BERLIN (AP) — The United Nations urged governments, businesses and others on Tuesday to “reboot” the world’s response to refugees as the number of people fleeing their homes rises, along with hostility to migrants.
The U.N. and Switzerland are hosting the first Global Refugee Forum in Geneva Tuesday and Wednesday, an event aimed at drawing pledges of financial, technical and other assistance, as well as encouraging changes of policy to enable refugees’ better inclusion in society.
“Our world is in turmoil and 25 million refugees are looking to us for solutions,” Filippo Grandi, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, told the event. He noted that the number is far higher if you add in people who are displaced within their own countries.
“As a new decade dawns with some 71 million people uprooted from their homes globally, inside and outside their countries, it’s time to reboot our responses,” Grandi said. He called for a “broad alliance” of governments, business, development institutions, the aid community, sports organizations and others.
Officials noted that most of the world’s biggest refugee hosts aren’t among the globe’s richest countries.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said the world must do more to shoulder the responsibility together.
“Developing and middle-income countries admirably host the vast majority of refugees and warrant greater support,” he told the forum.
In addition, he said, “at a time when the right to asylum is under assault, when so many borders and doors are being closed to refugees, when even child refugees can be divided from their families, we need to reaffirm the human rights of refugees.”