ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The head of the United Nations refugee commission said on Wednesday that they need more humanitarian resources to help refugees around the world.
“We are here, I am here, in the General Assembly high-level week to highlight that this is a big crisis in many places and that we need more resources, humanitarian resources, to help refugees but more important, especially here in New York, is to remind everybody that refugee crisis cannot be resolved just by humanitarian action,” Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, told Rudaw’s Diyar Kurda on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
“They need [a] political solution to the conflict that caused the refugees,” he added.
Recent floods in Libya, security unrest in Sudan and other developments have made the refugee crisis worse as the UN struggles to meet their demands.
Healthcare system is dying in Sudan and Grandi blamed the world for failing to prevent the death of children.
There has been an influx of migrants to the Italian island of Lampedusa in recent weeks, with thousands of new people arriving on the island.
This has prompted the local authorities to warn that the island is becoming overwhelmed. Italy is set to pass stricter laws to extend the length of time the migrants can be held before being repatriated to their countries.
The Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani on Wednesday said that the international community has to take action to put an end to human trafficking, adding that his country seeks legal migration rather than being used as a pathway by migrants to reach other European countries.
The high-level week of the 78th annual UNGA commenced on Tuesday and will continue through next week. Hundreds of world leaders and delegates have gathered in New York to attend the event, with around 150 heads of states and governments set to deliver speeches.
The theme of this year’s summit is “Rebuilding trust and reigniting global solidarity: Accelerating action on the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals towards peace, prosperity, progress and sustainability for all.”
