At Discussion on Refugee Crises, Deputy Secretary-General Says Global Financing Facility Can Bridge Gap between Humanitarian, Development Assistance
Following are UN Deputy Secretary-General’s Jan Eliasson’s remarks to the high-level panel discussion on leveraging innovative finance to address the refugee crises in middle-income countries, in New York today:
Thank you for participating in this important meeting. I am deeply grateful to the World Bank and President [Jim Yong] Kim to take such an active and substantial part in this initiative.
We are gathering just two days after world leaders adopted the New York Declaration to address large movements of refugees and migrants and one day after the pledging meeting led by [United States] President [Barack] Obama.
The New York Declaration sets out a key principle, namely that responsibility-sharing is central in addressing this growing element in the new global landscape.
Member States recognized that we must make efforts to address the impact of the refugee crises on the economies of host countries; countries that are often facing their own development challenges.
The Declaration calls on Member States to provide adequate, flexible, predictable and consistent financing to respond both to the immediate humanitarian and to longer-term development needs.
To concretely strengthen our collective responses, we must build on these commitments. And we must honour them in tandem with our work to advance the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
We are at a moment of historic human mobility in the world. Over 65 million persons have fled their homes due to conflict and violence in the past years, the highest number since World War II.
Many refugees remain marginalized with no solution for a better life in sight. Half of the refugees are children. Strains also accumulate on the countries and communities which receive those refugees — often for many years. These challenges can only be addressed together and globally.
The vast majority of refugees are hosted in developing countries, a quarter of them in least developed countries. However, the numbers of refugees hosted in middle-income countries are rising exponentially. These needs also need to be met.
A great part of the world’s refugees are fleeing the nightmare of Syria. Some countries in the Middle East and North Africa region have made enormous sacrifices to meet this global responsibility. They have shouldered the main immediate economic and social shock of the Syrian conflict outside the country. I thank them for their immense generosity.
As we know, the initial humanitarian approach is not sufficient for a durable effect. This is why the Secretary-General’s report “In Safety and Dignity” highlighted the importance of humanitarian and development actors working together with cross-cutting commitments, sometimes with differing timelines.
The World Humanitarian Summit recognized that the nexus between humanitarian action and development needs to be more dynamic and more mutually reinforcing.
The increasing engagement of the World Bank and multilateral development banks in supporting States and communities which host refugees and internally displaced persons is a crucial and positive step in this direction.
In this regard I commend the efforts of the World Bank and the United Nations to work together to establish and operationalize the global concessional financing facility, at the request of supporting countries, and as announced yesterday by leaders at the Refugee Summit.
This facility has a unique added value in addressing refugee crises in middle-income countries, and indeed bridges the gap between humanitarian and development assistance.
By including refugees as active contributors to the economy of host societies, we can offset costs, build social cohesion, and restore dignity for many, many people.
We must actively prepare for increased use of this facility for more middle-income countries facing similar challenges. I therefore welcome the World Bank’s efforts at the request of supporting countries to expand this facility in record time in order to be able to respond to future needs.
Global solutions in this area should build on the promises of the 2030 Agenda.
We have embarked on a transformative journey to a better future, staked out by last year’s ground-breaking Sustainable Development Goals agreed by UN Member States. A road to a future where no one is forced to make impossible choices. To a future where no one is left behind.
In this spirit, let us make sure that we make progress at this important meeting so that we can offer real hope to people in desperate need, and also to those who help them.