Tipping point: why we need new solutions for refugees
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As the number of forcibly displaced people around the world surpasses 100 million, Filippo Grandi, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, joins Maysa Jalbout in The Impact Room to discuss new pathways to respond to the global displacement crisis. Ukraine alone has generated more than six million refugee movements since the Russian invasion in February, and the knock-on effect that this has had on grain exports has triggered global food shortages, which in turn threaten to lead to widespread unrest, and likely more displacement. The humanitarian system is at breaking point and with global displacement forecast to hit one billion by 2050, there is an urgent need for new and innovative solutions. Have we reached a tipping point? Do we as a world need to rethink our collective conscience regarding freedom of movement and what it means to be a refugee? Is the current system fit-for-purpose or does it need an overhaul? In a special edition of The Impact Room recorded in the run-up to World Refugee Day, host Maysa Jalbout puts these questions and more to the UNHCR chief.  Also interviewed in this episode of The Impact Room is Sasha Chanoff, the founder and CEO of Refuge Point, a non-profit running refugee resettlement programmes and advocating for policy changes for the rights of refugees globally with a focus on long-term solutions. One organisation that is trying to help find long-term answers to displacement is Talent Beyond Boundaries (TBB), a nonprofit that helps to match skilled refugees to job opportunities in new countries to support labour mobility and plug global talent gaps. CEO Steph Cousins, explains to Maysa how TBB has found durable work solutions for hundreds of refugees in private and public sector companies in Australia, Canada, and the UK, and that it has plans to expand into Portugal, Ireland, Belgium, the US, and New Zealand. Also appearing on this episode to give their views on a global system that is supposed to help - but which often makes lives harder - are two young refugees: Amna Abo Zuhair, a Palestinian  living in Jordan, and Jean Marie Ishimwe, a Rwandan in Kenya.  Amna, 29, is a monitoring and evaluation project manager at Sitti, a social enterprise employing Palestinian refugee women from Jerash camp in Jordan. She is also the in-country director of Hopes for Women in Education, a language exchange, education, and women’s empowerment organisation, as well as a steering committee member of the Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative (RSRI), a global multi-stakeholder collaboration promoting opportunities for refugees to become self-reliant and achieve a better quality of life. Jean Marie Ishimwe, meanwhile, is the chairperson and lead of a refugee led organisation known as Youth Voices Community (YVC), which focuses on giving a voice to refugee and vulnerable local youths in Nairobi, Kenya. The 25-year-old is also the founder of a refugee-led Social Enterprise called Nawezaa, which uses media, mentorship, and technology to create impact in refugee communities. The Impact Room is brought to you by Philanthropy Age and Maysa Jalbout. This episode was produced and edited by Louise Redvers.  Maysa Jalbout is a leader in international development and philanthropy. She is a visiting scholar at MIT and ASU, and a non-resident Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Find her on Twitter @MaysaJalbout.
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