WorldBridge: Refugees International's Blog

Meeting our Match

2008-07-03T15:26:00.004-04:00

Two weeks ago, we launched a matching gift campaign in honor of World Refugee Day. We are happy to report that we raised over $24,000 from people across the country in just five days. We wanted to take this opportunity to thank these donors, and all of you who support our work by donating, telling your friends about us, signing petitions, or just staying current on the plight of refugees by reading this blog.

The money raised will go directly to supporting our recent mission in Chad and all of our work around the world. In Chad, Mpako Foaleng and Erin Weir just assessed the dangers being faced by over 400,000 Sudanese refugees and Chadian internally displaced people. Mpako and Erin have just finished talking directly to European Union and United Nations officials in Brussels and Geneva about ways to ensure these people have food, shelter and protection from further violence. Next week, they will return to the US, where they will demand action from the US Congress and Department of State to support displaced people who desperately need our help.

We accept no government or UN funding – this allows us to say what needs to be said to those who need to hear it, and to push policy makers into doing what they don’t necessarily want to do.

Watch this video to learn more about our work and some of our achievements – achievements that are made possible by you.

--Megan Fowler

Chad: Before the Rainy Season

2008-07-01T18:03:00.002-04:00

“The music has played again as is the case almost every year before the rainy season starts in eastern Chad.” This was a metaphor used by a Chadian in eastern Chad last month to describe the recent attacks by rebel groups against the government’s forces. The latest attack is one of many that has contributed -- together with ethnic tensions and the spill over of Sudan’s Darfur crisis -- to destabilizing eastern Chad in the last five years.

I recently visited Habile, a site for internally displaced people (IDPs) situated near the border between Chad and Darfur. Almost 29,000 Chadians have taken refuge there. In addition, more than 20,000 Sudanese refugees forced to flee violence and human rights abuses in Darfur, are currently hosted in Goz Amer camp, a mere eight kilometers away. They will not be able to return home to Darfur anytime soon, given the persistent insecurity in their villages.

However, in Habile, people are starting to consider returning home, especially those whose villages are located in relatively secure areas. Ahead of the rainy season, some people have returned to cultivate their land and start re-building their homes. One woman told me that if the security situation in her village continued to improve, her husband and their 4 children would return permanently.

This glimmer of hope is not shared by the majority of IDPs in Habile. People whose villages are located close to the border with Sudan are not planning to return soon. They are still afraid of attacks, killings and the loss of their property. The root causes of the violence that has forced people to flee their villages have not yet been properly addressed. In some border areas, there are no local authorities or government security forces, leaving these villages vulnerable to attack by armed rebels coming from Sudan.

The latest rebel attacks in the region have made things worse. In the past, Chadian rebel incursions have been followed by armed men on horseback from Sudan who profit from the chaos. They attack and kill civilians, and loot people’s property. These incursions have also generated tensions between communities, breaking the social fabric and weakening the traditional mechanisms for conflict prevention and management.

The UN Refugee Agency has been facilitating a dialogue between the leaders of the displaced communities and those from their home villages. Such initiatives have to be revitalised and understood as an integral part of a broader reconciliation process that will bring trust back among the different communities. This will set the stage so that when people return home to cultivate their land before the next rainy season, they can re-enter their communities and rebuild their lives.

-Mpako Foaleng

Colombia: Finding Solutions for Displaced Together

2008-06-27T15:05:00.002-04:00

Traveling back from Tame to Arauca, on the border region of Colombia and Venezuela, my colleagues and I stopped in a little town called Pueblo Nuevo to meet with displaced people there. We had been trying to reach a local religious figure who was providing assistance to families in need, but had not yet reached him. So, we chose to just drop in and try our luck. Unfortunately, on arrival, not only could we not find the priest, but we also couldn't find the church. People seemed to not know where it was.

We meandered around town for several hours looking for someone who knew the priest. Someone directed us to the church, but no luck. Another neighbor jumped in the trunk of our car to show us to the incoming mayor’s house. However, the mayor apologized and informed us he wasn’t starting his job until July, so he didn’t know much about services being delivered to displaced people. However, he hopped on his bicycle to find someone who might and reemerged, with the priest. Perfect!

We rode back to the church and proceeded to have a long discussion with the priest about the displaced and their needs. Even more fortunately, the incoming mayor sat in on the meeting and was given a crash course in his future responsibilities to those families who are victims of the increase in guerrilla fighting and who have taken residence in his town.

The situation in Arauca is increasingly dire, as more and more families and communities are being displaced in a territorial dispute between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN). This is a place where violence is increasing, and the humanitarian response has slowly begun, but is not yet commensurate with the need.

We visited an area called “4 of December,” which was named for the day when displaced people took over what had been a tent town of vulnerable poor. People are living in homes made of plastic sheeting and wood taken from the forest. The presence of open flames for cooking in homes made of dried wood causes me to fear for the worst. The neighborhood, for lack of a better word, lacks electricity and running water -- a concerted decision made by the municipality in response to the “illegal presence of the displaced.”

Next, we head to Nariño to investigate the needs of displaced people there. I can only hope the situation has improved.

--Jake Kurtzer

Northern Uganda: Mixed messages in uncertain times

2008-06-25T10:34:00.001-04:00

These are confusing times for people in northern Uganda. We have been here only one week, and have already heard so many contradictory statements. We can only imagine how difficult it must be for local people to decide which messages to believe.

When we met with people in one camp for the internally displaced, most of them told us that the main reason they could not go home yet was lack of basic services in their home village – particularly no clean water or shelter. But they still expressed fears that the lack of a peace deal could mean a return to war and going right back to the camps again. One woman told me, “If there is no signed peace agreement that means war and death.”

Not long before we arrived here things were looking unusually hopeful for northern Uganda. Many expected that a peace agreement would be signed between the Government of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The infamous LRA has conducted years of insurgency, abducting people and terrorizing the population in the north of the country. But Joseph Kony, the leader of the LRA, failed to turn up to sign the agreement. The formal Cessation of Hostilities Agreement expired in April 2008 and has not been renewed. Yet, despite the lack of a signed peace deal, the LRA has not conducted any attacks in northern Uganda for over two years.

With the reduction in violence, many people have started the process of returning home from the camps. Almost all of the international agencies are talking about reducing emergency relief programs, and instead working with the government on development projects. But some local organizations have pointed out to us that northern Uganda has seen false dawns before and therefore they remain cautious.

A week before we arrived here, the LRA attacked villages in south Sudan, killing 23 people. Then, soon after we arrived we saw local newspaper headlines announcing that the LRA had re-entered Uganda. The next day the Ugandan army was on the radio denying this report and assuring the population that the Ugandan army reinforced its presence at the Sudanese border and will not allow the LRA to cross. Still, rumors are rife here.

The internally displaced persons’ camps in northern Uganda are not like those in most other parts of the world. People were ordered to move into these camps by the government. Frequently, the camps are less than 10 kilometers from home villages; some are only one kilometer away. Now the government is using strong rhetoric to push the message that people should go back home. The international agencies here give us good reasons for phasing out the camps, such as the recent outbreak of the rare Hepatitis E virus in Kitgum due to poor hygiene conditions in overcrowded camps.

Still, many people hold on to their hut in the camp, moving between it and the home they are constructing in or near to their home village. Some international agencies suggest this is so they can try to claim food handouts in the camp. That may be so, but people are also genuinely fearful. It takes time for a population traumatized by over 20 years of war to feel safe again and to trust that peace really has set in for good. And there are many reasons at the moment for them to distrust these messages. As one local leader said to us, “They were forced into the camps. Now it should be the community in the north which leads the process of return out of the camps, and at their own pace.”

--Melanie Teff

President’s Corner: Mrs. Bush

2008-06-23T17:17:00.005-04:00

Thanks to Laura Bush, we now know that the White House is aware of the Iraqi refugee crisis. President Bush still has not mentioned the fact that 20% of Iraqis are displaced, but the First Lady included an Iraqi in her World Refugee Day ceremony.

Last Friday, I joined several dozen other refugee advocates at the White House to commemorate World Refugee Day. We sat in folding chairs under bright sun in the First Lady’s Garden as Mrs. Bush talked of America’s commitment to protecting refugees. She noted that in the last three decades, the U.S. has resettled 2.7 million refugees and that we are spending $1.2 billion on refugee resettlement this year.

Then she introduced three refugees—one from Burma, one Iraq and one from the Democratic Republic of the Congo—who had fled violence and persecution in their countries. Here is what she said:

Eh Moo Hoffman was born in a refugee camp on the Thai-Burma border. Her parents had fled from Burmese soldiers who tortured, raped, and killed her native Karen people. After more than 20 years living in danger, she and her family were able to resettle in the United States last year.
Zeyad Abdel Okhowa fled Iraq with his family after his work with the U.S. Embassy in Al Hillah put him in danger. Today, he works with the State Department's Digital Outreach Team to help improve understanding between Arab and Muslim communities and the United States.
Rose Mapendo's husband was executed, and she and her children were imprisoned in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She gave birth to twins while she was in jail, and she struggled to keep them alive. Rose and her children fled the Congo on an emergency evacuation flight in 2000. Today, she's an American citizen and the spokesperson for "Mapendo International," a non-governmental organization that assists refugees.

The inclusion of an Iraqi was significant, because it gave some visibility to the huge displacement crisis that has taken place within Iraq. Some five million Iraqis are displaced, about half are refugees who have fled to nearby countries, while the rest are displaced within Iraq. So far President Bush has said nothing in public to acknowledge the displacement, which has humanitarian and security implications for the entire Middle East. Maybe Mrs. Bush will fill him in.

--Ken Bacon

World Refugee Day: Where are the world's hidden refugees?

2008-06-20T09:52:00.003-04:00

Picture these iconic refugee images - an African woman, holding a child, gazing stoically into the camera against a backdrop of huts and tents in a barren landscape. A long line of people, men, women, and children - again, usually African - on the move with all their worldly possessions on their heads and their backs. An emaciated African child being examined in a clinic by a Western doctor or nurse in a vest with a red cross emblem.

These images have become iconic because for several decades they have encapsulated the plight of refugees. But this World Refugee Day is an opportunity to reflect on the ways these images don't really to justice to today's realities.

While conflicts in Africa continue to displace hundreds of thousands of people, this year the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, is highlighting the fact that refugee numbers have increased from 10 million to nearly 12 million due to the persistence of refugee crises in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While the Afghan presence in Pakistan and Iran, still numbering 3 million, has been a reality for decades, Iraqi displacement increased in 2007, with 600,000 newly displaced internally and still more fleeing into neighbouring countries in the Middle East, especially Syria and Jordan. In all, nearly half of the refugees of concern to UNHCR are from Iraq and Afghanistan alone.

The reality of the lives of Iraqi refugees requires further adjustment of our refugee iconography.
Iraqi refugees are not in camps. They live, virtually invisible, in urban areas, especially in Damascus and Amman.

They are hard to reach with basic services. Some, fearing eventual deportation, avoid registering with UNHCR. They gradually draw on whatever savings they may have brought with them from Iraq. Some try to find illegal employment in low-paying jobs in the informal sector.

Their children have had their schooling disrupted, though after extensive efforts, special international funding has been granted to support the inclusion of some Iraqi children in the school systems of the host countries.

The phenomenon of urban refugees is growing. Among the more than 1 million Zimbabweans outside their country in southern Africa are tens of thousands of people who could qualify as refugees living an underground existence in urban areas of South Africa and Zambia.

In Southeast Asia, host countries largely bar Burmese from accessing refugee camps, leaving them to fend for themselves in urban centres such as Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur.

In Latin America, political violence drives the internally displaced of Colombia out of rural areas and into towns, where they live unregistered on the margins of society.

The growth in the number of urban refugees coincides with two other developments: the overall erosion in the commitment of states to asylum for those fleeing persecution and conflict and large-scale economic migration. The twin fears of terrorist infiltration and inundation from illegal immigration have combined to create an environment in which countries of first asylum assume the worst when individuals seeking protection arrive on their door step.

Meanwhile, there are an estimated 200 million people now living outside their country of origin, and only a portion of this migration is from poor countries of the global South to the industrialised world.

With high levels of economic imbalance within developing regions and with poverty often associated with internal conflict and human rights abuses, refugee flows amidst the movement of economic migrants are a common phenomenon within the South.

China, Thailand, Malaysia, India, South Africa, Kenya, and Egypt are among countries that are magnets both for individuals fleeing persecution and for those seeking employment and greater economic opportunity.

These developments combine to pose special challenges for protecting the world's 12 million refugees. While camps will still be required and appropriate in some places - in Chad, for example, to shelter refugees from Darfur - the trend will be for more and more refugees to find themselves either forcibly or voluntarily trying to survive among the underclass in urban areas.

UNHCR and the non-governmental organisations that provide services with its support will have to adjust the way they work.

First and foremost, refugees need to be found. This means being sending teams into urban areas and reaching out, like social workers, to identify vulnerable refugees and register them.

It also involves talking to government officials, who need to be convinced that within the mass of urban poor and illegal migrants there are people who qualify for international protection. Ensuring legal status also goes a long way towards preventing statelessness for current and future generations.

UNHCR will need to find creative ways of providing assistance to vulnerable people. Local religious institutions and community-based organisations should play an important role in delivering the aid, but they will need funding.

Providing cash or vouchers to individual families, who in turn will choose how to spend the funds, is more effective than setting up feeding centers or special schools and health facilities.

To its credit, UNHCR recognises the challenges inherent in the evolving nature of refugee flows and the response of host countries to their needs for asylum. But experience suggests that it will need time to shift its approach.

It can only help if donor government officials and the general public adjust their own perspectives too, and start to understand the diversity of refugee experiences today.

--Joel Charny

Joel's post is part of Reuters AlertNet's World Refugee Day feature. For more information, visit www.alertnet.org

World Refugee Day: Confronting the Iraq Refugee Crisis

2008-06-18T18:08:00.004-04:00

Today nearly five million Iraqis--20% of the population--are displaced. About half of them have fled the country and live as refugees throughout the Middle East, while the rest are displaced within Iraq. Most fled their homes because they felt unsafe; those who worked for the U.S. as translators or drivers fled after they were attacked as collaborators. Most refugees and internally displaced lack access to employment, education and medical care; they are facing shortages of food and money.

This is a humanitarian crisis first, but it is also becoming a security problem.

Refugees International recently issued a report that found that internally displaced Iraqis were turning increasingly to militia groups, not the government, for support. "As a result of the vacuum created by the failure of both the Iraqi Government and the international community to act in a timely and adequate manner, non-state actors play a major role in providing assistance to vulnerable Iraqis," the report, Uprooted and Unstable, said. "Through a 'Hezbollah-like' scheme, the Shiite Sadrist movement has established itself as the main service provider in the country."

Militias, not the government, are winning the loyalty of aid recipients. This poses an obvious threat to what the U.S. most wants in Iraq--a stable, peaceful country run by a publicly supported government under the rule of law.

Yet the U.S. seems strangely casual about the impact of massive displacement in and from Iraq. President Bush has never mentioned the plight of displaced Iraqis, and other White House officials act as though the problem doesn't exist. The State Department's June 11 Iraq Weekly Status Report barely mentions Iraqi displacement.

The State Department is far from tone deaf to the plight of displaced Iraqis, particularly those who have worked for the United States. Secretary Rice has appointed an ambassador, James B. Foley, as Senior Coordinator for Iraqi Refugee Issues. At a press conference earlier this month, Foley said that "we believe that we have special obligations to Iraqis who have been employed by the United States or have been closely associated with U.S. efforts in Iraq." Yet most of the pressure to help these so-called Iraqi allies has come from Congress, not the administration.
The United States has vowed to allow 12,000 Iraqis to resettle in the U.S. this year, but eight months into the fiscal year, it has resettled only 4,742. Reaching the goal is still possible, if everything goes right.

What's more, the United States will spend more than $200 million this year to help displaced Iraqis. Unfortunately, that is just a drop in the bucket compared to what it costs surrounding countries to host Iraqi refugees. Jordan says it is laying out about $1 billion a year to accommodate about 500,000 Iraqis, and Syria, which hosts about l.5 million, says the cost is several billion dollars a year.

The surge has reduced violence in Iraq, but not enough to enable safe return of displaced Iraqis. Until it does, the United States needs to pay more attention to meeting the needs of nearly five million displaced Iraqis whose loyalty will be won by those who help them.

--Ken Bacon

In honor of World Refugee Day, UN Dispatch's Delegates Lounge will be featuring Ken's post for the coming week.

World Refugee Day: Reflections from Chad

2008-06-16T18:10:00.002-04:00

This Friday, June 20, is World Refugee Day. It is a day to recognize the struggle of some 12 million refugees worldwide who have been forced out of their homes and homelands by fear, conflict, and persecution. It is also an opportunity for many of us to try to appreciate just what it means to have a safe place to go home to, and to remember that no conflict happens in isolation. Insecurity anywhere threatens peace everywhere.

Consider this; there are almost 3 million refugees in Africa, many of whom have escaped one dangerous place, only to find themselves in the heart of another conflict.

Today, I am writing from Chad, a country rocked by its own protracted civil war, internal ethnic tensions, and widespread banditry. Still, it hosts roughly 243,000 Sudanese refugees fleeing indiscriminate attacks, summary executions, bombings, and the destruction of whole villages in neighboring Darfur. My colleague and I met a woman who had fled Darfur just 3 months ago with her four children. She told us how she crossed the border and lived under a tree with seven other families for six weeks before being moved to a refugee camp in eastern Chad. Days before I met this woman, Chadian rebels launched a new offensive in eastern Chad.

The two conflicts are interrelated, and the human fallout can be seen in both countries. Still – inexplicably -- the massive popular and political interest in Darfur stops at the Sudan/Chad border, and the international community has proven itself to be unwilling to take a regional approach to the resolution of these interlinked crises.

The world has chosen to care about Sudan, and yet the ongoing crisis in Chad has been all but ignored by international policy makers.

In contrast to this game of pick-and-choose that the international community has been content to play in they case of Chad and Sudan, the laws that protect refugees -- the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, and the Geneva Conventions – are built on the premise of common humanity, and the equal value of every human life. Similarly, the UN was built on the recognition that violent instability in any country represents a threat to international peace and security.

The world is small. Violence and suffering anywhere will have consequences for us everywhere.

While we recognize the tremendous challenges faced and overcome by refugees in the world today, also take a moment to remember that the modern history of conflict and refugee movements shows us just how interlinked our lives are. Conflict all too quickly reaches out and crosses the lines we have drawn to separate ourselves from our neighbors.

--Erin Weir

Honor World Refugee Day with a gift to Refugees International. Two generous donors have promised to match every online gift this week, dollar for dollar, in support of our work for refugees in Chad and around the world. Double your impact and give today.

Burma: Need for Aid Trumps Political Goals

2008-06-13T15:00:00.004-04:00

After the destruction wreaked in Burma by Cyclone Nargis, the United States made the wise decision to set aside its political disagreements with the government of Burma to make every effort to ensure that humanitarian assistance reached those in need. As a result of this decision, the U.S. has been remarkably generous, donating almost $38 million to the relief effort, while playing an instrumental role in transporting goods into Burma, now having flown over 150 flights with emergency goods into the country on U.S. planes.

The U.S. has also backed diplomatic efforts to engage the Burmese government on humanitarian issues, and supports the Tripartite Core Group (the cyclone response group comprised of representatives from the government of Burma, the United Nations, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations). The TCG, as it is known, has provided unprecedented opportunities for international engagement with Burmese officials. It is also carrying out a comprehensive, village-by-village assessment of the cyclone damage – the first study of its kind in Burma for decades (the regime dislikes statistical surveys and studies that could highlight the impact of their mismanagement). These steps represent real progress – not just for those Burmese who need assistance – but in the ability to establish a substantive dialogue between the reclusive government of Burma and the rest of the world.

Of course, news on the humanitarian front is not all good – for each step forward, there are complications. International staff are now allowed into the worst-affected areas of the delta, but can only stay for 72 hours. New restrictive guidelines have been issued to NGOs, but there are real questions as to how strictly they will be implemented. A similar move to issue guidelines to NGOs in 2006 was never fully implemented, allowing agencies to work under acceptable conditions. More aid is reaching cyclone victims every day, but everyone agrees that the response is still a shadow of what is really needed.

In the past week, Refugees International has begun to receive indications from U.S. government officials that their patience with the slow progress on humanitarian issues in Burma is beginning to wear thin, begging the question of how much longer the U.S. will be willing to accept the isolation of humanitarian issues from their concerns about political oppression. At a Refugees International-sponsored briefing on Thursday, a House Foreign Affairs staff member asked a panel of agencies that are operational in Burma if the renewal of US sanctions against Burma in July would hamper their operations. After receiving a unanimous yes from the panelists, he expressed concern over this impact, but also indicated that the bill would have to go forward anyway.

Similarly, discussions with administration officials in the past week have revealed frustration that the humanitarian agenda is “overshadowing U.S. political goals” in Burma. When discussing the overall humanitarian response, an official said that the pendulum had swung as far towards the humanitarian agenda as it was going to go; he indicated that we would see more of a return to pre-cyclone Burma policies in the upcoming months.

What does all of this mean for the humanitarian community working on Burma? Clearly, there is a growing need for the community to be much more proactive in describing its successes so that political actors continue to see the value in the relief effort. There also needs to be a unified presentation of the setbacks and difficulties, so that the U.S., working with the Tripartite Core Group, can press the Burmese government on issues of concern to the humanitarian community.

After pushing so hard over the past month to gain concessions from the Burmese government, which has resulted in improvements in humanitarian access, now is not the time to abandon this approach. There are more agencies providing more assistance inside the country now than at any time in the past decade. As long as these programs are reaching vulnerable cyclone survivors, the U.S. should stay the humanitarian course, while working with its allies around the world to press the Burmese government on the issues of political freedoms and human rights that are a global concern.

--Joel Charny

Visit our website to learn more about our work in Burma.

Empowering Women in the Fight Against Gender-Based Violence

2008-06-11T16:27:00.004-04:00

Violence against women is an international problem, but many countries and policymakers turn a blind eye to the prevalence of such abuse. Although there are many obstacles to preventing gender-based violence, including misperceptions of rape survivors, lack of funding and the absence of proper sexual assault services, there is hope. The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars recently hosted a panel to discuss the real statistics of GBV and plausible models for addressing this problem during conflict as well as within societies rebuilding after conflict.

Heidi Lehmann of the International Rescue Committee shared one approach in Liberia. Since 1989, Liberia’s civil war had created a breeding ground for violence against women. A 2005 survey in 4 countries indicated that 91.7% of 1,216 women and girls interviewed had been subjected to multiple violent acts during Liberia’s conflict. Displaced widows, wives, orphans, children, husbands, and brothers could be found in cramped camps around the country.

The IRC had been training health care and social workers to respond to rape survivors. However, they discovered that the most effective way to prevent gender-based violence was to involve the women in the solution. IRC conducted one-on-one interviews with women and children in the camps, assessing where the more dangerous areas were and what could be done to make them safer. Because of cramped quarters and food shortages, there were more opportunities for physical and sexual assault. Following the interviews, social workers went out into the community empowering women to come forward, seek justice and demand change. They also built a center for a group of local women who have committed to preventing gender-based violence in their community.

Still, more needs to be done in Liberia. When Refugees International was there last fall, we went looking for the text of the Rape Amendment Act that had passed in 2006 – a landmark victory for women’s groups in the country who seek justice for victims of sexual assault. However, few people had a copy of the law and groups regularly complained about its lack of enforcement. Progress in Liberia will not continue -- for women or men -- without substantially improving the nation’s justice system and giving it the resources and expertise necessary to carry out real reforms.

In order to encourage survivors to seek help and justice, it is absolutely necessary to have programs that they can depend on to provide the protective services and justice promised to them.

--Kimberly Compton

Afghanistan: Seeking Neutral Space

2008-06-09T16:52:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, Laura Bush was in Afghanistan, hailing the progress made since 2001 in the reconstruction process. She spent nine hours total in country, flying from Kabul to Bamyan, where she stayed within the four walls of a New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team compound. From there, the media reported, she could see the empty spaces left by the destruction of the giant Buddhas in 2001, the world’s best-known reminder of the Taliban brutality.

Mrs. Bush could not see, however, that Afghanistan is still struggling, and its government is unable to meet the humanitarian needs of a large portion of its population. Despite the US-led efforts to convey the image of a successful nation-building exercise, almost seven years after the NATO intervention, Afghanistan remains fragmented and unstable. Its central government barely holds power over the capital, Kabul, let alone the rest of the country. In many areas of the south, the west, and the east --- and increasingly in the center and the north of the country --- the war continues, displacing thousands and causing hundreds of civilian casualties every month.

Millions of Afghan refugees have returned to this situation. Since 2002, the repatriation process has been ongoing, with five million Afghans leaving Pakistan and Iran to return to their devastated, often dangerous villages throughout the country. With Afghanistan “no longer at war,” neighboring countries of asylum increasingly desired to see the populations they hosted return home. As a result, many Afghans were deported from Iran and others were forced to leave the Pakistani camps they were born in. One woman in a refugee camp near Peshawar told me, “We might as well return now before the Pakistani government cuts our electricity and destroys our business.”

The UN is severely limited in what it can do to help Afghan returnees and internally displaced people. The UN mission to Afghanistan is first and foremost a political mission, designed to support the central government and the international community’s agenda. But in a context where the international community and the government it supports are parties to the conflict, where does impartial humanitarian work fit in? “It is very clear that I am here to win a war,” an aid worker told us in Kabul. “There is no space for humanitarianism in Afghanistan.”

It took the UN four years and considerable pressure from the media and civil society to finally declare a humanitarian crisis in Iraq. Millions of displaced people and tens of thousands of deaths later, the US government and its Iraqi counterpart were still talking about “development” and “reconstruction.” It is hard not to draw a parallel with Afghanistan, where for-profit development contractors and the Provincial Reconstruction Teams have billions of dollars at their disposal while humanitarian agencies are struggling to feed and house the neediest. It is also difficult not to compare the two conflicts when civilian casualties and displacement caused by NATO operations are systematically under-reported either for political reasons or for lack of access. Access can only be carved and negotiated if agencies engage in dialogue with all the parties to the conflict. In Afghanistan, like in Iraq, the UN as a whole has taken sides. And civilian victims pay for it.

It would of course be too easy to blame the UN for the role it plays in Afghanistan or in Iraq. The Security Council gave it a political mandate in both countries, and under the one UN framework, all agencies --- including the humanitarian ones --- operate under the same umbrella. One has to wonder, however, how the international community will recover from the loss of humanitarian values it has promoted by effectively making the UN a party to the conflict in Iraq and in Afghanistan. The damage is enormous and has even hurt independent, non-governmental agencies that are perceived as being more of the same by the local population. As for the United Nations, its reputation is shattered, some fear, for good.

Unfortunately for the UN and for Afghan civilians, Laura Bush did not take advantage of her visit to bring attention to the humanitarian challenges millions of returnees, displaced and ordinary civilians face. But perhaps next time, she will spend the night, visit a village or two, and decide to offer the American public a more balanced account of the reality in Afghanistan.

--Kristele Younes

Kristele Younes and Patrick Duplat are currently in Afghanistan assessing the needs of returning refugees and internally displaced people throughout the country.

United Nations: Security Council's Trip to Africa Highlights Needs

2008-06-04T17:17:00.001-04:00

Since 2000, Security Council members have taken a trip each year to Africa—to visit UN peacekeeping missions, to meet with heads of state, and to otherwise get a “real picture” of what is happening on the ground. Members will often visit camps to talk to refugees, internally displaced people and members of aid agencies who are providing services.

The United Nations is central to global efforts to solve problems that challenge humanity and promote international peace and security. However, more of China’s allies have rotated onto the Security Council this year, making the historical divisions within the Security Council more pronounced than ever before and weakening its authority. This makes it more difficult for the UN to take concrete action, and there are few expectations that this year’s mission to Sudan, Chad, Nairobi and Djibouti (for Somalia issues), the DR Congo and Ivory Coast will lead to anything concrete.

Expectations are particularly low in the case of Sudan, as the Security Council has been impotent when it comes to Sudan for quite some time now. The Sudanese government continues to put bureaucratic impediments to the deployment of UNAMID, the joint UN-AU peacekeeping force in Darfur and refuses to fulfill its previous agreements. Some Council members had indicated that the mission would be an opportunity to reinvigorate the Security Council’s response to Sudan and reverse the Sudanese government’s blatant disregard for their authority. But after many discussions before their mission, it appears that the Security Council is headed to Sudan without a clear plan or strategy.

With the Security Council unable to act, it becomes all the more essential that individual governments increase their financial support for UNAMID and for NGOs and UN agencies providing assistance on the ground. It is also necessary to continue pressuring Sudan to fulfill its agreements, and to urge Sudan’s allies to increase pressure on Sudan.

Some Security Council members were determined to travel to Mogadishu, but because of insecurity, particularly in light of the recent attempt on President Yusef’s life, they will go to Nairobi and Djibouti to discuss Somalia. As Refugees International wrote in a letter to Council members, there are no easy answers for Somalia, but the status quo is unacceptable. The humanitarian crisis in Somalia is catastrophic. Somalis are routinely subject to massive human rights violations by all parties. Because of insecurity, very few agencies are providing assistance, so Somalis are left to fend for themselves. The insecurity in Somalia is a threat to international peace and security, but the Security Council has yet to come up with a response that is commensurate with the severity of the crisis. Still, Refugees International urges the Council to approach the use of an external military or peacekeeping force with extreme caution and to deliver humanitarian assistance in an impartial manner.

DRC is another area of concern for Refugees International. While there has been some progress since elections, largely due to the good work of MONUC, there is still a risk that all of this progress will be quickly reversed. There are still 1.1 million people displaced by violence throughout the east, and there are still armed groups attacking civilians. The Congolese national army is still one of the largest perpetrators of human rights violations. Rwanda is still deeply involved in the conflict in the east. Despite these threats, MONUC, one of the largest and most expensive peacekeeping operations in the world, will be under pressure to downsize. RI is hopeful that the Security Council will see the necessity to renew MONUC at its current size and with its current mandate in order to preserve the gains that have been made.

--Michelle Brown

President's Corner: Praying for Ted Kennedy

2008-06-02T15:57:00.005-04:00

I first met Ted Kennedy on Oct. 26, 1963. His brother, President Kennedy, was at Amherst College, to receive an honorary degree and to break ground for the construction of the Robert Frost Library. Ted Kennedy arrived just as the convocation began. My job was to usher him to his seat.

Ted Kennedy had been elected to the Senate the year before when he was 30 years old. He looked as young as some of the students in the audience, but, of course, he was better dressed and escorted by a state policeman.

This flashback is on my mind as Sen. Kennedy undergoes surgery today to remove a malignant brain tumor.

In his speech at Amherst College that day President Kennedy said: “Privilege is here, and with privilege goes responsibility.” Ted Kennedy lives by that maxim. During his 46 years in the Senate, he has used his position of privilege and power to fight for the poor, the uninsured, the educationally disadvantaged, targets of racial or ethnic discrimination, immigrants, and refugees.

He was instrumental in passing the Refugee Act of 1980, which moved the country from an ad-hoc resettlement program to the current infrastructure—strong partnerships between the government and private resettlement agencies and clear annual goals.

In the last two years, he was worked tirelessly to expand resettlement opportunities for Iraqi refugees, particularly those who worked for the United States and had to flee the country to escape threats against their lives.

Last month, Albert R. Hunt wrote in his Bloomberg News commentary that “Edward M. Kennedy is the most gifted legislator, and one of the best politicians and most exuberant public servants I have know in my almost four decades of covering Washington and politics.”

I saw these qualities first hand last year as Sen. Kennedy worked to win passage of the Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act. He approached the issue of protecting Iraqis with knowledge and passion. He assembled a strong bipartisan coalition, working with Republican colleagues and the White House to get an acceptable bill. He instructed his smart, legislatively savvy staff to put together a coalition of civil society agencies and other support groups. He met repeatedly with people who could push the bill forward, and he thanked everybody when the bill was passed.

On this day, when Senator Kennedy is undergoing brain surgery, I give thanks for all he has done for the country and pray for his full recovery. We need his energy, and we need his commitment to justice.

--Ken Bacon

Dominican Republic: Of Baseball Players and Migration Laws

2008-05-29T10:50:00.003-04:00

The New York Times recently highlighted the story of a young Dominican baseball player, Ángel Luis Joseph, who had been offered a contract by the San Francisco Giants. Sadly he lost this contract because the Dominican civil registry office refused to give him an official copy of his birth certificate, without which he could not get a passport or US visa. The Dominican civil registry office said that his documents are “under investigation” because his parents are Haitian. Ángel Luis was born in the Dominican Republic and was issued a Dominican birth certificate by a Dominican registry office. He has grown up speaking Spanish, has attended Dominican schools, and has never been to Haiti.

When I visited the Dominican Republic earlier this month I met with Ángel Luis and 24 other people in his situation (and heard of hundreds more cases). All of these people are unable to obtain official copies of their documents because of “investigations” arising from them having Haitian-sounding surnames. These people could not graduate from school, enter university, obtain a passport, get married, or register the births of their children.

The New York Times article was picked up by a Dominican newspaper – Diario Libre, and it has generated significant interest. Diario Libre’s website now has 10 pages of comments on the article that have been posted by members of the Dominican public. Aware that this is a neuralgic issue in the Dominican Republic, I was not surprised to see some knee-jerk reactions that are disturbingly anti-Haitian. But I was struck by how many Dominicans had written in expressing concern for this young man and hoping for a resolution of this issue for him and for others in his situation.

Many people also pointed to the fact that Dominican migrants overseas are often treated badly, and argued that the Dominican Republic was simply enforcing its migration laws as other countries do. Although it is correct that every country has the right to enforce its own migration laws, these people were misinformed about the Dominican Republic’s own laws. Until 2004, children of non-legal residents were given citizenship under Dominican law. However, a new “Migration Law” was passed in 2004 that re-interpreted the Dominican Constitution as granting citizenship to people born on Dominican soil only if their parents are legal residents. The country is applying this law retroactively to people born before this law came into force -- a violation of international and Dominican law. Some people pointed out that my own country, the UK, has changed its nationality laws to require that at least one parent of a child born in the UK is legally resident for the child to acquire British nationality. This is true, but the UK does not apply this new law to people born before the law changed.

Ángel Luis has now been offered a contract by the Cleveland Indians. But if he cannot get a passport he will lose this contract, too. Let’s hope that the Dominican government gives him an official copy of his birth certificate this time.

--Melanie Teff

Burma: Refugees Stagnant in Malaysia

2008-05-27T21:56:00.006-04:00

It’s been a year since I went on mission to Malaysia and sadly the situation for refugees in the country has not gotten any better.

While the Burmese refugee population in Malaysia continues to grow, they remain largely invisible to the outside world. Tucked in between the tall skyscrapers of Kuala Lumpur are apartment buildings crowded with Burmese refugees who are too afraid to leave their homes, to take public buses, to use a pay phone in case they are stopped and arrested by Rela, a volunteer immigration force that harasses and targets illegal migrants, including refugees.

This recent article describes the conditions that refugees in Malaysia must endure:

"The Rela raids happen all the time; as I write this, a raid is going on in Ampang, Lembah Jaya, with refugees trapped in their homes, afraid that Rela personnel patrolling outside will bang on their doors. They SMS their fear."

Burmese in Malaysia have fled abuses including rape and forced labor in their own country only to be picked up as illegal migrants and placed in overcrowded detention centers where canings are a common form of punishment. As the situation inside Burma continues to deteriorate, particularly following the recent cyclone, more and more Burmese will make the long and dangerous journey to seek refuge in Malaysia, where there are better job opportunities than in Thailand or Bangladesh, countries that directly border Burma.

Even though many of the Burmese in Malaysia are recognized by the United Nations Refugee Agency as having legitimate claims to asylum, the government has not signed the 1951 Refugee Convention and does not officially recognize refugees or the documents they carry. Burmese refugees in Malaysia are therefore left in a limbo state – they cannot access public services likehospitals or schools for fear of arrest and detention but they also cannot return home until conditions improve in Burma.

As long as the Malaysian government refuses to recognize the vulnerability of the refugees within its borders, women and children will continue to be put into detention centers and handed over to traffickers. The international community must highlight the situation in Malaysia and pressure the government to improve its treatment of refugees.

--Camilla Olson

Bihari: From Statelessness to Citizenship

2008-05-23T15:54:00.002-04:00

This week the Bangladesh High Court ruled that Biharis born in the country after 1971 can be granted Bangladeshi citizenship. Refugees International welcomes this positive decision which, pending final signature, will grant Biharis, or Urdu-speaking people born after the time of independence in Bangladesh, the right to be registered as voters and to receive national identity cards. This measure will allow about half of the 200-500,000 stateless Biharis, hosted by Bangladesh for 36 years, to find a remedy to their lack of an effective nationality. The decision does not cover individuals who were adults at the time of independence.

RI has long advocated for action by the governments of Bangladesh and Pakistan to end this serious human rights abuse by granting citizenship and/or permitting repatriation. RI's last mission to Bangladesh was in February 2006, when staff met with government officials and Bihari leaders to urge timely action. After the visit, U.S. Representative Diane Watson issued a letter to Assistant Secretary Ellen Sauerbrey, who was then the head of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, to press for resolution. RI president Kenneth Bacon and others requested the interim government to consider this group for inclusion in voter rolls and citizenship. On September 5, 2007, the interim government issued a decision in that regard.

In pre-independence India, the Biharis were an Urdu-speaking Muslim minority who resided in the Hindu region of Bihar. At the time of partition in 1947, some of them chose to move to East Pakistan and others to West Pakistan. When civil war broke out in 1970, the Biharis sided with West Pakistan. After the war and the independence of Bangladesh, they were unwelcome in either country. Pakistan feared that a mass influx of Biharis would destabilize an already fragile and culturally mixed population, particularly in the Sindh, where most Bihari wished to migrate. Bangladesh scorned them for supporting the enemy. With neither country offering citizenship, the Biharis (also commonly called "Bangladeshi Biharis", "stranded Pakistanis", "a linguistic minority," "Urdu-speaking stranded Pakistanis," and even just "displaced persons") have been citizens of nowhere for over three decades.

Biharis exist at the fringes of society, with their most fundamental human rights denied. They live in camp-like settlements throughout the country. Living conditions are miserable primarily due to high population density, aging accommodations, poor sanitation and hygiene, lack of education and health care facilities, and limited access to livelihoods, with most employable individuals consigned to day labor, barbering, or rickshaw pulling.

In 2003, the Supreme Court of Bangladesh granted citizenship to ten Biharis. It was a small but significant move. The September decision was the next key step to implementing that judgment. Last Sunday's announcement is another leap forward towards resolving the status of the Bihari community in Bangladesh, but only if it is signed and implemented.

We encourage the Bangladesh High Court to move as expediently as possible to finalize the process so that individuals truly benefit from the decision and also urge rapid development of a strategy to help integrate the young Biharis as citizens. RI hopes that Bangladesh will honor the choice of individuals whether or not to register to vote, and that Pakistan will offer the possibility of resettlement and citizenship for Biharis who wish to live in Pakistan, particularly those seeking family reunification.

-Maureen Lynch

DR Congo: Helping Communities Help Themselves

2008-05-21T17:15:00.001-04:00

I just got back from North Kivu in eastern D.R. Congo and it was amazing to observe that the biggest and most efficient organization taking care of more than 500,000 displaced people were Congolese families themselves. Families who have not been displaced by the years of violence in the eastern Congo have opened up their homes to assist uprooted Congolese with nowhere else to go. However, despite their efforts, these host families are not sufficiently supported.

Minova, currently hosting more than 3,000 internally displaced people, is a city bordering beautiful Lake Kivu. I met with displaced families who lived in small huts that had been built in the garden of the local authority’s headquarters. I also met with displaced families who were supported by local families instead. One pregnant woman was hosted by another family in their home, because they did not want her to give birth in her small hut that was inhabited by seven people - including five children and her husband. An elderly woman lived with a female resident of Minova who said that she will host her until it is safe for the older woman to return to her permanent home.

This sense of solidarity will not last forever. In camps around nearby Kiwandja, there were women and children who had recently left their host families and returned to the camps. “We spent three months with them but they were tired of having us with them,” the women told me. This indicates that host families have reached the limit of their efforts to assist displaced people.

Aid agencies, whose assistance has mainly targeted displaced people in camps, acknowledge the fact that host families have not received enough support. They say that it is a big challenge for them to identify displaced families within local communities and efficiently provide them with assistance. A way to get around this difficulty is to talk directly with the local population to assess their needs and to get their suggestions on how to deliver assistance that will reinforce their efforts. This will prevent the humanitarian situation from deteriorating further.

Some local civil society organizations, whose members are mainly small pastoralists and farmers, have ideas on how to reinforce the production capacity of host communities who are currently assisting displaced people. For instance, while distributing food to the displaced people, some should also be given to host families. Additionally, seeds and tools could be distributed to host families and the displaced people until both are able to produce from land. Distributing chickens or rabbits is another option as they take only 2 or 3 months to reproduce and they are easy to carry if people must flee from attacks. While such distribution may take some time, displaced people will be able to continue living with host families where they retain their dignity. In camps, many of the displaced said that they are cut off from social networks and feel more powerless and dependent.

As a Congolese pointed out to us, “We do live here, we have always lived here. We know how to survive in this unsecure environment. The international actors cannot provide everything for people’s livelihood without the participation of the people themselves. And they should not forget that at some point they will leave and most of what they have started doing during all these years without involving us will fall apart.”

People are looking forward to returning home as soon as the current peace process reduces the violence in their towns. In the meantime, Congolese in this region want to move on with their lives. Despite the insecurity, they carry on their livelihood activities – they farm small plots of land, they do petty trade, organize cultural events in their villages and many others. Aid has to build on the mechanisms used by Congolese to survive.

--Mpako Foaleng

The President’s Corner: The Right to Disaster Aid and Health Care in Burma

2008-05-19T17:40:00.002-04:00

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I recently reread this seminal document, both to prepare for the celebration of its signing in December and to see how the Declaration applies to the tragedy in Burma.

Although Cyclone Nargis killed over 100,000 people and displaced more than 1.5 million, according to international estimates, the reclusive, repressive military government in Burma is refusing to allow adequate amounts of international assistance to enter the country. As a result, starvation, disease and exposure threaten to drive the death toll much higher.

Last week, I called the Burmese government’s refusal to allow adequate amounts of aid and the workers to distribute into the country a “crime against humanity” that could trigger forced aid deliveries under a UN Security Council Resolution. Bernard Kouchner, the foreign minister of France, and Gareth Evans, who heads the International Crisis Group, have made similar arguments. But no matter how persuasive the arguments of forced humanitarian intervention under the UN doctrine of “Responsibility To Protect,” use of that doctrine wasn’t rigorously considered by the Security Council because both China and Russia oppose such consideration. In addition, some humanitarian organizations argue that forcible distribution of aid would carry more risks than benefits, perhaps endangering any possibility of setting up a workable, though late, emergency response.

What other human rights conventions apply to post-Cyclone Burma? The Universal Declaration of Human Rights doesn’t address disaster response, and it presents health as one aspect of the right to an adequate standard of living. Article 25 says: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care…”

In 1966 the UN General Assembly adopted the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Article 12 says that “The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.” It goes to on to say that signatories should control epidemics and “assure all medical service” needed. Unfortunately, Burma is not a signatory to the Covenant. Neither is the U.S., for that matter.

However, a recent analysis by the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response and the Center for Public health and Human Rights at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health points out that many of Burma’s neighbors are signatories and, therefore, obligated to help. In addition, the centers concluded that “international guidelines on human rights and natural disasters cite the right of all affected populations to evacuation and other life saving measures, to protection against negative impacts of natural hazards, and to access to adequate food, water, shelter, sanitation, and health services.”

The rub, of course, is that many countries are willing to give more aid than the Burmese generals are willing to receive. There are signs that the Burmese resistance is slowly melting. A number of U.S. and UN aid flights are getting through. China, India and Thailand have sent medical teams. Burma allowed John Holmes, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator to tour some of the devastated areas and has invited UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to visit the country. Most important, Burma appears willing to work with a group of Asian countries to set up a naval relief effort, perhaps with the support of the U.S., France and other countries with naval vessels in the area.

These are important developments, but they are evolving slowly more than two weeks after the cyclone. The costs of delay will be measured in terms of lives lost. Human rights conventions may not call for an urgent response, but human rights principles certainly do.

Ken Bacon

Eritrea-Ethiopia: Shimelba Refugee Camp’s Intellectual Capital

2008-05-16T17:28:00.002-04:00

“I recently developed a mathematical theorem and sent my paper to Addis Ababa University. Professors of the Mathematics Department confirmed that it was something new and that they would like to publish it in their academic journal. But I would like to wait on that because I believe certain parts need to be fleshed out more first.” In a frenzied day of interviewing refugees on a recent mission to Ethiopia, comments like these stood out. My colleague and I had about twenty minutes to speak with each person, and instead of detailing problems with food rations, inadequate sheeting for shelter, or the need for more sanitation facilities (problems which were repeatedly mentioned), several of the refugees emphasized their scholarly pursuits. This budding mathematician had obtained an advanced degree before he fled Eritrea a couple of years ago.

Other individuals spoke about their interests. One 22-year-old woman who escaped religious persecution in Eritrea described how she was now working in a laboratory in the camp, learning about avian influenza. Another young man told us that he had always wanted to study astrophysics. He recalled how several years ago at a science fair in Asmara, a foreign dignitary declared him the “best in Africa.” Refugees who slip across the border to Ethiopia rarely bring any belongings or documentation with them, but this person proudly showed us photos taken at that science fair.

Shimelba refugee camp in the northern Tigray region of Ethiopia hosts up to 18,000 residents originally from Eritrea. Up to 500 new refugees come to the camp each month. The vast majority of the refugees are young and university-educated, and many have doctorates. Over 75 percent of the population is male. These refugees largely left Eritrea in order to avoid compulsory military service for both men and women. Thirty years of struggle for independence, a brutal 1998-2000 border conflict with Ethiopia that killed at least 70,000 people and increasing international isolation feed the country’s inclination to prepare – at any cost –to defend itself or deter potential enemies.

But in its dogged pursuit of military readiness, Eritrea is losing its greatest asset: its educated youth. These refugees spoke of burning desires to further their educations, build careers, and live in a city again. According to an official of the Ethiopian refugee ministry, “They are looking for scholarships, sponsorship in urban areas, correspondence courses. And they are getting frustrated.” The Ethiopian government permits the lucky few who can afford to support themselves to live and study in Addis Ababa or other towns. But for many of those who remain in the camp, the stress of idleness and wasted potential has led to mental illness, particularly depression. Many would prefer to return to Eritrea if government policy improves, but pessimistic about the prospects for change, they are eager for resettlement.

If the intellectual capital simmering in Shimelba were allowed to thrive elsewhere, it would be that country’s great gain and Eritrea’s tragic loss.

--Katherine Southwick

Burma: What You Can Do To Help

2008-05-14T16:43:00.002-04:00

Cyclone Nargis has captured the attention of the world and focused it squarely on Burma. Just one month ago, Refugees International was engaged in an advocacy campaign to convince policy-makers here in the US that we should engage in humanitarian assistance work in Burma. Now, rather than debating the pros and cons of aid to the country, the US is rushing to work with anyone who has access to it. It provides us with the long-term opportunity to diminish US skittishness over the work of aid organizations in Burma by allowing US funders, and specifically Congress, to observe the operating environment and see the importance of providing aid to the people of Burma.

While the media is focused on the inability of agencies to get visas for their staff, and get shipments of needed goods into Burma, there is little attention given to the organizations who are on the ground, what they are accomplishing and what they could do with more funding. At a humanitarian coordination meeting last week, a number of agencies began to describe the capacity that already exists on the ground. Here are a few examples (by no means exhaustive) of who’s doing what:

Adventist Development and Relief Agency
170 staff inside Burma
Distributing 250 metric tons of rice

CARE
500 staff inside Burma
Carrying out needs assessments throughout the Rangoon area

World Concern
200 staff inside Burma
Providing medical response in the delta

Save the Children
500 staff inside Burma
Procuring goods locally and pushing further into the delta every day

World Vision
600 staff inside Burma
Doing rice, water and fuel distribution, and conducting assessments in the delta

PACT
430 staff inside Burma
Using local networks and partnerships with other organizations to deliver aid

More attention needs to be focused on increasing the resources that are going to these actors. While the world groans over what is not being done in Burma, and it is appalling, there needs to be a greater focus on what is being done and how to support it. Hopefully, as the weeks progress and the media need stories of hope, the important work of these NGOs will become more visible.

--Joel Charny

President’s Corner: Our Responsibility to Help Burma’s Cyclone Victims

2008-05-13T10:41:00.006-04:00

The arrival in Burma of one U.S. cargo plane carrying relief supplies and an American admiral is good news for survivors of the May 2nd cyclone and great PR for the U.S., but it shouldn’t obscure the totally inadequate world response to a humanitarian disaster.

A week and a half after the Cyclone Nargis, which killed more than 100,000 people by some estimates, displaced more than 1.5 million, and created conditions that could lead to the death of thousands of survivors, very little aid has reached the storm victims.

Burma’s military regime--paranoid, xenophobic, and heartless—deserves most of the blame for the lack of response; the generals have erected barriers to flows of humanitarian aid and the workers needed to distribute it. Yesterday, UN Secretary Ban Ki-Moon said: "I want to register my deep concern and immense frustration at the unacceptably slow response to this grave humanitarian crisis." But for 10 days the world has stood by, bemoaning and criticizing the regime's disregard for life, but doing little to help.

In a column in the The Washington Post yesterday (5/12), Fred Hiatt blames the United Nations for “bowing to Burma’s sovereignty as the nation’s junta allows more than a million victims of Cyclone Nargis to face starvation, dehydration, cholera and other miseries, rather than allow outsiders to offer aid on the scale that’s needed.”

In 2005, the UN adopted a doctrine called “the responsibility to protect,” that gives the UN the right to intervene to protect civilians from mass atrocities caused by “genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.” If a regime’s refusal to provide medical assistance, food, clean water and other aid to more than a million people doesn’t constitute a crime against humanity, what does?

Shortly after the cyclone struck, Bernard Kouchner, the foreign minister of France, called on the UN to invoke the responsibility to protect by authorizing the UN to bring food and workers to Burma over the government’s opposition. According to news reports, China and Russia, both of whom have the power to veto UN Security Council resolutions, blocked the action.

That shouldn’t be the end of the story. I think that France, the U.S. and other countries with planes, helicopters and ships in the region should begin airdrops and possibly airlifts of food and medicine into the Burma, whether or not the regime agrees. Yes, there is a risk that the Burmese military would oppose humanitarian flights, but forceful efforts to interfere with relief deliveries would turn the responsibility to protect into a right to protect.

Negotiations with the regime by the UN and others have opened windows for small shipments of aid, such as the U.S. plane that landed Monday, but the slow trickle of humanitarian goods falls far short of what is necessary, and the aid is arriving more than a week after it was needed. Obviously, a decision by the regime to allow adequate aid to enter the country is the best solution to the current crisis, but it doesn't seem likely that the junta will lower obstacles to assistance in time, either because it's afraid of an increased foreign presence or because it's indifferent to the suffering of its people. There is considerable evidence to support the indifference theory; according to reports in the British press, the regime has continued to export rice to Bangladesh while cyclone victims face possible starvation.

Imposition of the responsibility to protect is not an easy decision. Although the first steps to pressure a sovereign nation to protect its own people are political, diplomatic and economic, the doctrine does allow for military action as a last resort and under carefully defined conditions. But as the death toll threatens to rise in the face of continued government obstruction to international relief efforts, I think it is fair to ask: Does sovereignty mean that a government has the right to let its own people die in large numbers and have we already waited too long to act?

--Ken Bacon

For more of RI's work in Burma please visit: www.refugeesinternational.org/Burma

President’s Corner: Mia and Ronan Farrow Speak Out to Save Lives

2008-05-05T22:13:00.003-04:00

Later this week Refugees International will honor Mia and Ronan Farrow for their successful efforts to increase pressure on Sudan to end the killing in Darfur.

The mother-son team has written scores of op-eds calling attention to China’s economic and political support for Sudan and leading an international movement to dub this summer’s Olympics in Beijing the “genocide Olypmics.” While they have not asked athletes to skip the Olympics, Mia and Ronan have recommended that athletes and world leaders boycott the opening ceremonies to express opposition to the support Sudan gets from China. China, the leading purchaser of Sudanese oil, also sells arms to Sudan. I have personally seen rocket casings with Chinese markings on them in a north Darfur village that was bombed by Sudanese aircraft

The Farrows have attacked such American icons as investor Warren Buffett and film-maker Steven Spielberg. Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, once owned 11% of PetroChina’s publicly traded shares but sold them all last year. Buffett, who opposed divestment as way to pressure China on Sudan, said he sold the shares to realize a large profit. Spielberg decided not to advise China on staging the Olympics after Mia and Ronan called him a “key collaborator” in the “genocide Olympics.” After failing to engage Chinese officials on their complicity in the violence in Darfur, Spielberg said that “my conscience will not allow me to continue with business as usual.”

Since 2003, when Sudan mobilized and armed local militias to suppress a rebellion over the economic and political marginalization of Darfur, thousands of villages have been destroyed, about 2.5 million Darfuris have been displaced and an estimated 400,000 have died of war related causes.

The violence in Darfur has not ended since Mia and Ronan started speaking out. In fact, it has gotten worse. But China has paid attention. It has appointed a special envoy to deal with Darfur issues and it has supported the deployment of a combined UN-African Union peacekeeping force to Darfur. It has also hired public relations firms to help it counter the Farrows and other critics, so far without success.

Refugees International and other human rights organizations have been reporting on the death and displacement in Darfur for years. Many people have spoken out against the violence in Darfur—New York Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof, Smith College Professor Eric Reeves, U.S. activist John Prendergast, British author Alex de Waal, President George Bush, who despite accusing the Sudanese government of genocide in Darfur, plans to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Beijing. They and many others have helped create a nationwide movement against genocide.

As long as Mia and Ronan Farrow are speaking out, stopping the genocide in Darfur will remain a challenge facing the world at large.

Ken Bacon

Dominican Republic: Will All Dominicans Be Able To Vote on May 16?

2008-05-02T16:33:00.002-04:00

Imagine living in a country all your life and believing you are a citizen of that country. Then, when going to renew some documents, you are informed that your birth certificate and identity document were given to you by mistake and all your documents are invalid since they are “under investigation”. That is what is happening now to many people in the Dominican Republic.

Hundreds of thousands of people of Haitian origin live in the Dominican Republic. For decades Haitians have entered neighboring Dominican Republic, seeking an escape from extreme poverty and political violence. They have worked hard in jobs, for very low wages in sectors like sugar-cane cutting and construction. Yet, the way in which Haitians and people of Haitian origin are treated in the Dominican Republic is very disturbing. UN experts on racism and minorities recently reported “a profound and entrenched problem of racism and discrimination in Dominican society.”

A key example is the question of Dominican citizenship for people of Haitian origin. The constitution of the Dominican Republic says that every child born in their territory is Dominican, except for children of diplomats and children of people “in transit”. The Dominican government argues that all people who do not have documents regularizing their stay in the country are “in transit.” They have created a legal absurdity whereby people who have lived most of their lives in the country and even their children and grandchildren, who have never lived in any other country, are classified as being “in transit.” This has not been applied across the board to all foreigners illegally in the country, but has targeted the Dominico-Haitian community. When I lived in the Dominican Republic two of my friends – one Spanish and one Haitian - gave birth to babies. Neither of them had documents permitting their long-term stay in the country. My Spanish friend had no problem registering her baby and getting a birth certificate, while my Haitian friend was refused permission to register her baby.

In March 2007 the Dominican government issued a circular requiring all registry offices to forward any “suspect” documents for investigation, citing concerns that some offices had improperly issued birth certificates to children of foreign parents who did not prove their residence or legal status in the Dominican Republic. Over the past year many people of Haitian origin have gone to their local registry office to renew their identity document or request a copy of their birth certificate, only to be told that their documents have been cancelled as they are “under investigation.” They cannot challenge this cancellation and have no right of appeal. Dominican newspapers have reported that more than 30,000 identity documents have since been cancelled, many belonging to Dominicans of Haitian descent. Some of these cancellations may have been of fraudulently obtained documents, but how can we know when there is no due process to examine individuals’ cases?

On May 16 the Dominican Republic goes to the polls to elect its President. What will happen when people of Haitian origin present their identity cards which double as voting cards, at their voting stations? Will they be told that their documents are not valid? Will their names be on the electoral roll at all? And how many Dominicans of Haitian origin will stay away from the polls, fearing that their documents might be taken away from them if they go to vote? The Dominican Republic relies on its positive image as a democratic country and as a major tourist destination. It should not tarnish that image by disenfranchising a group of its citizens.

-Melanie Teff

Mark Malan Weighs In On the Future of Peacekeeping

2008-04-30T20:57:00.010-04:00

This past week, Foreign Policy Passport and U.N. Dispatch teamed up to host an online salon discussing the future of peacekeeping in light of current crises: UN Peacekeeping: Challenges and Opportunities for the Next Administration. Refugees International used this opportunity to discuss the challenges facing peacekeepers’ ability to bring about a stable peace so displaced people can return home.

Mark Malan, Refugees International’s Peacekeeping Program Officer, joined David Bosco, William Durch, Tod Lindberg and Eric Reeves in a longer conversation of the ins and outs of some of the current peacekeeping missions. Mark’s first post for the salon centered on the current African Union mission to Somalia and the debate taking place over sending an expanded UN mission to the country:

“….The African Union Mission in Somalia managed to deploy only a quarter of its authorized strength of 8,000 due to a combination of logistical constraints, financial shortfalls, and a lack of peace to keep. With only 2,000 AU troops in Somalia and only 9,000 in Darfur, in March 2008 the UN Security Council was seriously debating the notion of deploying 28,000 UN troops to Somalia.

The widening gap between aspirations and the implementation of successful peace operations is very evident. The multi-billion dollar question is: How do we close this gap? By simply saying "enough" and retreating from the peacekeeping enterprise, as happened in the mid '90s after the last big peak in global peace operations and some nasty experiences in the Balkans and Africa? By trying to expand the available means with the likes of the US-sponsored Global Peace Operations Initiative (GPOI), which aims to train a total of 75,000 peacekeeping troops -- mostly Africans -- by the year 2010? By commissioning another expert panel, like the one led by Lakhdar Brahimi in 2000 which produced very substantive recommendations on how to get the operational mechanics of UN peace operations right? Or by taking a really hard look at the mandate end and the peacemaking processes that precede the crafting of seemingly impossible mission mandates?”

To read the entire conversation between Mark and the other experts, check out U.N. Dispatch and FP Passport.

President’s Corner: The Need to Reverse Rising Food Prices

2008-04-28T19:11:00.004-04:00

Everywhere I go, whether to church or to cocktail parties, people are talking about the global food crisis. It’s about time.

While food prices have been rising for more than a year, it is only in the last few months, as food riots rippled through the developing world and the World Food Program began to warn of acute food shortages and budgetary shortfalls, that they began to attract the attention of policy makers in the West.

The Financial Times and The New York Times began writing about the food crisis last year, but the articles attracted little attention. Food banks and community organizations across the U.S. used higher food prices in their 2007 year end appeals, but then the problem seemed limited to the poor. Sharp increases in the price of eggs, milk, bread and meat in the U.S. have brought the problem home in the U.S. Food prices are now an economic and political issue, both a local and a global issue.

This week The Washington Post began a magnificently detailed five-part series on the global food crisis. Today’s story attributes the problem to glitches in global markets. Rather than let markets function freely, several rice and grain exporting countries have stopped exports in order to keep domestic prices low.

As Refugees International reports on its website, rising food prices will have a particularly harmful impact on displaced people, such as the more than two million people in camps in Darfur or the nearly five million displaced Iraqis, because they often can’t work and are removed from their fields and farms. Rations for many displaced people have been cut.

Higher prices already are leading to increases in planted acreage for harvests later this year, but that won’t be enough, particularly, as some analysts fear, if global warming makes crop disasters in some parts of the world more common in the future. The U.S. and other countries have to start making a number of changes, both to deal with the current crisis and to head off future food shortages.

First, the U.S. should stop subsidizing the use of food to make fuel, such as ethanol. By some estimates 25% of our corn crop is being turned into ethanol, a policy that is starving the poor to gas up SUVs. It makes much more sense to cut gasoline demand through conservation than to boost gas supply by burning food products in cars. Plus, improved conservation will have the added benefit of reducing upward pressure on oil prices, which is one of the forces behind rising food prices.

Second, we need a renewed push to bring the “green revolution” to Africa, which was largely bypassed by the improvements in rice and other crops that have helped cut starvation in Asia in Latin America over the last 50 years. Moreover, crop yields in developing countries have been rising at a slower rate since the 1960s, so a new push toward agricultural productivity is necessary. A number of foundations are working on this, but this needs to become a world-wide push, boosted by new infusions of government funds.

Third, trade rules for agriculture need to be streamlined. A combination of crop subsidies and export controls distort market forces, often at the expense of poorer countries. While markets aren’t always friendly to everybody, over time they will lead to a better allocation of resources to meet world food needs.

Josette Sheeran, who heads the World Food Program, has described the impact of high food prices in graphic terms. “For the middle classes, it means cutting out medical care. For those on $2 a day, it means cutting out meat and taking the children out of school. For those on $1 a day, it means cutting out meat and vegetables and eating only cereals. For those on 50 cents a day, it means total disaster,” she said in a recent issue of The Economist. In the U.S. rising food prices are a matter of economics and politics, but in much of the world rising food prices are a matter of life and death.

--Ken Bacon