Condensed Results Report of PROTECT's Research on Surveying Citizens' Attitudes

A formalized international responsibility sharing component has been absent in the international refugee protection system, despite the need for international collaboration is briefly mentioned in the preamble of the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees. The need became particularly evident when protection challenges arose during, among other events, the internal conflicts in Afghanistan and Syria and the massive Mediterranean Seacrossings from Northern Africa to the EU costs in the second half of 2010s. To remedy this, the United Nations and the European Union have introduced new arrangements of international responsibility sharing in refugee protection – respectively, the UN Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) and the EU New Pact on Migration and Asylum (New Pact). Although the UN arrangement is not binding, and the EU proposal only becomes binding after the EU Member States’ approval of new EU directives, regulations and decisions, there is a broad consensus that the proposals are relevant, and their implementation is underway. 

In democratic societies, citizen attitudes to international protection are a crucial part of the political factors that affect the success of the implementation of the GCR and the New Pact. As many governments have been justifying their refugee and asylum policies with reference to their citizens’ policy preferences, it is crucial to assess whether these new arrangements meet support or resistance among citizens. Thus, the overall objective of this research component of PROTECT is to explore public attitudes towards the most important instruments of international responsibility sharing that are proposed in the GCR and the New Pact.