The refugee and migrant issue is one of the world’s three biggest challenges, along with climate change and the Syria war.

Prior to the session UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon invited world leaders to the UN’s first ever summit on refugees and migrants. UN members adopted the New York declaration officially launching a campaign called “Together – Respect, Safety and Dignity for All”. Ban said the declaration shows the UN’s commitments to protect the human rights of all refugees and migrants, support countries that are most affected by migration, improve search and rescue operations, and increase humanitarian aid and resettlement for refugees.

Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said the New York Declaration is the biggest ever effort to share responsibility for the refugees in accordance with the UN charter.

US President Barack Obama will chair the second summit on the migrant crisis with three goals: first, to encourage the world community to increase resources for humanitarian activities from 10 billion USD in 2015 to 13 billion USD in 2016; second, to double the number of people eligible for resettlement, seek new legal ways to accept refugees, and have more countries accept refugees; and third, to provide another million refugee children an education and provide jobs to another 1 million refugees.

British Prime Minister Theresa May has called on countries to apply the rule that refugees must claim asylum in the first safe country they reach. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that in the next 3 years Japan will provide 2.8 billion USD of humanitarian aid to handle the global migrant crisis. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said Beijing will contribute an additional 100 million USD to support the UN effort.

Migration crisis has expanded worldwide over the past 30 years and will continue to increase in the future due to development gaps between countries, financial and economic crises, and wars.