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Add to Preferred SourcesUNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, hosted a gathering with political leaders from four continents, including Bangladesh, Costa Rica, Turkey and the World Bank at the UN General Assembly High Level Week in support of the international agreement known as the global compact on refugees, a robust and systematic model to improve the lives of refugees and their host communities.
The global compact is expected to be endorsed by members of the UN General Assembly in December 2018, after two years of intense consultations UNHCR has led with UN member states, international organizations, experts, civil society, and refugees.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi praised the role of host countries as first responders to refugee emergencies, like Bangladesh, Uganda, Niger or Mali, among others.
“These countries have kept their borders open at a time when in the world this is not something that we can take for granted anymore,” Grandi said. “We are facing an increasing tendency to reject, to close, to push back.”
2017 saw record figures of forced displacement — 68.5 million people worldwide were forced to leave their homes, of whom 24.5 million became refugees in other countries.
Almost nine in 10 of the world’s refugees are hosted in developing countries, where they often live in remote areas with significant development challenges. The impact on local services, infrastructure and resources “is colossal,” Grandi said.
The global compact envisions specific measures benefiting both refugees and hosts, such as strengthening the hosting country’s health and educational infrastructure, as well as potentially revitalizing economies.
The involvement of development actors is key to the success of the global compact. The president of the World Bank Jim Yong Kim described the international agreement as “an example of how multilateralism can and should work.”
Kim highlighted that 52 percent of refugees worldwide are under the age of 18 and “the consequences of inaction will haunt us for generations.”
“We need to remember that this is about people, about refugees who dream of better lives for themselves and their families,” he added. “And host communities, the vast majority of which are in low and middle-income countries that themselves aspire to grow and thrive.”
The new international agreement also builds on important lessons from applying a new vision for a more comprehensive response to these crises, known as the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF), in 15 countries.
Original source: UNHCR
Published on 24 September 2018