New York, June 8, 2023 – Víctor Genina, Director of Policy and Advocacy at SIMN, participated in the event organized by the NGO Committee on Migration, a network of civil society organizations that follows the processes of migration and refuge that take place in the United Nations.

As an introduction to the discussion, Víctor Genina pointed out that the number of people forced to leave their country of residence by crossing an international border, according to the UNHCR, reached 103 million people by the end of 2022 (a figure that Blanche Tax, an official of UNHCR, pointed out that it has increased in the first 6 months of this year, due to the emergence of new humanitarian crises). Likewise, he mentioned that the proliferation of conflicts, the global geopolitical realignment, the harmful effects of climate change, state weakness, and the strengthening of non-state criminal actors are among the main causes of this increase.

Finally, he raised the question of whether the responses provided so far, such as the Global Refugee Compact and its follow-up mechanism, the Global Refugee Forum, are sufficient for states to respond adequately to humanitarian crises and to people in need of international protection.

The speakers included Timothy Kilbourn, an official from the Canadian Mission to the United Nations; Max Blanche, UNHCR official; Zohal Wali, an Afghan refugee and entrepreneur in the United States; and Amanda Muñoz de Toro, a humanitarian worker with a presence in the detention camps in Greece.