This research examines the legal and institutional frameworks that seek to regulate displacement to establish how responsibility can be shared and how accountability for failures to do so can be ensured. It takes a critical approach to doctrinal research, that looks across generalist and specialist international legal regimes (including international refugee, human rights, humanitarian and criminal law). The purpose is to better understand the legal and policy challenges that affect the operative and normative systems responding to displacement. The work seeks to engage with a diverse range of stakeholders, including UNHCR, the ILO, IOM, the European and African Commission, ECRE and the EU, to provide real-world solutions to the challenges faced in relation to displacement.

There are three interlinked strands to this research theme:

• State responsibility for causing displacement – This research explores the prohibition of causing displacement under international law and seeks to establish what accountability mechanisms can apply, and how, to States who cause or contribute to cause displacement. In particular, it looks to the role of the laws on state responsibility in supplementing the lex specialis regimes of international law that regulate displacement. Further, it critiques the role and effectiveness of international refugee law in preventing and sharing-responsibility for displacement.
  
  
• Climate-related displacement – Climate-change will have an impact on displacement as people seek safety from its effects. This research works with stakeholders and practitioners to examine how the international community can respond to climate-related displacement in a fair and sustainable way. It explores how responsibility-sharing can ensure that the ‘burden’ does not fall on the most vulnerable communities but is fairly shared between States, in particular, those who have contributed the most to climate change itself. In so doing, it proposes that greater, and more equitable, access to legal pathways can build adaptation and resilience in responding to climate-related displacement.
  
  
• The role of soft law in migration governance – The international community increasingly relies on non-binding international agreements to coordinate international cooperation in responding to global migration. This research engages with regional and international stakeholders to analyse the role of these instruments, in particular the Global Compacts on Refugees and Migrants, at the international and domestic level. It examines the tension between soft law being seen as a means of filling the gaps in the existing legal framework to expand protection versus the growing prevalence of soft law agreements for externalisation of migration control as a means of avoiding accountability.