Ikea, Lego and Vodafone among companies pledging to help refugees
Nicole Johnston

In Geneva over 30 companies, private foundations and investors have pledged more than $250 million to help refugees.

The pledges were made at the Global Refugee Forum, an international conference being held in Geneva to try to find solutions to the refugee and migration crisis.

The UN says the companies are committed to training, creating jobs, providing legal support, investing in refugee-run companies and giving cash assistance.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi said: "The private sector, with its creativity, drive and commitment, has already stepped up, making important pledges at the Global Refugee Forum. And companies stand ready to do more."

Companies that have made pledges include Ingka Group, the IKEA Foundation, Vodafone Foundation and the LEGO Foundation.

By 2022 Ikea says it will support 2,500 refugees in job and language training in 300 IKEA stores in 30 countries.

The LEGO Foundation is providing a $100 million grant for play-based learning programmes for pre-primary and primary school aged children in East Africa.

The Vodafone Foundation is focusing on digital training for 500,000 young refugees with free internet in schools and teacher support.  This is being carried out in Kenya, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Over 20 law firms have pledged to commit 115,000 hours per year of pro bono legal support to refugees and stateless people.

Meanwhile Turkey's President, Recep Tayipp Erdogan, has spoken at the Global Refugee Forum and demanded that Europe do more to share the burden. Turkey hosts almost 4 million Syrian refugees.

Erdogan wants to establish a so-called  "safe zone" in northern Syria and send more than 1 million Syria refugees back across the border.

"We need to find a formula that will allow the refugees to remain in their motherlands and the ones that are already in Turkey to be peacefully returned and resettled in their motherland," Erdogan said on Tuesday.

This year Turkey threatened to "open the gates to Europe" and send more Syrians across the Aegean Sea to Greece.

Turkey has accused Europe of failing to keep up its end of the 2016 EU-Turkey refugee deal.

Under that accord, Turkey agreed to stem the numbers of refugees in return for almost $7 billion from the EU.  After an initial impact, the bottleneck of refugees stuck in Greece began to build again.

The EU has been trying to convince all member states to agree to a co-ordinated approach to take in new refugee arrivals. But countries like Hungary are refusing to sign on.  Southern European countries, including Greece and Italy, say they have been left to cope with huge refugee numbers on their own.

More than 90,000 refugees and migrants are stuck in Greece. More than 50,000 arrived this year, more than twice as many as 2018.

Greece has announced it will close its severely overcrowded island camps and transfer refugees to mainland detention centres where their movements will be restricted.

The UN's Grandi, says the refugee issue has become highly politicized in Europe at the expense of basic human rights.

"We see refugees who have fled for their lives being demonized and turned into figures of fear. We see people making political capital by stoking public anxiety and directing it towards some of the world's most marginalized and vulnerable people," he said.