Criticized for not doing enough to help desperate people fleeing their countries because of war and or for other reasons, Obama was hosting a refugee summit Tuesday with the leaders of Jordan, Mexico, Sweden, Germany, Canada and Ethiopia, along with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
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Instead, it agreed to work towards adopting a global compact on how to share the refugee burden, in 2018.
Billionaire George Soros said today that he will be investing $500m to help refugees and migrants who are fleeing civil war, oppressive regimes and extreme poverty.
“I called this summit because this crisis is one of the most urgent tasks for our time, our capacity for collective action”, the USA leader said in his final address to the UN General Assembly. He added that in many areas refugee protections were backsliding with a growing number of countries trying to turn back refugees in violation of worldwide law.
Soros’s investments will focus on helping migrants heading to Europe. Obama says world leaders can choose to press forward with a better model of cooperation and integration, or they can retreat into a world that is sharply divided and ultimately in conflict.
In particular, seven countries – Romania, Portugal, Spain, Czech Republic, Italy, France, Luxembourg – committed to resettle or admit at least 10 times more refugees than in 2015, according to United States officials.
“A village on the island of Samoa declared him officially a crown chief and prince – which I believe is a title that you can keep for life”, the president said.
“In the eyes of innocent men and women and children who through no fault of their own have had to flee everything that they know, everything that they love, we have to have the empathy to see ourselves”, Obama said in his address to world leaders.
Obama singled out the situation in Syria, which has displaced 4.8 million people so far, as particularly “unacceptable”.
World leaders remain unmoved by the suffering of refugees.
“The bigots and deceivers, in opposing greater responsibility-sharing [relating to admitting refugees from conflicts like the one in Syria], promote rupture”, Zeid said.
“The answer can not be a simple rejection of global integration”, Obama said, but rather to make sure “the benefits of that integration are broadly shared”. The more countries step up, the more manageable that becomes.
Only eight countries now host more than half the world’s refugees: Turkey, Pakistan, Lebanon, Iran, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya and Uganda.
On a serious note, Obama paid tribute to United Nations peacekeepers and staff and those who risk their lives delivering aid in Syria, and he praised Ban’s leadership, courage, optimism and imagination.
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He also plans to invest in specific sectors like “emerging digital technology”, which he said can help dislocated people “gain access more efficiently to government, legal, financial and health services”.
