Obama calls on wealthier nations to do more for refugees

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon who steps down on December 31, and U.S. President Barack Obama who will leave office in January, will be addressing the 193-member world body for the last time. Last week, South Sudan joined the ranks of Syria, Afghanistan, and Somalia – countries with over 1 million of their citizens living as refugees overseas.

“Make no mistake”, US Secretary of State John Kerry said at the United Nations meeting, “additional efforts are urgently needed”.

Still, even as both Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton also stopped by NY this week to meet with world leaders attending the General Assembly, Obama hopes to achieve a last push for greater cooperation between nations even after he leaves office. The world is facing the largest movement of refugees since World War II, some 65 million people.

The administration has yet to release a country-by-country breakdown of the 110,000 refugee figure.

And in one of the thorniest issues now confronting the world – the civil war in Syria – Obama said there was a “military component” to addressing it, but continued, “there’s no ultimate military victory to be won” and that nations must “continue the hard work of diplomacy”. “Refugees, majority women and children, are often fleeing war and terrorism”.

Many leaders came a day early to attend Monday’s first-ever United Nations summit on refugees and migrants, which approved a declaration aimed at providing a more coordinated and humane response to the world’s 65.3 million displaced people.

“If we were to turn refugees back, we would be reinforcing terrorist propaganda that nations like my own are somehow opposed to Islam”.

He called it “an ugly lie that must be rejected in all of our countries by upholding the values of pluralism and diversity”. “It’s a test of our common humanity, whether we give into suspicion and fear and build walls”.

At the U.N., Obama made the Syrian refugee crisis out to be a family issue.

Only eight countries now host more than half the world’s refugees: Turkey, Pakistan, Lebanon, Iran, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya and Uganda.

Six of the world’s richest countries – the United States, China, Japan, Britain, Germany and France – hosted only 1.8 million refugees past year, just 7 per cent of the world total, according to research by the British charity Oxfam.

While the new pledges would allow more asylum-seekers to rebuild their lives, it represented a fraction of the 1.1 million refugees who are in need of resettlement in 2016, according to the United Nations refugee agency. “Jordan’s burden is skyrocketing”.

US President Barack Obama urged countries to “welcome the stranger in our midst” at a summit that drew pledges from 50 countries to take in 360,000 refugees.

“We sought a $3 billion increase in global humanitarian financing and commitments to maintain funding in future years”, they said. “I think that’s really important as a start up”, she said.

In his remarks, Obama also referred to the White House call for the private sector to step up. In total, 51 companies ― including Accenture, Airbnb, Citigroup, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Google and IKEA ― have pledged to invest, donate or raise $650 million to go toward refugee education and employment.

The White House said more than four dozen USA businesses had pledged $650 million, including Facebook, Twitter, MasterCard, Johnson & Johnson and yogurt maker Chobani.

Last week, the White House announced that the USA would resettle 110,000 refugees in the coming year, a 30 percent increase over the 85,000 allowed in this year.

These increases are welcomed by refugee advocates, but the numbers represent only a drop in the bucket compared to what many other smaller countries are grappling with.

While there was no mention of the bitterly fought USA presidential contest, this year’s General Assembly opens amid uncertainty over who will succeed Obama, and perhaps less crucially, who will succeed former South Korean diplomat Ban at the United Nations.