"Thank you Hadnet for your moderation of this special evening. Nadia, Majdi – thank you for trusting us with your powerful testimonies. And, of course, thank you to the Exilmuseum for the strong partnership today and going forward. And to every partner, colleague, and friend of the IRC who has been with us through these first ten years in Germany, it is good to be among you today.
My name is David Miliband. I am the President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee. It means a great deal to stand here today in a space dedicated to people once forced to flee Germany to survive. Tonight, in that same country, we mark ten years of an organization supporting those forced to flee their own homes – and now building new ones here in Germany. That is no coincidence.
Our story began over ninety years ago. In 1933, Albert Einstein – already in exile himself – wrote to colleagues in New York. He asked them to use, in his words, “any and all means” to help those being driven out of Germany. Fifty-one people answered that call. And when those founders later joined forces with Varian Fry's Emergency Rescue Committee – which had spirited thousands of artists, intellectuals, and refugees out of Nazi-occupied France – they became the organization we know today.
And for more than ninety years, our work has served one purpose: to support people who have lost almost everything to maintain the things that cannot be replaced – their safety, their dignity, and their future. That is our history. Now let me tell you about our present.
Ninety years after that letter, and a decade after establishing our offices here in Germany, the hard truth is this: we are at a crossroad. The world is less stable. And it is becoming harder to stabilize. Just weeks ago, we published an update to our Emergency Watchlist that lists those countries most at risk of experiencing humanitarian crisis. Its title says it all – more shocks, fewer shock absorbers.
Let me give you two numbers from that report, each one a measure of how much harder this work has become: More than 50 million people have been impacted by conflict in just the last six months. And by the end of this year, 136 million people will be forcibly displaced or stateless. Numbers on that scale are almost designed to numb us. So let me put one face to them.
Just last month, I traveled to the south of Ukraine to visit IRC staff and clients. The human impact of forced displacement is staggering. Every single person I met has suffered loss and separation. In a small village near Mykolaiv, I met a man who had rebuilt his home after it was bombed – to then watch it be bombed a second time. He told me he had stopped rebuilding the house. He was rebuilding his life instead.
Stories like this show us: what drives people from their homes remains unchanged. What has changed is the scale and severity – climate, conflict, persecution – and the fragility of the systems that are meant to provide protection and enable the building of a new home.
Building that new and safer home here in Germany is exactly what we support. We work with educators to make classrooms a safer learning environment for refugee children. We work with employers and job centers to connect refugees to local employment opportunities. And every day, our team supports clients to access the protection and mental health services they need after harrowing experiences.
I am especially proud that in delivering this work, we work closely with partners and organizations led by refugees and migrants themselves – many of whom are with us tonight.
This year marks not only a decade of the IRC in Germany. It also happens to mark 75 years since the Geneva Refugee Convention. That Convention was a promise – made on this continent, in the shadow of its darkest chapter – that no one fleeing persecution should ever be sent back into danger.
Germany was central to making that promise then. And has kept that promise since. Today this country hosts the second-largest refugee population in the world. The country people once had to flee has become a home for millions of people who had to flee their own – a remarkable testament to shared global responsibility. And it was not achieved without difficulty – but it represents one of the great acts of shared humanity in recent memory. And it is exactly that achievement that is being questioned now as budgets for aid abroad and integration in Germany are cut – as the public language about refugees grows colder, narrowing the welcome once extended.
Tonight, the promise of 1951 is under real pressure, and IRC Germany stands up to that pressure in two ways: in the work we do for people who have arrived here, and the work we do for people who remain in the places that others were forced to leave. This commitment encapsulates our work of the last ten years. It is also the promise for the decade ahead.
There are real forces today narrowing the space for what our work stands for. So there is a real question in front of us: do we simply let that happen – or do we protect the systems that exist to protect people?
That is the question I want to leave with you tonight. What I would most like to know is what you are thinking about. Because tonight is really about that conversation. I can tell you who we are, where we have been and what the years ahead will demand. But it is committed people like you who are part of that answer – to help us build and strengthen, over this next decade, some of the shock absorbers that this moment so badly lacks.
So now, let me close where I began – with this place, and with this country. The story of exile and refuge is woven into Germany’s history. And in many years of doing this work, I have learned one thing above all else: it is not hope that leads to action. It is action that leads to hope.
When I look around me tonight, I see people of action who already understand that. That is why I am hopeful – because of who is here and what actions we will take together.
The next decade of action begins tonight. Please – enjoy the reception, stay a while, and let us keep this conversation going. Thank you."
