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 Alan Kurdi,

a Syrian refugee who died
in the Mediterranean in 2015.

He died alongside 3,700 others
trying to get to Europe.

The next year, 2016,

5,000 people died.

It's too late for them,

but it's not too late
for millions of others.

It's not too late
for people like Frederick.

I met him in in the Nyarugusu
Refugee Camp in Tanzania.

He's from Burundi.

He wanted to know where
could he complete his studies.

He'd done 11 years of schooling.
He wanted a 12th year.

He said to me, "I pray
that my days do not end here

in this refugee camp."

And it's not too late for Halud.

Her parents were Palestinian refugees

living in the Yarmouk Refugee Camp
outside Damascus.

She was born to refugee parents, and
now she's a refugee herself in Lebanon.

She's working for the International
Rescue Committee to help other refugees,

but she has no certainty at all

about her future,

where it is or what it holds.

This talk is about Frederick, about Halud,

and about millions like them,

why they're displaced,

how they survive, what help they need,
and what our responsibilities are.

I truly believe this,

that the biggest question
in the 21st question

concerns our duty to strangers.

The future you is about your duties

to strangers.

You know better than anyone,
the world is more connected

than ever before,

yet the great danger

is that we're consumed by our divisions.

And there is no better test of that

than how we treat refugees.

Here are the facts: 65 million people
displaced from their homes

by violence and persecution last year.

If it was a country,

that would be the 21st
largest country in the world.

Most of those people, about 40 million,
stay within their own home country,

but 25 million are refugees.

That means they cross a border
into a neighboring state.

Most of them are living in poor countries,

relatively poor or lower-middle
income countries, like Lebanon,

where Halud is living.

In Lebanon, one
in four people is a refugee,

a quarter of the whole population.

And refugees stay for a long time.

The average length of displacement

is 10 years.

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