Remarks by Mr. Barham Salih, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Member State briefing, Geneva

As delivered

1. Introduction

Good morning, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Before I begin, I would like to express my solidarity with the people of Venezuela following the recent earthquakes. UNHCR is already on the ground, working alongside the authorities, humanitarian partners, and affected communities to assess needs and support the response. We stand ready, as required, to provide life-saving protection and assistance. Our thoughts are with everyone affected by this tragedy.

And also, I want to say our best wishes to our colleague, the Ambassador of Colombia, who is in hospital and has been a great partner to us. I wish him all the best on our behalf, and hopefully we will see him healthy and safe soon. It is a pleasure to welcome you once again, and I thank you for joining us today.

When we met in February, in my first briefing to Member States as High Commissioner, I shared my initial assessment of the global displacement landscape, the challenges confronting UNHCR, and my early reflections on the direction I believed our organization needed to take.

Over the past five to six months, I have had the privilege of engaging with many of you, listening carefully to your perspectives and concerns. I have travelled extensively to refugee-hosting countries and situations of return. I have spent time with refugees, host communities, government leaders, humanitarian workers, development partners, regional organizations, and colleagues across our own organization.

Those conversations have reinforced my conviction that while the challenges before us remain immense, they are not insurmountable.

They have also reinforced something else.

The world is asking more of UNHCR than ever before. Refugees are asking more of us. Host countries are asking more of us. Donors are expecting and asking more of us. And rightly so.

At a time of record displacement, constrained humanitarian resources, increasing political polarization, and growing pressure on asylum systems around the world, we cannot simply continue doing more of the same.

We must continue to uphold international protection with absolute determination. We must continue to provide life-saving assistance wherever emergencies occur. But we must also become much more effective at helping refugees rebuild their lives and reducing the number of people trapped in protracted displacement.

That remains the direction I set out in February.

Today, I would like to focus on how we are beginning to translate that direction into meaningful action.

I will first share reflections from my World Refugee Day mission. I will then update you on how we are operationalizing our 50 by 35 vision, before concluding with the independent management review and our workforce reforms.

I know many Member States have asked how these different processes relate to one another.

They are not separate initiatives.

They are complementary parts of a single effort to ensure that UNHCR remains fit for purpose in a rapidly changing world.

2. World Refugee Day Mission

This year, Excellencies, World Refugee Day was particularly meaningful for me, as my first as High Commissioner for Refugees.

I chose to spend it in Ethiopia, a country that has demonstrated remarkable leadership over many years in providing protection to refugees despite facing profound economic, humanitarian and security challenges.

Ethiopia today hosts over 1.1 million refugees and asylum-seekers from neighboring countries, while also responding to internal displacement and managing significant development pressures. Ethiopia is demonstrating what becomes possible when protection is matched with inclusion and opportunity, not only for refugees, but also for the communities that welcome them.

A defining moment of the visit was the launch of the Makatet Roadmap, a nationally led framework to include refugees in national systems and services, expanding access to documentation, education, health care, livelihoods, and local services while strengthening opportunities for host communities as well.

This is the kind of practical, government-led approach the international community should support.

On World Refugee Day, I travelled to Ura refugee settlement, close to the Sudanese border. There, I saw Makatet already taking shape. Ura is home to thousands of Sudanese refugees who have sought safety after fleeing the devastating conflict in Sudan. Many arrived after horrific violence and unimaginable suffering.

Their immediate needs remain urgent: protection, safety, registration, shelter, health care, education and food. These remain the foundations of our work, and our first responsibility will always be to provide life-saving assistance for people who need it. But what impressed me in Ura was that emergency response is not stopping there.

Refugees and host communities are accessing shared schools and health services, with development investments being introduced from the earliest stages of displacement as a “solutions from the start” approach.

I also met refugee entrepreneurs whose businesses are supporting families, creating jobs and contributing to the local economy. These conversations reinforced something I have repeatedly witnessed throughout my travels: refugees are not defined by what they have fled; they are defined by what they continue to build.

At the same time, my visit to Jewi refugee camp in the Gambella region was a stark reminder that we cannot allow our focus on solutions to diminish our commitment to life-saving humanitarian action. Nearly 450,000 South Sudanese refugees live across the Gambella region, and renewed violence has forced thousands more to flee in recent months.

In Jewi, there was one doctor serving approximately 70,000 people in that camp. One doctor. That is unacceptable. Allow me to say, it is a moral failure, and a reminder that humanitarian assistance continues to save lives and requires sustained international support.

As we speak about solutions, inclusion and self-reliance, we must recognize a simple reality: people cannot build their futures if they cannot survive first.

Protection, emergency assistance and solutions are not sequential stages. They are mutually reinforcing responsibilities that must advance together.

At the African Union, I engaged with Member States on the inextricable link between conflict, displacement, and peace.

Humanitarian action saves lives.

Development expands opportunity.

But only peace can resolve displacement substantially and seriously.

I also presided over the High-Level Ministerial Meeting of the Tripartite Commission between the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of Rwanda, and UNHCR. The meeting took place at an important moment, building on recent regional developments, including the Washington Peace Accord.

I welcomed the renewed commitment of both governments, with UNHCR’s support, to facilitate the voluntary, safe and dignified return of refugees when conditions permit. This is an important step towards practical cooperation for refugees.

Refugees themselves must remain at the heart of every solution. Return can never be imposed. It must always be voluntary, informed, safe, and sustainable. Durable solutions, colleagues, do not end at the border. They require sustained support for reintegration so that return becomes not only possible, but lasting.

I would also, Excellencies, like to highlight my visit to Egypt, which has been most generous in hosting large numbers of refugees for so many years, without relying on camps. Following the adoption of its national asylum law—a historic precedent for that region—and the issuance of executive regulations, Egypt is now entering an important transition. UNHCR is working closely with the Government to help ensure this process is aligned with international legal standards and strengthens protection for those who need it.

3. Operationalizing the 50 by 35 Vision

Let me come, Excellencies, to the specifics of what we are doing in terms of operationalizing the 50 by 35 agenda.

I have just described a reinforced conviction that has only grown stronger over the past few months.

As we have discussed, the international refugee system is confronting a structural challenge. Displacement is becoming longer and more complex.

Prolonged displacement is not only a policy challenge—it is a human one. When refugees remain trapped in long-term displacement, dependent on humanitarian assistance and without realistic prospects for self-reliance or solutions, this undermines a fundamental human right: the right to dignity.

Today, nearly 70 per cent of the refugee populations are living in situations of displacement lasting five years and beyond, many still dependent on humanitarian assistance with limited prospects for self-reliance.

At the same time, humanitarian aid is projected to decline by more than 40 per cent, and official development assistance by a further 7 per cent in 2026.

This widening gap between growing needs and shrinking resources, combined with a deeper recognition of the socioeconomic impacts of forced displacement and the need for more sustainable responses, compels us to think—and act—differently. The 50 by 35 vision is our response.

It affirms a simple but fundamental principle: Solutions are not simply an eventual outcome of our work—they are a central pillar of our mandate.

At UNHCR, our mandate remains clear: protection, life-saving humanitarian assistance, and advancing solutions.

Alongside protection and humanitarian assistance, solutions—and pathways to solutions—must shape our approach from the outset. They must guide how we design our programmes, allocate resources, and engage partners—not as an afterthought, but as a defining feature of how our operational model is.

The real test is not the strength of the vision, but how this is translated into operational reality.

We are already taking practical steps to do so:

• We have established a dedicated task force, led by the Assistant High Commissioner for Operations, to map displacement dynamics country by country—grounded in data, field realities, and practical opportunities for solutions.
• Country offices are actively identifying context-specific pathways to solutions. This work is increasingly informed by stronger socioeconomic data and evidence, allowing us to identify where the greatest opportunities exist to reduce long-term dependency and advance durable solutions.
• In close partnership with the World Bank, we have agreed to work on an initial set of focus countries where we can move, in particular on job creation, and each of these countries reflects a different operational pathway. I want to emphasize that this is areas of focus for now—it is not excluding necessarily others—but we are focusing on a number of countries to identify specific operational details that we can pursue with regard to job creation, inclusion, and solutions.
• Syria represents a major potential opportunity for voluntary return. But returns will only be sustainable if we invest in restoring basic services, notably water, education, and local infrastructure, and if IDPs and refugee returnees have access to sustainable livelihoods and jobs.
• Uganda continues to demonstrate the value of progressive refugee policies. Together with development partners, we are scaling support for self-reliance through agriculture, markets, and jobs.
• Colombia has shown how regularization can unlock access to employment and public services for millions.
• Jordan demonstrates that solutions take different forms. While many refugees are returning to Syria, those who remain continue to require sustained support, including access to services and opportunities to work.
• Chad offers significant potential to link humanitarian action with development investment in underserved, highly impacted regions.

Beyond these contexts, colleagues, this approach is already shaping our work as UNHCR elsewhere:

• In the Central African Republic, emerging opportunities for return require coordinated new investment in return hubs—combining services, livelihoods, and reintegration support.
• As I spoke about, Ethiopia’s Makatet Plan offers a clear roadmap for inclusion, built on partnership with development actors.
• In Kenya, the Shirika Plan reflects the same direction—supporting refugees as economic actors within local communities.

That same principle is true in many countries: When given the opportunity, refugees contribute—to economies, to communities, and to society as a whole.

Current estimates suggest that if refugees were economically active at levels comparable to host populations, the cost of meeting basic subsistence needs could fall to around $6 billion annually, around 73 per cent lower than today.

Additional investments in refugee-hosting areas—often among the poorest— strengthen entire communities: schools, health systems, infrastructure, jobs, and local markets.

I believe this is smart economic and development policy. Avoiding the emergence of new aid-dependent populations is one of the most important long-term investments the international community can make.

Let me also be clear about what the 50 by 35 vision is not:

• It is not about shifting responsibility onto host countries.
• It is not about replacing humanitarian assistance with development financing.
• And it is certainly not about being trapped in poverty or dependent on overstretched systems.

Inclusion works only if supported—predictably, adequately, and over time—with sustained investment in national systems, livelihoods and opportunities for refugees to become more self-reliant.

That is why long-term, predictable financing is essential. We do need to build on the existing financial facilities that allow for development assistance with refugee-inclusion. As I said, we have already initiated serious conversations with many development actors including the World Bank and others in that direction, and I’m hopeful that these will lead to tangible, specific projects and initiatives that could be translated.

I want to also say that we have already signed a memorandum of understanding with UNDP to align together around the 50 by 35 vision as a shared strategic framework, and we are deepening engagement with international financial institutions and other development partners to scale that approach. Across all contexts, United Nations Country Teams, under the leadership of the Resident Coordinators, will play a central role in bringing together humanitarian, development and peace actors to translate this vision into country-level action.

As you have heard me say before, I acknowledge the 50 by 35 vision is ambitious and cannot be delivered by UNHCR alone. It requires sustained mobilization across governments, the United Nations system, development actors, donors, international financial institutions, the private sector and refugees themselves.

Our shared task is to keep solutions at the center, so that protection is matched by real pathways out of displacement. Being a refugee should never become a permanent condition, and long-term dependency on humanitarian assistance should not be the outcome we accept.

The question before us, Excellencies, is no longer whether change is needed.

It is how quickly we can deliver it.

The 50 by 35 vision is ambitious—but it is grounded in practical action: With political leadership, and strong partnerships, and sustained and predictable support. Governments, development institutions, donors, humanitarian actors, the private sector, and refugees themselves all have their role to play.

And it requires an organization that is ready.

UNHCR must evolve—not to step back from its mandate, but to deliver it more effectively: protecting lives today, while shaping solutions for tomorrow.

It is that transformation—and how we position UNHCR to lead it—that I would now like to turn to. And it is about the independent management review that I have spoken about and many of you have been engaged with and asking about.

4.Independent Management Review

When we met in February, I informed you that I would commission an independent review of UNHCR’s operating model. I did so because I believed it was important to step back and assess, with the benefit of independent expertise and broad consultations, whether our organization remains configured to deliver on its mandate effectively in this rapidly evolving displacement and international landscape.

The review was conducted independently by Oliver Wyman on a pro bono basis, and we are deeply grateful for the team’s professionalism, dedicated time and thorough work. It represents one of the most comprehensive assessments of UNHCR in recent years.

The review has now concluded, and we have received a comprehensive report outlining 51 initiatives and 90 programme recommendations.

I would like to emphasize at the outset that these remain recommendations. They have not yet been turned into decisions. We will now undertake our own assessment of the report, including further analysis of the implications, costs, and sequencing of implementation. Your engagement as partners and input will be an important part of this process. We will continue consulting Member States here in Geneva as we refine this approach.

The review drew on extensive consultations, including nearly 200 interviews across headquarters, regional bureaux, and country operations, as well as engagement with Member States, donors, and refugee-, stateless-, and IDPled organizations. It also benchmarked UNHCR against more than sixty multilateral, humanitarian, and private-sector organizations, and examined previous reform efforts. Crucially, it assessed not only our structures, but how effectively they enable us to deliver on our mandate.

I want to thank all those who contributed. Your feedback was clear and truly constructive.

The review reaches an important conclusion that our operating model needs to evolve, as has the environment in which we now work.

As we have stated before, displacement has become increasingly protracted. Funding has become more constrained and less predictable. Expectations regarding accountability, transparency and measurable impact have grown. Governments, development institutions, regional organizations, local actors, refugee-led organizations, and the private sector are playing an increasingly important and increasingly effective role in responding to these challenges that we face.

Many of you have reflected these same realities in our discussions over recent months. You have asked for greater clarity regarding what UNHCR is uniquely positioned to do, where we should lead directly, where we should convene, and where we should support governments and partners, and how we will ensure that every contribution entrusted to this organization delivers the greatest possible protection and solutions impact.

You have also challenged us on governance, workforce capability, hostcountry partnerships, funding sustainability, and delivery credibility.

These are legitimate questions. We have heard them, and the review addresses them in many, many ways.

Its central conclusion is that UNHCR now needs a clearer operating model to guide our choices, define our comparative advantage and ensure that our resources are deployed where they can deliver the greatest impact.

Our strengths must now be deployed with clearer roles, stronger governance, and better alignment to context.

Let me share six areas of recommendations that particularly resonate with me, and that will define our next chapter:

Shift 1: Organize Around Context, Not a Uniform Template

The first practical shift is to build an organization around the work, not the other way around. UNHCR will no longer apply the same model everywhere. Operations will be shaped by context:

An acute emergency is different from a protracted displacement context. A development-linked setting is different from a stable partnership environment, or a country in transition.

The review therefore proposes UNHCR organize itself increasingly around the realities of each context—acute emergency, protracted displacement, development-linked response, and stable partnership or transition, rather than applying a uniform global template.

That means matching each country situation with the right footprint, skills, delegated authority, right partnership models and the right kind of support from regional bureaux and headquarters. The review identifies opportunities to:

• Create leaner regional bureaux that focus on their defined oversight and cross-border alignment mandate and are centrally served by enabling functions, and streamline the reporting requirements that could be a bureaucratic impediment to the ability of our country offices.
• Standardize multi-country offices through clearer definitions of workforce composition expectations and requirements based on country coverage and local contexts; and
• Rationalize country presence based on defined rules and initiate transitions wherever we can effectively hand over to our local partners or national partners.
• Simply put, Excellencies, we do not need to maintain a country presence in 122 countries. Our presence should be rationalized where appropriate, using a clear modality to determine where UNHCR should remain directly present, where it should adjust its footprint, and where responsibilities can be transferred to national or local partners.

For Member States, this should provide a more consistent and clearer logic for how UNHCR deploys resources and makes choices in each country.

The review estimates—and I underline the word “estimates”—that a clearer and more context-driven footprint and alignment could conserve approximately $18 to 28 million. And I underline again that these are estimates that need to be verified as we go into the next stage of assessment.

We are now working on digesting in more detail the recommendations from this review to put into practice this approach for strategic budgeting and planning purposes, including already for 2027, where this might already be feasible.

Shift 2: Focus Headquarters on What Only Headquarters Can Do

The review concludes that headquarters should become leaner, more strategic, and better positioned to serve the field.

Its core functions should increasingly focus on what only headquarters can do: setting strategy, standards and policy; managing institutional risk; providing assurance; supporting global external positioning; and ensuring that the organization remains coherent across regions and operations worldwide.

At the same time, transactional and back-office functions should increasingly be simplified and consolidated through shared services where this improves efficiency, reducing duplication and allowing country operations to focus on delivery rather than administration.

The review also recommends assessing whether some of the organization-wide enabling functions, including human resources and resource management, may be delivered more effectively through further centralization and shared service arrangements where this improves efficiency and value for money.

The review identifies opportunities to consolidate shared services across finance, supply, information technology, and human resources. If implemented, these changes could reduce duplication across transactional functions and generate indicative cost savings of up to $21 million, while creating a more responsive, integrated, and cost-effective support model for field operations.

The review also recognizes that modernization requires targeted investment. Some of the changes are expected to generate efficiencies, while others will require upfront investment in the capabilities that will enable UNHCR to operate more effectively and better serve displaced populations.

A central part of this transformation investment is the modernization and integration of UNHCR’s digital, data and artificial intelligence capabilities, creating a stronger enterprise platform for protection delivery and decisionmaking, accountability, and transparency.

The review is clear that these capabilities are no longer optional enablers. They are becoming fundamental to how UNHCR protects people and manages its operations.

Better data can help identify protection risks earlier, improve emergency preparedness, and strengthen operational decision-making. With integrated systems we can reduce duplication, connect decision-making across the organization, and give Member States greater visibility over how resources translate into outcomes.

AI, used responsibly and with robust safeguards, has the potential to reduce administrative burden, improve analysis, accelerate decision-making and free staff to spend more time delivering protection and advancing solutions.

To support this transformation, the review recommends a significant modernization of UNHCR’s IT and data infrastructure, including systems integration and AI capability-building, with indicative investment needs in the range of $20 to 30 million.

Once again, please, these numbers are estimates that need to be verified as we evaluate in the next phases of this process. While this represents a significant upfront investment, it should be understood as an investment in the organization’s ability to operate more efficiently, more transparently and with greater impact.

If implemented at scale, this modernization is expected to deliver a payback period of approximately two to three years. The recurring savings could be substantial: around $7 to 10 million annually from efficiencies in IT, data and related non-staff costs, and a further $8 to 15 million in organization-wide resource savings through agent-driven automation, AI-enabled service delivery and systems improvements.

These savings will not materialize immediately. They depend on careful sequencing, responsible deployment and the progressive adoption of new tools and ways of working across the organization. But over a two- to three-year horizon, they have the potential to reduce duplication, lower recurring costs, strengthen outcome reporting and free resources for the core functions that we have.

Wherever possible, we will seek to leverage partnerships particularly with the private sector, to support this transformation. I don’t want to be too hopeful, but we’re already in conversation with some major technology companies that we hope, as part of their corporate social responsibility, to be partners with us on these modernization and transformation initiatives. They can bring not only the financial support and investment needed, but these private sector companies can also help us with in-kind support to really accelerate our digital transformation while ensuring value for money.

Some of the recommendations, Excellencies, relate to activities that are already underway (e.g. GSS), while others will require more consideration as to how they affect the 2027 operational planning.

But the direction is clear: headquarters must serve the field better, reduce duplication, and focus on those functions that truly require global leadership.

Shift 3: Define UNHCR’s Role in Each Context

The third shift is to be explicit about the role UNHCR plays in each context. The review proposes that we define our role more deliberately as implementer, orchestrator or technical partner depending on what the context demands.

This also requires us to become more deliberate about what we mean by partnership. Partnership extends well beyond our implementing arrangements.

Being clear about these boundaries will allow UNHCR to focus its resources where our comparative advantage is greatest, while enabling others to contribute where they are better placed to lead.

In some places, UNHCR must remain an implementer, especially in acute emergencies and where no other actor can deliver.

In others, our greatest value is as a convener, an orchestrator: convening actors to bring the needed support for inclusive systems and livelihood opportunities, setting standards, aligning delivery, and ensuring accountability.

In other contexts, UNHCR should act primarily as a technical partner, supporting governments and national systems to deliver sustainably, while ensuring that protection remains central.

Being clearer about these different roles will make UNHCR not only more effective but also more accountable. Each country context will therefore be assessed deliberately.

This sharper role definition is expected to generate $40–50 million in savings through better alignment of footprint and workforce.

Though we will not reach already the full ideal set-up in time for the 2027 budget, work will already begin now in line with the recommendations assuming that we will turn them into decisions in time.

Shift 4: Move Decisions Closer to Delivery

The fourth shift concerns decision-making and governance.

Decision rights will be clarified at every level, with authority placed closer to the front line where possible.

Country operations must be able to respond quickly to changing operational realities.

Shift 5: Build a Skills-Based, Performance-Oriented Workforce

This is central to every aspect of the review.

As I’ve said before, our people are our greatest asset. But the review makes clear that our workforce model must become more closely linked to skills, operational needs, and measurable performance.

Human resources must increasingly move beyond an administrative function to become a strategic workforce capability, translating operational priorities into workforce planning, organizational design, talent management, and leadership development.

The review recommends strengthening regional talent hubs to map skills across the organization, support cross-border surge capacity, and build the field expertise required across different operational contexts.

Delivering this shift will require an investment of an estimated $34 million upfront. The review identifies opportunities to examine our HR operating model, with indicative efficiency gains of around $17 to 21 million per annum.

At the same time, it recommends strengthening the foundations of our people function through greater investment in strategic workforce planning, business partnerships, organizational design, leadership development, HR technology, and the capabilities needed to support a more skills-based organization.

Wherever possible, we will build on the considerable expertise that already exists within UNHCR. But we must also recognize that some new capabilities will require targeted investment.

It will require the workforce transformation, which I will also turn to in my discussion regarding the SPRIF, but I hope that our review will also mean assessing the fundamental requirement of this organization: namely, moving beyond the defined attributes of our workforce to one that is fundamentally based on skills across the organization.

Shift 6: Make Funding and Results Easier to Trace

Funding and resources should be easier to track. For too long, the line between a Member State’s contribution and the outcomes it enabled has been more difficult to demonstrate than it should be. In an environment of constrained resources, this must change.

The review proposes a cleaner allocation logic linking resources more transparently to country context, operating posture and mandate priority, rather than relying primarily on historical precedent.

Member States and donors should have better visibility from the contributions to use, with stronger reporting on outcomes, trade-offs and what operational constraints mean in practice. This is a direct response to what many of you have asked of us and is fundamental to the trust that sustains long-term partnerships.

We have already begun moving in this direction, including through initiatives such as the Global Workforce Dashboard and our broader efforts to strengthen transparency and reporting across the organization.

Beyond the recommendations of the review, we are also continuing to strengthen financial discipline across the organization. Over the past two years, UNHCR has reduced travel expenditure by approximately 50 per cent and now has the lowest travel expenditure among comparable organizations. We are determined to sustain these gains by maintaining structurally lower travel costs across the organization.

Excellencies,

Once again, these proposed reforms should not be viewed as isolated management initiatives. They are intended to strengthen UNHCR’s ability to deliver across its full mandate in a rapidly changing world. Ultimately, these reforms are intended to strengthen value for money and ensure that every dollar entrusted to UNHCR is deployed where it delivers.

Changes will not be implemented overnight. They will be carefully prioritized, sequenced, tested and adapted by context, with transparency about what is taking shape, what is being piloted and what still requires consultation. Some changes can move quickly; others will require further engagement with staff, Member States and partners.

One area where that work is already underway is our workforce transformation. It is to that that I would now like to turn.

5. Staff Placement and Reduction in Force Policy (the SPRIF)

Excellencies,

No operating model, however well designed, can succeed without the people who bring it to life every day.

It is therefore important that I also speak candidly about the workforce challenges the organization has faced, over the past eighteen months and the steps we are taking to address them.

UNHCR’s international rotation and mobility framework has long been one of the organization’s defining strengths. It enabled us to deploy experienced colleagues where they are needed most, ensure a fair sharing of service across hardship duty stations, and develop a globally experienced workforce capable of responding across different operational contexts.

The significant financial contraction of 2025, however, fundamentally changed the operating environment. Following the difficult decisions taken last year to reduce the size of the organization, a structural imbalance emerged between the number of internationally recruited staff and the number of funded positions available within the assignment system.

At the time the policy was activated, approximately 3,000 internationally recruited colleagues were competing for around 1,800 established positions, with nearly one thousand staff remaining between assignments—many for far longer than the system was designed to accommodate.

This situation was not sustainable. It prolonged uncertainty for colleagues, constrained operational planning and carried an estimated financial cost of approximately $185 million over the 2026–2028 period.

It was not sustainable and not acceptable. It was in this context that I took the decision to activate the Staff Placement and Reduction in Force Policy (the SPRIF).

Let me emphasize: The SPRIF is not a second round of organizational downsizing.

The decisions regarding which positions the organization could retain were taken during the restructuring of 2025. The SPRIF addresses the mismatch between staff and those positions through a transparent, time-bound and rules-based process. It should therefore be understood not as a further downsizing exercise, but as the necessary reset from which we can build the future workforce model and skills strategy that will support UNHCR’s next chapter.

Throughout that exercise, we have placed particular emphasis on fairness, consistency and support for affected colleagues, including career transition assistance, psychosocial support and strong procedural safeguards. This remains extremely important to me.

The SPRIF is only one part of a broader workforce transformation. It provides the foundation from which we can build the workforce model required for UNHCR’s next chapter.

For that reason, I have asked the Division of People Management to undertake a broader review of UNHCR’s mobility and contractual framework.

Building on the recent completion of the centralization of transactional HR functions into the Global Service Centre, this marks the next phase of our workforce transformation, with an increasing focus on strategic workforce planning, skills, leadership development and organizational capability.

Our objective is not to diminish global mobility. It is to preserve one of UNHCR’s greatest institutional strengths while creating a workforce model that is sustainable, fair, more skills-based, and better aligned with operational needs.

This review will examine how we recruit, develop, deploy, and retain talent so that our workforce better reflects the capabilities required across different operational contexts.

The review is also being undertaken through extensive consultation with staff, managers and representative bodies, because the future workforce model must command confidence across the organization if it is to succeed.

6. Senior Leadership

Before I conclude, colleagues, Excellencies, I would like to acknowledge an important moment for UNHCR’s senior leadership.

I would like to express my sincere appreciation to Kelly Clements, Ruven Menikdiwela, and Raouf Mazou for their outstanding service and leadership over many years. Each has made an exceptional contribution to UNHCR and to the millions of forcibly displaced and stateless people we serve.

I know I speak for all of us in thanking them for their dedication and wishing them every success in the future. Thank you Kelly, thank you Raouf, thank you Ruven. And by the way, I don’t know what I’ll do without them. I’ve gotten accustomed to them over the past few months, I have to say, and I know that our friendships will endure and I will continue to count on your counsel and your support.

I also want to warmly welcome our newly appointed senior leadership: Tressa Rae Finerty as Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees, Antón Leis García as Assistant High Commissioner for Operations, and Edem Wosornu as Assistant High Commissioner for Protection.

They join UNHCR at a pivotal moment, and I look forward to working closely with them as we take forward the strategic direction and the organizational reforms that I have outlined today.

7. Closing

Taken together, Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates, the Independent Management Review and the workforce reforms now underway represent the most significant programme of organizational renewal undertaken by UNHCR in many years.

Neither is an end in itself. Both exist to strengthen UNHCR’s ability to fulfil our mandate in a rapidly changing world and to build a more focused, contextdriven and accountable organization: clearer in role, stronger in partnership, more transparent in its resource choices, and better equipped to deliver protection, life-saving assistance, and durable solutions.

Throughout this process, I remain committed to maintaining a close dialogue with Member States. You are our partners—your input, your counsel, is absolutely important, and I will continue keeping you informed as implementation progresses, and I welcome your continued engagement, scrutiny, and support.

Thank you so very much for your kind attention.