In 2022, the number of people displaced from their homes grew by the largest amount on record, driven in part by Russia’s war in Ukraine. People flee their homes for a variety of reasons—persecution, poverty, conflict, climate change—and the crisis has shown no signs of slowing down. What policies can make the world safer for refugees and displaced people? What draws them to eventually return? And how much do aid organizations depend on top donors to accomplish their goals?
Filippo Grandi, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, joined FP’s Ravi Agrawal to explore the trends and traumas of the global refugee crisis.
After U.S. President Joe Biden issued an executive order temporarily closing the southern border, chief of the U.N.’s refugee agency, Filippo Grandi, worries that some aspects are “at variance with international law.”
The global refugee population, at 43 million, is three times higher than it was a decade ago. UNHCR’s Grandi says it’s because of a broken international system, adding, “This is a world that has become unable to make peace.”
With most global attention focused on humanitarian needs in Ukraine and Gaza, Grandi decries the neglect of the crisis in Sudan: “People in Sudan go through the same suffering, suffer from the same abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law as the people in Ukraine or in Gaza, and yet nobody speaks about them.”
In 2023, the United States contributed more funds to the UNHCR than the next 10 countries combined. Grandi reflects on the influence that gives it over agency priorities.
Filippo Grandi
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Filippo Grandi is the United Nations high commissioner for refugees. From 2010 to 2014, he served as commissioner general of UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. He also served as deputy special representative of the U.N. secretary-general in Afghanistan and has worked with NGOs and UNHCR in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and at the United Nations’ Geneva headquarters.
Ravi Agrawal
Editor in chief, Foreign Policy
Ravi Agrawal is the editor in chief of Foreign Policy, the host of FP Live, and a regular world affairs analyst on TV and radio. Before joining FP in 2018, Agrawal worked at CNN for more than a decade in full-time roles spanning three continents, including as the network’s New Delhi bureau chief and correspondent. He is the author of India Connected: How the Smartphone Is Transforming the World’s Largest Democracy.
Related
