Speech Transcripts

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak at this event.

First, I would like to express my gratitude to the government and people of Turkey for their generosity and all of their hard work in hosting this Summit. As the world continues to face long-term, complex humanitarian crises, our discussion on forced displacement here today is truly a timely one.

The preamble to the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development agreed upon last year contains a pledge that "no one will be left behind." JICA welcomes this promise and intends to actively support it. The Japanese government and JICA have always stressed the importance of human security, aiming to provide freedom from fear and from want. That is why we are committed to providing support to refugees and IDPs.

As a development aid agency, JICA has comparative advantages in three areas to address forced displacement and its effects. First, we offer support to build resilience in host countries. In response to the Syrian crisis, we have provided assistance to host communities in Jordan and Turkey to support those who have been forcibly displaced. JICA also has experience in this respect across Africa and Asia, including our assistance to Somali refugees in Kenya and to IDPs in Sri Lanka.

Second, in host countries where refugees are granted freedom of movement and the right to work, JICA contributes to empowering refugees and IDPs by helping them establish their economic self-reliance. JICA currently provides refugees with such self-reliance assistance in Zambia, Uganda, and other countries where they can legally work. We also offer similar support to IDPs in Colombia.

Third, we provide state-building assistance in order to lay the foundation for sustainable peace and prevent the recurrence of conflicts having produced refugees and IDPs. This is actually one of the original goals of development aid. In a similar vein, JICA also extends reintegration assistance for returnees and returning IDPs. Development aid can give people hope for a brighter future by distributing the peace dividends at the early stages of the peacebuilding process. Our programs in Mindanao in the Philippines and in South Sudan aim to contribute to building stable countries and communities that do not lead anyone to be displaced.

In light of the severity of the situation in many countries today, JICA has been flexible in the application of its existing aid instruments and is handling new situations beyond its original mandate. However, we still face many challenges. In order to play a more active role in addressing the issue of forced displacement, I would like to make three points, on which I hope we can exchange views with partner countries and relevant agencies:

First, the international community should be more respectful of local actors. Host country and community ownership is critical to the sustainability of crisis countermeasures. If host countries view forced displacement as a national issue and include it as part of their own development plans, collaboration with development agencies are more likely to be successful.

Second, we need initiatives that do not treat the displaced as victims who merely wait for assistance. Host countries should not only welcome the displaced. They can be productive members of their host community and beneficiaries of development aid if they are granted the freedom to move around, to seek employment, to receive an education. In so doing, forced displacement does not become a social and economic burden, but rather represents the potential for economic opportunity to the host country.

Third, we need to be cautious about creating situations of aid dependency, especially in the context of protracted humanitarian crises. While fully recognizing the importance of neutrality in humanitarian aid, we have to acknowledge that bypassing local system of service delivery for long periods of time can risk damaging the self-reliance of the local actors. To make humanitarian-development cooperation more effective and to build foundations for peace, we must ensure that local institutional capacity is strengthened and relied upon at the earliest stage possible.

Development agencies already consider addressing forced displacement as one of their responsibilities. At JICA, we are researching the challenges bilateral development aid agencies face in further strengthening the humanitarian and development nexus so as to be more effective in dealing with humanitarian crises. We find that that there needs to be an understanding that relief, recovery, development, and prevention within the crisis response process are non-linear steps that do not follow a clear sequence. Rather, these steps overlap with one another. In addition, the areas and people affected by the crisis should be put at the center of assistance efforts. International and local partners should recognize each other's comparative advantages and enter situations with a flexible mindset. We will distribute a booklet summarizing these and other recommendations at the WHS venue.

JICA will continue to assist conflict-affected regions alongside partner countries and other agencies, and we hope to contribute to the dialogue on developing assistance methods that do not leave anyone behind.