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Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, apostolic nuncio of the Vatican permanent observer mission of the Holy See to the U.N. and other international organizations here, said, in an Oct. 4 address to the 57th session of the executive committee of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), that “political will” beyond necessary funding is required to make systemic changes to protect migrants, asylum seekers and refugees.

UNHCR executive committee was scheduled to meet in Geneva from Oct. 2-6 to review and approve the agency's programs and budgets and to advise on protection matters.

“Around the world, through seas and deserts, people struggle to escape from war, from violation of their human rights, from famine,” Archbishop Tomasi said. “Clearly all of these people need protection.”

“The hundreds of victims whose lives have been lost in recent weeks and months in their desperate search for a more secure and decent existence is a red light of alarm that in our globalized world the international community is failing to uphold its goals of solidarity and protection,” he said.

The following is the statement of Archbishop Tomasi at the second session of the Human Rights Council:

Mr. President,

The delegation of the Holy See adds its appreciation for yours, and for the UNHCR high commissioner’s, able and committed leadership of the executive committee and in the cause of refugees and forcibly uprooted people.

1. The hundreds of victims whose lives have been lost in recent weeks and months in their desperate search for a more secure and decent existence is a red light of alarm that in our globalized world the international community is failing to uphold its goals of solidarity and protection.

Around the world, through seas and deserts, people struggle to escape from war, from violation of their human rights, from famine. Motives and flows are mixed, a major challenge to the responsibility to protect, in our case responsibility to protect in general. While different mechanisms and institutional arrangements are in place to address different kinds of movement of people, clearly all of these people need protection.

The valid distinction between migrants, asylum seekers and refugees has been blurred. A certain reluctance and fatigue to preserve such distinction in a fair way seem to prevail, thus weakening the protection role of the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees and the related 1967 Protocol as well as the 1969 Organization of African Unity Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, the OAU Convention.

It seems reasonable, both in south-south and south-north population flows, that in the determination of admission the UNHCR should complement the often political approach of states and guarantee the quality of the process through its presence or the implementation of its specific guidelines about selection. In this way, asylum seekers, who are a small proportion in these movements, will not be exposed to refoulement.

2. The wider awareness of the responsibility to protect should encourage an added effort to alleviate the plight of asylum seekers who on subsistent living and in a virtual state of limbo are scattered in various regions like, for example, the recent flows of Iraqis throughout the Middle East. They are particularly vulnerable. Conflicts prevent them from returning and in the country of temporary residence their status is not well recognized; it is almost that of stateless persons.

Political necessity conditions the interpretation of the refugee convention even though reality on the ground, often effectively witnessed to by civil society organizations, would demand recognition of these individuals and families as entitled to convention protection and assistance. It has become obvious in the current discussions that more resources are called for to meet all protection requirements and to address not just populations in a state of limbo, but also the 5.7 million of the world some 9 million refugees in protracted refugee situations, the more than four million Palestinian refugees, and the estimated 24 million internally displaced people (IDP).

If international solidarity would add to its budget on aid to refugees a small proportion of the increase in arms expenses – from 1996 to 2005 military expenditure increased by 34 percent to US $ 1.118 billions in current dollars – then a major step forward would be taken toward an adequate response to the pains of uprooted humanity.

3. Funds are a necessary but not sufficient requirement. The political will is needed to make the responsibility to protect comprehensive enough to embrace the prevention of forced displacement tragedies. The way of dialogue and of respect of human rights should replace that of conflict. Refugee camps, official and unofficial, would no longer stain ...