UN Endorses Historic Global Compact To Support Worlds Refugees

The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly affirmed a non-legally binding Global Compact on Refugees on Monday, marking the latest move by member states to support the rights of 258 million people on the move worldwide.

UNITED NATIONS, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Dec, 2018 ) :The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly affirmed a non-legally binding Global Compact on Refugees on Monday, marking the latest move by member states to support the rights of 258 million people on the move worldwide.

The United States and Hungary were the only two nations that voted against the compact, while 181 countries voted in favour. The Dominican Republic, Eritrea and Libya abstained.

"It is a global commitment to step up and shoulder our responsibilities toward refugees, to find solutions that respect their human rights, to provide them with hope, and to recognize the legal responsibility to protect and support them," U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said in welcoming the vote.

She urged all member states to begin implementing the framework as soon as possible.Over the past 18 months, states in conjunction with the U.N. Refugee Agency negotiated the non-binding document, which aims to ease the pressure on refugee host countries and support conditions in countries for displaced citizens to return home.

UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) Chief, Filippo Grandi, said the pact was historic and speaking at an event at UN Headquarters in New York to mark the compact, noted it was the first time the Assembly has seen an agreement between and beyond States, that acknowledges the need to work collectively for the rights of refugees.

In this world of ours, which often turns it back to people in need, that has shamefully politicized even the pain of exile, that has demonized and continues to demonize refugees and migrants and sometimes even just foreigners, this compact, in synergy with the other compact, the compact on migration, can really represent tangibly, a new commitment to international cooperation, the UNHCR chief said.

He said it represented a new commitment to shared values of solidarity and the quest to just and sustainable solutions for disadvantaged people.

This global compact for refugees, which is separate from the newly-adopted Global Compact for Migration, aims to strengthen the international response to large movements of refugees and their protracted situations, and was prompted by the historic, 2016 New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, in which all 193 Member States agreed that the protection of refugees should be a shared responsibility.

The Declaration tasked UNHCR with authoring the refugee compact, which came to fruition after 18 months of extensive consultations between Member States, experts, civil society, and refugees.

Just last week, the Global Compact for Migration, also non-legally binding, was adopted by 164 Governments at an international conference in Marrakech, Morocco in a bid to support safe, orderly and regular migration.

This great achievement for multilateralism, as UN senior migration official, Ms. Lousie Arbour called it, specifically targets the universal human rights and fundamental freedoms of migrants, which comprise a different group of people on the move than refugees.

Approximately 85 percent of refugees live in developing countries, according to UNHCR, where services are already strained. Though donors have been generous in financing aid to refugees, Grandi noted that the disproportionate burden on middle and low-income countries is evident, and leaves us at the mercy of economic downturns.

Thus, part of the compacts pledge to joint action entails addressing the specific challenges faced by developing host countries.

Both the Global Compact on Migration and Global Compact on Refugees, surface a time of heightened division across the world and within societies, Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said.

In addition, Grandi urged States to re-evaluate the way refugees are supported to be more inclusive:The image that we have of refugees is the refugee camp. We want to get away from that.

In recent years we have seen a contagion of closed borders, contrary to national refugee and human rights law. Millions of refugees are facing years in exile, or risking their lives on dangerous journeys to an uncertain future. And that is why this global compact is such an important step, she said.

Ms. Mohammed stressed that the effort to shoulder our responsibilities toward refugees, to find solutions that respect their human rights, to provide them with hope, and to recognize the legal responsibility to protect and to support them, are not only important goals in themselves, but play a critical role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, that seriously leave no one behind.

Adoption of the compact, is not the end, but the beginning of the international community work on the issue, the general Assembly President, Maria Fernanda Espinosa declared. What left is implementation.

Echoing the call to further action, Grandi warned that the compact on refugees is not a silver bullet that will solve all the problems, but with concrete international engagement, could be transformative.

"Without this international cooperation we will not be able to face neither this all the other global challenges that await us in the future," he added.