in our activities to discuss our project results. Secondly, by funding travels and/or by live-streaming, we will facilitate the network members' participation to the main H2020-project's activities, including our Expert Fora, Policy Fora, Academic Fora, and Conferences, which are all high-level international events. This will enable the Norwegian stakeholders to better follow our results. Thirdly, we will communicate our relevant findings to Norwegian policy and governance actors, targeting especially the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Justice and Public Security, and Local Government and Modernization as well as local governments, political parties and non-state organizations by organizing three symposia, preparing three policy briefs, organizing a users conference, publishing a web-site, and devising social media pages/groups that target specially the Norwegian stakeholders. - Finally, we will disseminate our relevant findings to the Norwegian public through digital platforms using various textual and audiovisual means, including social media.