04/24/2006

Contacts: Sarah Martin and Betsy Apple
ri@refugeesinternational.org or 202.828.0110

The signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in January 2005 between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement brought the 21-year civil war to an end, creating the conditions for the return of approximately four million refugees and internally displaced people to south Sudan. Although basic services are missing throughout the region and international agencies face serious logistical obstacles to establishing their presence, Sudanese are courageously “voting with their feet” and opting to return. The process will rival that of Afghanistan as the largest return process in recent decades.

A return of this magnitude requires a corresponding effort from international agencies, especially the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). However, the constant refrain during Refugees International’s recent assessment to south Sudan was expressions of concern about UNHCR’s weak presence in the region. “UNHCR is underperforming and this has to change,” said a UN official in Juba. “They are supposed to be a major player in returns and their weakness is weakening the entire system,” the representative of another humanitarian agency noted. Plagued by a lack of strong leadership as well as by deep budget cuts, UNHCR has struggled to establish a strong field presence in south Sudan and can no longer blame a difficult logistical environment for its problems.

In December 2005, the return and reintegration working group in Nairobi agreed that the main protection issue in Sudan was the lack of capacity on the ground to monitor safe and dignified return. “I came alone with my child,” a woman living in an IDP camp near Malakal told us. “Nothing is easy. It took us almost five days on the barge to get here. I did not know what would be here. I cannot get to my home village and I don’t have the money to return so I will stay here.” A man living in another IDP camp near Malakal told us his story. “The political commissioner came to convince us to return to our home village so we can vote. We decided to try to go and went with a convoy of vehicles that was leaving for the first time. There is no water there or along the way. The old roads have been mined and we had to make a new road. It used to take us two hours but it took us 48 hours to get there. Three people died of thirst along the road and we saw four other dead people as well. We believe that they were shot by warring tribes who live near there.” Without strong external support from UNHCR and other agencies, the return process will continue to pose such risks to vulnerable people.

Returns monitoring is a critical role for UNHCR where it has the mandate to work with internally displaced persons. In Juba, however, it took UNHCR seven weeks to sign a contract with its implementing partner despite the fact that most of the groundwork for the agreement was finalized. In Malakal, UNCHR came in and began doing returns monitoring in the ports that duplicated the work of another NGO. “They said to us that we are in charge of returns now. All return monitoring must go through us. Yet their enumerators are not in the field anymore. We don’t know what they are doing anymore,” said a representative of that agency. As the government agency doing returns monitoring had stopped operating for several months, UNHCR’s inability to fill this gap in a timely manner has negatively impacted the returns process. “There’s no effective protection monitoring going on with the returns,” complained a humanitarian agency. “Returning in safety is a fluke, not a guarantee.”

There are two interrelated causes of UNHCR’s leadership problems: the dearth of experienced, knowledgeable staff in Sudan and the lack of appropriate engagement by UNHCR headquarters in Geneva. “There is no consistent leadership in UNHCR’s offices in the south,” was a frequent comment the agencies that RI interviewed. “Their senior managers are all over the place and there is a lack of a clear chain of command.” “You just can’t leave important chunks of responsibility to junior staff,” said a representative of a UN agency. “There is just not much field experience in their field offices,” said another UN official. “We need all stakeholders to be prepared to adapt and move as the conditions in the field change,” said a representative of UNMIS, the UN peacekeeping mission overseeing the implementation of the peace accords.

UNHCR is facing up to its management difficulties reluctantly. A UNHCR representative in New York insisted, “Yes, we have had problems with staff getting sick and leaving --- it’s a difficult environment to work in. But we are fulfilling our mandate well.” UNHCR also pointed out that it was specifically asked to work on IDP returns in the Blue Nile State and Eastern and West Equatoria. “Our role was not accepted by other UN agencies and this has caused problems,” said a senior UNHCR representative. UNHCR also pointed to the negative impact of significant budget cuts. “Our funding request for Sudan was reduced from $76 million to $46 million at the Geneva level because major funders like Japan and the US have been dropping our funding,” said one UNHCR employee, “We have been criticized by donors when we do act and the message is coming that we should focus solely on returns. We currently only have $10 million for operations in the south.” “The donors seem to only want to fund UNHCR for refugee returns,” agreed one UN official.

UNHCR has begun to recognize the leadership problem. Its staff acknowledges that it was late to switch to a focus on managing its program out of Juba, the main city in the south, rather than Khartoum, the capital. “We were late in adapting. We would have loved to have someone on the ground immediately but we were struggling to find the right person.” In recognition of the need to strengthen its presence in Sudan, the agency recently appointed a permanent manager at the deputy director level.

An effective UNHCR is so critical to the success of the entire operation in south Sudan because within the UN system the agency has the most in-house expertise on protecting refugees and internally displaced persons and managing large-scale returns. As they address management issues, they must be fully funded to ensure that all returns in south Sudan have a strong protection component. Other agencies confirm how badly the funding cuts have undermined UNHCR’s ability to do its job. “UNHCR is malnourished, funding-wise. They have lost a lot of people.” “UNHCR is really overstretched and struggling with it. They are learning the lesson that if you overstretch yourself in south Sudan, you won’t get anything done,” said one of their implementing partners. UNHCR must fulfill their protection mandate, as the displaced people of Sudan are depending upon UNCHR to help them to come home safely. Donors who push UNHCR to take on new mandates must realize that these tasks come with costs.

Refugees International therefore recommends that:

• The High Commissioner of UNHCR act immediately to strengthen the management of UNHCR’s Sudan program;
• UNHCR officials in Geneva, Khartoum, and south Sudan work together to share information so decisions about new responsibilities are based upon realistic assessments of capacity to fulfill them;
• UNHCR focus on its core competencies, and ensure that its resources are directed to fulfilling its protection mandate;
• Donor countries review their funding priorities to ensure that UNHCR receives adequate support;
• UNMIS and UNHCR review current protection activities in south Sudan to ensure they are being implemented adequately.