June 13, 2023 — The International Rescue Committee responds to the UNHCR’s release today of global displacement figures, which has reached an all-time high of 110 million people.
David Miliband, President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, said:
A record high of 110 million people displaced is a testament to the great and growing toll of climate change, economic turmoil, and armed conflict worldwide - all while the global guardrails designed to protect against humanitarian suffering are being dismantled.
“With displacement at the greatest levels seen since WWII, it is of great concern that high-income nations in particular are greeting refugees and asylum-seekers not with humanity and fairness, but with inhumanity, cruelty and injustice. Rather than guaranteeing safety, these baseless policy decisions only amplify the unsafe conditions that asylum-seekers are fleeing from in the first place.
"Humane responses on a global scale, as we saw in Ukraine, are possible - and particularly urgent in light of great and growing global need. The true crisis is not global displacement itself but the glaring lack of political will to address it.”