The head of the United Nations refugee agency is calling on world leaders to fulfill a duty to protect refugees and migrants.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, spoke to NHK in New York on Sunday.

He noted that a constant increase in the number of refugees and displaced people around the world has now reached 120 million. He cited the conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan, and turmoil in Venezuela.

Grandi said, "When you look around here in New York at the discussions that take place around peace and security issues, you can see that the future, unfortunately, doesn't look very good from this point of view."

He expressed a sense of crisis about the fact that discriminatory words and actions are conspicuous in the United States, which has led the world in accepting refugees and immigrants.

Former President Donald Trump, the Republican candidate in the US presidential election, claimed that people who have migrated to the US are eating the pets of American citizens.

Grandi said, "I think that to denigrate immigrants and refugees, to ridicule them to worse, stigmatize and exclude them is very dangerous."

He said what needs to be achieved, when there is a large foreign population in a community, is to find good ways to integrate them.

Grandi said it is the duty of world leaders to host and protect refugees and migrants from the difficult situations in their countries so that they can become an asset to the community.