Who are the millions of human beings driven from their homes by wars, acts ofviolence and massacres, or by hunger, poverty or ecological disasters? Ordinary people who, by virtue of their plight, acquire the status of refugees,displaced persons or forced migrants. These people typically lose nearlyeverything fleeing to supposedly more friendly neighbouring countries orterritories where they are often unwelcome. From one day to the next, they hasten to places where they are then deprived of their basic rights. Only through the generosity of the countries which take them in and of the international community can they feed themselves, work or even survive.
With every major crisis the humanitarian machine moves in. The non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the big international organisations, headed by the UN High Commission for Refugees (HCR), start their long, taxing work - counting, caring, feeding, protecting, reassuring.
Founded in 1950 to help relocate more than 1m European refugees uprooted by the second world war, the HCR only had a three-year mandate. But the many post-war population movements - notably the Hungarian uprising of 1956 - made the United Nations extend its mandate for further five-year periods. Its activity has spread progressively to the help and protection not just of refugees, but also of other precarious groups: asylum seekers, displaced peoples and those who have been repatriated.
The 1951 Geneva convention defines the term “refugee” as applying to “any person who owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country”.
In 2000 the HCR took under its protection 21.3m people, including 1.2m asylum seekers, 2.5m repatriated persons and 6.9m displaced people. Only half of these were counted as actual refugees, that is 11.6m. Although they are often cited, these figures only give half the picture. For, in addition, there are 20-25m people displaced inside their own countries (1) - 30m according to some sources - who live in dire conditions, especially since they receive virtually no help or protection. There are 2m of them in Congo-Kinshasa, 4m in Sudan, more than 1m in Indonesia, 1.5-2m in Colombia, in former Yugoslavia, in Burundi, in Rwanda, Angola and so on: the statistics make you dizzy. Only a quarter of these people are taken care of by the HCR.
All these figures are just estimates. Will anyone ever know exactly how many East Timorese fled to the west of the island to escape massacre? Or how many Sudanese fled war and famine? How many Congolese disappeared into tropical forests? Every day new refugees join the sad procession, while others (far fewer) return home. How many are they in all? Twenty million? Fifty million? No-one can say for sure.
The question of people displaced within their own countries is fiercely debated within the United Nations. For now, they fall only marginally within the remit of the HCR: refugee status implies the crossing of an international border. Should we put refugees and displaced persons in the same judicial category and give them equal protection, as the UN secretary general’s special representative for displaced persons suggests? At the HCR, some are against the idea: they say it would make the status of the refugees even more fragile; in addition the HCR, which is already struggling to collect up the funds needed to ensure the protection of the 21.3m people in its charge, does not have the necessary organisational structures.
The HCR is mainly funded by voluntary contributions from governments. Its global budget for 2000 amounted to $1bn for emergency operations and long-term programmes. Ron Redmond from its information department says the organisation is short of a fifth of this sum to cover all the needs assessed by the agencies on the ground. Governments are tired of always being asked to give more and are growing increasingly reluctant to reach for their cheque books; so each year the organisation is having greater difficulty in covering its budget. In 1980 it had $60 a year per refugee; in 2001 it only has $40.
"It’s becoming impossible to pursue the sorts of aid projects that help refugees to be more self-sufficient (accommodation, health and education),"explains Michel Gabaudan of the contributor relations department. “Hundredsof thousands of children will no longer get any schooling and nutrition programmes are being abandoned.” In theory, contributions are released for specific projects according to the level of need for assistance. But sometimes governments ask for their contributions to go to parts of the world which they regard as having priority, thereby depriving the HCR of the chance to direct resources to the places where need is greatest. In 1999 there was an average of $120 for every refugee from Kosovo, compared with just $35 for a refugee from West Africa.
Moreover, statistics show that the wealthy countries which build the biggest fortresses around themselves are far from bearing their share of the burden. Asylum-seekers and refugees seeking to make their home in Europe and North America account for barely 5% of the total number of the world’s refugees and displaced persons. And only 0.2% of that total actually end up living in the wealthy countries, with over 95% of them going to North America which, unlike Europe, has not forgotten how much it owes to immigrants. In the opinion of Ruud Lubbers, who has just been appointed High Commissioner for Refugees, the attitude of the wealthy countries’ governments is incoherent: “On the one hand, they won’t fund programmes to help refugees return home or to improve refugees’ lives in places where the risks of exile prove too great (2). And on the other hand, every year they make it harder for peoples under threat to find asylum and safety on their territories.” They will have to make up their minds soon.