ABOUT US

Global Refugee Youth Network (GRYN) aims to become the “Go to” organization of expertise on refugee youth and information about refugee-youth led initiatives. GRYN is an independent youth-led network that supports young refugees to develop their capacity, empower themselves, help each other and lead initiatives to respond to their communities’ needs and advocate locally, nationally, regionally and globally for the changes they feel are important.

Rationale

Since 2015,  Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) has been working with young refugees to create and strengthen mechanisms that empower young refugees to assess the challenges facing refugees, to leverage their lived experience, and to engage in their communities and at the policy level to create positive change. This has included partnerships with UNHCR through the Global Refugee Youth Consultations (GRYC) and UNHCR’s Global Youth Advisory Council (GYAC), which yielded not only good practices to be replicated, but also a cadre of young refugee leaders keen to use their knowledge and skills to improve policy and practice around refugee youth engagement. In 2020, alumni from the GRYC and GYAC, recognized that to effectively advance work with and for young refugees in a manner that is attuned to their challenges, that builds on their strengths and that is led by refugee youth themselves, there was a need to:

  • Support and strengthen community-based refugee-youth led initiatives, both formal and informal, with funding, capacity building, networking, and other resources.
  • Advance refugee youth-led policy advocacy, to amplify refugee youth voices on the issues that are important to them and raise awareness about the specific needs of refugee youth – in all their diversity, as distinct from children and adults and as specific to the refugee experience.
  • Develop refugee youth research skills and refugee youth-led research to enhance evidence base for youth programming initiatives.
  • Leverage the skills and capacity of young refugees to advance refugee youth engagement in a comprehensive – an independent refugee youth-led network.

GRYN Principles

  • Participation & self-representation: GRYN will create space for refugee youth to engage, participate and amplify refugee youth voices on issues, policies and decisions that are important to them.
  • Diversity & inclusiveness: GRYN celebrates the beautiful diversity of refugee youth and actively seeks to involve young refugees from all contexts, regions, nationalities, ethnicities, religions, of all genders, those who are part of the LGBTIQ+ community, those who are living with disability and any young refugee who brings any other aspect of diversity.
  • Independence: GRYN seeks to develop as an independent organization that facilitates responsible freedom of expression.
  • Partnership and collaboration: GRYN will seek and sustain close partnerships with a diverse array of organizations, networks and individuals that share the same values and aims and will consistently value, model and foster collaborative approaches, mutual learning and shared advancement.
  • Responsiveness & accessibility: GRYN works to respond to the varied needs and situations of young refugees and RYLOs and adapts its approaches, tools, and ways of working to make them accessible for all young refugees whatever their situation.

GRYN Strategic Objectives

Objective 1: Strengthen refugee youth leadership and youth-led organizations (RYLOs) at the local level. GRYN will support refugee youth-led initiatives, including those that are and are not formally registered with funding and capacity building related to leadership, project management, networking, advocacy, communication, research, and other skills that they identify as important to their work.

Objective 2: Advance refugee youth-led policy advocacy to amplify refugee youth voices. GRYN will facilitate and support effective refugee youth-led advocacy on policy and practice of importance to young refugees. Advocacy will be evidence based and grounded in lived experience. GRYN will actively cultivate a network its network to enable advocacy opportunities and will target States, UNHCR, UNHCR partners, UNICEF, and other UN agencies NGOs, INGOs, donors, young people, and other humanitarian actors.

Objective 3: Develop refugee youth research skills. GRYN will Integrate refugee youth-led research into all the other work streams to identify what is needed, gaps and good practices in terms of youth-led initiatives, capacity building, networking, and advocacy. GRYN will seek out partnerships with research institutes interested in advancing refugee- and youth-led research to develop the capacity of young refugee researchers and to ensure a strong evidence base.

Objective 4: Establish a sustainable independent refugee youth-led organization. GRYN will convene a core group of young refugee leaders interested to drive forward this initiative and involve a diverse cohort of refugee youth leaders as GRYN Associates who support short- and longer-term engagements. GRYN will Work with WRC to pursue the objectives noted above while also exploring how to establish and register an independent organization registered in Switzerland.

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