Mr President, colleagues,

The Russian Federation welcomes this high-level plenary meeting that is seeking solutions to the problem of migrants and refugees across the world. In our view, this meeting is an important international forum that has convened to discuss assistance to people who were forced to abandon their homes due to wars and domestic armed conflicts in their home countries, as well as due to political, economic, social and other troubles.

Today, when there are over 65 million displaced persons in the world, the subject of this meeting appears to be more topical than ever. We share the common opinion that the most reliable way to successfully resolve the refugee crisis is to eliminate the cause forcing these people to leave their home.

We assume that a successful response to modern migration challenges requires, first of all, prevention and settlement of conflicts through political means, coordinated efforts of the global community in political, socioeconomic, humanitarian and other areas, and security and human rights protection, as well as building interaction between humanitarian aid and development assistance. It is necessary to exclude external interference in domestic issues by other countries.

We believe that the current refugee crisis in Europe is a result of irresponsible intrusion into the domestic affairs of the sovereign states in the Middle East and North Africa in order to destabilise them and impose a change of unwanted power. This intrusion brought a collapse of statehood, humanitarian disasters, civil wars and a rise of terrorism. It made living in those countries unbearable due to the danger to life and violation of fundamental rights and freedoms. As a result, a massive flow of refugees and migrants is leaving the said region. We believe that the states that were actively involved in this intrusion must bear the largest and foremost responsibility for providing help to the victims, refugees and displaced persons.

We believe that a solution to the refugee crisis in Europe can be found through political resolution in the countries from which the refugees are fleeing, as well as through assistance to them in socioeconomic development and state-building. Millions of people, entire nations need peace and confidence in the future. These can be provided by a cessation of hostilities in Syria, Libya and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa, and by combating terrorists in the region.

In this respect, we see the promoted concept of “shared responsibility” as an attempt to shuffle off the responsibility. We insist that such attempts are counterproductive.

 We assume that this concept does not bring Russia any additional international legal and/or financial obligations. But we would like to stress that Russia supports the international refugee protection regime based on the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. Our country provides political support and donations to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), supplies substantial amounts of humanitarian aid to the source countries, and accepts and assists with the settlement of the refugees in our territory, including over a million displaced persons from Ukraine.

We believe that to stabilise the situation it is also necessary to ensure proper control over the migration flows, prevent criminal activity by migrants, improve the readmission procedure, and build new pathways for legal immigration.

Everything must be done to prevent terrorists from infiltrating the countries accepting refugees, those who are really in need of help. It is unacceptable that refugees be subject to political manipulation by parties inciting ethnic, religious and social hatred – even more so that refugee camps be used for recruiting and training militants.

We assume that the approaches to the resolution of the migration issues, including protection of refugees’ rights, must not contradict the basic principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence, and must not violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of any states and be imposed without the consent of those countries where they are exercised. The 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol are the international legal foundation of this activity.

One more point, Mr President. We listened to the statements by representatives of Georgia and Ukraine, which included unjustified allegations against Russia. Since my time is limited, I will only say this: the purpose of such statements is obvious, and it is to shift the burden of responsibility for the current situation onto somebody else’s shoulders, to justify the criminal policy that forced thousands of people to leave their homes and one’s own unwillingness to take actual steps to remedy the situation.

Thank you for your attention.