\u201cNew York Declaration\u201d<\/a> with token commitments but bereft of concrete responsibility-sharing measures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cWe have waited two years for this summit. World leaders should be announcing clear and concrete steps towards ending the refugee crisis. The UN had initially proposed an ambitious plan, but the European Union, Russia and China were among those who sacrificed refugees\u2019 rights for national self-interest and missed a massive opportunity to back a global solution to the crisis,\u201d said Salil Shetty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cInstead of sharing responsibility, world leaders shirked it. The UN summit has been sabotaged by states acting in self-interest, leaving millions of refugees in dire situations around the world on the edge of a precipice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBut governments should not be under the illusion that this lets them off the hook. UN member states have both a moral and a legal duty to welcome the refugees who need help today.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The day after the watered-down UN document is adopted, President Obama will host a Leaders\u2019 Summit in New York on 20 September designed to secure specific commitments from member states to offer safe and legal routes to refugees \u2013 something most of them have so far failed to do. He will also call on leaders to donate money to assist refugees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Amnesty International is calling on governments, particularly from wealthier countries, to urgently make commitments to resettle significantly more refugees and provide them with legal ways to find safety, whether at the Obama Leaders\u2019 Summit or in the weeks to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe desperately need a quick and decisive show of leadership from a core group of countries willing to take responsibility and immediately help by welcoming in some of the most vulnerable refugees and providing others with humanitarian, work and student visas. The more countries who step forward, the more workable a solution becomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn the long-term, we need a more organized sharing of that responsibility, with states agreeing objective criteria to decide what proportion of the world\u2019s refugees each needs to take, based on their capacity to host them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are 21 million refugees in the world today, according to UNHCR, with only 14% of them in the richest parts of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Together, Ethiopia, Kenya, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan and Turkey host a third of the world\u2019s refugees, while accounting for 1.6% of the world\u2019s economy. Right now, only about 100,000 refugees are actually resettled annually; 90% of them by just five countries (USA, Canada, Australia, Norway, and the UK).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Amnesty International has long lobbied governments around the world to do more to share responsibility to fulfil refugees\u2019 rights, and this week began a global campaign called \u201cI Welcome\u201d calling on governments to welcome refugees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWorld leaders have completely failed to agree a plan to protect the world\u2019s 21 million refugees \u2013 some of the most vulnerable people in the world. But where leaders fail, people of good conscience will act. Change starts with three short words: I welcome refugees,\u201d said Salil Shetty. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The abject failure of a United Nations summit to tackle the deepening global refugee crisis is a missed opportunity that will affect millions of the world\u2019s most vulnerable people unless leaders find alternative solutions to help them reach safety, Amnesty International said ahead of two high-profile refugee summits next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_yoast_wpseo_opengraph-title":"","_yoast_wpseo_opengraph-description":"","_yoast_wpseo_opengraph-image":"","_yoast_wpseo_opengraph-image-id":0,"_yoast_wpseo_twitter-title":"","_yoast_wpseo_twitter-description":"","_yoast_wpseo_twitter-image":"","_yoast_wpseo_twitter-image-id":0,"_hero_title":"","_hero_content":"","_hero_cta_text":"","_hero_cta_link":"","_hero_alignment":"","_hero_background":"","_hero_size":"","_hero_show":"","_hero_type":"","_hero_embed":"","_hero_video_id":0,"_hero_hide_image_caption":true,"_hero_hide_image_copyright":false,"_nav_style":"","_disable_share_icons":false,"_disable_sidebar":false,"_display_author_info":false,"_hide_featured_image":false,"_hide_featured_image_caption":true,"_maximize_post_content":false,"_reduce_content_width":false,"_sidebar_id":0,"_stretch_thumbnail":false,"byline_context":"","byline_entity":"","byline_is_author":false,"disable_related_content":false,"download_id":0,"download_text":"","show_published_date":true,"show_updated_date":true,"term_slider":"","amnesty_index_number":"","recipients":"","recipients_refresh":"","recipients_refreshed":"","amnesty_umbraco_data":"","document_ref":"","amnesty_updated":"","footnotes":""},"category":[1585],"location":[1589],"resourceType":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-1671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","location-world"],"datePosted":"September 14, 2016","mlpRelationships":{"1":1666,"2":1671},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category?post=1671"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=1671"},{"taxonomy":"resource-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resourceType?post=1671"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=1671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}