All Member State briefing with the High Commissioner

(As delivered)

1. Introduction

Good afternoon Excellencies, distinguished delegates, and colleagues.

Thank you for joining me today.

When we met last in June, I provided a detailed update on the financial situation, the organizational reforms underway, and the Independent Management Review. Many of the reforms I outlined were still under review at the time.

Today, I want to update you on where we stand, the direction we are taking, and what this means for the organization that you have entrusted and supported to carry out this mandate.

Before I do so, let me also warmly welcome two new members of our Senior Executive Team who join me today: Antón Leis, our new Assistant High Commissioner for Operations and Edem Wosornu, our new Assistant High Commissioner for Protection

Our new Deputy High Commissioner, Tressa Rae Finerty, who many of you know, is not with us today.

She is currently on leave while she clarifies the application of post-employment restrictions arising from her previous service as a senior U.S. Government official in particular as it relates to her participation in multilateral meetings that U.S. Department of State officials attend. She has requested a partial waiver from the U.S. authorities, with our support and agreement, and we are hoping for a speedy and favorable resolution to this matter.

Excellencies,

Before turning to our financial situation, I want to recognize the extraordinary contribution of the countries hosting the vast majority of the world's refugee population, often while facing significant pressures of their own. These countries demonstrate every day the enormous responsibility borne by host States in providing protection, services, and opportunities to refugees. Thank you.

1. Financial Situation / Funding

Our financial situation remains challenging, but we have made progress in stabilizing our position for 2026.

Our current funding forecast is approximately US$3.2 billion, compared with an initial forecast of approximately US$2.9 billion at the beginning of the year.

I want to thank Member States for that support. A number of governments have maintained or increased their contributions this year, and the European Union has increased its support and become our largest donor. I am particularly grateful to those donors that have continued to provide flexible and unearmarked funding.

More than half of our projected funding for 2026 is tightly earmarked. While earmarked contributions remain vital, tight earmarking limits our ability to direct resources to where protection risks and operational needs are greatest and can create significant mismatches between available funding and operational requirements.

This is an issue we need to address together. It was also identified in the Independent Management Review, and I would like us to continue discussing how we can strengthen predictability and flexibility in the way UNHCR is financed.

Our financial risks have reduced considerably through stronger cost control, closer monitoring of funding mismatches, and greater financial discipline. But we are still managing the possibility of a mismatch between revenues and expenditure by the end of this year, and continued prudence will be necessary.

Looking ahead to 2027, there remains significant uncertainty. Based on the information currently available, including funding already recorded and indications from donors, our outlook is broadly comparable to what we were forecasting for 2026 at the same point last year.

Our proposed needs-based budget for 2027 is approximately US$7.1 billion, around 16 per cent below the 2026 budget. This does not mean that needs have fallen. It reflects a more streamlined organization, a much sharper prioritization of where protection risks are greatest, where UNHCR has a distinctive role, and where our resources can have the greatest impact.

UNHCR's budget remains needs-based. But in the financial environment we face, we must make clearer choices about the activities and capacities most essential to our mandate. And we are committed to make those choices in a transparent manner.

We must make choices. We must protect our core mandate and align resources with clear priorities. Equally, we must reduce duplication, simplify how we work, and ensure that every dollar entrusted to UNHCR is used as efficiently and effectively as possible.

I welcome the discussion with Member States on our proposed 2027 budget, which I hope can be adopted by consensus at ExCom. And I appeal to all Member States to consider supporting UNHCR financially in 2027, including those that have not traditionally contributed to our work.

1. Independent Management Review

Excellencies,

As I shared with you in June, the Independent Management Review provided one of the most comprehensive assessments of UNHCR in recent years. I emphasized then that its findings were recommendations, not decisions, and that we would undertake our own assessment before determining what should be implemented and in what sequence.

The review reinforced areas where change is necessary: clearer purpose aligned with our footprint, streamlined responsibilities and decision-making, less duplication, simpler processes, and better use of systems, data, and technology.

We have assessed these findings alongside our financial outlook and the Strategic Directions, and the focus must now shift from review to implementation.

This builds on efficiency measures already underway. Travel expenditure has been reduced by approximately 50 per cent over the past two years, and we are reviewing our physical footprint, including options to significantly reduce accommodation costs at Headquarters in Geneva by securing a new venue that is around 50 percent cheaper.

We need a more focused, agile, efficient, and cost-effective organization, with clearer responsibilities, stronger accountability, and resources directed towards where UNHCR can have the greatest protection and solutions impact.

We are also strengthening the link between resources and results, so that allocations more clearly reflect protection priorities and intended outcomes, and Member States have better visibility over how contributions translate into real results.

Technology is part of this transformation. We are beginning to deploy generative AI and other digital tools to reduce routine work, improve access to institutional knowledge and validated data, and strengthen decision-making. Through our partnership with Google, organization-wide access to Gemini Enterprise has been provided for one year at a nominal cost of US$1. These tools must be used responsibly and should release human capacity, not replace human responsibility.

In that context, I want to tell you that we are developing partnerships with a number of big, reputable AI companies to help us develop these tools. Most of these are pro-bono and are part of their willingness to provide philanthropic support for the kind of work that we do.

Our coherent programme of organizational change will be judged not by the number of processes changed, but by results: whether decisions are faster, responsibilities clearer, duplication reduced, costs better controlled, and more of our capacity directed towards protection and solutions.

Also in that context, I want to say these are taking place in the context of UN80 and greater complementarity within UN agencies. The collaboration that we have with a number of UN agencies, with the Korean Government, and also UNDP, for example, on a variety of systems that they have is quite remarkable.

Our own collaboration with WFP in terms of data sharing and utilization of common data is also quite promising and helpful.

1. Footprint: Field, Regional Bureaux, and Headquarters

In June, Excellencies, I outlined the principle that UNHCR should increasingly organize itself around operational context rather than apply a uniform institutional model everywhere, as recommended by the Independent Management Review.

We have now taken that work further through reviews of country operations, Regional Bureaux, and Headquarters.

This has been a strategic repositioning exercise, not simply a cost-cutting exercise. The starting question has been what UNHCR needs to do, where, and how. Our structures and presence should follow those strategic choices, not the other way around.

The field has already carried a significant share of this adjustment. As we move into this next phase, Headquarters and Regional Bureaux must also change, and Headquarters in particular must lead by example.

For country operations, we have broadly agreed the direction of the future footprint. Our presence will be differentiated according to context, protection needs, operational requirements, and the role UNHCR needs to play.

Our role differs by context. In some situations, UNHCR will need to deliver directly. In others, our greatest contribution may be to convene governments, development actors, international financial institutions, and partners around protection and solutions, or to provide technical support to national systems. Being clearer about where UNHCR must lead directly and where others are better placed to lead will allow us to concentrate resources on our comparative advantage rather than duplicate capacity.

The same review has been undertaken for our Regional Bureaux.

This is fundamentally a role reset, not simply another downsizing exercise. Regional Bureaux will be leaner, less transactional, and more strategic, concentrating on the functions where a regional perspective adds real value- regional analysis and diplomacy, resource prioritization across operations, performance and oversight, partnerships, cross-border coherence, and support to country operations.

We will not impose one identical model across all regions. That cannot happen. Regions differ, and they require more flexible approaches. Their configurations will differ because the political, operational, and protection environments across these various regions may vary, and we need to take that into our analysis and our consideration.

And at Headquarters, I want to reinforce a principle I have stated before: Headquarters exists to support the field, not the other way around.

We provide strategic leadership, but ultimately, we are a support hub for our operations where the mandate is being delivered.

Headquarters has indispensable global responsibilities, but it should focus increasingly on what genuinely needs to be performed at the global level. It must provide protection leadership, strategy, policy and standards, institutional stewardship, risk and assurance, global external positioning, and functions that genuinely require organization-wide coherence, while routine and transactional work is simplified, consolidated, automated, and delivered where that is more efficient and cost-effective.

The Headquarters review will now move into implementation so that its future structure and costs begin also being reflected in our 2027 planning.

Across all three levels - country operations, Regional Bureaux, and Headquarters - the objective is the same: clearer roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities at the right levels, fewer unnecessary layers, less duplication, greater efficiency and cost-effectiveness, and, most importantly, stronger support to operational delivery.

1. Workforce Updates

The severe financial contraction of 2025 created a structural imbalance between the number of internationally recruited colleagues and the number of available positions.

I spoke to this the last time we met. We had nearly 3,000 international staff for 1,800 positions. So we were facing nearly 1,200 colleagues who really did not have a placement plan through an arrangement called Staff in Between-Assignments (SIBA).

The organization was paying for each individual for up to six months until they found an alternative placement. But the reality was the disparity between the number of staff and the number of positions available. That was the real issue.

That is why, as I informed you, we activated the Staff Placement and Reduction in Force process (the SPRIF).

That process has now concluded. Approximately 1,150 international colleagues entered the exercise. More than 180 colleagues have been placed while a significant number of colleagues will separate from UNHCR over the coming months.

I want to acknowledge their service and their commitment to this organization. They are talented and committed professionals, and their departure reflects the financial and structural circumstances facing the organization, not a lack of contribution or value. I am deeply grateful for their service.

Following extensive consultations across the organization, we have revised some of our workforce policies. A key change is the discontinuation of the SIBA arrangements.

It will be replaced by a Redeployment Pool for international professional staff approaching the end of assignment. The purpose is to intervene earlier, begin placement efforts before colleagues become unassigned, provide priority consideration for suitable vacancies, and establish clearer outcomes where redeployment is not successful.

We have also addressed legacy arrangements where staff occupied positions below their personal grade. Following consultations with staff representatives, remuneration will ultimately align with the level of the position occupied, with transitional measures for affected colleagues. This is expected to generate approximately US$15.8 million in annual savings.

More broadly, we are moving towards a workforce model that is more skills-based, mobile, sustainable, and aligned with operational priorities - while preserving the field experience, diversity, global mobility, and protection expertise that are among UNHCR's greatest institutional strengths.

I want to say this organization has gone through a lot of difficult choices in the last couple of years.

Having lost nearly 35 per cent of its staff following the budget contraction, it has not been easy for us to reorganize and try to move through that.

The whole concept of these reforms is to create a sustainable structure, a delivery model that is fit for the times, and provide greater stability and efficiency for this organization.

My hope is that, with these issues that I am describing to you, we will be looking at a stable structural reset for this organization as we move into the period ahead, and hopefully we will not have to deal with the kind of shocks that have been there.

Our staff, our community, and above all the refugees deserve a more stable world.

We do not want to be defined by continual change that does not allow us to focus on our mandate.

I want to say that all of this is to improve and stabilize our delivery model, make it fit for the times, and enable us to deliver on our mandate.

1. Mandate and 50 by 35

Excellencies,

Let me talk about our mandate.

Our mandate is absolutely clear according to the Convention and according to our fundamental core values.

It is about protecting refugees, providing international protection for people who are fleeing persecution and violence, and providing humanitarian assistance for people in need, but also about delivering and helping with solutions.

As I have explained before, we cannot have refugees stuck in camps, dependent on humanitarian handouts for such long periods of time.

Our mandate compels us, while providing protection and humanitarian assistance when needed, also to really focus on solutions.

We simply cannot look away while the number of refugees piles up and think that we are delivering our mandate.

As I have explained to you before, this is absolutely central to the way UNHCR wants to distinguish its work through 50 by 35, our ambitious goal of reducing the number of long-term displaced people dependent on humanitarian systems by 50 per cent within the next ten years.

I will not repeat all the details about why this is important. You have heard me say it before.

But as we have refined and looked at the numbers and realities. I can tell you that we have nearly 25 million refugees are living in protracted displacement in low- and middle-income countries.

Of these, we estimate that approximately 14.5 million are unable to meet their basic needs without humanitarian assistance. Our ambition is therefore to help nearly 8 million people move beyond that dependency over the coming decade. My hope is that this is the minimum that we could do. I very much hope that, with your support, we can do a lot more than that.

A dedicated task force, led by the Assistant High Commissioner for Operations, is translating that ambition into country-specific pathways towards greater self-reliance and solutions, drawing on data, operational knowledge, and realistic opportunities for progress.

Our engagement with development partners is also becoming more operational. Our cooperation with the World Bank initially focuses, as I told you before, on five countries: Syria, Uganda, Colombia, Jordan, and Chad. This is not to say others will not be included, but these are areas of focus that we are looking at while working on other countries too. In these countries, we believe there are concrete opportunities to advance employment, inclusion, development investment, and sustainable solutions.

In Afghanistan, Excellencies, which I visited in July together with UNDP Administrator Alexander De Croo, the challenge is return and reintegration on an extraordinary scale.

Since September 2023, more than six million Afghans have returned from neighboring countries, many after decades in exile. Humanitarian assistance can address immediate protection and reintegration needs, but sustainable reintegration requires functioning services, local economies, employment, and development investment.

This is precisely why our partnership with UNDP and wider engagement with development and financial actors are so important.

Many of you had an opportunity to hear me brief you about my visit to Afghanistan and the conversations we had with regard to priorities. But I want to say it again: we cannot afford to look away, morally, from a humanitarian perspective, but also if we want these returns to become sustainable, it is absolutely important that we engage in making sure people have a way of re-integrating.

And we are talking about is unprecedented numbers. By the end of this year, the estimate is that it could reach eight million.

I am very proud of the work UNHCR is doing in partnership with other organizations, development partners, and UNDP in terms of helping, primarily, women returnees with jobs and integration.

When Alexander De Croo and I visited some of these operations, they were not at the scale that is needed, but in terms of the impact on the lives of people, this is huge. There is a lot that we need to discuss about Afghanistan, perhaps on another occasion soon.

But again, think about Afghanistan, which over the past few decades has been a source of major refugee movements. Now, many of these returns I would not consider entirely voluntary. Nevertheless, these returns are happening. We need to deal with it and be as helpful as we can.

In the Central African Republic, we are seeing another promising pathway. Government leadership, regional engagement, and targeted investment are creating opportunities to accelerate voluntary returns and local integration. Initial support has already helped close displacement situations for around 6,000 refugees, with a further 14,000 expected to benefit in the coming weeks, while another 20,000 people have registered their interest in returning. Importantly, the Government is increasingly taking ownership through return and development plans, with development partners beginning to come behind them.

In Thailand, the pathway is different. The Government's decision to allow long-staying refugees from Myanmar to work is showing what can happen when policy barriers that have kept refugees dependent are removed. More than 6,000 refugees have already entered employment or are in the employment pipeline, while the Government has begun issuing official identity cards. Refugees who spent years dependent on assistance are working, supporting their families, accessing services, and contributing to the Thai economy.

And, Excellencies, during my mission to Syria last month, I saw another dimension of this agenda: the opportunity-and the challenge-of making return sustainable. Close to 1.8 million refugees and approximately 1.9 million internally displaced people have returned to their areas of origin.

I saw both the immense destruction left by years of conflict and the determination of Syrians to rebuild their lives and communities. But return will only be sustainable if people have access to documentation, livelihoods, basic services, housing, and communities capable of receiving them. Humanitarian assistance alone cannot reconstruct communities, restore infrastructure, or create the economic opportunities people need to remain home.

Again, putting things in context, Syria, which was defined for the last fifteen years by conflict, displacement, violence, and horrible human rights abuses, has a different headline today: an opportunity for people to go back to their communities and rebuild their homes.

We are working with the World Bank, UNDP, and others on specific measures by which we can push this agenda. And I have to say, in that context, the consistent message that I was hearing was that many pledges have been made. When are we seeing the delivery on these pledges so that communities can build? I want to really emphasize that engagement.

These countries, Excellencies, offer different contexts and different dynamics, and demonstrate why there will be no single model for 50 by 35 and our solutions agenda.

What they share is a shift from managing displacement indefinitely towards changing the conditions that keep people displaced and dependent.

UNHCR cannot and should not build national education systems, reconstruct economies, or create labor markets. This is not our mandate.

UNHCR's role is not to substitute for those actors who are mandated or tasked to do this. Our mandate is to ensure protection, provide technical expertise, convene and catalyze wider engagement, and ensure that displacement and protection considerations are incorporated into development, recovery, and national policy.

This is why we need governments, development actors, international financial institutions, the private sector, and the wider UN system to engage much earlier and more systematically.

Education is also truly an important part of this agenda.

We are working on an important initiative that we have titled Aiming Higher, which builds on existing systems within UNHCR and really builds on the fantastic achievement of the DAFI programme. We want to expand opportunities for refugees to access higher education in countries of asylum, through third-country pathways, and through digital and connected learning, strengthening agency, employment opportunities, self-reliance, and solutions.

I have said this before, in your presence, but let me say it again because it bears repeating: The most decisive solution to displacement remains peace.

Our task is not to substitute humanitarian action for political solutions. Humanitarian organizations cannot resolve the conflicts that force people from their homes.

Our responsibility is to protect people while they are displaced and to ensure that, when opportunities for return, inclusion, and other solutions emerge, we are ready to help make them safe, dignified, and sustainable.

Self-reliance is therefore not a substitute for durable solutions. It is one pathway towards restoring agency and reducing dependency while we pursue durable solutions.

Durable solutions, once again, Excellencies, must remain a decisive priority of our work.

1. 75th Anniversary of the Refugee Convention and High Commissioner's Dialogue

Excellencies,

The organizational reforms and solutions agenda I have described remain firmly anchored in our protection mandate.

The 75th anniversary of the 1951 Refugee Convention is not simply an occasion for commemoration, but an opportunity to demonstrate its continued relevance to the realities States and refugees face today.

At a time when asylum systems are under significant pressure, the fundamental proposition of the Convention remains essential: people fleeing persecution and conflict must be able to seek safety and international protection.

The Convention is also a practical framework that recognizes the legitimate interests and responsibilities of States. It requires refugees to respect the laws of their host countries and provides States with mechanisms to address threats to national security, public order, and serious criminality, while preserving essential safeguards.

Our recently updated guidance on the expulsion of refugees involved in serious crimes illustrates this balance. The answer to contemporary challenges is about using the Convention properly and effectively.

Over the course of this year, we have been engaging Member States, refugees, civil society, and other partners on some of the most difficult contemporary questions facing international protection.

This process will culminate on 7 and 8 December in the High Commissioner's Dialogue on Protection and Solutions here in Geneva, providing a space for candid exchange on the pressures facing international protection and for practical action, including on 50 by 35. It will help shape our collective agenda as we move towards the Global Refugee Forum in 2027.

In the same context, I would also like to inform you that on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, we will be holding a senior-level meeting that I hope senior leaders from various countries will attend. This is an occasion to commemorate, reflect, and also, hopefully, affirm the vitality and relevance of the Refugee Convention.

I do thank many of you who attended our commemorative event here in Geneva on 28 July. That was quite a moment.

I very much hope that our meeting in New York will also be another milestone in bringing together the international community around the Convention and our belief in its effective application. So far, more than 31 countries have agreed to sponsor that event, with many world leaders kindly joining us for it.

1. Conclusion

Excellencies,

We have moved through an intense period of review to decisions and implementation.

Our structures must become clearer and more efficient. Our resources must be more tightly aligned with priorities. Our workforce model must become more sustainable. Decision-making must become more agile and accountable.

But none of these reforms is an end in itself. They are not simply about reducing costs.

They are about preparing UNHCR for the future and strengthening our ability to deliver our mandate: providing international protection, responding when lives are at stake, and pursuing durable solutions with much greater urgency.

We must be disciplined about what UNHCR does, more effective in how we do it, and more deliberate about where others are better placed to lead.

And throughout, our mandate must remain our compass.

I am grateful for your engagement, your scrutiny, your advice, and above all your continued support.

I look forward to working with you, candidly, practically, and in partnership.

Thank you.