While every refugee's story is different and their anguish personal, they all share a common thread of uncommon courage - the courage not only to survive, but to persevere and rebuild their shattered lives.

Now, it's high time for all those that have an influence on the parties with the conflict to understand that it is in the interest of everybody to put an end to this conflict. But this kind of persuasion, this kind of intense pressure, I believe it's my duty to do, even if I recognize that the contradictions and the different perceptions of interest that exist are making it very difficult.

We can't deter people fleeing for their lives. They will come. The choice we have is how well we manage their arrival, and how humanely.

I think that it's very important to have the United States' engagement in many situations we have around the world, be it in Syria, be it in the African context. The United States represents an important set of values, human rights, values related to freedom, to democracy. And so the foreign policy engagement of the United States is a very important guarantee that those values can be properly pursued.

The international community has to overcome its differences and find solutions to the conflicts of today in South Sudan, Syria, Central African Republic and elsewhere. Non-traditional donors need to step up alongside traditional donors. As many people are forcibly displaced today as the entire populations of medium-to-large countries such as Colombia or Spain, South Africa or South Korea.

Syria has become the great tragedy of this century - a disgraceful humanitarian calamity with suffering and displacement unparalleled in recent history.

Thus, on this World Refugee Day, let us take time to recognize and draw inspiration from these ordinary people who have shown such extraordinary courage - the world's millions of refugees and displaced.