AHMR African Human Mobility Review - Volume 11 No 2, MAY-AUGUST 2025 seeks to address. While the GCR is non-binding, it exists within an institutional framework of international cooperation and political commitments that align with developmental goals (Gilbert, 2019). The GCR is one component of a larger, multilateral and coordinated effort toward addressing protracted and large-scale refugee situations and forced displacement. Several large-scale movements of refugees and migrants in 2014 and 2015 highlighted the inadequacies of the international protection framework as receiving states, mostly in the Global North, responded with deterrence and restriction. Forced displacement was growing in scope and severity in many regions and the majority of receiving states were in the developing South, as mentioned above, yet it was the influx of Syrian refugees into Europe – labeled as a “refugee crisis” by European states – that precipitated several convocations by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly (Ferris and Donato, 2020). The mandate of these convocations was to develop a framework for equitable and predictable funding as well as greater burden-sharing. This led to the 2016 New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, the main substantive outcome of which was the codification of the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF). The CRRF is designed to realize the goals of equitable and predictable funding, self-reliance, and multi-stakeholder participation that are elements of a developmental approach toward forced displacement. Beginning in 2017, the CRRF and its humanitarian–developmental approach was used in various pilot projects in 15 states and the lessons learned therein would inform the GCR. This larger effort therefore represents a network of compacts, initiatives, funding mechanisms, and other innovations across various sectors geared toward bolstering a developmental response to forced displacement as well as statelessness. In addition to the GCR, out of the New York Declaration came the Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (hereafter “GCSORM”) with its own mandate. Measures to reduce statelessness feature in the GCSORM, for example, the harmonization of travel documents, ensuring gender equality in the conferral of nationality to children, increasing birth registration, and providing nationality to children born in another state’s territory, especially where a child would otherwise be stateless (UN, 2018). The CRRF commits to working toward immediate birth registration of refugee children upon reception and assisting in ensuring access to marriage, death, and birth certificates and other documentation. It also calls for the collection of data on both displaced populations and the implementation of the framework itself to allow not only for a more accurate picture of statelessness but to inform and refine policy. There is currently no compact dedicated to statelessness, although the existing framework does contain provisions on the eradication thereof. The GCR encourages the establishment of a global network of universities, academic alliances, and research institutions on “refugees, other forced displacement and statelessness issues” working toward “research, training and scholarship opportunities” in line with the goals of the GCR (UNHCR, 2018). The GCR also calls for the establishment 114