Global Refugee Forum garners $2.2b in pledges

The 2023 Global Refugee Forum (GRF) ended on Friday in Geneva, Switzerland, with over 2.2 billion U.S. dollars in pledges to improve the lives of the world's refugees and the countries and communities that host them, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Filippo Grandi, reported Xinhua.

The contributors, including governments, the private sector, philanthropies and foundations, faith-based organizations and others, also made commitments to consider refugees and host communities in policymaking and an array of financing instruments and programs.

"This (forum) was perhaps the greatest example of a 'whole of society' approach that I have seen in my 40 years of humanitarian work," Grandi, a co-host of the forum, said in his closing statement. "It has shown the transformative power of multilateralism, grounded in a multi-stakeholder whole-of-society pledging approach."

The three-day event brought together 4,200 participants from 168 countries and more than 425 organizations, while more than 10,000 people joined the forum online. The participants also promised to provide training opportunities and other material, technical and policy support for the displaced people.

Currently, there are more than 114 million displaced people across the world, of whom 36 million are refugees, according to UN statistics.

Furthermore, states pledged to resettle 1 million refugees by 2030 while governments and foundations launched a pledge backed by a new global sponsorship fund to help a further 3 million refugees access third countries through community sponsorship.

Among the more innovative initiatives was a multi-stakeholder pledge on digital protection from governments, the private sector, civil society, the United Nations and other actors, to help prevent the harmful impact of hate speech, misinformation and disinformation.

Held every four years, the GRF is the world's largest international gathering on refugees. It is designed to support the practical implementation of the objectives set out in the Global Compact on Refugees, a framework for more predictable and equitable responsibility-sharing among states, adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 2018.