Refugees and migrants don't slow down the development of states they arrive, but on the contrary, accelerate it, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon wrote in the article published in the El País newspaper.
"Movements of people are a quintessentially global phenomenon that demands a global sharing of responsibility. The better new arrivals are integrated, the greater their contribution to society will be," he said, stressing the need for more effective collective actions.
"I expect the September 19 meeting of the General Assembly to point the way towards solutions to the most immediate refugee and migration challenges, and commit world leaders to greater global cooperation on these issues," TASS cited the Secretary General as saying.
"Human beings have moved from place to place across the millennia, by choice and under duress, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Only by upholding our duty to protect those fleeing persecution and violence, and by embracing the opportunities that refugees and migrants offer to their new societies, will we be able to achieve a more prosperous and fairer future for all," he noted.
"We need to strengthen the international systems that manage large movements of people so that they uphold human rights norms and provide the necessary protections," Ban Ki-moon believes.
