PRESS BRIEFING ON REFUGEES

Press Briefing

PRESS BRIEFING ON REFUGEES

The increasing use of a humanitarian response in situations requiring political involvement was complicating the world refugee scene, the Assistant High Commissioner for Refugees, Soren Jessen-Petersen, said at a Headquarters press briefing this morning, held in conjunction with the publication of the new biennial report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), entitled the State of the World's Refugees, 1997-1998. Publication of the report was announced simultaneously in Geneva by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, and a news video of the report was released for worldwide distribution. The report presents a comprehensive survey of the global refugee situation and indicates areas for constructive humanitarian action.

Of the 22 million persons currently under UNHCR's care, Mr. Jessen- Petersen said, only half were refugees in the traditional sense. About 5 or 6 million of those being cared for by the UNHCR were returnees living under situations that were at best fragile, and another 2 or 3 million were internally displaced persons. Approximately 35 million people had been forced from their homes and, because they did not fit into existing categories of refugees, were not being helped. Those forced from their homes were facing constantly changing situations, including changes in the nature of the armed conflicts, human rights abuses and economic declines, and that must be addressed politically.

The good news about refugees worldwide was that the numbers were down compared to a year ago and repatriations were increasing, Mr. Jessen-Petersen said. Also, in so many words, there was more support than ever for the work of the UNHCR. For example, this year for the first time, the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) had extended the UNHCR mandate for five years by acclamation, which meant that all Member States endorsed the UNHCR's work wholeheartedly. However, along with the good news, there was increasing concern that States were using humanitarian assistance as an excuse for avoiding substantive political action. Humanitarian workers were being sent into situations where politicians and armies did not dare tread.

Four primary factors indicated that was occurring, he continued. First, more civilians than ever were being targeted in conflicts. Forced population shifts, such as in the former Yugoslavia or in the African Great Lakes region, were increasingly a tactic of war, rather than merely a consequence. Second, there was an increase in statelessness among the world's populations, a condition wherein large groups of people were displaced from their homes following cataclysmic human events. Third, the doors of both rich and poor countries were increasingly being slammed shut to refugees. Finally, in the post-cold-war period, major nations were retreating from involvement in situations of conflict and were using humanitarian assistance as an excuse for not taking political action.

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However, the solution was not always humanitarian action itself, Mr. Jessen-Petersen continued. For example, during the situation in the former Zaire, a multinational force had been turned down, after which the UNHCR had had to go in under less-than-ideal conditions to save more than 250,000 people. In that situation, humanitarian assistance had complicated matters by allowing the parties to stall for time when a political solution was needed. After rejection of the political solution, the agency had been in a "no-win" situation, caught between two evils and called on to either help people return to their homes and possible danger or assisting them to stay in camps where harm was certain.

In that situation, Mr. Jessen-Petersen said, humanitarian workers had seen right away that killers from the armies were mixed with the refugees in the camps. The UNHCR had asked for a military component to separate the killers from the legitimate refugees, but, in the end, the humanitarian component had been left alone without the political or military aspect it had been expecting.

"There can be no State security without human security", Mr. Jessen- Petersen said. "Some believe we've seen the worst, but we believe displacements will continue and people will have greater difficulty." While there was increased attention and interest in the problems of refugees and while the importance of the humanitarian component in human problems was increasingly recognized by the world community, there was clearly a limit to what could be done to protect those in danger.

Increasingly, the world community reacted with a humanitarian response when it felt concern, rather than with the political response more often needed, he continued. The UNHCR had made it clear to the Security Council that an emergency response capacity had to be established. Statements of support for UNHCR activities were not enough. Political action was needed to deal with the root causes of conditions that made people flee, as in Bosnia and Herzegovina for example, where from the beginning the response had been humanitarian, rather than political. That had also been true in Africa's Great Lakes region.

The real solution, Mr. Jessen-Petersen said, was a programme of the following five elements: the reduction of poverty; curtailment of the small arms trade; a rigorous promotion of human rights in those countries emerging from conflict; following up political developments with long-term actions to avert relapses, such as the one occurring in Cambodia; and, finally, rigorous protection and preservation of the right to asylum, which was the only way to safeguard the safety and dignity of people displaced from homes. "Internal human security should be the major focus of UNHCR activities", Mr. Jessen- Petersen said.

In response to a question, Mr. Jessen-Petersen said a turning point in today's refugee affairs had come not in response to the African Great Lakes problems or even to the troubles in the former Yugoslavia, but with policies

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that had their roots in actions taken by Europe during the mid-1980s. It was then that people had fled regional troubles in great numbers and European countries had responded by putting up obstacles, rather than looking at the root causes of the conflicts that were making refugees flee. Such policies had spread from Europe to the developing world, where there were legitimate economic and security concerns with regard to large influxes of needy people.

Asked whether the non-payment of dues by the United States had affected the work of the UNHCR, Mr. Jessen-Petersen said that the UNHCR had been lucky with its donor support and had been well funded. However, while next year its budget would be slightly under $1 billion, due to the fall in the numbers of refugees, this year the UNHCR major funding donors were showing "donor strain" for the first time. That was limiting some critical UNHCR activities, such as the repatriation effort in Liberia.

Asked where Ted Turner's $1 billion pledge would be allocated, Mr. Jessen-Petersen said the UNHCR was pleased that Mr. Turner had designated refugees as one of the important global elements needing immediate help. There were discussions under way about how the United Nations should proceed and there were some possibilities for funding refugee programmes. For example, an initiative in Bosnia and Herzegovina was aimed at bringing Bosniac minorities back into Serb majority areas from where they had been ousted, and the agency would like to see the spread of such initiatives. It would also like to link such programmes with initiatives in other areas, such as demining.

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