NZ Aid Groups call on world leaders to deliver action

NZ Aid Groups call on world leaders to deliver action after failure of refugee summit

New Zealand’s aid workers have added their voice to a global declaration rebuking world leaders for failing to act on the deepening refugee crisis, at a major UN Summit on Refugees and Migrants in New York.

Heads of State and Government Representatives are meeting at United Nations Headquarters in New York to look at how to deal with the greatest displacement crisis since the end of the Second World War.

The Summit, two years in the planning, was billed as a watershed moment to spread the responsibility of responding to the refugee crisis more fairly. There are over 60 million refugees and displaced persons in the world today, according to the UN agency for refugees (UNHCR). Today, only 100,000 refugees are in fact resettled annually, 90% of them by just five countries (USA, Canada, Australia, Norway, and the UK).

“World leaders went into negotiations ahead of the UN Summit with a hard proposal to take in up to 10% of the world’s most at risk refugees,” said Mark Mitchell, Chair of the NGO Disaster Relief Forum (NDRF) – New Zealand’s network of disaster relief agencies. “What they have emerged with is a declaration without binding commitments, pushing any meaningful decision to the next major Summit in 2018.”

In response to the weak Summit outcome, New Zealand’s network of disaster relief agencies, the NGO Disaster Relief Forum (NDRF) has joined a coalition of global civil society organisations in releasing their own alternate plan with a series of commitments, urging states to launch a real New Deal for Refugees, Migrants and Societies at the Summit.

The global civil society proposal urges states to commit to seven immediate, measurable actions which would make a difference on the ground for the millions of refugees, migrants and internally displaced people (IDPs) in need of protection, safe passage and inclusion in host countries so they get work and provide for themselves.

These include:

• An implementation plan ready to go by the end of the year
•
• Set up a mechanism to share the responsibility more evenly between more countries. At the very least, meet the annual resettlement needs identified by UNHCR
•
• Review national border policies to uphold the human rights of all people at international borders, including gender and age-sensitive guidelines to protect the most vulnerable migrants immediately
•
• Fulfil existing international commitments to end the practice of child immigration detention
•
• Develop a Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration
•
• Run public campaigns to counter xenophobia
•
• Agree on concrete measures to improve the protection and assistance for internally displaced people.
•
The plan includes a ‘scorecard’ to measure Summit outcomes against this proposal.

“By 2018, when world leaders have agreed to discuss the issue again, the number of refugees will only have grown,” says Mitchell. “As the President of the Security Council now, New Zealand can do more to call on world leaders to act, supporting those who have been displaced, and by addressing the root causes of their displacement through sustainable and equitable development, including lasting solutions to natural disasters, conflicts and war.”

On September 19 to mark the summit, NDRF member World Vision will be sharing the artwork of former refugee Hani Shihada on a mobile mural around Auckland (a city just 500,000 people smaller than Turkey’s refugee population). Hani’s image of child refugees is a symbol of those suffering while the world watches, and asks New Zealanders to step up where the international community has not.

The full civil society statement and scorecard can be read here.

---ENDS---

© Scoop Media