The world’s first Global Refugee Forum sponsored by the United Nations tried to bring hope today to the more than 70 million people displaced by war, conflict, and persecution, including over 25 million refugees who have fled to foreign countries.
In opening remarks, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the world “cannot afford to abandon refugees to hopelessness”.
“Solidarity runs deep in the human character. We must do all we can to enable that humanitarian spirit to prevail over those who today seem so determined to extinguish it.
“Today, more than 70 million people are forcibly displaced — double the level of 20 years ago, and 2.3 million more than just one year ago. Moreover, the growth in displacement is outpacing the rate at which solutions are being found.” he warned.
He expected this troubling rise in forced displacement to continue because conflicts have become more complex and interlinked. They are worsened by the megatrends of climate change, population growth, rapid urbanization, food insecurity and water scarcity.
His comments come against a backdrop of alarming political trends. Alleviating the suffering of refugees and other displaced people used be a humanitarian endeavor built upon feelings of solidarity towards those who have lost everything.
In recent years, it has increasingly been steeped in politics. Refugees are being stigmatized and used as tools in domestic political infighting in the United States and many countries in the European Union, South America and Asia.
US President Donald Trump is building walls and using harsh legal means to keep refugees out; the EU is using squalid camps in Libya and other locations to detain refugees and migrants; India’s new nationality may turn millions of refugees and migrants into stateless persons; Hungary and others have shut down their frontiers; Australia sends refugees to prison-like camps on nearby islands; and Turkey hopes to push at least one million refugees back into Syria following its recent military conquest of Syrian territory along its borders.
Among other things, the Global Refugee Forum is highlighting three settings. One is the Afghan refugee situation, which is forty years old this year and very under-funded. Others are in the Horn of Africa and Central America, especially in Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
The countries most heavily impacted by displaced persons and refugee arrivals are poorer nations, including Venezuela, Syria, Yemen and in Africa. It is very difficult to find resources to help the neighboring countries that are hosting the refugees. They are already lurching from crisis to crisis and face huge shortfalls of funding and other resources.
The Forum is an outcome of UN-sponsored global compacts on refugees and migrants agreed last year. It is seeking pledges from governments, international institutions, civil society organizations and businesses to work together to support refugee needs, such as legal protections, humanitarian assistance, human rights guarantees, protection of children and women, and education.
The global compact on refugees provides a blueprint to “re-establish the integrity of the international refugee protection regime, with the 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol at its core,” Guterres said.
“At a time when the right to asylum is under assault, when so many borders and doors are being closed to refugees, when even child refugees are being detained and divided from their families, we need to reaffirm the human rights of refugees.”