Created by the United Nations in 1951 to protect and assist refugees, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) today aids one of every 220 people on the planet. But nowhere are the challenges more unprecedented or the demands on UNHCR's time, staff and resources greater than in Africa.
In 1996, Africa accounted for 9.1 million (or 35 per cent) of the 26.1 million refugees, returnees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) being assisted by UNHCR around the globe. In January 1995, UNHCR assisted 11.8 million people in Africa, up from just 7.45 million in January 1994, prior to the Rwandese crisis.
In an interview with Africa Recovery in Geneva, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata noted that Africa also commands the largest share of the organization's resources. "Budget-wise, about 45 per cent is Africa," said Mrs. Ogata, who took over as head of UNHCR in 1991.
The organization had 800 staff members in the Great Lakes region alone in December, about 18 per cent of the 4,515 field staff it deployed globally in 1996. "In the Great Lakes region I have been involved since the very first day, in April 1994 when [Rwanda's crisis] became acute," Mrs. Ogata said. Since the latest refugee crisis erupted in eastern Zaire in September 1996, Mrs. Ogata estimated she had spent about half her time working on it.
Causes of refugee crises
Although Africa's refugee crises are coloured by poverty, Mrs. Ogata noted that poverty alone does not create refugees. The causes are most often political, she argued, with military action provoked by political tension or a political power struggle usually the direct cause.
The dramatic increase in the number of refugees in recent years can be attributed directly to the growing number of intra-state conflicts, such as the one in Rwanda in 1994 which grew to engulf much of the Great Lakes region, according to Mrs. Ogata. As the Great Lakes crisis has shown, demobilizing armed groups that flee to neighbouring countries along with refugee populations is extremely difficult. These groups often use their bases in the neighbouring countries as springboards to attack the government forces and populations of their former homeland.
"And so we find ourselves in the midst of a regionally expanded civil war situation," said Mrs. Ogata, who noted that this has been the case in Yugoslavia, Tanzania and Zaire, as well as with the Liberian refugees in Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire.
Asked how the international community might better respond to the security and humanitarian dilemmas posed by recent refugee crises, Mrs. Ogata said: "I think the international community has to make up its mind: are you going to deal with it or not? The kind of experience we've had on the Great Lakes region today makes me wonder whether the political decision has been taken to do something about it or not."
Central Africa dilemmas
Some observers have censured UNHCR for allegedly "tolerating" the presence of armed Rwandese refugees in its camps in Zaire and Tanzania between 1994 and 1996. Mrs. Ogata noted that UNHCR tried to control armed elements inside the camps but that plenty of armed elements remained outside them. "They held a strong grip over the refugees, and it got stronger and stronger as time went on."
Mrs. Ogata also pointed out the extreme difficulty of separating "the victims of civil war from the actors of civil war," both of whom end up as refugees in UNHCR camps. If the proposed Multi-national Force (MNF) for the Great Lakes Region was not going to separate them, she added, "how can civilians like our own colleagues be expected to do so?"
The High Commissioner, however, does think the task is achievable. "When people are at first fleeing a country, their fighting capacity is at a pretty low ebb, or they wouldn't flee," she noted. In 1994 the UN Department of Peace-Keeping Operations estimated it would cost about $60 mn to disarm and separate armed Rwandese refugees from civilian refugees. But "no one was willing to do it then," she said. In the end, UNHCR was only allowed to hire a Zairian military contingent to work under its supervision to provide greater camp security.
UNHCR was also criticized for cooperating with the Tanzanian military in the involuntary repatriation of Rwandese refugees in December 1996. UNHCR had planned a much more orderly return, according to Mrs. Ogata, and had also arranged to examine, screen and determine the status of those refugees who, for various reasons, felt that they could not return to Rwanda. Mrs. Ogata said extremist elements spread misinformation in the camps to lure the refugees away from the Rwanda-Tanzania border, which forced Tanzanian authorities to act.
Mrs. Ogata noted that a post-genocidal situation, like the one in the Great Lakes, poses unique problems for UNHCR and other organizations trying to repatriate refugees. Even those Rwandese refugees who did not participate directly in the genocide fear what Mrs. Ogata called the "revenge potential" if they return to Rwanda. Yet, the reconciliation process requires that some sort of justice be meted out to show that the perpetrators of genocide are being punished.
"But this has not been done in Rwanda yet ... because the justice system has taken such a long time to start functioning and, for various reasons, the Tribunal has also not functioned. This has certainly made the reconciliation process very difficult," Mrs. Ogata said. (The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was formally established by the UN Security Council in Arusha, Tanzania, to prosecute perpetrators of the Rwanda genocide.)
The High Commissioner believes the UN Security Council's refusal to deploy the proposed Canadian-led MNF to assist the estimated 300,000 Rwandese and Burundi refugees who fled westward to escape Zairian rebel forces was a grave error. If the MNF had been deployed inside Zaire, it would at least have contained the fighting, and it might have frozen the military situation, Mrs. Ogata said.
But, she added, it is still unclear whether the deployment of an MNF would have resulted in the refugees going home. Indeed, Mrs. Ogata noted that it was the fighting that finally spurred many refugees to return to Rwanda.
As for the United States proposal for an Africa Crisis Response Force, Mrs. Ogata said it would be important to first define the aim of such a force. "The most important role they can play, when people leave a country and are to be under international protection, is to disarm them," she commented. "Nobody right now has that mandate."
UNHCR's outreach
UNHCR is sometimes described as a kind of specialized "fire department," constantly responding to refugee crises as they flare up around the globe. Asked if the organization believes it ever wins, Mrs. Ogata said: "Oh yes, I've seen many successful repatriations, in Central America, in Indochina, in Africa -in Mozambique recently." But Mrs. Ogata still has put a high priority on improving the effectiveness of UNHCR's emergency response capabilities.
In recent years, UNHCR has more actively assisted IDPs. It has stopped the practice of just concentrating on refugees and now also helps those who have been displaced for a long time and are in refugee-like situations.
"We have not said we would be the lead agency for IDPs. But in the Yugoslavia context, it was everybody, refugees, IDPs, war-affected people that we helped," Mrs. Ogata said.
Mrs. Ogata would like to see quicker and better coordinated post-conflict rehabilitation aid following repatriation. She noted that although UNHCR can help people return home, "we can only do so much, because we are not a development agency." Governments often are not yet in a strong position to plan and to implement development assistance, and therefore more flexible and generous forms of aid are needed.
The international community needs to find better ways to empower women refugees, according to Mrs. Ogata. Because refugees often flee their home countries as an entire community or as a village, it often seems easier to distribute aid through the community or village leaders because they have some knowledge of and hold over their people. UNHCR has been trying to break away from this practice and to channel aid through women who are heads of their households. She said this is usually a sure way to ensure that the aid reaches those most in need, such as children.
In 1996, UNHCR worked with 453 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as implementing partners. But local NGOs in countries hosting large refugee populations often complain that they are largely untapped and even ignored by UNHCR (see Africa Recovery, May 1996).
"What we are trying to do is to link up and also to strengthen the capacity of local NGOs," Mrs. Ogata said. "Now this is the policy, but in practice, because the international NGOs have larger capacities, we often turn to them ... as local NGOs often do not have overall management capability. Supervising a whole administrative agreement can be very complicated."
In the past two years, UNHCR has initiated a special Partnership in Action programme to strengthen the relationships between UNHCR and NGOs. But much more effort will have to come from UNHCR, Mrs. Ogata added. NGOs sometimes become impatient with all the technical financial requirements of UNHCR, she pointed out. The challenge is to make administrative arrangements as simple as possible without sacrificing financial accountability.
Mrs. Ogata believes the efforts to strengthen the organization's emergency response capability have borne fruit.
"Now we have emergency teams that we can send all over the world very quickly," Mrs. Ogata said. "But what I would really like to see get better is for the political part of the UN to come in and solve the political problems that generate refugees. If not by the UN, then by the OAU [Organization of African Unity]. Because the causes of refugees' problems are political. They have to be dealt with politically. It's there that I'd like to see stronger UN commitment, initiative and linkage among agencies."