The UN high commissioner for refugees says the migrants crisis is now a global phenomenon and that simply turning them away "won't work".
Filippo Grandi told the BBC that more nations had to help the "few countries" shouldering the burden, by increasing both funding and resettlement.
He said that last year, fewer than 1% of 20 million refugees had been resettled in another nation.
More are fleeing conflict and hardship than at any other time in history.
Mr. Grandi was speaking to the BBC during a day of special live coverage examining how an age of unprecedented mobility is shaping our world.
Later, the UN refugee agency's special envoy, Angelina Jolie-Pitt, will deliver a keynote speech, in which she will warn about the "fear of uncontrolled migration" and how it has "given space, and a false air of legitimacy, to those who promote a politics of fear and separation".
BBC News World On The Move is a day of coverage dedicated to migration, and the effect it is having on our world.
A range of speakers, including the UNHCR's special envoy Angelina Jolie-Pitt, and former British secret intelligence chief Sir Richard Dearlove, will set out the most important new ideas shaping our thinking on economic development, security and humanitarian assistance.
You can follow the discussion and reaction to it, with live online coverage on the BBC News website.
'Difficult discussion'
Mr. Grandi, who took up the UN post in January this year, said the fact that Syrians were arriving in East Asia and in the Caribbean as refugees showed "how global the phenomenon has become and therefore we have to have global responses".
He said the burden of caring for refugees had so far fallen "on a few countries that host hundreds of thousands of refugees, usually those near wars, near conflicts and a few donors that alone, seven or eight of them, give 80%-90%, of the funding".
"This has to spread more, has to be shared more, otherwise, the imbalances will cause knee-jerk reactions, closures, rejections and in the end we will fail in our responsibility to help refugees."
He said that resettlement was "a direction in which we need to move more boldly", given that fewer than 200,000 of 20 million refugees, excluding internally displaced, had been taken in by another country.
"There is an awareness that global displacement, having reached 60 million people, plus all that move for other reasons, economic migrants and so forth, that requires a different kind of investment and therefore it involves everybody," Mr. Grandi said.
He admitted a solution would require "a very long and difficult discussion" but added: "There can't simply be a reaction whereby states shut down borders and push people away simply because it won't work
Filippo Grandi told the BBC that more nations had to help the "few countries" shouldering the burden, by increasing both funding and resettlement.
He said that last year, fewer than 1% of 20 million refugees had been resettled in another nation.
More are fleeing conflict and hardship than at any other time in history.
Mr. Grandi was speaking to the BBC during a day of special live coverage examining how an age of unprecedented mobility is shaping our world.
Later, the UN refugee agency's special envoy, Angelina Jolie-Pitt, will deliver a keynote speech, in which she will warn about the "fear of uncontrolled migration" and how it has "given space, and a false air of legitimacy, to those who promote a politics of fear and separation".
BBC News World On The Move is a day of coverage dedicated to migration, and the effect it is having on our world.
A range of speakers, including the UNHCR's special envoy Angelina Jolie-Pitt, and former British secret intelligence chief Sir Richard Dearlove, will set out the most important new ideas shaping our thinking on economic development, security and humanitarian assistance.
You can follow the discussion and reaction to it, with live online coverage on the BBC News website.
'Difficult discussion'
Mr. Grandi, who took up the UN post in January this year, said the fact that Syrians were arriving in East Asia and in the Caribbean as refugees showed "how global the phenomenon has become and therefore we have to have global responses".
He said the burden of caring for refugees had so far fallen "on a few countries that host hundreds of thousands of refugees, usually those near wars, near conflicts and a few donors that alone, seven or eight of them, give 80%-90%, of the funding".
"This has to spread more, has to be shared more, otherwise, the imbalances will cause knee-jerk reactions, closures, rejections and in the end we will fail in our responsibility to help refugees."
He said that resettlement was "a direction in which we need to move more boldly", given that fewer than 200,000 of 20 million refugees, excluding internally displaced, had been taken in by another country.
"There is an awareness that global displacement, having reached 60 million people, plus all that move for other reasons, economic migrants and so forth, that requires a different kind of investment and therefore it involves everybody," Mr. Grandi said.
He admitted a solution would require "a very long and difficult discussion" but added: "There can't simply be a reaction whereby states shut down borders and push people away simply because it won't work
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