BRUSSELS, 20 May. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, and the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, have asked the Member States of the European Union to help refugees go beyond the war of Ukraine and do not forget other crises such as Burma, Venezuela or the Sahel.
“The important message is that Ukraine is not alone. We must not forget the rest,” the Italian politician said in joint statements before participating in the meeting of EU development ministers.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has assured that there are already more than 84 million refugees in the world and that only in Ukraine there are 6 million refugees and more than 8 million internally displaced persons.
In this sense, he recognized the seriousness of the situation in Ukraine and explained that the Russian offensive could trigger others due to the impact it has on energy, food security or the rise in prices. “This can cause more displaced people if there are more countries that fall into instability,” Grandi pointed out.
“For Europeans, the Ukrainian crisis is not the only crisis, we have to continue paying attention to other chronic refugee crises,” Borrell assured, recalling that the donor conference for Syria a few weeks ago was a success.
At all times, the head of European diplomacy has valued the joint efforts between the community institutions and the Member States, pointing out that this approach is adequate to address humanitarian crises such as the one in Ukraine.
“The budget is a European budget. And it cannot have a deficit. Our resources are limited and we have to distribute them and we cannot increase them,” said the former Spanish minister.
Grandi, for his part, has advanced that he will ask countries to have a reserve of 10 percent of their development budgets to deal with displacement crises, in line with the distribution that the EU makes of its humanitarian funds.
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