AHC opens fourth Convention Plus Forum

Briefing notes

AHC opens fourth Convention Plus Forum

This is a summary of what was said by UNHCR spokesperson Ron Redmond – to whom quoted text may be attributed – at today's press briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

20 May 2005 Also available in:

The Assistant High Commissioner, Kamel Morjane, is today presiding over the fourth Forum devoted to the "Convention Plus" initiative, launched by UNHCR back in 2003. The 68 member states of UNHCR's Executive Committee are all invited, along with 24 other states and a number of NGOs and other organizations.

The Convention Plus initiative aims to provide a more systematic and structured approach to finding lasting solutions to refugee situations, especially protracted refugee situations, through more effective means of inter-state cooperation and burden-sharing.

Today's Forum will focus primarily on the targeting of development assistance for the benefit of refugees, returnees and their host communities, and will seek to assess to what degree the widely-accepted ideas contained in Convention Plus are actually being put into practice by UNHCR itself, by states and by other actors. We will provide more information about this meeting in a web story later in the day.