UNHCR’s Contribution to the COP28 Declaration on Climate, Relief, Recovery, and Peace

Climate change is exacerbating protection concerns and risks for forcibly displaced people and their hosts, particularly in conflict-affected and fragile contexts, and is contributing to new, onward, and protracted displacement. Aligned with the goals outlined in the COP28 Declaration on Climate, Relief, Recovery, and Peace, UNHCR has prioritized climate action as integral to delivering on its displacement and protection-centered mandate. UNHCR is leveraging its unparalleled displacement and protection expertise, data and evidence, partnerships and operational presence to support regional, national, and local efforts to strengthen climate-smart protection and resilience for forcibly displaced populations and their hosts, thereby enabling sustainable solutions.

As UNHCR’s contribution to the COP28 Declaration on Climate, Relief, Recovery, and Peace, UNHCR is committed to mobilizing and scaling up climate action and resources for frontline countries and communities through the Global Refugee Forum (GRF) multistakeholder pledge on climate action, and complementary pledges incorporating climate action, launched at the GRF in December 2023. In direct follow-up to COP28, the GRF provided a significant opportunity to advance the inclusion and support of refugees, their hosts, and countries of origin through a whole-of-society approach, involving states and other stakeholders.

The GRF Climate Action Multistakeholder Pledge calls for the systematic inclusion of refugees and other forcibly displaced people in national climate action laws, plans and policy by 2027 to unlock urgently needed financing for hosting countries and communities in climate vulnerable, fragile and conflict affected settings. Co-led by the Governments of Ethiopia, Somalia, Denmark, and Germany, the pledge reinforces the Declaration on Climate, Relief, Recovery and Peace by translating calls to action made at COP28 into concrete commitments at the GRF with over 60 individual contributions received.

In follow-up to the GRF, the co-leadership, together with other key supporters of the pledge, are collectively working across the humanitarian-development-peace nexus towards the realization of the pledge target and vision by leveraging synergies with other policy processes, convening in other fora, and facilitating pledge matching opportunities. UNHCR will continue to work closely with the co-leadership States and other stakeholders under the pledge to implement the synergies between the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) and climate action, including the ongoing engagement and support of UNFCCC processes towards COP29 and COP30, to ensure no one is left behind.