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STORY: UN / UNHCR SALIH INTERVIEW
TRT: 03:31
SOURCE: UN VIDEO
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 13 MARCH 2026, NEW YORK CITY / FILE
FILE - NEW YORK CITY
1. Close up, United Nations flag
13 MARCH 2026, NEW YORK CITY
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Barham Ahmed Salih, UN High Commissioner for Refugees:
“The responsibility in every sense of the word is awesome. We are talking about unprecedented levels of displacement globally: 117 million people are forcibly displaced from their homes. This is not to include the numbers that are emerging from displacement as a result of the escalating conflicts across the Middle East. This is happening at a time of shrinking humanitarian resources.”
FILE - NEW YORK CITY
3. Close up, United Nations flag
13 MARCH 2026, NEW YORK CITY
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Barham Ahmed Salih, UN High Commissioner for Refugees:
“I really want to emphasize the following: behind every statistic is a life, is a person with aspiration, with a right to dignity, with the right to a better future. I say this as a former refugee myself, understanding what protection means and what opportunity means to people.”
FILE - NEW YORK CITY
5. Close up, United Nations flag
13 MARCH 2026, NEW YORK CITY
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Barham Ahmed Salih, UN High Commissioner for Refugees:
“Being a refugee is not meant to be a fate. It is meant to be a temporary condition. When I say this, I also reflect on the sad reality that overwhelming majority of the refugees in the world today - In fact, nearly two thirds of the refugee population - are stuck in situations of protracted displacement and reliant on humanitarian assistance. By protracted displacement, I mean five years, a decade, even in some cases two decades or more.”
FILE - NEW YORK CITY
7. Close up, United Nations flag
13 MARCH 2026, NEW YORK CITY
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Barham Ahmed Salih, UN High Commissioner for Refugees:
“At the end of the day, the hope for most of refugees is to go back to their homes and rebuild their lives. But in the meantime, we need to help host nations - who are mostly by the way low income, middle income countries around the world - we need to help them accommodate refugees and include them in the national, life and economies to be productive, contributors to their economies, instead of just being stuck in these situations of dependency on humanitarian assistance.”
FILE - NEW YORK CITY
9. Close up, United Nations flag
13 MARCH 2026, NEW YORK CITY
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Barham Ahmed Salih, UN High Commissioner for Refugees:
“The story of resilience with every refugee I have met is genuine and is real, is not easy to lose one's home. It's not easy to lose your community and your friends and to move into a faraway land and starting all afresh.”
FILE - NEW YORK CITY
11. Close up, United Nations flag
13 MARCH 2026, NEW YORK CITY
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Barham Ahmed Salih, UN High Commissioner for Refugees:
“These are people with agency and yes, with a fundamental right to dignity and to make it in this life. It's incumbent upon us to help them to make it. And I know together, we will continue with that important mission.”
FILE - NEW YORK CITY
13. Close up, United Nations flag
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Barham Ahmed Salih said, “The story of resilience with every refugee I have met is genuine and is real.”
In an interview with UN Video in New York, Salih said, “The responsibility in every sense of the word is awesome. We are talking about unprecedented levels of displacement globally: 117 million people are forcibly displaced from their homes. This is not to include the numbers that are emerging from displacement as a result of the escalating conflicts across the Middle East. This is happening at a time of shrinking humanitarian resources.”
He emphasized that “behind every statistic is a life, is a person with aspiration, with a right to dignity, with the right to a better future. I say this as a former refugee myself, understanding what protection means and what opportunity means to people.”
He also said, “Being a refugee is not meant to be a fate. It is meant to be a temporary condition. When I say this, I also reflect on the sad reality that overwhelming majority of the refugees in the world today - In fact, nearly two thirds of the refugee population - are stuck in situations of protracted displacement and reliant on humanitarian assistance. By protracted displacement, I mean five years, a decade, even in some cases two decades or more.”
He highlighted, “At the end of the day, the hope for most of refugees is to go back to their homes and rebuild their lives. But in the meantime, we need to help host nations - who are mostly by the way low income, middle income countries around the world - we need to help them accommodate refugees and include them in the national, life and economies to be productive, contributors to their economies, instead of just being stuck in these situations of dependency on humanitarian assistance.”
He said, “The story of resilience with every refugee I have met is genuine and is real, is not easy to lose one's home. It's not easy to lose your community and your friends and to move into a faraway land and starting all afresh.”
He concluded, “These are people with agency and yes, with a fundamental right to dignity and to make it in this life. It's incumbent upon us to help them to make it. And I know together, we will continue with that important mission.”
