REFUGEES: Shortfall Leaves UNHCR Humanitarian Operations at Risk

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Oct 22 2002 (IPS) - Financial shortfalls threaten to interrupt a large portion of the United Nations refugee agency’s humanitarian operations in November, creating a cloud of pessimism over the 114 countries and nearly 20 million people that benefit from this international aid.

The expenditures of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) grew 217 million dollars, largely earmarked to help the 1.7 million Afghans who are returning to their country. The agency points out, however, that financing for Afghanistan was covered by donor contributions.

The financial emergencies, meanwhile, are concentrated mostly in the UNHCR operations under way in Africa.

The agency is in the midst of a crisis, "a serious situation, a cash-flow problem" that is leaving programme coffers empty, spokesman Ron Redmond said Tuesday.

If the donor governments fail to provide some 80 million dollars before the end of this month, "we will be forced to halt some activities on the ground in the year’s final quarter."

Financial hard times are commonplace lately among the budgets of intergovernmental organisations. To explain this phenomenon, the expression "donor fatigue" was coined, in reference mostly to the cases of governments of industrialised countries.

The leading government donor to the UNHCR is the United States, followed by Japan and the Netherlands.

Even the home institution, the United Nations, suffered similar difficulties until two years ago due to the failure of the United States to pay its quota of support to the multilateral forum.

The state of arrears was settled by an agreement reached in December 2000 that modified the calculation of the contributions corresponding to the United States for the UN.

The UNHCR budget for 2002, approved by the agency’s executive committee in October 2001, reached 802 million dollars.

But by mid-year, when it became evident that income would not cover its necessities, the UNHCR resolved to cut its budget to 726 million dollars. Another reduction, last week, left the total financial resources of the agency at 710 million dollars.

Ruud Lubbers, High Commissioner for Refugees, declared that these cutbacks "have been extremely painful and have affected refugees and our work on their behalf around the world."

When the magnitude of the problem became evident, the UNHCR reacted by giving priority to operations in the field, with the bulk of the cutbacks to be made by the administrative headquarters in Geneva.

The agency’s officials determined that it would be necessary to limit the impacts of the funding cuts on the refugees, and ruled out applying fixed reductions across the board, due to the differences in needs among the regions where it operates.

The UNHCR staff numbers around 5,000 people, more than 80 percent of whom work in the field. And an estimated 60 percent of these field workers serve in difficult and often dangerous areas, far from their own families.

Lubbers stressed that the agency’s "most pressing needs are clearly in Africa right now," adding, "Many of our programmes in Africa and elsewhere were already struggling because of previous budget cuts."

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan stepped up to call the donor countries’ attention to the UNHCR situation, mentioning the difficulties of the African humanitarian endeavours in particular.

Lubbers said Tuesday, "We have numerous protracted refugee situations there that are largely forgotten by the international community, as well as several new crises in West Africa, the Great Lakes and the East and Horn of Africa."

The budget cuts are affecting the movements of voluntary repatriation efforts, such as at the "return centres" of Angola and Somalia, which were forced to reduce the number of people benefiting from those programmes.

Furthermore, newly arriving refugees will have to be channelled to camps that are already overcrowded, with the accompanying consequences for security, health and protection, as in the case of the Liberian refugees in neighbouring countries and of the Somalis in Kenya.

According to the UNHCR, Eritrean refugees are hurt by the budget cuts because they no longer benefit from water, health, education and agricultural projects, while lack of funding for security at Tanzanian refugee camps means that those populations will be left vulnerable.

Without additional funding, children in the Caucasus region will not receive winter clothes and refugees in Thailand and Papua New Guinea will not be relocated as planned away from the insecure border areas.

Agency spokesman Redmond noted that the unpredictable cash flows mean field staff are unable to plan projects in an adequate way, and that living and working "hand-to mouth" has prompted a great deal of frustration and little cushion for the UNHCR to deal with new emergencies.

The High Commissioner said that while needs are growing, the agency is finding it increasingly difficult to obtain the resources necessary to attend to the millions of refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced that can be found worldwide.

Lubbers issued an appeal to the donor countries to provide the funding needed for the rest of this year in order to maintain the assistance "that the refugees have the right to obtain."

REFUGEES: Shortfall Leaves UNHCR Humanitarian Operations at Risk

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Oct 22 2002 (IPS) - Financial shortfalls threaten to interrupt a large portion of the United Nations refugee agency’s humanitarian operations in November, creating a cloud of pessimism over the 114 countries and nearly 20 million people that benefit from this international aid.
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