The Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN) is a regional advocacy network of 270 members in 28 countries across Asia and the Pacific that brings together diverse local, national, regional and global civil society organisations to protect and promote the rights of refugees and other displaced people, as well as working to facilitate unhindered access to services and livelihood opportunities.
Currently, the human rights and humanitarian system – with its top-down structure of policy, decision-making and programming – largely excludes local civil society and refugee-led organisations from shaping the human rights, policy and decision-making space.
This project seeks to directly challenge the status quo. By experimenting with a co-leadership model between one person with and another without lived experience of forced displacement, it aims to intentionally and meaningfully transform the landscape within the network to place current and former refugees at the centre of decision making. The aim is to note any allyship and resistance across the network, by fostering individual accountability while challenging mental models, relationships, policies and practices across the human rights and humanitarian sector.