Shock UN agreement grants thousands of migrants FREE ACCESS to scores of countries
HUNDREDS of thousands of refugees will be granted free access to 50 countries as the global political community agrees to share the burden of the migrant crisis.
The groundbreaking decision, made at the ongoing UN summit in New York, saw scores of nations agree to take a percentage of 360,000 refugees earmarked for resettlement.
This is double the number allowed to enter nations worldwide last year.
Romania, Portugal, Spain, Czech Republic, Italy, France and Luxembourg agreed to take a staggering ten times the amount of refugees they accepted in 2015.
Countries have also collectively granted £3.4billion in financial contributions to UN appeals and other humanitarian organisations.
The international agreement came during a summit event hosted by Barack Obama in which he said every country had to take responsibility for the migrant crisis.
National ambassadors could only attend Obama's speech if they promised to pledge their support in advance.
The US President said: "This is a test of our international system where all nations ought to share in our collective responsibilities, because the vast majority of refugees are hosted by just 10 countries.
"We must recognise that refugees are a symptom of larger failures - be it war, ethnic tensions or persecution."
The Migrant Crisis through pictures
Mon, September 19, 2016Hundreds of migrants are continuing to arrive in Europe as they flee the scenes of chaos and brutality of the Islamic State in the Middle East.
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Obama also secured support from businesses to help address the refugee crisis, meeting with big business leaders before the summit to secure a donation of around £600million to "empower refugees".
There are more refugees in the world than ever before, with 21.3million listed by the UN.
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