António Guterres (UNHCR) on Refugees, Returnees and Displaced Persons, Third Committee, 40th Plenary – 70th General Assembly
Video: 31:47
3 Nov 2015 Statement by Mr. António Guterres United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees on questions relating to refugees, returnees and displaced persons and humanitarian questions.

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Amid Record Numbers of People Displaced by War, Humanitarian Actors No Longer Able to Provide Core Assistance, Protection, Top Official Tells Third Committee
3 November 2015
GA/SHC/4149
Until donors ramped up contributions, humanitarian actors were no longer able to provide core assistance to the record number of displaced people worldwide, the head of the United Nations refugee agency told the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today as it concluded discussions on racism and began consideration of humanitarian questions.

“The international multilateral humanitarian community, even when combining all its resources, is no longer able to provide the core protection and basic life-saving assistance,” António Guterres, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told the Committee during an interactive dialogue. Between 2010 and 2014, the number of people that had been forced from their homes every day had nearly quadrupled and now more than 60 million people worldwide had been forcibly displaced as a result of war and persecution.

The corresponding increase in humanitarian needs, therefore, had overwhelmed the global capacity to respond, he said. In 2014, UNHCR’s focus on emergency response had strained capacities and resources across the Agency. As the explosion in humanitarian needs had inevitably outpaced the support of the donor community, there was a growing gap between requirements and resources. Most urgently, he said, the Agency had a $205 million deficit in Africa.

“Money moves freely, but people still face enormous obstacles,” he continued. As a cruel paradox, few movements were as tightly restricted as those of human beings, leading to hundreds of thousands of people having no other option but to put their lives into the hands of unscrupulous smugglers.

That desperation could be seen in the growing number of displaced persons. Since January, 750,000 people had arrived on Europe’s shores and the number of daily arrivals, on Greek islands alone, stood between 6,000 and 8,000. The European Union, he noted, had the capacity to manage the crisis, but a united and comprehensive regional approach was essential. Furthermore, Europe and Africa needed a common strategy to allow people to have a future in their own countries.

One key element in effectively responding to humanitarian crises was development actors working side by side with humanitarian actors to help prevent further conflict, support host communities, and pave the way for durable solutions. But, “more than anything else, we must be able to understand and address the root causes of displacement” from conflict over resources, poor governance, human rights violations, unequal access to development benefits, or climate change, he said.

“Migration should be an option, not a necessity; an expression of hope, not of despair,” he noted.

Indeed, all countries must meet their obligations under international refugee law, and political solutions must be found to conflicts that had prompted refugee flows, Mogens Lykketoft, President of the General Assembly, told the Committee. With a humanitarian and refugee crisis of a magnitude not seen since the Second World War, no region or country could address that crisis on its own.

To address those grave challenges, he said the Assembly would hold a plenary meeting 20 November to discuss global awareness of the tragedies of irregular migrants in the Mediterranean basin, with specific emphasis on Syrian asylum seekers. It would be preceded by an informal meeting on 19 November on ways towards a comprehensive approach to the humanitarian response to the global refugee crisis. Additionally, a high-level thematic debate would be held on 12 and 13 July 2016 on the United Nations and human rights, with particular attention being given to the needs of the millions of people who had been affected by conflict and disaster…