UNHCR Filippo Grandi demands int’l leadership to address refugee issue

York: UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi on Thursday asked for leadership to address the refugee issue.

In the last 10 years, the number of people forcibly displaced has doubled, to almost 80 million people. At the same time, solutions remain elusive, Mr Grandi told the Security Council.

The number of people displaced has been rising since 2012. 2011 was the last year in which this figure went down, and since then it has risen year after year, he noted.

The global trends represent, in a way, the human impact of a decade of crises: wars, violence, persecution and discrimination against people and groups, and countries in which social breakdown prevails. All of this is accelerated by poor governance, by the climate emergency, by prevailing inequality and exclusion, he said. “These trends somehow show how, when leadership fails, when multilateralism, which you represent, doesn’t

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live up to its promise, the consequences are felt not in the global capitals of our world; not in the homes of the powerful and of the rich. They are felt in the peripheries of nations, in border communities, among the urban poor, in the lives of those that have no power,” he said.

“And among them are the refugees and the displaced, whose history is too often told only in numbers and statistics, who appear in newspapers and our social media feed only as pawns in political debates, or frankly, as part of grotesque international squabbles on who can push them back or push them away harder, and further,” he added.

Mr Grandi asked for unity and leadership of the Security Council. “Please, echo and follow up on the cease-fire call of the secretary-general. Use your leadership and influence, the tools and resources that you have at your disposal, to seek out and to expand space for solutions,” he said.