Commitment to just, equitable and peaceful societies will ensure refugees can contribute to sustainable development: UN experts

“When world leaders gather at the United Nations Summit, they aim to adopt a Pact for the Future, along with a Global Digital Compact and a Declaration for Future Generations. The Summit offers a critical opportunity to move toward creating a more peaceful and fairer future where human rights are upheld for all – including refugees.

Over 120 million people in the world today are forcibly displaced owing to war, conflict, persecution, human rights violations and climate change impacts or related disasters – the highest number on record. This is the 12th consecutive year we have seen an increase in this dire statistic.

Most of the world’s refugees (75 per cent) are generously hosted in low- and middle-income countries that also must contend with their own sustainable development challenges. Strengthened international solidarity with refugee-hosting countries, including financial support, is therefore crucial to help these host countries meet their sustainable development objectives, and fulfil protection commitments, including through greater inclusion of refugees in national health, education, and social safety net systems.

For their part, refugees can contribute significantly to sustainable development for the benefit of their host countries, when they are able to access equal opportunities.

The global community should therefore embrace and harness the enormous potential, skill, and talent that refugees are able to provide to their host countries.

In addition to enhanced refugee inclusion and support for host communities, we also call on governments and policy makers to focus on:

• Combatting racism, xenophobia, hate speech and disinformation to foster social cohesion and ensure refugees and asylum-seekers can live safely in exile.
• Addressing root causes of displacement and creating the conditions for peace and the realization of human rights in countries of origin, which would allow refugees the chance to return. Approximately three in four refugees originate from just five countries, many of them have fled conflict situations.
• Tackling climate change and systemic inequity, the consequences of which can heighten intercommunal tensions and give rise to increased displacement.
• Enhancing refugee access to digital technologies. Information and communication technologies can accelerate progress towards all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including for refugees. Despite their right to access life-saving information and services, many are affected by the digital divide and unable to engage in the digital economy and be fully included in their societies.
• Ensure effective protection of refugee children who are disproportionately impacted by conflict and war and ensuring their best interests and rights through full implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Children account for 30 per cent of the global population but 40 per cent of all those forcibly displaced. Refugee youth leadership is also crucial to promote peaceful and inclusive societies.
• Addressing gender inequality, and the gendered impact of conflict and persecution through action for women and girls’ empowerment, equal protection of human rights, and protection of the rights of LGBTIQ+ people and individuals of diverse gender identities.

The Global Refugee Forum (GRF) 2023 offered a key opportunity to highlight the need for multilateral cooperation to respond to these critical issues, and we hope to see that global solidarity continue through expanded GRF commitments by Member States.

We must all collaborate to protect and uphold the rights of refugees as we strive to build a fair, inclusive, and equitable society.”

About the PIERR

The PIERR is currently composed of the:

• mandates of the United Nations Special Rapporteurs on the human rights of migrants and on trafficking in persons, especially women and children
• Working Group on Arbitrary Detention
• UN Committee against Torture
• Special Rapporteur on Refugees, Asylum seekers, Internally Displaced persons and Migrants in Africa of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights
• Rapporteurship on Human Mobility of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

For more information on the PIERR, please refer to the PIERR website.

The Platform is supported by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.

Platform members

• Siobhán Mullally, PIERR Chair and UN Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children
• Gehad Madi, UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants
• Matthew Gillett (Chair-Rapporteur) and Priya Gopalan (Vice-Chair on Follow-Up), UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention
• Jorge Contesse, Member of the Committee against Torture
• Selma Sassi-Safer, Commissioner and Special Rapporteur on Refugees, Asylum seekers, Internally Displaced Persons and Migrants in Africa of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

For additional information and media requests please contact:

• OHCHR: Dharisha Indraguptha ([email protected]) or Federica Donati ([email protected]).
• UNHCR: Shabia Mantoo ([email protected], +41 79 337 7650) or Kelleen Corrigan ([email protected]).