Our focus must be on helping people move beyond prolonged displacement: UK statement at the UN Security Council

As we heard today, over 100 million people are forcibly displaced worldwide.

For more than two thirds of refugees, displacement is not a passing crisis.

It lasts five years or more, with no durable solution in sight.

A childhood spent entirely in a camp.

A home never returned to.

A family still waiting to rebuild.

Seventy-five years after the adoption of the Refugee Convention, this is the clearest possible case for change.

The United Kingdom supports UNHCR's 50 by 35 vision.

Our focus must be on helping people move beyond prolonged displacement, rather than leaving them trapped in exile, unable to rebuild their lives.

But delivering that shift requires change.

It starts with protection.

We need asylum systems that work for refugees, host communities, and the Member States that sustain them.

That means strengthening our collective ability to distinguish fairly between refugees and migrants.

It also means confronting organised criminal networks that profit from dangerous journeys.

To "protect protection", asylum systems must be credible, effective, and trusted by the people and governments that sustain them.

Change also means backing nationally led solutions and development interventions.

The United Kingdom is putting that into practice.

We are working with international financial institutions to direct development finance towards refugee-hosting countries.

That helps ensure host communities are not left to carry the burden alone and supports the inclusion of refugees into national systems.

We are also working in more than 50 countries, including efforts to bring nearly 200,000 refugee children into national education systems.

But fundamentally, we must confront why people are fleeing in the first place.

War. Instability. Repression.

This Council exists to address precisely those threats.

Yet too often we respond to displacement rather than helping to prevent it.

In Sudan, that means uniting behind a ceasefire to end the conflict driving displacement.

In Syria, it means supporting stability that enables safe and sustainable return.

In Yemen, it means de-escalating a conflict that is once again driving displacement and humanitarian suffering, and recommitting to a UN-led political process.

This Council has the tools to address the root causes of displacement.

What it needs is the political will to use them.

The seventy-fifth anniversary of the Refugee Convention is the moment to show that this system can adapt.

The UK will use this anniversary year, and the road to the Global Refugee Forum in 2027, to work with UNHCR, international financial institutions, and Member States, to keep the system credible, sustainable, and fit for today's world.