World leaders are meeting in New York where the United Nations General Assembly is holding the first-ever summit on “Addressing large movements of refugees and migrants”.

With numbers of people forced to flee conflict and hunger in their countries unprecedented since World War II, the meeting is expected to approve a document that might induce the 193 UN member states to adopt a more coordinated approach to protect the human rights of refugees and migrants.

That may prove difficult as some countries already rejected an earlier draft that called on nations to resettle 10 per cent of the refugee population each year, and refugees are proving a deeply divisive issue in Europe and the US, but at least the UN is trying.

The biggest more recent wave of refugees came from Syria. Its neighbouring countries, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, have done more than their fair share of humanitarian gestures, taking in huge numbers which, at least in the first two countries, puts a severe strain on resources.

Jordan received praise for giving shelter, providing schooling for Syrian children and allowing Syrians to enter the labour market.

The promise was that Jordan will continue to bear responsibility for refugees in return for donations by rich countries until the Syrian conflict is solved and refugees return home.

For, it is not possible for Jordan, even if one forgets its meagre resources, to afford politically, economically and socially to house millions of Syrian refugees forever.

Addressing the economic and social burdens of countries receiving the refugees is never going to be the ultimate answer.

Instead, nations of the world need to address the root causes of the refugees’ plight and find permanent solutions to the reasons that make them refugees in the first place.

According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 65.3 million people were displaced at the end of 2015, an increase of more than 5 million from a year earlier.

They include 21.3 million refugees, 3.2 million asylum seekers and 40.8 million migrants.

That so many people should have to leave their countries is shocking. That the world leaders should miss the crucial point is equally so; it is not so important to haggle over numbers, as critical as these are — of refugees accepted in one’s country, of money to give to those who shelter refugees, of how many kilometres of walls and razor wire that keeps them away, of how many should be resettled, how many allowed to work, how many enrolled in school — but to hold meaningful discussions about what makes people become refugees or pushes them to migrate, in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world, and find ways to address the reasons, if need be by the mandate invested in the UN.