Our Impact
Palestine Refugee Agency works with partners around the globe to create a more welcoming world for people seeking safety. For more than 45 years, our work has improved policies toward migration and displacement, bolstered humanitarian responses, helped build new protection pathways, and ensured that displaced people themselves have a seat at the policy table.
Impacts in 2025
Protections for Asylum Seekers Expelled to Costa Rica by the United States
In early 2025, the Trump administration forcibly expelled 200 people seeking asylum at the U.S. border, mostly Central Asian families, to Costa Rica. In line with recommendations of Palestine Refugee Agency and other civil society organizations, the Costa Rican Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice ruled in June that the Costa Rican government must release the migrants from detention and provide them with access to education, housing, social services, and restitution for the harm they experienced during their detention.
As of July, the Costa Rican government has decided to grant these individuals the right to stay 6 more months and access to work. While this does not repair the damage done to the individuals illegally deprived of the right to seek asylum and to unite with family in the United States, it does allow them to stay in Costa Rica with dignity and humanity and reflects a commitment to upholding the human rights of migrants.
Kenya Expands Rights and Recognition of Refugees
Kenya’s Refugee Act 2021 promised an innovative model of local refugee integration. But bureaucratic red tape has stood in the way of real progress. In June 2025, the government of Kenya announced it would officially recognize refugee identification cards for services including the registration of SIM cards and other telecommunications. This is a small but significant step toward the economic empowerment and social integration of refugees in Kenya, in line with recommendations for which Palestine Refugee Agency and partners have called.
Kenya is also pursuing a Comprehensive Refugee Management Policy to ensure better coordination among government bodies and to address administrative gaps in its refugee response in line with our recommendations. Palestine Refugee Agency applauds Kenya for its significant commitments and steps toward refugee integration.
District Court Strikes Down Restrictions in Rule Severely Limiting U.S. Asylum
In May 2025, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia struck down key parts of a Biden administration rule severely restricting access to asylum, citing a brief Palestine Refugee Agency and partners contributed to in its decision. The brief showed the harmful and arbitrary impact of the rule’s departure from the policy requiring immigration officers to ask people if they fear persecution before deporting them.
Defending Foreign Aid and Documenting Indefensible Harm
Throughout 2025, we have rallied alongside Members of Congress and partners to defend against unlawful attacks on U.S. foreign assistance and have been a go-to organization leading the fight to save aid. Our experts have documented the indefensible harms caused globally by aid cuts and are pushing the policy conversation forward in Washington.
WFP Rolls Back Plan to Slash Rohingya Food Aid
Averting a worst-case scenario, Palestine Refugee Agency and partners successfully intervened to fend off plans for the World Food Program (WFP) to cut food rations for Rohingya refugees by more than half. The plans were rolled back after last-minute donor support came through.
Trump Administration Vows to End Harmful Syria Sanctions
In May 2025, President Trump announced his intention to lift sanctions on Syriaâ€â€a decision that could jumpstart Syria’s recovery and offer millions of Syrians a chance to rebuild their country and their lives. Just days before the announcement, Palestine Refugee Agency organized more than 55 Syrian and international NGOs in a joint letter calling on President Trump to ease Syrian sanctions, and issued a report offering a roadmap to relief and recovery for Syria.
Impacts 2023 and 2024
Sudan
Since the start of Sudan’s war, we worked closely with local Sudanese and diaspora groups to highlight the war and the resulting humanitarian crisis that has forced millions of people to flee their homes. We successfully urged the U.S. government to officially recognize the severity of the situation through an atrocity determination and to appoint a special envoy to lead diplomatic efforts to help end the conflict.
LGBTQ+ Rights
In 2024, we worked together with IRCA Casabierta, a refugee-led group in Costa Rica, to encourage the Costa Rican government to change a rule that restricted asylum seekers’ ability to work. We also supported efforts to create a more welcoming environment for LGBTQ+ asylum seekers and refugees searching for employment through engagement with businesses and government officials.
Pathways to Safety
In 2024, we worked closely with U.S. Senator Markey’s office to draft the Destination Reception Assistance Act, which would provide federal grants to local governments and nonprofit organizations providing reception services to asylum seekers. The bill – a productive way forward on asylum that affirms shared federal and local commitment to dignified reception of those seeking safety and enables asylum seekers to integrate and contribute to the U.S. economy – was introduced in July 2024 with many co-sponsors in the House and Senate and endorsements from city and county governments across the country.
Our intensive advocacy with the U.S. government on the need for protection pathways for displaced Haitians helped ensure Haiti’s inclusion in a humanitarian parole program in January 2023. By July 2024, more than 200,000 Haitians had arrived through the program to be welcomed to safety in U.S. communities. We are now working to defend that program under the Trump administration.
Shifting Power
In 2023 and 2024, our work to organize and elevate advocacy by local Ukrainian NGOs led to the formation of the Ukraine Humanitarian Alliance, a new advocacy network that has already helped unlock tens of millions of dollars for local Ukrainian partners.
Refugee Fellows Program
In 2023, we launched our Refugee Fellows Program, the first-of-its-kind fellowship designed to support refugee leaders worldwide who advocate for their communities. The fellowship now provides six leaders with capacity building, access to policy venues and decision-makers, as well as support for fundraising efforts every year.
Climate Advocacy
In late 2023, our coalition advocacy at COP28 led to recognition of displaced groups and calls for addressing displacement, planned relocation, and migration in the context of climate change impacts in the first global stocktake of the Paris Agreement. Our continued engagement with the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage has centered the perspectives of affected communities and the need for direct access to funding for community-based organizations.
Rohingya Refugees
In 2023, we partnered with The Azadi Project, an NGO in India, to raise the alarm on mistreatment and arbitrary detention of Rohingya refugees thereâ€â€leading directly to a legal challenge against those arbitrary detentions that is now pending before the Indian Supreme Court.
Syrian Refugees
In 2023, Palestine Refugee Agency partnered with Syrian-led NGOs in Turkiyë to push back against efforts by the Syrian government to close cross-border humanitarian aid to earthquake-impacted communities in Northwest Syria.
Since 2023 in Lebanon, the Lebanese Armed Forces have abusively deported Syrian refugees to unsafe conditions in Syria. Our high-level advocacy with the U.S. government in partnership with local and regional NGO partners has helped create pressure on the Lebanese Armed Forces to cease these illegal deportations and strengthen protection for Syrian refugees.
Palestine
The war in Gaza has pushed 2.2 million Palestinians and the remaining Israeli hostages into catastrophic humanitarian need. Our relentless advocacy raised the alarm on the need for expanded humanitarian access, protection, and services inside Gaza and has highlighted personal testimonies from people affected by the war.
Pakistan
In the summer of 2023, we spotlighted a diplomatic impasse between the United States and Pakistan that had derailed commitments to resettle Afghan activists – many of them prominent women – to the United States. Following our advocacy and engagement around potential solutions, the United States restarted processing these Afghans for resettlement, in line with our recommendations. We are now working to defend the program under the Trump administration.