Oral Answers to Questions

John Nicolson Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

1. What preparations her Department is making for the UN world humanitarian summit.

[John Nicolson (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

2. What preparations her Department is making for the UN world humanitarian summit.

[The Secretary of State for International Development (Justine Greening)]

Our country has bold ambitions for the world humanitarian summit, which comes at a critical time given that there are currently more displaced people globally than at any time since the second world war. We are working with a range of partners, including UN agencies, Governments, non-governmental organisations and the private sector, to ensure that the summit delivers transformative change to crisis response.

[Justine Greening]

We have not finalised the UK delegation yet, but I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the issue of child protection has been very much at the core of all our humanitarian responses, not least, most recently, in Syria. The UK worked with UNICEF to put in place so-called safe zones in many of the refugee camps to enable children to be reunited with their families if they had got lost.

[John Nicolson]

What discussions does the Secretary of State expect to take place at the summit on support for those fleeing violence and persecution? Will she support efforts at the summit to ensure that lower and middle-income countries hosting refugees and displaced people have long-term, predictable financing, and that refugees themselves have the right to work and contribute to the society and economy to which they move?

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Gentleman asks a very pertinent question. The Syria conference in London tomorrow will look at this very issue of respecting the fact that refugees are, on average, a refugee for 17 years. We need to go beyond providing traditional lifesaving support to meet such broader needs—not just jobs, as he says, but getting children into schools. The Syria conference tomorrow is a key moment not just to respond to that crisis, but, more broadly, to show a new model of responding to protracted humanitarian crises around the world. I hope we can then take that forward at the world humanitarian summit.