Return of refugees realises growth, reconstruction — Prince Hassan

AMMAN — HRH Prince Hassan, president of the Arab Thought Forum (ATF) and honorary chair of World Refugee and Migration Council (WRMC), reiterated the humanitarian issue in the Arab Mashreq over the regional developments, current steps and the importance of the implications of events the Mashreq has witnessed since 2011.

According to an ATF statement, cited by the Jordan News Agency, Petra, Prince Hassan, in a virtual meeting the forum organised on Wednesday on refugee issues on the occasion of the first anniversary of holding the first international refugees forum in Geneva, said that the human dignity of refugees’ right to return home requires a new structure for the relevant vision.

In this regard, the prince called for cooperation to structure the new concept to avoid more violence and conflict, stressing the importance of the return of refugees as a basic solution in a bid to realise growth and reconstruction.

These multiple responsibilities have to be delivered to a regional socioeconomic council comprising the public and private sectors, civil society institutions and non-government organisations such that stakeholders of the region can meet to set a goal that can establish a structure of the basic indicators for the next stage, he added.

Prince Hassan also said that the COVID-19 pandemic, that infected more than 75 million people so far and claimed the lives of more than one million others, might have been served by the circumstances through the concept of moving cross-borders between one country and another, adding that the pandemic and surrounding constraints had non-equivalent impacts among various classes.

Also speaking during the event, Shaden Khallaf, senior policy adviser and head of the Middle East and North Africa policies unit at UNHCR, delivered a lecture about following up on the outcomes of this international forum and how to utilise the goals of the Refugee Convention.