DANSK FLYGTNINGEHJAELP FORENING

Their core work

The Danish Refugee Council (DRC) is one of Denmark's largest humanitarian NGOs, specializing in refugee protection, forced displacement, and international migration governance. In H2020 research, they contribute direct field experience and policy expertise to academic consortia studying how global asylum frameworks — particularly the UN Global Compact on Refugees — are designed, adopted, and implemented in practice. Their value to research projects is the practitioner's perspective: they translate governance theory into operational reality, grounding academic analysis in what actually happens to displaced people and host communities. They bridge the gap between international policy commitments (SDGs, GCR) and the field-level realities of refugee protection.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Both H2020 projects began in 2019, so the keyword shift is not a timeline evolution but a thematic distinction between the two projects running in parallel. The ADMIGOV project reflects a broader framing — migration governance, development, protection, and the SDG framework — while ASILE signals a sharper, more institutionally specific focus on the UN Global Compact on Refugees and how global asylum governance regimes are emerging. The trajectory suggests DRC moved from contributing general migration governance expertise toward engaging with concrete multilateral instruments (GCR) and the EU's role in shaping them — a more policy-architectured, institution-facing research agenda.

DRC is moving toward research that scrutinizes specific multilateral asylum frameworks (GCR, EU asylum policy) rather than broad migration governance — positioning them as a partner for consortia focused on international law, EU external migration policy, or refugee regime accountability.

How they like to work

DRC participates exclusively as a partner, never as project coordinator — consistent with the role of a practitioner NGO that brings operational legitimacy and field access to university-led research consortia. With 27 unique partners across 17 countries from just 2 projects, their network is broad and diverse rather than concentrated, suggesting they are comfortable working with varied academic institutions. This makes them a valuable but dependent partner: they enrich research with real-world data and policy credibility, but they rely on academic partners to drive the project management and methodological framework.

DRC has collaborated with 27 unique partners across 17 countries in just two projects, indicating active engagement in large international research consortia with wide European and global coverage. The geographic spread aligns with the global scope of refugee and asylum governance research, likely involving partners from MENA, Sub-Saharan Africa, and major EU member states alongside Denmark.

What sets them apart

DRC is one of very few H2020 participants that combine large-scale humanitarian field operations with direct engagement in EU-funded governance research — they are not a think tank theorizing about refugees, but an implementing organization that works with displaced populations across 40+ countries. This gives them something most academic partners cannot offer: access to primary data, field networks, and the institutional credibility of an organization that governments and the UN actually negotiate with. For any consortium studying asylum policy, migration governance, or refugee protection, DRC provides the practitioner anchor that transforms policy analysis into something empirically grounded.

Highlights from their portfolio

• ADMIGOV
  The largest of DRC's two projects (EUR 362,978) and thematically ambitious — examining alternative models of migration governance with links to the SDG framework and the New York Declaration, giving DRC a platform to influence migration policy reform debates.
• ASILE
  Directly addresses the EU's role in shaping global asylum governance and GCR implementation — a highly policy-relevant topic at the intersection of EU external relations and international refugee law, with DRC as a key practitioner voice.