Date: 2008
Author: HFP

A PRM of the future will need the capacity for understanding and formulating policies that relate to a confluence of factors affecting population movements, ranging across many sectors and disciplines. Multilateral organisations and their donors will not only need to be able to anticipate and prepare for unprecedented threats to human security, they will also need to be able to take advantage of windows of opportunity and identify new ways of doing things for the greater assistance and protection of populations at risk.

The Planning from the Future project, undertaken through the Humanitarian Futures Programme, King’s College, London, is a futures capacity assessment and enhancing exercise. It comprised the contributions of 67 staff members from eight different offices of the USAID Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance (DCHA), as well as from the Department of State’s Bureau for Population, Refugees and Migration (State PRM). Eight staff members from State PRM took part in the exercise conducted during between June and October 2007.

Preliminary results were reviewed with PRM management in Washington, DC in January and February 2008. This report, focusing on PRM’s role within the context of humanitarian action, is one of three reports prepared by HFP under Phase One of the Planning from the Future project. The executive summary of the report is available to download.