Political climate requires new approach to encouraging refugee protection: UNHCR

OTTAWA The current political climate demands a refreshed approach to refugee protection that goes beyond high-level talks and right down to the community level, the deputy head of the UN’s refugee agency says.

The anti-refugee, antiimmigrant sentiment deployed by politicians is fuelled by fear, and the global challenge is to look at what drives that fear and respond to it, Kelly Clements said in an interview Friday.

“We could do a better job both showing what kind of integration has happened, trying to move the debate from one that is focused on fear (to) one that is focused on opportunity and advantages,” she said.

Clements spoke at the end of a two-day visit to Ottawa, where she made the pitch for Canada to increase how many refugees it will resettle but also play a leading role in reshaping the global approach to resettlement.

Canadians are already engaged in seeking practical solutions to the global refugee crisis: next week is the inaugural meeting of the World Refugee Council, an organization based in Waterloo, Ont., and partially funded by the federal government.

Their work will support the outcome from landmark meeting in New York last September where UN member countries committed to finding new ways to deal with refugees. The UN is now working on a plan to put that declaration into action.

Those efforts come at a time when the U.S. President is seeking to curtail refugee resettlement via executive orders, and anti-immigration platforms have proven popular in recent elections in Europe. That, along with an unprecedented level of human displacement around the globe, has raised questions about whether the foundational document obliging states to protect refugees — the 1951 UN Refugee Convention — needs an update.