Deputy Secretary-General's remarks to the Africa Dialogue Series 2019 [as prepared for delivery].

I am pleased to take part in this dialogue on durable solutions to forced displacement in Africa. The topic could not be more timely.

As we have heard, record numbers of women, children and men around the world have been forced to flee from their homes.

African countries are at the forefront of efforts to deal with the crisis and tackle the underlying causes.

The international community must recognize the scale of the challenges this crisis poses for African countries and find the most effective approaches to supporting Africa's response.

At the same time, we must not let those challenges fuel a false narrative about Africa, Africa's migration or indeed Africa's young people.

Allow me to highlight four areas where the narrative needs to change.

First, the world must recognize the African response to the challenge of forced displacement.

As the Secretary-General said in his address to the African Union earlier this year, in the search for durable solutions to forced displacement, the world-and, indeed, the Secretary-General himself-has drawn constant inspiration from African leadership, African vision and African compassion.

Africa has made significant progress in developing some of the most progressive legal frameworks around forced displacement such as the 'AU Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa' (Kampala convention), which 40 states have signed and 25 states have ratified.

In line with the Global Compact on Refugees, many countries in Africa are applying the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF) and adopting new policy changes. In this regard, African countries are increasingly acknowledging that refugees are not economic burdens but fellow individuals whose expertise and skills can be utilized for the benefit of the host communities as well.

This has resulted in progressive and innovative policy breakthroughs in several countries including in Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia and Uganda.

Building on this, a number of governments have recognized that the most effective way to deal with refugees is to allow them to participate in the local economy. Tanzania, for instance, has granted citizenship to 200,000 Burundian refugees, giving them access to land rights and allowing them to participate in the political life. In Uganda, refugees are given small plots of land in villages and thereby integrated within the host community.

They have the right to work and start their own businesses, an...