IRIN Focus on implications of falling refugee budgets

This week's meeting in Geneva of the UN refugee agency's 57-nation Executive Committee comes at a critical time in the organisation's 50-year history as lack of funding has forced it to make substantial budget and staff reductions this year. "The current working budget amounts to less than US $40 per year for each person of concern to UNHCR," Ruud Lubbers, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Monday at the opening of the week-long annual meeting of the agency's governing body. "This is considerably lower than most previous years. I consider this budget to be the absolute minimum......" Lubbers said. He noted that the agency was reducing its staff by 16 percent and its budget by roughly 10 percent to meet projected income. UNHCR is mandated by the UN "to lead and coordinate international action for the world-wide protection of refugees and the resolution of refugee problems," according to its mission statement. Its primary purpose is to safeguard the rights and wellbeing of refugees. This includes providing them with basic necessities such as shelter, food, water and medicine in emergencies and seeking long-term solutions, such as their voluntary return home or their beginning afresh in new countries. Caring for more than 21 million people worldwide The agency currently cares for some 21.7 million people worldwide with a budget of US $882 million, it said in a news release on Monday. Some 28 percent of its target group, which includes refugees, asylum seekers, returning refugees and others of concern, are in Africa, according to UNHCR statistics. Following the suicide plane attacks on 11 September in New York and Washington the focus of the world's attention has shifted to the plight of civilians in Central Asia and there is a real fear within the humanitarian community that some six million refugees in Africa will suffer most. "The cutbacks are global cutbacks, but yes, there is a sense that Africa is being hit hardest. We felt it very strongly during the Kosovo crisis and if the expected crisis in Afghanistan materialises then we will see it again," Paul Stromberg, UNHCR regional spokesman in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, told IRIN. Stromberg said that UNHCR's East Africa operation has been told to assume a budgetary shortfall of 20 percent this year and was having "to scale back and be watchful". He said that this year there had been a plan to repatriate 70,000 refugees from Ethiopia to Somalia, but this had to be cut back to 60,000 repatriations because UNHCR could not meet the cost of returning all 70,000. "All funding comes from the donors, of course, and there is a sense amongst donors that so many of Africa's refugee problems and crises have been going on for so long that whatever we throw at them seems to make little difference. Of course this is to massively oversimplify things but there is a sense on the part of the donors that there is no end in sight," Stromberg said. As of 25 September 2001 UNHCR's revised budget shortfalls were: -22 percent for West and Central Africa; Great Lakes, -20 percent; East and Horn of Africa, -29 percent; and Southern Africa, -30 percent. Concentrating on core activities According to Geneva-based UNHCR Information Officer Delphine Marie, in cutting back managers are directed to focus on maintaining core UNHCR activities and to keep the impact on refugees as limited as possible. She said priority for resource allocation was given to core activities within both the survival sector (water, health, food, sanitation) and the protection sector. This approach was echoed by a spokesman from UNHCR's Pretoria-based Regional Directorate for Southern Africa. Fidelis Swai told IRIN that any funding shortfall in his region would mean a greater focus on its core mandate rather than other activities such as road repairs or bridge building. "We will continue to serve the primary needs of refugees, but we might have to eliminate non-core activities," Swai said. However, despite reassurances from UNHCR that restructuring will not affect services to refugees, humanitarian sources in Zambia, which hosts the largest concentration of refugees in southern Africa, told IRIN that they were concerned. "If UNHCR now says that it is primarily going to focus on its core mandate and focus less on non-core activities, what happens to those refugees who rely on these so-called non-core activities?" one aid worker who works with refugees said. He added that there were "great" problems with the refugees integrating into Zambian society so the refugee population relied "heavily" on the non-core or more developmental activities. UNHCR has expressed concern over its ability to maintain key programmes whose long-term goals were crucial to assisting refugees and returnees in reintegrating - providing assistance in bridging the gap between their return and long-term development assistance. "The withdrawal from non-core activities that have benefited governments and local communities will undoubtedly be difficult and close consultation with host governments will be vital to ensuring a smooth handover of activities," Elike Segbor of the Geneva-based UNHCR Africa bureau said. Governments worried A spokesman for the Zambian government told IRIN that although the authorities understood that restructuring within UNHCR needed to take place, they were worried about the consequences. "Zambia is a poor country. We are fighting poverty, HIV/AIDS and basically just trying to ensure that Zambians have access to the basics. How are we supposed to help fill the gap that might be left?" he said. In addition to cuts in programme activities, funding shortfalls have resulted in an ongoing closure of offices across the continent. UNHCR's Segbor told IRIN that many of these offices had already been slated for closure before the recent budget cuts. These were primarily offices that remained as vestiges of earlier days when refugee caseloads in those countries were significant. Decisions to cut programmes and close offices, he explained, were weighed against the diminishing number of refugees. Most programmes, according to Segbor, would continue to function through NGO partners and be supported by UNHCR cluster offices in neighbouring countries. [A cluster office is one assigned to cover two to three countries]. Any programme cuts, Segbor said, were primarily directed at operations which, for various reasons, had not happened. For example, he said, the repatriation of refugees in Liberia has not begun because of continued insecurity in the region. Similarly, no repatriation has taken place in Burundi due to failed peace talks. In West Africa, reduced funding over the last three years has meant that UNHCR faced two choices: keep the offices functioning on reduced staff and thin budgets or create cluster offices, which would reduce costs and allow more money to be spent on programmes, a UNHCR source told IRIN. By the end of this year, cluster offices in Benin, Central African Republic, Gabon and Senegal will oversee operations in countries including Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Chad, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger and Togo, the source said. The decision to close offices was not universally welcomed by UNHCR staff but "we live in a real world, we had to be realistic," one UNHCR source said adding that governments should be happy by the decision since a UN withdrawal means there is no longer an urgent refugee problem. However governments and refugees have expressed reservations about UNHCR's departure. Refugees want the UN agency to stay because they do not have faith in governments ability to fulfil their new role effectively, a fear echoed by some governments. Cameroon, for example, which hosts close to 44,000 mainly Chadian refugees, has two offices, both of which are due to close by the end of the year. UNHCR Officer in Charge for Cameroon Marcellin Hepie, who is overseeing their closure, says the refugees are terrified of what the future holds. The Cameroonian authorities themselves have asked UNHCR for a five-year transition period, citing a lack of legal, financial and infrastructural capacity to take care of refugees. The same fear is felt in the West African country of Cote d'Ivoire, where UNHCR has three branch offices in the western towns of Danane, Guiglo and Tabou and a country office in the commercial capital, Abidjan. Two of the offices in the west, where more than 125,000 mainly Liberian refugees live, were closed last week, while the third is to be shut by the end of this year. The government wanted them kept open and, at the same time, a transition period initiated to help the authorities prepare for the takeover, a humanitarian source told IRIN. Urban refugees Urban refugees are a sub-group that needs attention and can pose a security problem, humanitarian sources say. Some, especially former fighters, may resort to violence and crime while women might turn to prostitution in order to survive, the sources said. According to Hepie, the closing of UNHCR offices in Cameroon could aggravate the situation of urban refugees there. Cameroon’s two biggest cities, Douala and Yaounde, account for about 65 percent of some 8,000 urban refugees. Humanitarian sources in Cote d'Ivoire say that refugees there will feel psychologically abandoned and face an uncertain future. This may lead to migration towards bigger cities such as the commercial capital, Abidjan, the political capital, Yamoussoukro, and Bouake, the second largest city. Ruud Lubbers warned on Monday that the lack of durable solutions for refugees could lead to a rise in crime and the threat of further conflict or instability. "We must guard against this. The unacceptable alternatives are more protracted refugee situations, more refugees languishing in refugee camps year after year, more refugees taking desperate measures to find safety and a better future, and more refugees being exploited by criminal networks," he said. He added that the international community's failure to find lasting solutions for millions of refugees "makes us all guilty of their degradation."