Joint Platform on Migrants and Refugees

Your Excellency, Ambassador Badawi,

Your Excellencies, Distinguished Partners,

Dear Colleagues,

On behalf of the United Nations family in Egypt, it is my honor to welcome you to the meeting of the Joint Platform for Migrants and Refugees.

Before we begin, I wish to extend our heartfelt thanks to Ambassador Badawi for his leadership, dedication and active engagement on this critical file. 

We wish him every success in his new appointment as the Ambassador of Egypt to Türkiye, confident that he will continue to make a meaningful impact.

Distinguished participants, we gather today against a global backdrop where displacement and migration are the defining challenges of our time. Conflict, climate change, and deepening inequalities are driving unprecedented human mobility, reshaping societies, and testing systems across the world. 

Egypt is one of the countries that carries a profound responsibility, providing a true public good to the international community.

We commend Egypt for welcoming unprecedented numbers of migrants and refugees from across the region. This generosity is not only a lifeline within Egypt’s borders but also a vital contribution to regional stability.

However, the responsibility for caring for and safeguarding people on the move cannot rest solely on the shoulders of Egypt; it demands a collective response from the international community.

And also, a recognition of the need to scale-up support to NGOs and grass-roots partners. These organizations deeply understand and effectively respond to the challenges and needs of migrants and refugees.

The Joint Platform on Migrants and Refugees, which brings us all together today, aims to match that spirit with an even stronger, coordinated response.

The Platform provides a space, uniting the whole of government, civil society, UN, and international partners in a collective approach.

Allow me here to recall the two principles that together form the key objectives of the Joint Platform. 

First: we aim to serve the rights of all persons on the move based on their vulnerability, in line with the status conferred on some of them by international conventions. 

And second: we aim to support the host country. This platform seeks to support Egypt’s efforts to include refugees and migrants in essential public services. 

In this way, we seek to empower migrants and refugees to realize their potential as sustainable development actors, contributing to growth and social coherence within their host communities. 

Dear ladies and gentlemen, we all know that migrants and refugees continue to face barriers to education, health care, livelihoods, and social protection, while host communities’ shoulder immense pressures on already stretched services.

To put this into perspective, 73.5% of all registered refugees in Egypt are women and children. 

The challenges are about mothers seeking safety, children needing classrooms, and families requiring care and dignity. These challenges cut across every sector and cannot be solved in isolation; from education to health to protection; they demand holistic solutions that put vulnerable migrants, women and children, at the heart of our response.

This is precisely what our first UN Joint Programme on Migrants and Refugees under the Joint Platform delivers: expanding access to education and health care, strengthening protection systems, and addressing food insecurity.

Thanks to the European Union, our trusted partner from the very beginning, what began as a pilot has become a proven model.

Thousands of children from migrant, refugee, and host communities are now in classrooms, learning and growing together. Clinics serve both migrants and host communities. Protection services and livelihood opportunities reach those most at risk.

And in a minute, you will hear about the results of the Joint Programme. 

Dear partners, the challenges faced by migrants, refugees, and host communities cannot be solved through fragmented, short-term interventions. 

They require sustained, multi-sectoral collaboration that extends beyond individual funding cycles. 

Our success depends on one factor above all: partnership.

Only by combining the expertise, resources, and commitment of government, international partners, civil society, academia, and the private sector can Egypt sustain lasting change - one that strengthens national systems, empowers host communities, and upholds the dignity of migrants and refugees.

A path that builds resilience and stability for Egypt and the region.

I thank you.