World leaders came together at a high-level UN Summit for Refugees and Migrants in New York on 19 September 2016 to address the large movements of refugees and migrants.
Commitments to address current issues and future challenges were adopted by UN Member States under the New York Declaration. The declaration “expresses the political will of world leaders to save lives, protect rights and share responsibility on a global scale”.
Commitments are made to:
- Protect the human rights of all refugees and migrants, regardless of status, including the rights of women and girls as well as promoting their full, equal and meaningful participation in finding solutions.
- Ensure that all refugee and migrant children are receiving education within a few months of arrival.
- Prevent and respond to sexual and gender-based violence.
- Support those countries rescuing, receiving and hosting large numbers of refugees and migrants.
- Work towards ending the practice of detaining children for the purposes of determining their migration status.
- Strongly condemn xenophobia against refugees and migrants and support a global campaign to counter it.
- Strengthen the positive contributions made by migrants to economic and social development in their host countries.
- Improve the delivery of humanitarian and development assistance to those countries most affected, including through innovative multilateral financial solutions, with the goal of closing all funding gaps.
- Implement a comprehensive refugee response, based on a new framework that sets out the responsibility of Member States, civil society partners and the UN system, whenever there is a large movement of refugees or a protracted refugee situation.
- Find new homes for all refugees identified by UNHCR as needing resettlement; and expand the opportunities for refugees to relocate to other countries through, for example, labour mobility or education schemes.
- Strengthen the global governance of migration by bringing the International Organization for Migration into the UN system.
For further information and proposed next steps:
See the New York Declaration
