On the 19th of September 2016, during the UN Summit on Refugees and Migrants, the IOM Director General and the UN Secretary General formalized a new agreement between their two institutions. The Agreement was heralded as transforming IOM into a ‘UN-related’ organization, and was followed by IOM’s rebranding to ‘IOM-UN Migration’, thus fostering the impression that IOM had, for the first time, become part of the UN. Yet, as a matter of law, the relationship had not significantly changed. In fact, compared with the 1996 UN-IOM relationship agreement, the 2016 iteration diminished aspects of cooperation and lines of accountability between the two organizations. IOM independence from the UN, as well as its ‘non-normative status’, were expressly recognized for first time in an agreement between the two entities. This chapter assesses the differences between the initial UN-IOM relationship agreement in 1996 and that concluded in 2016. It explains why the disconnect between the legal effect of the 2016 Agreement and the public impression of it are important, and makes suggestions for possible reform. In doing so, it unpacks what is meant by ‘UN-related organization’, explains how these organizations differ from UN specialized agencies, and considers why the latter status was avoided.

The conclusion of a relationship agreement between the IOM and the UN in 2016, alongside the organisation’s rebranding to ‘UN Migration’, gave the appearance of a significant shift in a normative direction, but was it? And what are the implications for people displaced by climate change? The IOM has never been a UN agency. In fact, characteristic features of the IOM that set it apart from the UN are preserved in the 2016 Agreement, including the express retention and acknowledgement of its institutional independence. Moreover, the UN and the IOM are oriented to achieve quite different goals. Whereas the mandate of the UN is normative and protective, fundamentally concerned with upholding human rights, the constitutional mandate of the IOM is ‘to make arrangements for the organized transfer of migrants’ and to provide various migration services ‘at the request of and in agreement with the States concerned’. Accordingly, the IOM’s adoption of the UN name and logo could be misleading.