While a growing body of research explores the ways in which NGOs affect IO accountability, relatively little high-level, sustained international advocacy has focused on the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and IOM has been under-examined in the literature on NGOs and IO accountability. This is surprising as IOM has a history of involvement in activities such as migrant returns and detention that may threaten or actively violate migrants’ rights—activities that call out for careful external scrutiny. This chapter explores the drivers and implications of this puzzling disconnect, and opportunities to overcome it. We map out the limited ways in which international human rights advocacy organizations have engaged with IOM, and consider why advocacy NGOs have not more actively pushed for increased accountability from IOM. International advocacy NGOs have important but still under-developed roles to play in advancing accountability for the human rights implications of IOM’s work. Enhancing accountability is a two-way street: there is a need for advocates to devote more attention to IOM, and develop more concerted advocacy strategies vis-à-vis IOM. Meanwhile, IOM should clearly recognize the importance of external advocacy, and engage more openly and systematically with human rights advocates, moving beyond traditional postures of defensiveness, dismissal and secrecy.

This chapter provides an introduction to the evolution of IOM’s mandate and obligations from its founding in 1951 to 2022. In contrast to the tendency in some scholarly literature to portray IOM as a static actor devoid of normative obligations and available to unquestioningly advance state interests, however nefarious, this chapter paints a more complex picture. Focusing in particular on IOM as a “multi-mandated” organization, the chapter charts how IOM’s mandate and conceptions of its obligations have shifted over time, including in light of the development over the past two decades of a significant set of internal policies, frameworks and guidelines. Without minimizing the significant gaps and opacity that remain, the chapter explores changes in the organization’s perceived purpose and obligations, and explanations for these shifts, drawing on insights from international relations scholarship on international organizations’ legitimation efforts. Gradually, IOM has transformed from a logistics agency strapped to the interests of the United States, to a global organization with a still nascent but growing sense of its obligations not only to states but also to people on the move—changes that have ultimately advanced IOM’s efforts to secure its own position and power in the international system.

This introductory chapter sets the stage for the contribution advanced in this volume. First, it provides a brief overview of IOM’s history and structure. Second, it offers a primer on IOM’s entry into the UN system as a related organization in 2016. Third, it situates the book in relation to the core concepts underpinning it, including the obligations, accountability, and expansion dynamics of international organizations (IOs). Fourth, it draws out key themes running through the volume, particularly in relation to grounding assessments of IOM in international law; understanding IOM’s roles as a norm ‘breaker, taker and shaper’; analysing IOM as a protection actor; and developing more complex accounts of institutional change at IOM. Fifth, it maps out the structure, scope and limitations of book. Finally, it reflects on the legal and political implications of this volume, focusing on the need to recast the IOM Constitution to centre not only the organization’s obligations to its member states but also to the migrants it claims to serve.

Voluntary return is hailed as the ‘preferred’ solution to displacement by many actors in the refugee regime, including states, international organizations such as the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and often by refugees themselves. Many political leaders use the rationale that refugees’ presence is only temporary, and that they will eventually return to their countries of origin, to justify to their sceptical constituents the decision to shelter thousands of beleaguered foreigners. However, obstacles such as ongoing conflict currently impede large-scale returns to countries like Syria, Iraq and South Sudan. This leaves millions in protracted limbo as other so-called durable solutions to refugee situations, such as resettlement to third countries or local integration and the acquisition of citizenship in asylum states, are simultaneously becoming increasingly rare. When refugees do return, voluntarily or otherwise, they commonly face impoverishment and violence, sometimes resulting in repeated displacement.