Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, adresses the MEPs on the current situation of refugees in the world. This transcription is a result of an automatic process. Please check against delivery.

Brussels

statement

plenary session

migration and refugees in Europe (T)

METSOLA, Roberta (EPP, MT, EP President)

GRANDI, Filippo (IT)

Formal sitting - address by Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees: opening statement

SOUNDBITE (English) Roberta METSOLA, EP Vice President, Good afternoon everybody. Welcome. We are going to start with a discussion with Mr. Fillippo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

SOUNDBITE (English) Roberta METSOLA, EP Vice President, Distinguished High Commissioner, dear colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, this year marks the 20th anniversary of the Geneva Refugee Convention. I understand that there are a number of points of order that need to be made. But this is not yet the beginning of the plenary session. There will be a moment later when you can make your points.

SOUNDBITE (English) Roberta METSOLA, EP Vice President, As I was saying, this year marks the 20th anniversary of the Geneva Refugee Convention, the Geneva Convention was concluded in the aftermath of the Second World War. Since then, conflict and persecution have continued and forced displacement has increased around the world, making the convention as relevant today as ever.

SOUNDBITE (English) Roberta METSOLA, EP Vice President, Last year, the UNHCR estimated that eighty two point four million people were forcibly displaced across the globe. At the same time, access to protection is shrinking across the globe and we must do more.

SOUNDBITE (English) Roberta METSOLA, EP Vice President, This European Parliament has supported the adoption of the Global Compact on Refugees, but so far the commitments made to ease pressure on host countries and enhance refugees self-reliance have not translated into tangible results.

SOUNDBITE (English) Roberta METSOLA, EP Vice President, The Covid 19 pandemic has only added another element of complexity to an already highly problematic scenario. The pandemic has caused deep disruptions at the social, economic and political levels in all societies around the world. However, the pandemic has not only affected people's health, it has also disproportion affected the most vulnerable groups, including refugees.

SOUNDBITE (English) Roberta METSOLA, EP Vice President, Refugees face risks, distress and abuse by human trafficking networks that prey on the vulnerable or worse, as we are witnessing on Europe's external borders, are exposed to state sponsored instrumentalise with human beings used as a hybrid threat to the European Union intended to destabilise.

SOUNDBITE (English) Roberta METSOLA, EP Vice President, So we are clear we must never allow humans to be used as pawns in these geopolitical power plays. Last year, the commission put some proposals on the table, aiming to put the common European migration and asylum system on a new foundation under the European pact on migration and asylum.

SOUNDBITE (English) Roberta METSOLA, EP Vice President, As you know, the European Parliament, as European Colegislator has an important role in ensuring the Geneva Convention and the rights and obligations that it enshrines remain at the centre of the pact and the EU's response to asylum and forced displacement. So in this context, I am very pleased to welcome you today.

SOUNDBITE (English) Roberta METSOLA, EP Vice President, High Commissioner, at the ceremony marking the 17th anniversary of the Geneva Convention. Furthermore, your presence with us is an opportunity to celebrate the long standing partnership between the European Union and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

SOUNDBITE (English) Roberta METSOLA, EP Vice President, This partnership is an extraordinary asset for our work on key legislative proposals in the field of asylum policy. So High Commissioner, you have the floor.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, Good afternoon, Madam Vice President. Members of the European Parliament, distinguished guests and dear friends, I'm very honoured to be with you today. And Madam Vice President, would you please convey my best wishes of a prompt recovery to President Sassoli.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, 70 years ago in the aftermath of the Second World War, delegates from many of your countries gathered in Geneva at a special United Nations conference to adopt the 1950 UN Convention on Refugees. It was one of the highlights of renewed commitment to international cooperation, which the war had destroyed and of solidarity with the millions of people whom the war had uprooted over seven decades.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, The Refugee Convention has proven its relevance time and again, a legal framework which implementing the ancient and universal principle of asylum has saved countless people from violence, conflict and persecution because of their race, religion, politics and more.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, And it is on behalf of the refugees and other people forcibly displaced around the world that I come today to seek your renewed commitment to solidarity and support for if we are to solve the challenge before humanity of covid, of climate, of conflict.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, We need political leaders like you to reject the me first my country first approach that may win elections yet brings little in terms of practical solutions and instead embrace again a sense, a sense of purpose through international cooperation.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, Madam Vice President, nobody chooses to be a refugee to be subjected to violence or persecution because of one of who one is or caught in conflict from which one must flee, forced to live with the anguish of exile. The UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Organisation, which I lead, is mandated to protect, assist and solve the plight of those displaced around the world in more than 130 countries.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, My colleagues work on the ground with more than 82 million refugees and internally displaced people and counting, around 90 percent of whom are not here in Europe. Or elsewhere in prosperous countries, but in low and middle income ones bordering areas of conflict and crisis.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, Think of Lebanon for example, where one in five people is a refugee, or Colombia, which hosts more than one point seven million Venezuelans or Canyon with hundreds of thousands of Somali, South Sudanese, Ethiopian and other refugees. It is host countries like those that bear the brunt of the international responsibility to protect refugees.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, And it is those countries and host communities that must be supported through increased humanitarian and development aid, as well as other burden and responsibility sharing mechanism like a refugee resettlement.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, And much more must be done inside countries of origin through concerted strategic efforts to prevent displacement in the first place and to resolve the causes of people's flight so they can return home, which remains the preferred solution of nearly every single displaced person.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, Such action is needed in Ethiopia, which, after a year of senseless, brutal violence in Tigray, is tragically entering a much larger and even more complex conflict. The fragmentation of the entire country is now a real risk, and so is the likelihood of further internal and external displacement with destabilising consequences throughout the Horn of Africa.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, The European Union must give stronger support to peacemaking efforts if we are to prevent the crisis with ramifications that will be felt for generations across the region, the continent and beyond, or in the Sahel, where social cohesion in fragile and poor nations is crumbling over resources scarce by climate change.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, This causes conflict, creates space for terrorism and uprooted people. Around two and a half million are now displaced or refugees in central Sahel at the doorstep of Europe and very near Libya. And the crisis keeps widening.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, More broadly, climate related displacement is a growing reality, which I hope governments and stakeholders will pay more attention to beyond Coreper 26 or in Afghanistan, where the UN and NGO colleagues who never left are delivering aid across the country and ramping up assistance to displaced and returning Afghans ahead of winter, which is days away.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, But unless the international community finds ways to prevent a total collapse, of basic services and of financial liquidity, I fear not only massive humanitarian suffering. Of the 39 million Afghans still in the country, but also potentially large scale displacement in a manner that will have global consequences, including for Europe in some places.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, On the other hand, we must step up, work in and with countries of origin to remove the obstacles that refugees tell us prevent them from returning. For example, why do we must not waver in our support to countries hosting Syrian refugees like Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and especially Lebanon?

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, We must also do more to help Syrians inside their country. Many amongst the millions of refugees and internally displaced people tell us that they want to return home, but cannot just yet because of security, concern and lack of services. We must work on both in these and other places around the world. I look to Europe for leadership and support.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, We are, of course, grateful for Europe's aid efforts and we will continue to encourage funding to be as flexible and predictable as possible. But for Europe's political leadership to help prevent and solve conflicts is equally important political leadership, which is not always visible and which is often undermined by divisions.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, But global leadership, as you know, starts at home. And the picture painted by Europe's recent Greek record on asylum is regrettably mixed. While many countries have and continue to adhere to European and international laws and principles, current practises by some states are of serious concern.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, And the rest of the European Union must not allow a race to the bottom, but rather ensure that laws and obligations are upheld by all. I appreciate the many very real challenges that makes movements of refugees and migrants pause to asylum systems in Europe and worldwide made worse very often by the criminal action of traffickers.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, And of course, it is unacceptable that the dangerous onward movement of vulnerable people be encouraged by states in this respect. Yesterday, the UNHCR and the International Organisation for Migration have appealed for an urgent resolution of the situation at the border between Belarus and Poland and for immediate, unhindered access to people on the move to ensure provision of humanitarian assistance, identification of those in need of protection and access to proceed to procedures in Belarus for those there who wish to seek asylum.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, But looking at the broader picture in Europe, these challenges simply do not justify the knee jerk reaction we have seen in some places. The irresponsible, xenophobic discourse, the walls and barbed wire, the violent pushbacks that include the beating of refugees and migrants, sometimes stripping them naked and dumping them in rivers or leaving them to drown in seas.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, The attempts to evade the asylum obligations by paying other states to take on one's own responsibilities. Madam Vice President, the European Union, a union based on the rule of law, should and can do better and in matters of rule of law, continue to be an example to others.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, There is, Madam Vice President, a way to manage those challenges, not through rhetoric and demonisation of the other, but by working together. The first and best solution is, of course, to ensure that people are protected in their home countries. And that is where European peacemaking plays an important role.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, The second is to enable better protection in countries where most refugees seek asylum close to home. And that is where robust European support can help strengthen asylum systems. And provide humanitarian and development aid to facilitate refugees, inclusion in host countries, social services and economic activities until a durable solution is found.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, But there will continue to be people in need of protection who arrive at European borders and receiving them in ways that are both effective and principled is an obligation of the European Union. It is an obligation which can be met with the early identification of those in need of international protection through fair and fast asylum procedures.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, It is an obligation which can also more easily be met when coupled with efficient and expeditious return of people found not to be in need of international protection and important component of the protection system as a whole, contributing to its integrity and public confidence.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, I know that such returns have not proven to be easy, but the answer cannot be at the expense of responsibilities to extend protection when it is needed. States must cooperate to address these challenges in different ways, and UNHCR, IOM and other partners are ready to help finding solutions.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, Also, means cooperation amongst EU states to share the responsibility for those in need of protection within and amongst the union. And it means respecting the rule of law and the legal systems that exist and which I and so many other proud Europeans value as a foundational part of our social contract.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, The new pact on migration and asylum proposed by the European Commission, which we have endorsed as a practical way forward, provides EU member states with the framework to help manage mixed flows and uphold European responsibility.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, I encourage all member states to support to the pact, and I wish to express my appreciation for the work of the European Commission, whether discussing the situation inside Europe or working for solutions abroad. It has been a constant source of support to UNHCR and to displaced people around the world.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, They have been a true partner and supporter for which I am grateful, and they want to extend my special thanks to Commissioner Ylva Johansson, who is here with us today. Madam Vice President, the 1951 Refugee Convention and the European Union were born from the same tragedy to save future generations from the devastation wrought by war.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, The European project has undoubtedly brought Europeans unprecedented peace and prosperity, of which we should all be proud. And the 1951 Refugee Convention has saved many lives. And despite its age, continues to prove its relevance for people forced to flee unrelenting violence and persecution.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, The strength of both is found not only in a resolute legal basis for preventing conflict and protecting people, but also, and as importantly, in a deeper sense of solidarity. Solidarity between states, solidarity with people in need of protection. We need both now and more than ever. Thank you.