It is my great pleasure to welcome you to this Development Dialogue event together with Assistant High Commissioner for Operations of UNHCR, Raouf Mazou in advance of the World Refugee Day on 20 June.

While our collaboration dates back in 1960s, in 2017, UNDP and UNHCR Principals committed to deepening our strategic partnership through leveraging our complementary strengths and mandates. We agreed to fulfil the imperative to ‘leave no one behind’ in the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda by ensuring that refugees, asylum-seekers, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and host communities all benefit equitably from development progress.

Four years on, this agreement has led to mushrooming of joint collaborations in over 30 countries as well as regional partnerships spanning refugee situations. In the Syria situation, for example, which is the largest refugee crisis in the world, UNDP and UNHCR have been collaborating with 5 host governments and 270 international and national partners through the Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan, or 3RP. This plan has provided half a million people with cash assistance, helped over 44,000 individuals into employment and issued over 76,000 work permits to Syrian refugees in Jordan.

The need to work together has never been stronger. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, for the first time in thirty years, global human development tumbled backwards. In the meantime, the number of forced displaced people continue to rise to another record high, more than 80 million according to latest estimates, although the precise number will be shared by UNHCR shortly on World Refugee Day.

The nature of forced displacement crises has become more protracted and intractable. The drivers and consequences of both internal and cross-border displacement are the result of increasingly complex interactions among socio-economic, political, security and environmental factors.

In this respect, Internal Displacement Monitoring Center’s 2021 Global Report on Internal Displacement (GRID) shows that disasters triggered more than three-quarters of the new internal displacements worldwide in 2020. It also pointed out that convergence of conflict and disasters led to many people being displaced for a second or even third time, increasing and prolonging their vulnerability.

When IDPs, refugees and asylum seekers do not have freedom of movement or access to decent jobs and social protection, and when they and their children lack adequate education and training opportunities, the cycle of aid dependency, vulnerability and poverty is bound to continue.

Reversing these trends requires concerted efforts to work together at scale. More investment is needed towards joined up, gender-responsive interventions that bridge together development, humanitarian, peace and security, human rights, and climate actors.

In this connection, I would like to touch upon UNDP’s recent work with UN Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement. We see it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to ‘’reframe and reset’’ our collective approach to internal displacement, placing much more emphasis on developmental approaches and national accountability, elevating prevention, and promoting a more effective collaboration between different actors under common principles.

Given how the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated existing vulnerabilities, we need to better understand the multi-dimensionality of risk, including those arising from climate change. We also need a meaningful pivot to preventing forced displacement from happening in the first place. This means better data and analytics around risks and threats, and being able to translate these into concrete preventive actions addressing adverse drivers of forced displacement.

In our recent publication, carried out in partnership with the High Level Panel which is titled “Towards Development Solutions to Internal Displacement: A Political Economy Approach”, we highlight that building development solutions rooted in the political economic context opens opportunities to enable displacement-affected individuals and communities as agents of change. By being actively engaged in the development processes that shape their lives, they become part of the solution.

Distinguished participants,

Our UNDP-UNHCR collaboration relies on the shared belief that together, and as part of broader inter-agency efforts, we can better respond to displacement crises.

Today, we will hear from government partners, UNDP and UNHCR colleagues, as well as member states about their experiences of collaboration in different countries and regions.

We believe that with the right support and policies, forcibly displaced persons can improve their own wellbeing and thrive, while making vital contributions to host communities’ development.

At the Global Refugee Forum in 2019, UNDP committed to working with UNHCR to 1) address adverse drivers of forced displacement; 2) to strengthen Rule of Law and Local Governance; and 3) to promote decent work through innovative digital initiatives.

The UNDP and UNHCR Partnership Framework on Rule of Law and Local Governance helps now over 15 countries improve access of refugees and host communities to justice, safety and security and human rights protection systems, as well as to basic services.

UNDP and UNHCR are also collaborating on innovative digital initiatives that foster the economic inclusion of refugees. In Bangladesh, UNDP, in coordination with UNHCR, adapted the portal Aspire to Innovate (a2i)   to provide Rohingyas living in camps and the local host communities with online tools required to develop fashion lines and connect them with the international market. This model is being expanded internationally with a similar platform adapted for Syrian refugees in Turkey and displaced Venezuelans in Colombia.

Building on these joint collaborations, UNDP and UNHCR are working on a new “Global Joint Initiative for Inclusion and Solutions” as the next step in this evolution, which we hope to launch this year.

With a focus on accelerating development solutions for refugees, IDPs and host communities, the Global Initiative intends to establish a joint facility to support bold and innovative actions that can be scaled up starting with 10 priority countries or situations.

This strengthened cooperation between our two organizations will seek to enhance human capabilities and expand opportunities for the forcibly displaced and host communities, with a specific emphasis on women. We want to make sure that refugees and IDPs do not just survive, but thrive and flourish together.

I look forward our discussions today.