Navigating Discretion in Refugee Protection: How Humanitarian Organisations Can Make a Positive Impact?

This paper engages with questions of local-level stakeholder interactions that shape the ground-level conditions for refugee protection. In particular, it explores the potential of humanitarian negotiation approaches and tools in efforts to elicit favourable responses from local authorities in support of protection objectives.

The analysis is guided by two theory-based assumptions. First, local-level decision-makers enjoy varying degrees of discretion in the final implementation of asylum and refugee protection policies, depending on different factors, including institutional and individual motivations, objectives, interests or pressure from the stakeholder environment. The second assumption draws from the concept of humanitarian diplomacy and negotiation in which decision-makers can be influenced to the advantage of protection objectives through targeted negotiation, well-informed of the context, stakeholder interests and local power dynamics.

Using selected aspects of humanitarian negotiation as an analytical framework, the paper conceptualises the interactions between humanitarian actors and local authorities as a negotiation. It seeks to demonstrate how this perspective can help structure and strategize such interactions to navigate different interests, build relationships and achieve improved refugee protection outcomes at the local level.