PRESS CONFERENCE BY US COMMITTEE FOR REFUGEES

It was difficult today -- on World Refugee Day -- to be celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the 1951 Refugee Convention, at a time when the key United Nations agency mandated to support refugees was being starved for funds, Bill Frelick, Director of Policy, United States Committee for Refugees, told correspondents at a Headquarters press conference this morning.

The Committee, a non-governmental organization based in Washington, D.C., today released its "World Refugee Survey 2001", an annual survey of refugee conditions around the world.  Joining Mr. Frelick was Jeff Drumtra, the Committee's Senior Africa Policy Analyst.

Highlighting the contents of the Survey, Mr. Frelick said that it contained thematic articles about refugee conditions written by experts in the field, highlighting the events of the past year.  Three of the five articles dealt specifically with the significance of the fiftieth anniversary of the Convention, the foundation stone of the world refugee regime, and the need to reinvigorate the Convention in looking ahead to the future.

The heart of the Survey, he said, were the country reports, of which there were 130 and from which the Committee derived its statistical information.  One of the tables, for example, highlighted the major displacements that took place last year.  There was also a country-by-country assessment of the numbers of refugees per host country and by their country of origin, now living in host countries around the world.

Also included, he continued, were lists of the signatories and non-signatories to the Convention, as well as the top donors to international refugee aid agencies and a list of last year's voluntary and involuntary repatriations.  The Convention, he noted, prohibited the return of refugees -- those who had fled their own countries and crossed an international border -- to persecution.

The numbers were not just numbers, as each number represented a human face and a particular story, he said.  Some of those stories were told within the various country reports, including "Only Grass Suffers When Two Bulls Fight", which was the harrowing story of the Sudanese lost boys from the perspective of one child.

Among the key statistics in the Survey, said Mr. Drumtra, was that there were 14.5 million refugees around the world at the beginning of the year -- an increase of 400,000 over the last year and an increase of 1 million over the last two years.  Also, internally displaced persons -- those who fled their homes but remained within their own countries -- numbered at least 20 million worldwide.  That was an increase of 3 million in the past two years.

The total number of uprooted people, which numbered 34.5 million worldwide, was larger than the population of 80 per cent of the world's countries, he said.  Of the 57 main sources of uprooted people, the five primary ones were the Sudan, Afghanistan, Palestine, Colombia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Last

year alone, 5.5 million people fled their homes due to war, persecution, repression and atrocities.

On the issue of funding, he said that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) -- the primary international body responsible for the protection and care of refugees -- was currently undergoing its worst financial crisis in the last 10 years.  Donor nations were not providing the necessary support to refugees.  Last year, the UNHCR had a funding shortfall of $115 million.

This year, it was looking at another shortfall of $100 million, he continued, even though it had laid off 700 staff and was reducing its projects around the world.  That, he stressed, had a real impact on refugees and on the people trying to assist them.

The funding crisis, added Mr. Frelick, raised the question of how the promises of the Convention could be implemented.  Linked to that issue were three other concerns.  The first was the question of unsafe refuge.  For example, refugees fleeing Sierra Leone into Guinea, only to have their camps in Guinea under attack and overrun by the violence.  In Africa alone, about 2 million refugees last year fled from areas where they were escaping war and persecution into areas which were subjected to violent conditions.

Another concern was the targeting of humanitarian personnel, he said.  In the past nine years, 198 United Nations aid workers had been murdered, with about 240 more being kidnapped in the past six years.  Also of serious concern were the barriers to asylum, including access to people in trouble, as well as access for such people to countries of safety.

What was being seen were ever-increasing barriers to asylum, he continued, which pointed to one of the problems with the Convention itself.  Although the Convention prohibited the return of refugees to persecution, that principle had been repeatedly violated in country after country last year.  Up to 50,000 Afghan refugees were forcibly returned from Iran and thousands of North Koreans were returned from China. 

What had also been seen was a shutting of doors.  While the Convention prohibited forced return, it did not require States to open their doors or provide asylum.  Therefore, there had been a proliferation of barriers in recent years to keep people out, including interdiction on the high seas and the imposition of visa regimes.  The 14.5 million refugees were those that had succeeded in crossing an international border.  The number that could not be counted were the multitudes fearing for their safety, but unable to get past their own borders. 

In response to questions, Mr. Frelick said that the United States interdicted Haitians, Cubans, Chinese and others on the high seas and returned them summarily to their countries of origin.  While that would seem to violate the Convention's prohibition on forced return, the United States Supreme Court had said that the Convention was not self-executing and was only implemented through domestic legislation, and that the Immigration and Nationality Act of the United States only applied within its territory.  Therefore, one suggestion would be to amend legislation to ensure that it was in full conformity with the Convention. 

Mr. Drumtra added that the United States could do more, as its funding for overseas refugee assistance now was $50 million less than it was five years ago.  However, the largest culprits in the funding shortfall experienced by the UNHCR were the Europeans, who had been extremely negligent in supporting the international refugee regime.  Five years ago, European countries were providing more than $550 million to the UNHCR.  Last year, that amount had dwindled to   $310 million.

The UNHCR, Mr. Frelick said, had the mandate, deriving from the Convention, to protect refugees.  It was not just an assistance organization.  What distinguished it from the other United Nations agencies was its protection mandate.  The Committee was critical of the UNHCR on a case-by-case basis, as it had been with regard to Chechnya, where the agency had not been as active as it could have been to provide humanitarian assistance and monitor human rights abuses.  The UNHCR could only be as strong and effective as Member States allowed it to be.

With regard to specific recommendations, Mr. Frelick said that on the issue of protection of humanitarian personnel, what was needed was a security guard force, out of the Secretary-General's office, that was specifically mandated to protect United Nations humanitarian workers and non-governmental partners.  It would not be part of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations or contingent on a peace agreement or Security Council resolution. 

He went on to say that it would essentially be the safe force that guarded Headquarters which would, by extension, be used to support and guard warehouses and the humanitarian workers themselves.  The precedent for such a force was Iraq in 1991, where the United Nations security guards were used in northern Iraq.

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