Sixty-five million people were displaced from their homes by conflict and disaster last year — that’s 24 people every single minute.

David Miliband, President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee recently spoke at TED2017 about this global refugee crisis and shared his own personal connection to the refugee experience: Both his parents were forced to flee their homes in World War II.  

“If Britain had not admitted refugees in the 1940s,” he said, “I certainly wouldn’t be here today.”

Miliband proposed four solutions to ending the refugee crisis:

Solution 1: Refugees need to be able to work. Support for work needs to be the norm. 

Solution 2:Education for refugee kids should be a lifeline, not a luxury. “Kids can bounce back when they’re given the proper social, emotional support alongside literacy and numeracy,” Miliband said.

Solution 3:Refugees need money. Most refugees are in cities, not camps, and cash assistance empowers refugees and boosts the local economy.

Solution 4:The most vulnerable refugees need the chance to start a new life in the West. “Now is not the time to be banning refugees,” Miliband says, “it’s the time to be embracing people who are victims of terror.”

Read more from David Miliband's talk on the TED blog.

Learn more about how the IRC helps people whose lives and livelihoods are shattered by conflict and disaster to survive, recover and gain control of their future.