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UNITED NATIONS HIGH COMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES Welcome to the Executive Committee of the UN High Commissioner for refugees (UNHCR)— colloquially referred to as ExCom for short or the UN Refugee Agency. The Executive Committee is the body of the UNHCR that gathers representatives from over 70 nations to address the challenges of refugees crises and refugee-‐hosting nations, It is the primary agent that deals with crafting and and driving the work of the UNHCR.
The UNHCR plays a very important role politically, economically and in terms of humanitarian response. Refugees are often found living in extremely difficult conditions — sometimes forced to remain for extended periods of times, from years to decades, in overpopulated camps without proper access to housing, food, education or health care. Work permits or other forms of independent income are often difficult to come by. Other more pressing issues, like, food security, malnutrition, violence, and public health concerns contribute to this deadly combination. In the middle of such refugee-‐producing crises, UNHCR becomes active in participating as a provider of humanitarian aid and to coordinating the international networks for refugee recognition, settlement and protection.
HISTORY OF THE UNHCR After the Second World War, Europe was confronted with a serious refugee scenario. Millions of displaced peoples had remained scattered across the continent. There were little opportunities for repatriating these refugees back to their home societies. Global leaders had tried on several occasions to create a political body tasked with looking after European war refugees and displaced persons. Initially, two organizations were created, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force and United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA), but were unsuccessful in resolving the plight of post-‐World War II refugee problems. As the world settled into the bipolar conditions of the Cold War, Western officials sought to return refugees in the West to countries that were now located behind the Iron Curtain. Sending these displaced peoples back would have meant risking these individuals’ political freedoms and the lives. In 1947, the International Refugee Organization (IRO) was introduced, designed to globalize refugee problems by distributing responsibilities, costs and refugees among a
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large number of nations willing to take them on. The IRO was more successful resettling tens of thousands of refugees under its UN mandate. However, hundreds of thousands remained in refugee camps even up to 1950. With other refugees crises emerged beyond Western Europe, it had become clear that more efforts needed to be undertaken. Hence, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was created in 1950 with the scope of “leading and co-‐ordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide...and to safeguard the rights and well-‐being of refugees.” In our six decades of work, the UNHCR has faced many challenges, meeting some of them with success, others with failure. While the UNHCR has received better funding for its projects, which has produced successful examples, several cases of forced repatriation have lead to human rights violations. The mandate of the UNHCR is another challenge for the agency. Saduko Ogata, a former High Commissioner, summarized the dilemma of the UNHCR well by stating, “There are no humanitarian solutions to humanitarian problems.”
COMMITTEE TOPIC: SETTLING REFUGEES IN THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT
The Syrian crisis has produced hundreds of thousands refugees, with a particularly large contingency arriving in neighboring Jordan. Indeed, the effect of over 600,000 displaced Syrian citizens seeking asylum is becoming a serious issue, stretching the capacity of the Jordan to deal with greater inflows. The Jordanian infrastructure
and its institutions are working to accommodate the massive arrival of even more Syrian refugees, who comprise nearly 10% of its overall population. Of these displaced conflict refugees, over three-‐fourths reportedly reside in urban areas, negatively impacting Jordan’s health, sanitation, and education systems. There are over 150,000 school-‐age refugee children in Jordanian primary and middle schools. As thousands of adult Syrians are continuing to enter Jordan’s urban centers, seeking temporary employment and housing, demand and competition are skyrocketing. As housing aid in non-‐governmental and humanitarian organizations, the price of housing has drastically increased. There are serious concerns that these socioeconomic stressors may become political in nature, potentially destabilizing an otherwise stable Middle Eastern country.
Refugees settled in Nairobi, Kenya are rarely given any documents, work papers or other permits. They often live in squalid conditions in make-‐shift camps.
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Hence, the topic of urban refugees is a thematic area that required greater international attention. This is hardly surprising. In fact, as is clear after even a brief overview of the history of the UNHCR, challenges and solutions to the world’s refugee problem over the last few decades have been anything but stable and consistent. Differing priorities, goals, levels of authority, funding inflow, and ideals have continuously changed. More than that, however, the needs of refugees themselves and the challenges that they face also vary dramatically. Whereas a main area of concern to the UNHCR was—and still is, to a large extent—how to care for and protect refugees located in large settlement camps, today the world is shifting towards urbanization, and the refugee problem is shifting along with it. The UNHCR has estimated that over half of the world’s nearly 11 million global refugees live in urban areas. In 2015, after the events of the Arab Spring, continued violent crises in central Africa, and weak states in the Horn of Africa, this number has only increased even more. In urbanized areas, such displaced persons have virtually no recourse, can destabilize already overstretched host countries and are exposed to poverty, violence, and discrimination.
HISTORY OF THE PROBLEM: DEFINING A REFUGEE According to the UNHCR mandate, we can define a refugee as someone who is, owing to a well-‐founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country. Beyond this strict definition of what a refugee is, the work of the UNHCR regularly comes into contact with other forms of displaced persons, for example, a political asylum seeker. An asylum seeker is forced to flee their country of origin based on a host of variable, ranging from violence or persecution. Asylum seeks typically have yet to receive refugee status. They will register with the UNHCR and host government and asked to be given protection as a refugee.
The Syria crisis is overstretching the ability of neighboring countries, like Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.
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Some asylum seekers will be given some official status; others will not be so fortunate. Therefore, the UNHCR also tries to resolve the needs of persons, like internally displaced persons, returnees, and stateless persons. While the UNHCR mandate does not formally include non-‐refugee status persons, the UNHCR’s stance as the primary UN refugee agency, suggests that it has the expertise and material capacity to deal with the challenges of these individuals. EXISTING FRAMEWORKS AVAILBLE TO THE UNHCR The 1951 Refugee Convention has served as the primary platform for dealing with refugees. But it has not been without criticism from global and regional stakeholders. For one, it represents a collective effort by the international community to establish the rights of asylum-‐seekers and refugees. It outlines the practice of non-‐refoulement. Non-‐refoulement prevents refugees from being returned to their country of origin against their will, especially if that means endangering their lives or face possible violence, arrest and imprisonment, persecution, or death. Many countries have yet to become signatories to the 1951 Convention, including such central players as the United States, most Middle Eastern countries and much of Southeast Asia. One can make the argument some of the most pressing refugee situations take place these regions of the world. The Syrian conflict and the recent emergence of the Islamic State or the continued human rights violations of religious minorities in Burma are two of several such examples. Some might claim that the 1951 Convention does not go far enough. How we define a refugee was influenced by the constraints of the Cold War. Also, mechanisms for distribution and burden sharing are not properly delineated leaving some states bear more responsibility than others. Additionally, there are inconsistencies in the rights and assistance granted to refugees—some are granted asylum in one country while others are denied. Other criticisms focus on “exile” as a solution. Rather than removing individuals who could be persecuted, some members of the international community and observers would like to see efforts to raise national capacity to combat persecution and violence within their countries. Hence, in place of focusing on protecting individual refugees that make it into safer havens, in which the UNHCR works, leaving other potential victims of displacement to their own fates. A focus on internationalism, globalism, and stabilization should therefore be an option that should be evaluated and explored.
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MECHANISMS FOR DEALING WITH URBAN REFUGEES A central challenge in addressing the humanitarian needs of urban refugees is to create innovative and effective methods for assuring their registration with the UNHCR and host governments. Registration of urban refugees is fraught with challenges for several reasons: because refugees’ prefer to keep a
low profile from political organizations and security agencies that they will be detained or even returned to their home states in conflict. Sometimes, they do not want to endure the hardships associated with traveling to a UNHCR site; finally, there is a lack of information about the UNHCR as being a resource for improvement. National governments also play an important role in registering refugees: if they prevent refugees from registering, they are not considered refugees and therefore do not fall under the UNHCR mandate. Hence, registration and documentation are important mechanisms. One way to improve registration is to directly address the question as to why refugees might avoid UNHCR and government offices. Another suggestion is directly engage the refugees themselves. Indeed, the UNHCR has gone into communities, using “mapping tools” to locate high concentrations of unregistered displaced persons. In some cases, the UNHCR found out that refugees were poorly informed on the benefits from receiving refugee status. However, too many refugees go unnoticed. Typically, Syrian refugee woman head one-‐in-‐four households, only one in three say they leave their homes. If they are not registered, children may also not be either. Corruption and prejudice also continue to hamper registration efforts. Lastly, registration does not guarantee that refugees stay put – they could be forced to move again. BLOC POSITIONS A small number of countries are currently are doing the “heavy lifting” of urban refugeeism. Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey are housing nearly 2.5 million Syrian refugees. Conflict refugees from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, those was faced with violence and famine in East Africa, or refugees being persecuted in Colombia, seek refuge in urban areas close by, increasing the pressure on neighboring countries’ infrastructures. Refugee-‐receiving states often require large amounts of foreign assistance to cover the costs of humanitarian response. The UNHCR estimates the cost
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of Syrian refugees at over 3 billion USD for Jordan. Hence, countries directly affected by these refugee-‐generating crises have significant incentives to push the international community to collaborate for distributing refugees. UN member states located faraway from refugee-‐producing crises do not automatically feel the challenges of urban refugeeism as much as bordering states or states close to conflict zones. As a result, they can often be more selective in selecting which refugees are awarded resettlement in their cities. It proceeds from this that some of states become the target of criticism for deterring the arrival of new refugees by increasing border controls and detaining asylum seekers. Nations in this bloc are developed, and include the United States, Canada, and many members of the European Union. Similarly, Australia has been criticized for turning away asylum seekers and refusing asylum. The United States also faces its share of criticism for the way it deals with child asylum-‐seekers on border with Mexico, often times deporting thousands of minors conflict refugees from Central America.
QUESTIONS A RESOLUTION MUST ANSWER
• Should the committee consider changing the UNHCR’s definition of refugee? • Should the UNHCR alter its focus to help asylum seekers before they cross
borders or enter cities? • What measures should be implemented to work with the refugee-‐producing
countries in order to stop violence and persecution before they occur? • Which mechanisms facilitate the quicker registration of urban refugees? • Is reintegration into new, local communities or are resettlement and repatriation
the better options?
Antonio Guterres is the current UN High Commissioner on Refugees.
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