Addressing more than 100 diplomats and ministers at the UNHCR annual meeting in Geneva on Monday, the 14th of October, UN refugee agency chief Filippo Grandi warned that the refugee movement crisis in Lebanon and Sudan could worsen, but pointed out that tougher border measures were not the answer, calling them ineffective and sometimes illegal, reports Reuters.
He said an unprecedented 123 million people are currently displaced worldwide due to conflict, persecution, poverty and climate change.
“You will ask: what then? First of all, don’t just focus on your borders,” he said, urging leaders to address the reasons why people leave their home countries.
“We need to address the root causes of displacement and try to find solutions.”
Without naming specific countries, Grandi said plans to send asylum seekers elsewhere, or to suspend or delay asylum programmes, contravened international law. He also offered to help countries set up fair, rapid and legal asylum systems.
In the same speech, he warned that in Lebanon, where the growing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah has displaced more than a million people, the situation could deteriorate further and “certainly if the air strikes continue, many more people will be displaced, and some will decide to go to other countries”.
He also called for a sharp increase in support for refugees fleeing Sudan’s civil war, saying that a lack of resources was already driving them across the Mediterranean and even across the Channel to the UK.
Grandi said the UN plan to help some of the more than 11 million people displaced in Sudan or nearby countries has less than a third of the money needed.
Grandi said the agency’s funding for this year has increased thanks to US support, but it is still “far below what is needed”.
The number of displaced people worldwide has more than doubled in the past decade.