Cartagena+40 ends amid cooperation and solidarity to protect refugees and displaced and stateless persons

December 19, 2024

Santiago – The Platform of Independent Experts on Refugee Rights (PIERR)—a group of human rights experts from the UN and various regional organizations—welcomes the adoption of the Chile Declaration and the Chile Action Plan for 2024–34. 

Forty years after the Cartagena Declaration on Refugees was signed in 1984, the PIERR welcomes the efforts made by States, regional organizations, and civil society organizations to comprehensively address the situation of millions of refugees and internally displaced and stateless persons in Latin America and the Caribbean, which recently led to the adoption of the Chile Declaration and the Chile Action Plan for 2024–34. 

The Cartagena Declaration expanded the concept of who may be considered a refugee in Latin America and the Caribbean to reach beyond the criteria that had been spelled out in the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. The Cartagena Declaration also included in the definition all individuals who had been forced to flee their home countries because their lives, safety, or freedom were at risk in a context of widespread violence, foreign attack, internal conflict, mass human rights violations, or other circumstances that might have seriously disturbed public order. The Cartagena Declaration was a landmark in the regional tradition of affording solidarity, asylum, and protection to refugees and ensuring cooperation in this field throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. 

In the decades that followed, institutions in the inter-American human rights system adopted this expanded definition of a refugee from the Cartagena Declaration, which has been integrated in domestic legislation in 15 countries in the Americas, along with efforts to ensure its effective implementation. 

The recently approved Chile Declaration and Chile Action Plan for 2024–34 acknowledge the new humanitarian challenges affecting the region and suggest responses to ensure effective protection and solutions. Both documents highlight convergence among international human rights law, international refugee law, and international humanitarian law, as well as the complementary nature of these three fields. 

The PIERR welcomes the fact that the 2024 Chile Declaration reaffirms this commitment by Latin America and the Caribbean to protect the rights of all refugees and internally displaced and stateless persons. The new Chile Declaration incorporates integration programs, inclusive public policies, and measures to address statelessness, as well as recognition of the need to tackle the structural causes of forced displacement and the effects of climate change.  

The Chile Declaration highlights the importance of ensuring a significant participation by refugees and internally displaced and stateless persons (including dispositions about specific protection needs based on age, gender, and other diversity considerations) and cooperation with international actors, the private sector, academia, and civil society to implement the Chile Action Plan for 2024–34. 

The PIERR stresses that adopting a comprehensive approach that strengthens protection mechanisms in countries of origin, transit, destination, and return and addresses the broad rights spectrum for individuals all along their journey requires joint efforts by all countries in the region. This is why the principles and commitments of the Cartagena Declaration are now more relevant than ever. 

Independent experts at the PIERR are available to actively cooperate with States and the international community to enable greater protection and more sustainable solutions for refugees and internally displaced and stateless persons, in order to allow these individuals to live dignified, peaceful lives in Latin America and the Caribbean and elsewhere in the world. 

END 

About the PIERR: The PIERR currently brings together the heads of the United Nations' Special Rapporteurships on the human rights of migrants and on trafficking in persons, especially women and children; the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention; the UN Committee against Torture; the Special Rapporteurship on refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons, and migrants in Africa of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights; and the IACHR's Rapporteurship on Human Mobility. 

Siobhán Mullally, Chair of the PIERR and UN Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children; Gehad Madi, UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants; Matthew Gillett (Chair-Rapporteur) and Priya Gopalan (Vice-Chair on Follow-Up), of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention; Jorge Contesse, member of the UN Committee against Torture; Selma Sassi-Safer, Commissioner and Special Rapporteur on refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons, and migrants in Africa of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights; and Andrea Pochak, Commissioner and Rapporteur on Human Mobility of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. 

The PIERR has the support of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). 

For further information, please visit www.pierr.org. 

The IACHR is an autonomous body of the Organization of American States (OAS) whose mandate is based on the OAS Charter and the American Convention on Human Rights. Its mission is to promote and defend human rights throughout the Americas and to serve as an advisory body to the OAS in this area. The IACHR consists of seven independent members elected by the OAS General Assembly who serve in a personal capacity and do not represent their countries of origin or residence.

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