UNHCR’s Grandi urges joint action to tackle soaring displacement

UNHCR's overall budget - while an improvement on the "bleak" situation at the start of the year - is still only 45 per cent funded against total requirements of $10.8 billion for 2024, with uncertainty hanging over next year and beyond. "We cannot continue to operate like that. And neither can you. This approach is not sustainable," Grandi told governments.

Sustainable approaches

One approach offering benefits for displaced people, local communities, host countries and donors alike is to reduce the current over-reliance on humanitarian aid - especially in protracted situations - in favour of including refugees in local communities and in national systems while they await long-term solutions, such as safe return to their home countries or resettlement elsewhere.

"This model is not about shifting the burden to host countries," Grandi stressed. "It is about strengthening - including through financial support - the capacities and resilience of host countries and communities so they can successfully, and sustainably, include displaced people in their national response systems for as long as displaced people are there."

Another challenge requiring fresh approaches is the phenomenon of refugees and others fleeing war, violence and persecution increasingly taking the same routes to safety as those moving in search of better economic opportunities. These so-called "mixed flows" of refugees and migrants create challenges for countries along the routes as well as for those using them, who face similar significant dangers.

Grandi urged countries not to focus only on their own borders but to promote alternatives to such dangerous journeys. This could include creating more legal pathways to entry - such as resettlement and family reunification - or supporting alternatives to onward movement in transit countries - including legal stay and regularization schemes.

A shift towards such "route-based" approaches will require significant investments in transit and host countries, Grandi said, adding that whichever pragmatic and principled solutions emerge, UNHCR will continue to forcefully defend the institution of asylum.

Moments of hope

Despite the troubling global backdrop, Grandi pointed to several bright spots amid the gloom with a record 200,000 refugees due to be submitted for resettlement in 2024.

In recent weeks Turkmenistan became the second country after Kyrgyzstan to resolve all known cases of statelessness, following a decade of progress under UNHCR's #IBelong campaign, during which half a million people have secured legal nationality. On Monday Grandi launched a new Global Alliance to End Statelessness to build on the success of #IBelong.

He also cited the inspiring example set by the Refugee Olympic and Paralympic athletes who competed in Paris earlier this year, and the five courageous women - one global laureate and four regional winners - who will be honoured at the 2024 Nansen Refugee Awards in Geneva on Monday night.

Returning to the need for collective action to address the current global challenges, Grandi concluded: "I beg you all that we continue to work - together and with humility - to seize every opportunity to find solutions for refugees. And as we do, let us please hold on to hope. The hope that peace will finally come to all those countries where it seems so distant, so impossible."

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