This background paper has been drafted to inform the Nansen Initiative Regional Consultation in Central America, which will be held in San Jose, Costa Rica from 2-4 December 2013 to explore the issue of disasters and cross-border displacement in Central America. This paper and the consultation itself will discuss Central America’s regional approach for providing protection and assistance to political refugees in the 1980s and 1990s through the Cartagena Declaration and the International Conference on Central American Refugees (Spanish acronym, CIREFCA), since these efforts pursued cross-border and regional cooperation on protection issues.  It also recognizes the region’s current efforts to address the protection challenges associated with mixed migration within a general environment of violence and crime, such as through the Regional Conference on Migration.