The refugee crisis is a test of our character

I'm going to speak to you
about the global refugee crisis,

and my aim is to show you that this crisis

is manageable, not unsolvable,

but also show you that this is as much
about us and who we are

as it is a trial of the refugees
on the front line.

For me, this is not just
a professional obligation,

because I run an NGO supporting refugees
and displaced people around the world.

It's personal.

I love this picture.

That really handsome guy on the right,

that's not me.

That's my dad, Ralph, in London, in 1940

with his father Samuel.

They were Jewish refugees from Belgium.

They fled the day the Nazis invaded.

And I love this picture too.

It's a group of refugee children

arriving in England in 1946 from Poland.

And in the middle is my mother, Mariam.

She was sent to start a new life

in a new country

on her own

at the age of 12.

I know this:

if Britain had not admitted refugees

in the 1940s,

I certainly would not be here today.

Yet 70 years on, the wheel
has come full circle.

The sound is of walls being built,

vengeful political rhetoric,

humanitarian values and principles on fire

in the very countries that
70 years ago said never again

to statelessness and hopelessness

for the victims of war.

Last year, every minute,

24 more people were displaced
from their homes

by conflict, violence, and persecution:

another chemical weapon attack in Syria,

the Taliban on the rampage in Afghanistan,

girls driven from their school
in northeast Nigeria by Boko Haram.

These are not people moving
to another country

to get a better life.

They're fleeing for their lives.

It's a real tragedy

that the world's most famous refugee
can't come to speak to you here today.

Many of you will know this picture.

It shows the lifeless body

of five-year old Alain Kurdi