UN Refugee Chief Urges Security Council to End Conflicts So Displacement Stops Passing Between Generations

On Friday, the man who runs the United Nations refugee agency stood before the Security Council and told its 15 members that his people can keep refugees alive, but only they can help bring the fighting to an end. Barham Salih was giving his first address to the Council since being elected high commissioner for refugees last December. The meeting took place on the sidelines of the annual U.N. gathering of world leaders.

Salih has a personal stake in the subject. He is a former refugee himself, and he served as president of Iraq from 2018 to 2022. He told the Council that its members have "a unique responsibility to help make peace possible," and he asked them to use it on behalf of the millions forced from their homes and the millions more who should never have to flee. The figure behind that appeal is more than 117 million people forced to leave their homes.

His argument rested on a division of labor. Humanitarian workers, including those at UNHCR, deal every day with what conflict leaves behind, he said, but they cannot create peace. Under the U.N. Charter, that task belongs to the Security Council, which is charged with maintaining international peace and security.

He then went through the crises driving people from their homes. Sudan remains the world's largest displacement crisis, with 12 million people displaced inside and outside the country. "As long as this war continues, people will continue to flee," he said. In Congo, he said, generations have lived through cycles of conflict and violence, and an escalating Ebola crisis now adds to the strain. In Ukraine, the war has displaced millions inside the country and sent millions more abroad.

He also pointed to Western Sahara, the disputed territory that Morocco claims. Generations of refugees from there have grown up in camps near Tindouf in neighboring Algeria, he said, facing uncertainty and limited prospects while they wait for a political solution. And in the most recent escalation in the Middle East, UNHCR has mobilized resources and staff to assist more than 130,000 Yemenis who fled recent hostilities and are still inside Yemen. Over 3,700 others have sought safety in Djibouti.

Salih turned to a target he announced earlier this year: cutting by half, by 2035, the number of refugees in long-term displacement who depend on humanitarian aid. He acknowledged the goal "is ambitious." But he said it must be, because keeping people alive year after year while they cannot rebuild their lives cannot be the end goal.

He was specific about what success should not look like. It cannot mean getting better at keeping people caught in war alive for another year, or setting up a new camp in response to a 50-year emergency, or watching children inherit displacement from their parents. "Success must ultimately mean creating the conditions in which people no longer need us," he said. He described the agency's ambition as preventing displacement where possible, resolving it where it has happened, and creating conditions for people to rebuild in safety and dignity.

What to watch now is whether the Council, which heard the appeal, takes up peace efforts on the conflicts he named, and whether the 2035 target gains traction.