President Mugabe attended the United Nations Summit for Refugees and Migrants on Monday where leaders adopted a NY declaration that calls on countries to protect the human rights of the world’s more than 65 million refugees, increase humanitarian aid, help with resettlement, standardise responses and provide better education and employment opportunities for displaced people.
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“Governments participating here today [Tuesday] have come together, with different types of commitments, to approximately double the global number of refugees resettled and afforded other legal channels of admissions and to improve asylum systems”, the statement said.
The United States said 52 countries taking part in a US -led summit were stepping up to accelerate resettlement and boost financial support for refugees.
The first-ever United Nations summit on refugees and migrants kicked off a week of high-level diplomacy as world leaders take part in the annual General Assembly meeting, dominated this year by the conflict in Syria. He said it expands the concept of refugee response beyond humanitarian aid – like food, medicine and tents – to include things like education and jobs.
But Obama also called on the world community to address the root causes of displacement.
“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.
The key driver of the modern crisis has been Syria’s long-running civil war, though large numbers have also fled instability in Iraq and Afghanistan.
With numbers of people forced to flee conflict and hunger in their countries unprecedented since World War II, the meeting is expected to approve a document that might induce the 193 United Nations member states to adopt a more coordinated approach to protect the human rights of refugees and migrants. Of those, 21.3 million are refugees, and 10 million are stateless.
A photograph of a drowned teenage girl in a body bag has become the latest symbol of the refugee crisis.
“We have a collective responsibility to change the narrative on migrants and migration in our countries”.
The administration has yet to release a country-by-country breakdown of the 110,000 refugee figure.
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Peter Thomson, the President of the UN General Assembly, said: “I will take forward the commitment of the membership to begin a process that will lead to a global compact on migration, as well as to support a global compact on refugees”. We in Zimbabwe have hosted many refugees from conflict-affected countries.
