[Title] Statement by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the United Nations Summit for Refugees and Migrants

Excellencies,

Today the world faces an unprecedented level of refugee and migrant movements, which amounts to serious ongoing humanitarian crises. Against such a backdrop, the first United Nations Summit for Refugees and Migrants, which we hold today, is most welcome and timely. I wish to convey my heartfelt appreciation to all the Member States who have gathered to participate in this historic summit.

As the humanitarian crises we are witnessing today are so enormous, close cooperation among all the relevant states and organizations is essential. For that very reason, Japan consolidated the G7 Ise-Shima Leaders’ Declaration, which highlighted the importance of mid- and long-term efforts to address refugee and migrant issues.

I support the United Nations to take the lead in tackling this issue. I expect all the United Nations organizations to come together and unite their efforts as “One UN” under the “New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants” adopted today. I welcome the agreement to include the International Organization for Migration, which makes great contributions to this field, as a related organization of the UN.

Excellencies,

Japan, as the holder of the G7 Presidency, and as an advocate for human security, has been proactively contributing to improve the refugee crisis. JICA, the implementing agency of Japan’s ODA, has been providing assistance to Syrian refugees and host communities in various countries, such as Turkey and Jordan. Japanese NGOs are working and sweating together with local people. In addition, Japan works closely with the United Nations organizations, of which there are many Japanese staff who personally play active roles in this area.

One of the characteristics of Japan’s assistance is that we provide development cooperation to promote self-reliance among the refugees and economic development of the host countries alongside our emergency humanitarian assistance. To take one example, in Lebanon’s central region, in addition to humanitarian assistance, Japan provides vocational training to Syrian refugees and Lebanese youth in cooperation with UNHCR. We also built water ways for irrigation together with UNDP. These cooperative activities have assisted more than 30,000 people.

We call this approach “the humanitarian and development nexus.” In short, we provide seamless assistance to both refugees and host communities from emergency assistance to economic development. I expect this approach to contribute greatly toward achieving the goals of the New York Declaration by enabling the coexistence of refugees and host communities while safeguarding their safety and dignity.

Excellencies,

To conclude my remarks, I would like to make a new commitment. Japan commits to providing an assistance package of about 2.8 billion US dollars between 2016 and 2018 as humanitarian and self-reliance assistance to refugees and migrants, and assistance to host countries and communities. Japan will continue to play a leading role to bring solutions to the refugee and migrant issues by collaborating closely with the international community