Attacking refugee problems with the old UNHCR setup wont work

Sir,

It would be preposterous of me to present to you my congratulations for your recent election to head the UN Refugee Agency. Conversely, having served 20 years with your organization I would like to share with you some observations, whatever their relevance.

You have been elected to flog a dead horse.

The UN Refugee Convention, which stands as the foundation of your organizarion, was conceived in 1951 in a European context as an instrument of the the Cold War. Over the years based on the principales defined in the convention – namely that all people claiming to be refugees should be given a hearing and those recognized as such should be protected from repatriation – Western governments, which were the main adherents, built a gargantuan monument of national legislations on the issue of “asylum.”

In practice however, the principle was applied selectively. Thus, during the Cold War, it would never have occurred to a European democracy to repatriate anyone fleeing a Communist country. Thus, at the time of the Hungarian crisis of 1956 and the Czech crisis of 1968, not one of those who fled to the West was ever screened for refugee status with the theoretical risk of being repatriated.

This was for two reasons, both unspoken. First, they were fleeing a common enemy, “communism,” and the political environment would not have permitted their return to their country of origin. Second, the new arrivals were fellow Europeans belonging to the same Judeo-Christian cultural environment and their integration did not raise any substantive issue.

It is possible that the situation would have evolved differently if the numbers had not been manageable. But they were manageable. Likewise, as European refugees sought refuge in Europe, Asians in Asia and Africans in Africa, the spillover of population movement from one geo-cultural environment to another was contained.

Vietnam proved the end of this order. The Vietnamese boat people’s exodus was defined by two attributes.

First, no country in Southeast Asia was willing to provide them with permanent asylum. Those countries would only accept refugees temporarily, subject to resettlement in other countries.

Second the United States had suffered a humiliating defeat and needed to assuage its bruised ego.

The end result was that as of 1979 all Vietnamese boat people were automatically classified as “refugees” and scheduled for resettlement in the US or in Western countries.

A decade later, in 1989, as the outflow proved unending, the international community adopted the Comprehensive Plan of Action (CPA). Thenceforth,boat people would be screened. Those classified as refugees would be resettled and the others repatriated.

Repatriation was supposed to be “voluntary.” However, with Western governments looking the other way, the UNHCR organized deportation operations for the last groups of boat people who refused to return to their country of origin.

The CPA saw the closing of the boat people crisis but to this end three conditions had to be met. First, the country of origin had to accept the return of the screened-out people. Second, the United States had to turn over the leaf on its defeat in Vietnam. Third, the Soviet Union had to collapse leaving Hanoi with no alternative but to mend its relations with its neighbors and the West.

Throughout the CPA, UNHCR served its titleholders well with the caveat that the conventions were only activated when the political environment saw it fit.

The other bookend that defined UNHCR was the siege of Sarajevo, which started in April 1992. With the WFP and ICRC stunned into inaction your predecessor Sadako Ogata, threw caution to the wind and set up an airlift to bring assistance to the beleaguered inhabitants of the city. Under what auspices proved irrelevant.

There was a conflict in the heart of Europe, it created an urgent humanitarian need, UNHCR fulfilled it and this is what governments wanted. That the beneficiaries were neither refugees nor displaced but actually in their own homes was irrelevant.

With UNHCR having no institutional memory, both the CPA and Bosnia have little relevance to the current situation. But they are good examples of what a high commissioner can do and will do when the political context requires it or makes it possible.

Looking to the future, the days when Western industrialized democracies are willing to provide balm to alleviate humanitarian crisis resulting from third world countries, tribes or factionsthat are unwilling to address their disputes by other means than violence are over.

Likewise, when donor funds dry up, recipient governments are liable to address the problem themselves. A small example of this situation came up when USAID suspended subsidies for the clinics that cared for Burmese refugees in Thailand. The Thai authorities responded by doing what they had for years refused to do; grant the refugees work permits so they could cover their own health costs.

On a much wider scale the total expense as of today for the some 1.5 million Rohingya refugees that were expelled from Myanmar to Bangladesh since 2017 is estimated to have reached at least US$3 billion with no end in sight.

Unless one wishes to “Palestinize” the problem, you might consider granting Bangladesh a one time lump sum in exchange for the Rohingyas getting residence and work permits for at least the coming ten years. Granted, Bangladesh might not like the idea but some well-targeted threats to cut funding altogether should prove persuasive.

Not that there is no precedent in this regard. In 1996 it took the threat of cutting funding to energize the likes of Malaysia and Indonesia into closing the last camps for the last few hundred Vietnamese boat people and deporting them to Vietnam, thus bringing to a close the boat people crisis. That means that, in some circumstances, denying aid is more humanitarian than providing it.

All bureaucracies if left unchecked will proliferate. The UN is no exception, UNHCR even less so. Your organization as of today has some 17,000 staff members. The number is abhorrent and could easily be cut by half.

Take China as an example. In 1979 UNHCR started a US$50 million US program to help resettle refugees from Vietnam. To manage the program, one mid-level staff member and one international secretary were assigned to Beijing, assisted by some local staff. Today some 40 years later, UNHCR has a program in China budgeted at some $350,000 and managed by five international staff members including one of director level.

This was a drift that repeated itself throughout the whole organization, with one additional caveat: controlling staff numbers and grades is not only a matter of budgeting but also of ethical management. Ultimately overstaffing, like over-promoting, is demeaning to the whole organization. It cheapens performance and puts a premium on quantity rather than quality.

Reducing staff is one of the most difficult exercises with the additional question as to whether a bureaucracy that presided over staff inflation has the aptitude to reverse course or if the issue should not be entrusted to an outside independent entity.

Reducing staff is one of the most difficult exercises, with the additional question as to weather a burocracy that presided over staff inflation has the aptitude to reverse course or if the issue should not be entrusted to an outside independent entity.

Currently the world is witnessing a simultaneous multiplicity of crises or a magnitude rarely seen before. Within this overall disruption the problems of population displacement, refugee crisis and the globalization of irregular population movement have conspired to create in many industrialized societies a growing feeling of unease – not to say of being under siege. And it cannot be overlooked that the societies that are at the receiving end of the current uncontrolled migration waveare also your major donors.

The end result is a new paradigm that bears little relevance to the one that prevailed when the Refugee Convention was conceived. The upshot is not so much that the convention is dead. What is dead is the ecosystem in which they were conceived. And this ecosystem needs a new convention.

Within this current generalized chaos, governments are groping for solutions. As of now, they have not been particularly successful, which has something to do with the fact that looking ahead is not their strong point. An additional fact ,that in democracies electoral deadlines are often the onlybenchmarks, has not helped.

That your organization should be involved in this process should be a given. But a given operating constructively, with an open mind, a sense of political realities and a perception of the world as it is today rather than as it was yesterday.

Granted, your involvement in such an endeavor will undoubtedly invite criticism both from some NGOs whose volition is to preach rather than to practice and from the more dogmatic denizens of your own office. But history will not be on their side.

Although nobody has elected you to look at your office in the light of the future, who’s to stop you if you do?

But whatever you do, sir, I wish you luck.

Alexander Casella

Alexander Casella, PhD, is a former UNHCR director for Asia and Oceania and a former UNHCR regional representative in the Middle East.