“Coming at a time of multiple global crises, and when large-scale movements of refugees and migrants are challenging many countries-even stoking xenophobia in some quarters-it is very significant that 193 Member States of the United Nations are coming together to agree on a way forward to manage the challenges better, together”, UNHCR spokesperson Melissa Fleming told reporters on September 6.
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The summit also aims to increase the number of refugees worldwide in school by one million and the number of refugees granted the legal right to work by one million.
The Declaration also tasks UNHCR to develop a Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework, setting out a blueprint for a stronger system with more reliable funding and early engagement of development actors to help those forced to flee their homes and the communities hosting them.
With 21.3 million refugees across the globe, the need for action and not just words has never been greater.
“Today’s summit represents a breakthrough in our collective efforts to address the challenges of human mobility”, said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, adding that the declaration will mean “more children can attend school; more workers can securely seek jobs overseas, instead of being at the mercy criminal smugglers, and more people will have real choices about whether to move once we end conflict”.
World governments pledged at the summit to scale up efforts to confront the biggest refugee crisis since World War II, adopting a political declaration that human rights groups have criticized as nearly meaningless. “Because it is not only refugees who are moving in large numbers, it is also those seeking greater economic opportunities”.
“This is the largest protracted refugee situation in the world”.
It is unclear if it is political pressure or bad publicity that prompted the United Nations to finally tackle the refugee catastrophe.
For almost four decades, he told the 193-member Assembly that Pakistan had served as a generous host to millions of Afghan refugees, the largest protracted refugee situation in the world.
Meanwhile, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad al-Hussein offered sobering comments urging world leaders to avoid reducing the deal to self-congratulation. “There will be no repeat of the year 2015 with more than 1 and a half million irregular migrants”.
“It is shameful the victims of abominable crimes should be made to suffer further by our failures to give them protection”.
Defending the UK’s approach, the Home Office said the government had pledged £2.3bn in humanitarian aid to Syria and neighbouring countries and are providing almost £70m in response to the Mediterranean migration crisis.
“I would say if you measure this document by what is at stake here, it certainly falls short of the mark”.
A new position as special representative to the UN Secretary General for internally displaced persons (IDP) needs to be established, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday.
HRW issued a statement calling the declaration a “missed opportunity”.
Protect child refugees and migrants, particularly unaccompanied children, from exploitation and violence.
Civil society groups remain unimpressed by the language of the declaration.
“Despite our modest resources, the people of Pakistan opened their hearts to their Afghan brothers and sisters”, Nawaz Sharif said, pointing out that the current Afghan refugees totalled 2.5 million.
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“The overall climate is not very favorable to receiving refugees in many parts of the world but on the one hand, states committed to this so we can remind them of their obligations”.
