Reflections on Protection, Migration, and Financing at UNGA 81.
By Lindsay Jenkins, Distinguished Fellow for Migration
High-Level Week at the 81st UN General Assembly (UNGA) arrived at a moment of strain for migration and displacement response. With AI, conflict, energy security, and climate change dominating the agenda, migration was rarely center stage. Yet across official UNGA sessions and side events, governments, UN agencies, civil society and investors made clear that the systems built to protect and support people on the move are under pressure from every direction, even as new openings for solutions take shape.
For the Americas, that tension is also an opportunity. The region is at once in flux and well placed to shape a more resilient response that benefits refugees, migrants, returnees, and the countries and economies that receive them. Getting there will require bringing new tools and new partners into the conversation, and making sure the people closest to these issues, including grassroots groups, have a real seat at the table.
Protection as a Principle, Control as a Priority
From official events across UNGA, differing visions emerged on migration in the 21st century and what tools best meet the moment. The week also marked the 75th anniversary of the 1951 Refugee Convention, the cornerstone of the global refugee protection framework and the foundation for international cooperation on solutions to displacement, which surfaced a related debate over whether and how the world can still deliver on each of these.
While governments’ messages at times shifted depending on the venue, overall, those that raised migration or refugees did so in terms of protection, contributions, or pathways. They called for strengthening regular migration channels to meet labor and demographic gaps and to uphold their humanitarian imperatives. Several countries reaffirmed their support for refugee protection and called for strengthening implementation of the Refugee Convention. A smaller but influential group, the United States and Chile among them, framed migration chiefly as a security matter, using UNGA as a platform to present it through a lens of destabilization and to call for increased border controls and other reforms to prevent “abuse” of asylum. That tension, between protection as a principle and control as a priority, ran through the entire week and reflects broader challenges facing governments across the Americas.
Colombia spoke to that challenge as a country of origin, transit, and destination. It recognized the right to seek asylum while stressing states’ authority to decide who receives that protection. It accused criminal networks of fostering and profiting from irregular migration, and questioned whether existing global agreements were broad enough to respond to the nature of migration and displacement today. And as the largest host country in the region, Colombia cautioned that current levels of migration and displacement could not be sustained over the medium term.
On the UNGA margins, advocates added their voices in support of the Refugee Convention and expressed concerns over the erosion of the rights of migrants and asylum seekers. Refugee-led organizations and civil society groups examined governments’ approaches to managing migration and asylum, from processing asylum claims abroad to third-country removal agreements and offshore “return hubs,” raising concerns over the legality, cost, and human impact of externalization policies. They also led a more forward-leaning discussion about the role of refugee protection, the importance of sharing that responsibility among countries, and the need to deliver solutions to displacement to secure the future of protection. And in raising this final theme, the groups hit on the topic that seemed to be a key point of convergence over the week.
Common Ground on Solutions, Different Ideas of Success
Across governments, UN agencies, and civil society, support emerged around focusing on solutions to displacement. UNHCR’s “50 by 35” vision provided a helpful frame, aiming to halve the number of refugees in long-term displacement who rely on humanitarian aid by 2035 by focusing on lasting solutions in both host countries and home countries. For host countries, the vision is to create conditions that allow refugees to work, support themselves financially, and contribute to their new communities. In countries of return, the focus is on conditions that allow people to return home with jobs and services waiting, giving them a stake in their future and ensuring that displacement does not become a cycle.
Over the course of the week, various countries of destination and return shared their efforts to deliver on solutions. Brazil held up its Operação Acolhida (Operation Welcome) to show how the government is including refugees in the workforce and public services at scale. Spain highlighted its 2026 extraordinary migrant regularization process, expected to give legal status to up to 500,000 people, many of them from Latin America, as a principled and practical way to extend protections while meeting labor and demographic gaps. Syria gathered the most attention regarding solutions for returnees. According to UNHCR, some 1.9 million internally displaced people and 1.8 million refugees have returned since the fall of the Assad regime. The government set out a “Syria without camps” vision for recovery built on infrastructure, services and livelihoods. Partners backed the vision while calling for protections for those returning.
Support for the “50 by 35” goal was broad but not always uniform in terms of priorities. Notably, the United States backed the vision “where it reflects a genuine pivot towards solutions and self-reliance,” but framed it almost entirely around helping refugees return home and pressing countries to accept their returned nationals. That position raises the question of whether convergence on the overall goal extends to all outcomes, and it matters for the Americas, a region that is both hosting millions of migrants and receiving growing numbers of returns and removals.
Delivering Solutions, Finding the Funding
Across these discussions, there was a sizable elephant in the room: delivering solutions to displacement requires money. For many low- and middle-income countries, including those in the Americas, the global migration and displacement response has historically relied heavily on international humanitarian and development cooperation. The upheaval in that system and contraction of its funding since 2025, instigated first by the United States but followed soon after by other major donors, has strained countries’ capacity for migration response and solutions to displacement.
This has hit hard in the Americas, where the United States had long been the largest donor to the regional displacement response before suspending most of that aid in 2025. Brazil warned that restrictive asylum policies and a severe funding crisis threaten the global protection system “precisely when needs are greater than ever,” and Panama expressed concern about diminished funding at a time of continued large-scale displacement from Venezuela. As host to 2.5 million Venezuelan migrants and refugees, Colombia cautioned that rising displacement alongside shrinking budgets for the agencies that manage it was a “recipe for disaster.”
Globally, these fiscal strains have brought to the fore additional tools and partners for displacement solutions, and for the humanitarian and development “reset” more broadly, particularly as it relates to funding and financing and the role of the private sector. While these are not new topics to displacement and migration contexts, key stakeholders have placed new urgency on figuring out how to make them work. At UNGA, the United Kingdom highlighted its focus on directing development finance to refugee-hosting countries, thereby lessening the fiscal impact on receiving countries and supporting refugee inclusion in national systems. The Islamic Development Bank spoke of its concessional and grant-based financing facilities, including the Global Islamic Fund for Refugees, as well as financing for education and skills development for displaced people. On the UNGA margins, the Refugee Investment Network pointed to refugees as economic catalysts in host countries and championed a refugee lens investment framework to help direct public and private capital toward displacement solutions.
Looking at the Americas, the Mayors Migration Council announced $3.5 million in grants from its Global Cities Fund for city-led projects related to economic opportunity, climate resilience, and inclusive sport, including in cities in Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay. Colombia was among five countries in which UNHCR indicated it would partner with the World Bank to direct financing for solutions as part of its “50 by 35” agenda. The agency also highlighted its partnerships with the Mexican government and private sector for refugee job placement, enabling tens of thousands of refugees to rebuild their lives while filling critical labor gaps.
Capital in the Region, Connections Still Missing
Beyond these voices, other key financing actors from the Americas were less vocal on financing for migration and displacement during UNGA week. Some have significant direct expertise and investments in this area but did not use the week to showcase that work. This includes the region’s main development banks, which have disbursed billions toward migration-related efforts in the region.
Others presented funding and finance efforts that were relevant to the region’s displacement solutions, but did not yet explicitly identify them as such. For instance, during a broader event on the future of impact investing in Latin America, leaders from philanthropy, private capital, and development finance touched on migration and displacement as shaping the region’s impact investment landscape, though they did not address specific deals targeting solutions. CAF (Development Bank of Latin America) shared its recently established fund for recovery and reconstruction in Venezuela, and philanthropic donors discussed strategies to support and invest in similar efforts. Each is a chance to connect existing capital to migration response and displacement solutions, and to give displaced people a stake in them.
Notably missing voices from financing-focused migration and displacement discussions during the week were grassroots groups from the Americas. These are experts in the realities of their communities, what and where the needs and opportunities are, and how solutions can best reach them. Giving these groups the connections and resources to help design both the solutions and the financing behind them is how solutions to displacement become durable.
Looking Ahead
Stepping back, UNGA left a mixed, if cautiously hopeful, impression of the state of migration and displacement response. On the one hand, the global migration and protection system is strained from many directions. Some governments are questioning its rules and ability to deliver solutions, while traditional funding is shrinking and falling short of the need. On the other, there is a growing consensus around focusing on delivering solutions to displacement and helping refugees, migrants, and returnees build, or rebuild, lives where they are.
A month out, in the Americas, those points of convergence look real but uncertain. Whether they hold as the region’s approach to migration and displacement continues to shift could turn on a number of factors, from elections to energy security to the impacts of El Niño. Regardless of how those play out, bringing more resources, more partners, and more people with a stake in the outcome to the table will make displacement solutions more likely to last.
With all that in mind, in the months to come, CEDA and its partners will be asking important questions about the current and future state of migration and displacement in the Americas:
Where do migration and displacement fit in the future of humanitarian and development planning and financing in the Americas, and what will collaboration look like?
What is working now to help migrants, refugees, and returnees not just survive but thrive in their communities across the region? What lies ahead, and who needs to be at the table?
Which funding and financing tools can do the most for the migration and displacement response in the region, and how can those who use them work together toward a more stable, prosperous future for migrants, refugees, returnees, and their communities?
CEDA will share reflections on all of these questions and more in the coming months, through research, convenings, and collaborations with CEDA’s partners.
Please reach out to info@weareceda.org with ideas, questions, and reflections.
