First Ever UN Summit on Refugees Takes Place in New York

The U.N. is holding a summit on migration and refugees on Monday to address the more than 65 million people who have been displaced by conflict.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will open the global body's first-ever summit on Addressing Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants at the U.N.'s headquarters.

The goal of the gathering is to craft a strategy on protecting the human rights of refugees and migrants, which has been the largest movement of displaced people in Europe since World War II.

"Instead of sharing responsibility, world leaders shirked it," Amnesty International Secretary-General Salil Shetty said in a statement. "The U.N. summit has been sabotaged by states acting in self-interest, leaving millions of refugees in dire situations around the world on the edge of a precipice."

President Barack Obama will be meeting with Iraqi's prime minister on the sidelines of the assembly to discuss taking back the northern city of Mosul from the Islamic State.

Obama will also host a leaders' summit Tuesday that will be focused on specific pledges and commitments to assist refugees.

He'll be joined by the leaders of Germany, Canada, Mexico, Ethiopia, Jordan and Sweden and by the U.N. secretary-general.

They want to increase financing for global humanitarian appeals by 30 percent in order to double the number of refugees resettled globally and to raise the number of refugee children in school by 1 million.

Skeptical of the U.N. gathering, Shetty is hopeful the leaders' summit will yield positive result.

"We already know the U.N. summit is doomed to abject failure, while the Obama summit looks unlikely to pick up the pieces," he said.