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UN refugee chief urges action from Security Council so displacement no longer crosses generations · Best of: Features

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  U.N. Refugee chief urged action from Security Council so displacement no longer
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  crosses generations. Written by Edith M. Litterer. This article is being
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  read by an automated voice generated by Everlett. UNITED NATO, the
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  U.N. Refugee Chief urged the world's Divided Nations Friday to focus on
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  ending conflicts and crises so the more that one hundred seventeen million
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  people
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  forced to flee their homes can return, and not spend generations displaced
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  in a foreign country. In his first speech to the UN Security
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  Council since his election as High Commissioner for Refugees last December, Baram
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  Sali told its fifteen members that the have a unique responsibility to
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  help make peace possible. For the millions of people forced from their
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  homes, and the millions more who should never have to flee. I
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  urge you to use that responsibility. The
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  former refugee, who was president of Iraq from twenty eighteen to twenty
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  twenty two, told the meeting on the sidelines of the annual UN
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  Gathering of World Leaders. Sali stressed that humanitarians, like those working for
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  the Refugee Agency known as UNHCR, deal every day with the consequences
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  of conflict but they can't create peace. That responsibility under the Yan
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  Charter is entrusted to the Security Council, which is charged with maintaining
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  international peace and security. The refugee chief ticked off conflicts that have
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  forced people to flee. The war in Sudan remains the world's largest
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  displacement crisis, with twelve million people inside and outside the country, he
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  said.
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  As long as this war continues, people will continue to flee, he
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  said. In Congo Salis said, generations have now lived through cycles of
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  conflict and violence, now compounded by an escalating Ebola crisis. In Ukraine,
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  he said, war has displaced millions inside the country and sent millions
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  more fleeing to other countries. Generations of refugees from disputed Western Sahara,
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  which Morocco claims, have grown up in camps near Tinduf in neighbouring
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  Algeria, facing uncertainty and limited prospects while awaiting a political solution, he
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  said. In the latest Mideast escalation, Salih said UNHCR has mobilized
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  resources and staff to help more than one hundred thirty thousand Yemenis
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  who have fled recent hostilities and remain in the country, and over
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  three thousand seven hundred who have sought safety in Djibouti. The refugee
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  chief acknowledged that a goal he launched earlier this year to reduce
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  the number of refugees in long term displacement who rely on humanitarian
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  aid by half by twenty thirty five is ambitious. But he stressed
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  that it must be, because keeping people alive year after year while
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  they remain unable to rebuild their lives cannot be our end goal.
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  Success can't mean becoming better at keeping people caught in war alive
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  for another year, or establishing a new camp in response to a
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  fifty year emergency, he said, and it can't mean having children inherit
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  displacement from their parents. Success must ultimately mean creating the conditions in
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  which people no longer need us, Sally said. UNHCR's ambition must be
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  to prevent displacement where we can, resolve it where it has occurred,
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  and create the conditions in which people can rebuild their lives in
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  safety and dignity. Edith M. Lederer has been covering international affairs for
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  the Associated Press for more than a half century.