International cooperation between North and South to enhance refugee protection in regions of origin

This paper explores the current Geneva-level debate on targeting development assistance to enhance refugee protection capacity in regions of origin. It draws on the insights available from the international relations theory relevant to international cooperation as a means to illuminate the prospects for overcoming polarisation. Moreover, it surveys the existing literature on ‘burden-sharing’ in the global refugee regime, placing it in the broader context of regime theory, the body of international relations theory on which it implicitly and selectively draws. This paper argues that, ‘collective action failure’ is not an inevitable outcome of attempts to achieve north-south cooperation and identifies a number of factors that may be conducive to improving the prospects for cooperative outcomes. It concludes by examining how the conceptual logic of Convention Plus’ approach to north-south cooperation could be further developed as a means to facilitate future multilateral cooperation and thereby overcome sources of past and present polarisation.