The Hungarian-American billionaire said Tuesday he will invest $500 million into companies and startups founded by migrants and refugees, as well as businesses and initiatives that address the needs of refugees and their host communities.
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Power specifically pointed to a sanctions resolution passed by the United Nations back in March that, she says, has been effective in impeding the regime’s ability to access important technology, but adding that its ultimate success hangs on “the world’s willingness to enforce this”.
The announcement came during an ongoing United Nations summit in NY on the crisis. He explained that investments and profits from his investment would fund programs at the Open Society Foundations, his philanthropic organization that in part gives out social justice grants.
The White House says more than four dozen USA businesses are pledging $650 million in support to help some of the world’s refugees. The Chinese leader stressed the coordinating role of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in solving matters concerning that topic. “Migrants are often forced into lives of idle despair, while host countries fail to reap the proven benefit that greater integration could bring”.
“I think the way the president will approach this is trying to apply what we have done that’s worked in the last eight years as a template for how we deal with other crises”, Rhodes told reporters Friday, pointing to the Paris climate agreement and Iran nuclear deal as specific examples of global cooperation that the White House views as successes.
In its announcement, the White House said, the companies “are standing with the administration to demonstrate that private sector innovation and resources can have a durable impact on refugees residing in countries on the frontlines of the global refugee crisis and in countries of resettlement, like the United States”. “Refugees, a lot of them women and children, are often fleeing war and terrorism”. The issue will now be delayed until 2018, despite the urgency of the situation: At the end of past year, more than 65 million had been forced to flee their homes, according to the UN.
Facebook, Twitter, MasterCard, Johnson & Johnson, yogurt maker Chobani are among companies that have pledged financial and in-kind support to help ease access to education, employment and financial services for 6.3 million refugees in more than 20 countries.
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A number of countries rejected an earlier draft of the agreement that called on nations to resettle 10 percent of the refugee population each year, something that has led a number of human rights groups to criticize the document as a missed opportunity.
