After a decade at the helm of the UN Refugee Agency, Filippo Grandi leaves with a mixture of cautious relief and unease.

Addressing the General Assembly for the final time, he noted a rare statistic: for the first time in nearly ten years, the number of people uprooted by war and persecution has fallen from 123 million at the end of 2024 to roughly 117 million today.

The figure, he warned, should not be mistaken for progress.

“The world has not grown safer,” he told delegates, pointing to Sudan’s collapse, Gaza’s devastation, Ukraine’s stalemate, and Myanmar’s turmoil.

The decline, he explained, stems mainly from people returning home, often to shattered countries.

Syria and Afghanistan account for much of the shift.

More than a million Syrians have gone back since the fall of the Assad regime, along with some two million internally displaced.

In both cases, “voluntary” return is a relative term.

Some went home willingly; others, lacking options, simply gave up exile.

UNHCR teams still deliver cash assistance and rebuild homes in Syria, but Grandi insists this is barely a start.

Gulf donors, European governments, and international lenders, he said, must go beyond relief work and help rebuild infrastructure, restore services, and restart local economies.

In Afghanistan, meanwhile, forced returns from Iran and Pakistan have stripped many of the safety and education once accessible abroad.

The High Commissioner called those expulsions “a denial of protection,” especially for women and minorities facing discrimination.

The outgoing chief urged governments to think less about walls and more about routes.

Restriction, he said, is “a poor substitute for strategy.”

Early support in transit countries, not pushbacks, would spare lives and ease the strain on border states.

But UNHCR itself is running out of money to act on such logic.

The agency faces a $1.3 billion gap, with barely a third of its $10.6 billion budget funded this year.

Grandi’s final message was simple, if weary: without predictable funding, all promises of solidarity ring hollow.