Norwegian Dissemination and Communication Network on International Refugee Protection and the UN Global Compact on Refugees

The main objective of PROTECT-NORCOM is to increase the impact of our H2020 project PROTECT on Norwegian stakeholders and the Norwegian society by increasing their awareness about our H2020 project results and demonstrating their relevance to them. We will achieve this objective by two means:

(1) by organizing specially targeted activities and devising communication channels tailored for different stakeholders that are our target groups

(2) by facilitating key Norwegian stakeholders’ participation, actively or as audience, in the international conferences and dissemination events of our H2020 project, where they can interact with global intergovernmental bodies like UN, UNHCR, IOM, OHRCR, regional organizations (EU, AU, OAS), and transnational organizations working in the field of refuge protection.

We aim to provide high-quality dissemination and communication of research-based knowledge on international refugee protection toward Norwegian stakeholders. The University of Bergen is leading PROTECT, an international research project which receives full funding from the EU's H-2020 Framework Programme. In compliance with the H2020 call, the target groups of PROTECT's planned dissemination and communication activities are global (UN, UNHCR, IOM, OHCHR) and regional (EU, AU, OAS) authorities as well as transnational nonstate organizations. In order to facilitate exploitation of our findings in Norway, we propose additional, special measures:

As a first measure, we will build a Norwegian dissemination and communication network on international refugee protection and the UN's Global Compact on Refugees. This network includes authorities, non-state organizations, and academics, who will come together in our activities to discuss our project results.

Secondly, by funding travels and/or by live-streaming, we will facilitate the network members' participation to the main H2020-project's activities, including our Expert Fora, Policy Fora, Academic Fora, and Conferences, which are all
high-level international events. This will enable the Norwegian stakeholders to better follow our results.

Thirdly, we will communicate our relevant findings to Norwegian policy and governance actors, targeting especially the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Justice and Public Security, and Local Government and Modernization as well as local governments, political parties and non-state organizations by organizing three symposia, preparing three policy briefs, organizing a users conference, publishing a web-site, and devising social media pages/groups that target specially the Norwegian stakeholders.

Finally, we will disseminate our relevant findings to the Norwegian public through digital platforms using various textual and audiovisual means, including social media.

The dissemination and communication measures aim to pick the project findings that are relevant for Norway and disseminate them to Norwegian stakeholders by using additional dissemination and communication tools that are tailored for different target groups in Norway.

We have planned strategic research and knowledge communication measures specially devised in order to offer opportunities for exploitation of our research results by Norwegian stakeholders:

(1) we organize three symposia on refugee protection topics of high relevance for Norway, bringing together Norwegian stakeholders to discuss how our
results can be used in their work

(2) we publish three policy briefs for Norwegian stakeholders

(3) we create and continuously update a website and a blog service in Norwegian, dedicated to Norwegian stakeholders and citizens, outlining our results of special interest for Norway, and spread the web-links to these results through dedicated social media channels

(4) we organize a users conference for Norwegian stakeholders, where we also invite global and regional actors like the UNHCR, IOM, and the European Union, an activity that will allow us to disseminate on Norway-relevant issues

(5) we facilitate Norwegian stakeholders’ participation in PROTECT’s high profile international final conference in Brussels

(6) we build a Norwegian dissemination and communication network of academics, policymakers, authorities, and non-state governance actors.

These dissemination and communication activities target stakeholders such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Justice and Public Security, Ministry of Local Government and Modernization, UNE, UDI, IMDI, local governments with large number of refugee and asylum seeker arrivals, and the following organizations: Norwegian Refugee Council, Norwegian Red Cross,
Norwegian People’s Aid, Norwegian Organization for Asylum Seekers (NOAS), Selvhjelp for innvandrere og flyktninger (SEIF), Foreningen tolvte januar, Norwegian Center against Racism, and others.