‘We will not be weakened’, UNHCR’s Grandi says in final rallying call to humanitarians

In his final public address as UN High Commissioner for Refugees before his mandate ends on 31 December, Grandi sharply criticized the “incredibly abrupt [and] very deep funding cuts and the hardship they have created around the world,” adding: “No one should tell us they have not caused loss of life. They have already caused loss of life.”

Speaking on the closing day of the Global Refugee Forum (GRF) Progress Review, held in Geneva this week, he also made a stirring defence of the institution of asylum and the system of protection for people forced to flee war and persecution.

“Conflicts and human rights violations continue to be the main drivers of displacement,” he said. “These [affected] people need to have the space for international protection,” he said.

“But we know very well … that the risks of the erosion of refugee protection exist, so we need everybody’s support – from faith-based actors, civil society, refugee-led organizations, people with lived experience [of displacement]. We need to build this advocacy from all angles.”

While the 1951 Refugee Convention had been drawn up and adopted by States, “the institution of asylum belongs to everybody. It is up to all of us to defend and protect it.”

He also spoke out in defence of the United Nations, which works to protect and support those “whom history has marginalized,” including the displaced. “It is for the people who are left behind that the UN was created,” he said. “For their sake, the UN needs to be supported.”

Referring to the massive cuts suffered by UNHCR and the humanitarian sector as a whole over the course of 2025, Grandi acknowledged it had been an extremely difficult year. But he added: “I know that we are all together in our determination to continue to do our work. Not just our work delivering aid, but our work about justice, about rights, about protection. This we cannot weaken.”

The Progress Review – co-hosted by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and Switzerland, and co-convened by Colombia, France, Japan, Jordan and Uganda – brought together around 1,500 participants from close to 150 countries. More than 250 refugees and others with experience of displacement and statelessness took part, as well as an array of refugee-led organizations.

During the closing session, Majdi Laktinah from Syria, who has lived in Germany since 2012 and was a member of the German Government’s official delegation to the event, urged attendees to focus on positive developments in recent years, citing the example of strengthened institutional refugee participation in Germany.

“Since the last GRF [in 2023], so many significant changes happened in this world, and these have had immense impacts on refugees, displaced people, and the staff and systems supporting them,” he said. “I would like to take a moment to focus on the beams of sunshine that made it through this cloudy environment.”