Barack Obama announced that the US-led coalition had collectively agreed to roughly double resettlement places for refugees, increase humanitarian aid for refugees by $4.5bn, provide education to 1 million more refugee children, and potentially improve access to legal work for another million adults. Full details were not disclosed, but the move constituted the most concrete set of refugee measures at the UN general assembly. But the mood changed on Tuesday, with 18 developed countries announcing plans to increase legal access for refugees, 17 developing countries pledging to increase refugees’ access to education, and 15 claiming that they would take various measures that could help to expand refugees’ access to work. Argentina and Portugal were among the countries who pledged to start resettlement programmes for the first time. Refugee specialists who had criticised the vague UN-led declaration on Monday were cautiously optimistic about Tuesday’s US-led announcements.

Source: The Guardian September 20, 2016 22:07 UTC