Actress and campaigner Cate Blanchett called on the world to adopt a more compassionate approach to refugees on Tuesday.
The UNHCR goodwill ambassador told an audience at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, that not only do refugees need support in the form of nutrition, healthcare and shelter, they also need to be heard, to have their stories put in a positive light.
In 2016, a Pew Research Center report on the refugee crisis in Europe found that in eight out of 10 European nations surveyed, over 50 percent saw incoming refugees as increasing “the likelihood of terrorism”in their country.
According to UNHCR’s Global Trends 2016 report, developing regions hosted 84 percent of the world’s refugees, with some of the poorest nations offering asylum to 28 percent of the global total, or 4.9 million refugees.
“There has to be a burden share, no one country can house these people. And you’ve got to remember that these are not terrorists, these are innocent people,” Blanchett said during a session titled “An Insight, An Idea With Cate Blanchett.”
“Everyone I’ve met, they all want to return home and they want to be useful to their host countries.”
On Monday, Blanchett was honored at the Crystal Awards in Davos for her leadership in raising awareness about the refugee crisis. On accepting her award, she called upon leaders to reengage with refugees, rather than turn them away.
“Nowhere is the fractured world more humanly embodied than in the refugee — a person uprooted from all that they hold dear, forced to flee, often resented and reviled in the country where they settle,” Blanchett said. “This is the narrative that we truly need to disrupt.”
