Letters from the future — UNHCR’s new COMPASS approach casts to the future

This year, UNHCR introduced a radical new approach to strategic planning, which we named COMPASS. The idea behind the name was that it represents our intention to support the forcibly displaced and stateless to chart a new path.

Core to the new approach are the principles of the Global Compact on Refugees, which calls for a broad coalition of partners, people forced to flee, the stateless, host governments, private sector and donors to join UNHCR to vision a future where the forcibly displaced thrive, not just survive.

In 2021, the entire organization adopted the new approach. The first step was situation analysis in which a broad range of actors came together at the invitation of UNHCR operations. They were then asked to vision towards a strategy that see the lives of the people we serve improved through their inclusion in education, job opportunities, development programmes and national plans.

Two people, Dominik Bartsch, UNHCR Jordan Representative, and Foni Joyce, a South Sudanese Refugee, took this challenge to a new level when they shared their letters to the future.

Dominik imagined a letter to the High Commissioner in two years:

Dear Filippo,

It’s already two years since I finished my work in Jordan, and so much has changed already. I was reading the other day an article on Al Jazeera written by this Syrian refugee journalist, Basma, who wrote about her experiences since finding refuge in Jordan back in 2014, and to see how far she’s come is incredible. Jordan was always a shining example when it came to innovation and solutions in the refugee response, so it’s no surprise how well things are going.

Basma finished high school in Jordan and managed to get a DAFI scholarship, with which she studied Journalism. At the time only a small number of refugee students could get university scholarships as you may recall? And journalism was a closed sector for refugees, but by the time she finished her studies, things had changed, and she was able to find work first at a local radio station in Mafraq. She worked hard and developed her skills, and soon moved to bigger news outlets. She now writes for local and regional newspapers.

Basma also writes about life in Za’atari and how it changed over the years. Soon after they arrived in Jordan, building on his work as a farmer back in Syria her father had started a small hydroponic project in their caravan’s backyard. A few years later, his project has grown so much, the yield is excellent, and he is selling most of his salad production on the market. And Za’atari, which is now a much greener place than what we remember (imagine that!), is supplying fresh produce all the way to Amman! Apparently, community-based associations in recent years have become very active in managing the camp’s operation. Some are run by Jordanians and others totally managed by Syrians, and they provide a living for many camp residents who work in the associations, but also facilitate access to markets for refugees who want to sell their produce (or other products).

Remember also the first few doctors who joined the national response for the coronavirus back in 2021? One of them was Basma’s uncle, Ahmad, who had studied medicine back in Damascus University. He had started working in a hospital in Mafraq back in September 2021 and is now heading one of the camp clinics. He is the best pediatrician apparently — all the kids love him, even families from Mafraq bring their children.

One of the things I miss the most from when we worked in Jordan is talking to the incredible people we worked for, seeing their resilience and eagerness to give back to the communities that hosted them, to become agents of change in their lives and the lives of those around them. All that work we did to shift our response from only providing humanitarian assistance, to focusing more on the longer-term inclusion in Jordanian society, opening up sectors for refugees to work in and ensuring that they had the same opportunities as Jordanians was certainly worth it. As I was reading Basma’s article, I was smiling, because I realised how far we have come.

Sincerely,

Dominik

Foni imagined her letter to the future with reference to people that UNHCR has featured in its storytelling in 2021. A video of her reading her letter opened UNHCR’s largest meeting of the year, the Executive Committee.

The planning for 2022 is complete, and the Jordan operation has not wasted a moment to set itself up for success. Their vision that refugees join the operation with their talent and aspirations has kicked off in advance of the plan. We couldn’t be more excited to follow the progress of the refugees who are being hired as health workers to support Jordan’s medical facilities and engineers to maintain Azraq Refugee Camp’s solar energy plant.

COMPASS calls for visioning into the future. By 2024 all operations will have multi-year strategies casting long into the future. This post is the first of many in which we will tell the story of UNHCR’s progress towards planning for a world where people forced to flee thrive, not just survive.