Refugees

Would you define for us what a refugee is, and when your organization becomes involved in their plight?

A refugee is someone who has to leave the country for fear of persecution. This is the simplest refugee definition that is in the statute of our office. Anybody who leaves a country and seeks refugee protection comes under my mandate automatically. But there are other cases in which a group of people because of war, internal conflict, or violence leave en masse, and we see that a lot these days. Then we are mandated to protect them, to make sure that they are accepted in the countries into which they go, which are mostly neighboring countries. We ask the host countries to keep them; then we bring a lot of assistance so that we can help alleviate the burden that neighboring countries must bear. And today the majority of the refugees, 85 percent of the seventeen million, are in Third World countries, so it means that the Third World countries bear an enormous burden.

What is the profile of these refugees?

In most refugee outflows, women and children are the majority. More than 50 percent, some cases about 75 percent, because a lot of these mass refugee groups are victims of fighting, and the men in many cases continue to fight while the women and children take refuge into neighboring countries.

What does your organization do for these refugees?

An example of a traditional refugee outflow crisis is that of the Burmese Islamic people known as the Rohingyas going into Bangladesh. The first thing we have to do is to get the agreement of the host country, Bangladesh, to receive these people. Also, we must set up and negotiate with the government for a camp site, and then bring in shelter and food, provide medical assistance, and assure water facilities--that kind of physical support. We also try to register them to know their numbers and who they are. This whole exercise requires a great deal of logistical support. There's a lot of work involved, and we try to find partners to implement the assistance work. Many are nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); the government itself very often provides their services, too. The Red Cross is a very important implementing partner in many cases.

As these operations become more complex, is more coordination required with other arms of the UN, such as peacekeeping forces?

If it is a conflict-caused outflow, like that in Yugoslavia, the peacekeeping effort becomes very important. Working with the cease-fire and peacekeeping forces, we assist in the repatriation of the displaced people. In the case of the Rohingyas going to Bangladesh, we would take care of them, protect them, make sure that they are not forced back, provide them with basic food and medicine and so on, and then expect some kind of negotiations to take place with the Burmese government, which is now occurring with the political wing of the UN. Once there's some kind of an agreement, as was the case in Afghanistan and Cambodia (both took twelve years--I hope this one won't be that long), we can help the refugees go back home. And when that starts we try to make sure that the security of those who go back is assured and they're not forced back; so we usually have to be on the receiving end, too.

pull-quote from interview How is policy developed within UNHCR?

We report to the executive committee, especially on financial matters, and then we seek their general guidance on policy issues, but as far as executing the policies is concerned, it is very much left to the high commissioner and the senior management committee to determine how to respond and what initiatives to take.

The Iraqi crisis of last year was very interesting from a legal point of view. A painful one for those who had to make decisions, because the refugee crisis involving the Iraqis took a conventional form only as far as the refugee Kurdish people who went to Iran were concerned. I did appeal to Iran to keep its borders open, and Iran as a consequence received 1.2 million Iraqis at one point. It is fairly standard whenever we appeal to governments to keep the borders open that we promise assistance, so we did go in and try to help the government set up. A lot of the work is done by government, and this is one thing I'd especially like to underscore, that while financial resources come mostly from industrialized countries, the neighboring countries of refugee outflow bear a great responsibility, and they are mostly Third World countries, not very wealthy countries, receiving refugees from even poorer countries. Iran did provide a lot of assistance. They set up camps and so on. We assisted the Iranians, but refugees who tried to get to Turkey had more difficult problems. For various reasons, security problems and so on, Turkey did not keep the doors open, and as a result, a lot of the refugee Kurds were stuck in the mountains. Now traditionally our mandate would be to help those who cross the border. How do you interpret a border? How do you assist people from across the border? This is a logistical problem. How to reach them? And it was a very difficult decision, and a difficult situation to cope with. The coalition forces decided to move in and bring Iraqis down from the mountain to the Iraqi side. A formal refugee law-related solution should be to take them out to the Turkey side, but this solution was to bring them down on the Iraqi side. The natural conditions, the mountain slope and so on, made it easier that way. At the same time, it put us in the situation of needing to protect Iraqis on Iraqi territory against a very hostile regime. It was a very difficult decision, what to do, how to negotiate with the governments, what were the legal principles, and so on.

We consult within our own organization, as the legal division is very strong on providing us with the legal provisions that we need. There are also practical problems. Though we could not even gain access to the Kurdish refugees stuck on the mountains in the winter, we at least assisted them where we could. Those were the decisions that we reached, and we moved accordingly. The United Nations did negotiate with Iraq to bring UN staff to Iraq to assist these people. These were the negotiations that were conducted. And even today, with all that has happened, we have continued to work, protecting Iraqis in Iraq and providing material assistance. Of course we kept the executive committee informed. The concept of protection is a very important one, but its context is evolving today very much.

pull-quote from interview So Iraq has been something of a test case.

This was the largest refugee flow in a short time period, because in Iraq, 1.7 million people were either across the border or on the border in refugee situations, and it was the intervention by the coalition forces that brought them back so very quickly. It was the quickest return, but return did not mean return to the status quo, so we were faced with the problem of how we protect people who are back in their country, but not back at home in a normal situation. We had to do a lot of work inside Iraq.

In a situation like that where the states in the region have very complex interests with regard to the Kurds, quite a bit of political negotiation must go on, because solutions would affect the vital interests of states like Turkey that have great concern about the movement of the Kurdish people across their borders.

Well, our basic position is rather clear: we always ask the countries concerned to keep the borders open so we that we can come and protect, and also provide material assistance. That is the basic position.

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