Statement by President Higgins following meeting with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi
Date: Tue 15th Jul, 2025 | 17:14
“I was pleased to meet today with Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and to commend him for the exceptional commitment which he has shown to refugees across the world over the last ten years.
Our meeting provided an opportunity to resume the discussions which we have had on a number of occasions across his term as High Commissioner, including when we previously met in Áras an Uachtaráin in 2019, accompanied by refugees from Syria, Vietnam, Iran and Sudan who had found a home in Ireland.
Our interacting global crises of hunger, rising inequality, climate change and biodiversity loss, each exacerbated by war and conflict, are leading to large increases in those fleeing from their homes.
Acute hunger grew for the sixth consecutive year in 2024, with more than 295 million people in 53 countries and territories experiencing the worst forms of acute food insecurity. The total number of people facing famine or at risk of famine more than doubled between 2023 and 2024, with over 95% of this increase in Gaza and the Sudan, with populations also experiencing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity in South Sudan, Haiti and Mali.
Prior to his current position, High Commissioner Grandi served in UNRWA from 2005 to 2014, first as Deputy Commissioner-General and then as Commissioner-General. I visited Gaza a number of times in that period, including my visit as part of a European Delegation in 2005 with the former Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Andreas van Agt.
Today, the entire population of Gaza is facing Crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity, with over 80% of cropland and 83% of agricultural wells having been destroyed. UNICEF has reported that at least 5,119 children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years were admitted for treatment for acute malnutrition in May alone, while a reported 66 children have already died of malnutrition.
It is further reported that at least 1,580 medical personnel have lost their lives, with a further 180 in Israeli detention centres.
The world needs reminding that statements agreed by the General Assembly of the United Nations, while not having an immediate mechanism of enforcement in a military sense, have a deep moral significance.
It is important to also remember that under the Charter of the United Nations, when a resolution has been carried, as is the case in the Middle East, there in an individual obligation on each sovereign member state to take all of the measures available to it to implement what has been agreed.
Those who support the human rights perspective, both as context and obligations, are facing a time when what has been internationally agreed is being reported in the daily media as being broken.
What is even more dangerous is a new impunity being granted to those who announce in advance forcible dispossessions and relocations, be it the population of Gaza or the half a million Afghans forced to leave Iran.
We have in recent months witnessed the militarisation of aid, this is affecting the most vulnerable. There are 20,000 mothers in Gaza who are being subjected to conditions of dehydration and malnutrition with all the consequences to their own life and those of their children.
There are grieving families dealing with the loss of the member of the family who sought out to gather food with the United Nations last week accepting as a verified figure 784 people shot at feeding stations.
The reduction from 400 feeding stations under UNRWA to the four of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation means that those taking the incredible risk to seek aid are having to pass through long areas that are regarded as militarized zones, with the vast majority of those killed women and children.
It is time for the public of the world to unite in asserting that the universal acceptance of human rights is our best and only strategy for achieving peace and sustainability for future generations.”