75th anniversary of the 1951 Refugee Convention

Speech by Ms Nathalie Fontanet, State Councillor, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the 1951 Refugee Convention at the Palais des Nations 
28 July 2026

"The protocol greetings having already been delivered, I respectfully salute you all, in your respective titles and capacities.

High Commissioner, dear friends,

Seventy-five years ago a group of diplomats gathered a few steps from here.

It was a Saturday in July. The lake was calm, our streets were quiet, but the world was still counting its dead.

Those men and women had seen what happens when a person knocks on a door and no one answers.

Many of them had lived it personally.

And so, in Geneva, they wrote down a promise.

A simple one, really : that a human being, fleeing persecution, would never again be turned away into danger. That "refugee" would not be an insult, or a burden, or a statistic, but a status, a right, a claim on all of us.

We just heard that promise read aloud.

I would like us to sit with it for a moment. Because a promise made in Geneva is a promise Geneva must help keep.

Let me be honest with you about where we stand.

At the end of last year, almost one houndred and eighteen million people were forcibly displaced across the world.

Forty-one point six million of them are refugees.

Nearly sixty-nine million are displaced within their own countries.

But there is also, for the first time in more than a decade, a small piece of good news hidden in those numbers: they went down, slightly, by about four per cent.

However, we must be careful with that figure.

It reflects, above all, large returns to Syria and to Afghanistan. Returns that often took place in fragile, precarious conditions.

Going home to rubble is not the same as going home.

So no, we cannot yet speak of a world that is healing.

We can only speak of a world that has not stopped needing this Convention.

And here is what I want to say tonight, as a representative of the host authorities: Geneva did not sign that text as a spectator.

This canton has offered refuge for centuries, long before 1951.

Refugees built our watchmaking industry. They taught in our schools. They founded our banks. They enriched our lives with new languages.

We know, from our own history, a truth that fear too often obscures. Those who arrive with nothing do not take from a place. They give to it.

Tonight we heard that truth again, from those who lived it. A young woman swam for her life, and then she swam for the world. An athlete, a laureate and artists stood before us.

Every one of them was, at some point, a name on a list, a case file.

And every one of them is living proof of what this Convention truly protects : not misery, but possibility.

So what does Geneva owe this anniversary?

Not nostalgia.

Not self-congratulation.

Our task is quieter and harder: to keep this land a place where humanitarian law is not negotiable, where the institutions that protect the displaced can work, and where the word "refugee" is spoken with respect.

The Canton of Geneva stands with UNHCR, as it has for seventy-five years.

That is not a courtesy.

It is a commitment.

The diplomats of 1951 did not imagine they were writing for us.

They hoped, I think, that we would not need their text for long.

They were wrong about that.

But they were right about something more important : that even after the darkest decade in memory, states could still choose principle over fear.

That choice remains ours. Every year. Every border. Every knock on the door.

Thank you, and happy anniversary to a promise still worth keeping.

Only the spoken text shall prevail

Image caption : (From left to right) Swiss State Secretary for Migration H.E. Vincenzo Mascioli; Belgian-Cameroonian singer-songwriter Lubiana; Syrian Olympic swimmer and UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Yusra Mardini; Iraqi human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Nadia Murad; South Sudanese Olympic basketball player and UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Wenyen Gabriel; South African actress, businesswoman and UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Nomzamo Mbatha; State Councillor of the Canton of Geneva Nathalie Fontanet; UN High Commissioner for Refugees Barham Salih; Councillor of the City of Geneva Marie Barbey-Chappuis; Moldovan soprano and UNHCR High Profile Supporter Valentina Nafornița; Iraqi musician Naseer Shamma; Swiss Permanent Representative to the UN Office in Geneva Ambassador Thomas Gurtber.

© Antoine Tardy / UNHCR