HAMUN 44 UNHCR (High Commissioner for Refugees) Topic A: Strengthening Refugee Protection Capacity of Neighboring Countries

Transcription

1 HAMUN 44 UNHCR (High Commissioner for Refugees) Topic A: Strengthening Refugee Protection Capacity of Neighboring Countries

2 Committee Background The United Nations Refugee Agency formally called UNHCR for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was created and mandated in 1959 by the General Assembly to lead and facilitate international cooperative efforts to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems all around the world. UNHCR s main responsibility is to ensure that everyone can exercise their rights to seek asylum and to find safe refuge in another state with the option to either return home voluntarily, integrate locally, or be able to resettle or relocate to a different state altogether. This committee is also mandated to help stateless individuals find permanent asylum without the risk of persecution based on ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation. UNHCR s mandate has gradually been expanded to include protecting and providing humanitarian assistance to whom it describes as other persons of concern, including internally displaced persons (IDPs) who would fit the legal definition of a refugee under the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and 1967 Protocol, the 1969 Organization for African Unity Convention, or some other treaty if they left their country, but who presently remain in their country of origin. The ultimate goal of UNHCR is to help find permanent solutions that allow refugees to rebuild their lives in peace, including, but not limited to voluntary repatriation, local integration or resettlement in another country. Even though UNHCR has already been assisting millions around the world every year, for several other millions, durable solutions are not accessible and many refugees remain in limbo until they can return to their home countries or resettle in another country. For millions of refugees around the world, going home remains the strongest hope of finding an end to exile. In order to allow the migration of refugees back to their country of origin, UNHCR needs the continuous support of source countries to reintegrate their own people after conflict has ended. It must also have the support of the international community in the post-conflict phase to ensure that those who choose to go home can rebuild their lives with stability and security. Statement of the Problem In June 2016, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced that more than 65 million persons have fled conflict and persecution. Many millions more are displaced each year and cumulatively from a much broader range of life threatening humanitarian crises than are captured by UNHCR s figures. An average of 26.4 million were displaced annually by acute natural hazards since 2008 and an unknown but sizable number displaced by gang and cartel violence, electoral and communal violence, nuclear and industrial accidents, and a range of other human-made disasters. The Syrian crisis reinforces the conclusion that armed conflict can lead to mass displacement when the adversaries violate their duty not to attack basic rights of civilians. The UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria concluded that the war crimes, crimes against humanity, and human rights violations were so severe that the Syrian reality should shock the conscience of humanity (UNHRC 2014, no. 138). These violations have led to the single largest forced migration in recent history. The flight of refugees has threatened the stability of

3 neighboring countries, including Turkey, which today hosts the largest number of refugees of any country in the world; Lebanon, where more than one in every six persons within the country s borders is a refugee from Syria; and Jordan. These rights require that all political actors, both states and non-state agents, refrain from grave abuses of human rights such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other abuses that effectively treat people as if they were not human at all. Atrocities such as these are among the major causes of refugee movement and other forms of forced migration today. Acting to prevent such crimes and holding accountable those who nevertheless commit them will be a crucial step in making the global system of refugee protection more adequate. The duty to provide such assistance to those already displaced falls on neighboring countries, on those in the local region, and on the global community as a whole. The responsibility of countries to provide help is proportional both to their proximity to those in need and, more importantly today, to their capacity to provide effective assistance. The rich nations of Europe, North America, and the oil-rich Gulf states thus have urgent duties to assist the very poor countries who are hosting most of the world s refugees today. Developing fair and politically effective ways of assigning the share of the responsibility that different developed nations should carry will be essential to the creation of a more effective refugee system. History of the Problem Displacement from humanitarian crises is complex and diverse. Humanitarian crises are any situations in which there is a widespread threat to life, physical safety, health, or basic subsistence that is beyond the coping capacity of individuals and the communities in which they reside (Martin et al. 2014). Potential triggers include: hurricanes, cyclones, tsunamis, earthquakes, epidemics and pandemics, nuclear and industrial accidents, acts of terrorism, armed conflict, environmental degradation, drought, famine, climate change, situations of generalized violence and political instability, and serious and pervasive human rights violations, including persecution and torture. Poor governance at the national and local levels, high levels of poverty and inequality, and insufficient access to basic services undermine coping capacities and make a crisis out of what might otherwise be a manageable event. The 65 million refugees and displaced persons reported by UNHCR in June 2016 represent only one group of those affected by humanitarian crises those fleeing persecution and conflict (UNHCR 2016). Many persons are displaced by other crises that, in some cases, present equally life-threatening situations. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC), more than 19 million people were newly displaced by disasters brought on by natural hazards in 2015 (IDMC 2016). The 2015 levels were lower than average; annual displacement from these hazards since 2008 averaged more than 21.5 million per year (ibid.). The majority of new displacements from natural hazards are in Asia, primarily from weather events but also from earthquakes, volcanoes, and other geophysical disruptions. India, China, and Nepal registered the highest numbers of newly displaced in 2015, with 3.7 million, 3.6 million and 2.6 million, respectively (ibid.). As a proportion of population, new displacements

4 most heavily affected small island states; for example, a storm surge in Tuvalu uprooted 55 percent of its population of around 10,000 (ibid.). While the majority are displaced globally for a short period and then return home, an increasing number of those fleeing natural hazards are in protracted situations (IDMC 2015a), unable to return or to find permanent solutions in other locations. According to the Fifth Assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, [c]limate change over the 21st century is projected to increase displacement of people (IPCC 2014, 20). The detailed review of the evidence indicated that [e]xtreme weather events provide the most direct pathway from climate change to migration (Adger et al. 2014, 767), but also noted that in the longer-term sea level rise, coastal erosion, and loss of agricultural productivity will have a significant impact on migration flows (Adger et al. 2014, ). While some Journal on Migration and Human Security S6 of these movements precipitated by worsening environmental conditions are likely to be voluntarily planned by individuals and households, others will be clearly involuntary, including relocations planned by governments. Perhaps most at risk will be those who are unable to move on their own because of age, infirmity, or lack of financial, social or human resources, and who become trapped in increasingly more dangerous situations. There has been helpful though imperfect response to the duties arising from proximity by the countries neighboring South Sudan. The regional organization of Sudan s neighboring countries Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, and Eritrea is called the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). IGAD has played a diplomatic role in seeking to mediate the conflict within South Sudan that began in 2013, as they did in helping secure the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended the earlier conflict between northern and southern Sudan that ultimately led to the independence of South Sudan in When too many refugees arrive at once, they can create a host of challenges for city officials. Refugees often arrive with little more than the clothing on their backs urgently needing housing, food, education and skills training. Yet neither the United Nation s 1951 Convention on 1 2 Refugees - nor its 1967 supplementary protocol - even references urban refugees, much less defines the specific roles and responsibilities of city officials in dealing with migrants. Though the current strategic plan of the UN s refugee agency acknowledges that more refugees are moving to cities, it offers few recommendations for helping cities better serve them. Current Situation In an analogous way, subsidiarity implies that the primary responsibility toward internally displaced persons falls on the country of which they are citizens. Their own country has the primary duty to protect them. But if their country of citizenship fails to protect them or acts in a way that compels them to flee, the duty of protection moves to neighboring countries and to larger regional and international actors. Thus national borders carry considerable moral weight in

5 determining ethical responsibilities toward displaced persons, but there are also obligations to the displaced that reach across borders. From both a secular philosophical standpoint and in most religious perspectives, there are duties both to one s fellow citizens and to forced migrants who need of protection through asylum or through some other form of emergency assistance. Neither of these types of duty is absolute. Duties to fellow citizens do not always trump duties to forced migrants, nor do duties to forced migrants always override duties to co-citizens. The key question, therefore, becomes what relative weight should be assigned to each of these duties in diverse circumstances. Most of the forced migration in the world today is caused by conflict and war. Half of today s refugees have been driven from homes by the conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan, and Somalia, and most of the internally displaced have been forced to flee by conflict within their countries (Guéhenno 2016). Perhaps the worst humanitarian crisis of recent times: the Rwandan genocide of 1994, where force was massively used to deny the basic rights of the Tutsi people. It was also appallingly violated in the slaughter at Srebrenica, where thousands of Bosnian Muslims were killed because of their identity as part of an ethnic cleansing. The displacements that resulted from each of these conflicts were massive. This suggests that a central priority in efforts to prevent massive forced migration should be much stronger efforts to prevent and halt the unjust resort to the use of force. Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan are today already massively overburdened with Syrian refugees. They do not possess the economic and other resources to take in many additional refugees. On the other hand, the resources of the wealthy nations of northern Europe, North America, and the oil-producing Gulf states give them the capability to receive many more refugees and to share the burdens being carried by Syria s already overtaxed proximate neighbors. The assistance being provided to the countries bordering Syria is woefully inadequate. The duty to share the burden of assistance to displaced people is proportional to the capability of doing so. Countries with greater economic and political capacities to help have proportionally greater responsibilities to do so. These responsibilities may be carried out by granting asylum and refugee status to more of the displaced, and, perhaps most urgently, by providing economic and other forms of assistance to countries like Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan who are already carrying a disproportionate burden. To achieve this, the rich nations of the northern hemisphere will have to overcome tendencies to racially or religiously driven xenophobia and the mistaken fear that terrorists are often refugees. In addition, European powers such as France and the United Kingdom that gained economically from their colonies in Africa and Asia have duties to be open to refugees from these regions. A country with a history of military involvement in another nation can also have special obligations to people in flight from that nation. The United States recognized its particular duty to receive refugees from Vietnam after the Vietnam War. Though the US intervention in Iraq was certainly not the sole cause of the displacement of many Iraqis, it was a significant factor that contributed to the political chaos that led to the huge forced migration of Iraqis that has occurred. For many countries in Europe that are now facing the issues of immigration and ethnic minorities, the focus is on integration and there has been much discussion about the concept of

6 integration and how to measure it. In the United States, the focus is no longer on assimilation but their incorporation into US society. Incorporation is a more general concept referring to the broader processes by which new groups establish relationships with host societies. Past UN Action On September 19, 2016, the UN Summit to Address Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants, led to the unanimous adoption of the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants. Annex I of that document sets forth a Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework and calls upon the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to develop a Global Compact on Refugees in 2018, which is currently in process. The papers analyze state policies in light of international law, examine refugee-producing conditions, interrogate barriers to access to protection, assess traditional durable solutions, highlight promising new initiatives, explore the system s assumptions and ethical underpinning, identify non-refugee populations in need of protection, review public opinion on the global crisis in refugee protection, and create a strong 3 analytical and evidence base for reform. In light of the Holocaust and emerging Cold War, in creating the office of the UNHCR and promulgating the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (hereinafter referred to as the 1951 Convention ), the international community gave special consideration to those fleeing persecution (Martin 2014). Soon thereafter, however, UNHCR was repeatedly asked to use its good offices to provide protection to those fleeing armed conflict. While the 1951 Convention remained focused on persecution, in 1969, recognizing the inadequacy of the 1951 Convention in addressing displacement in Africa, the Organization of African Unity (now the African Union) adopted a regional convention that defined refugees to include persons compelled to leave because of external aggression, occupation, foreign domination, or events seriously disturbing public order. In 1984, the Latin American countries adopted a similar definition in the Cartagena Declaration. Victims of other types of humanitarian crises, however, still fall outside these commendable regional expansions of the refugee definition. The International Criminal Court (ICC) was established in 1998 to hold people accountable for violations of standards of international law like those that occurred in Rwanda and Bosnia and that are continuing in South Sudan and Syria. The Rome Statute that created the ICC gave it jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. The Rome Statute arose from the recognition that duties of the international community based on our common humanity can take priority over the sovereignty of independent nation-states when human rights violations rise to the level of atrocity. For example, while President Omar al Bashir of Sudan faces charges of genocide and crimes against humanity for his actions in the Darfur region of Sudan, he has thus far eluded arrest due to the reluctance of certain ICC member states to detain him. In another case, charges against President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya had to be dropped because the ICC prosecutor could not get witnesses to testify, likely because of threats to their safety and bribes. Nevertheless, the ICC has 3

7 had success in a number of other cases and it has launched a process that promises to strengthen the accountability faced by those responsible for the atrocities that contribute to some of the worst refugee and migration crises occurring today. Blocs In Latin America, where 2.6 million Venezuelans, the vast majority of them since 2015, have poured into neighboring countries such as Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Peru as conditions at home have become unbearable. Most governments Colombia s being the lead example have welcomed the Venezuelans with open arms, hastening to help them integrate into the local economy and initiating campaigns to combat xenophobia. However, in some countries Peru and Brazil, for example local populations and populist politicians have stoked fear and prejudice. As of February, more than four million Venezuelans over 10 percent of the country s population have fled the country. Colombia alone is estimated to be hosting more than two million Venezuelans. As the number of Venezuelan refugees soars, animosity towards Venezuelan migrants will likely continue to grow. As the scale of the exodus grows, these refugees will be scapegoated for economic shortcomings in hosting countries. Populations will start to believe that Venezuelan migrants are responsible for taking their jobs and social benefits. Venezuelan refugees should be considered as permanent migrants given the deteriorating situation in their poor, directionless country. At the same time, host countries should concentrate on long-term policies to mitigate the potential political, economic, and social disturbance within their borders. A pdf of migration trends in Latin and Central America can be found here. The European Union (EU) today has more tools to address challenges in the asylum area than ever before. EU Member States in 2013 received more than 400,000 asylum applications, an increase of some 0 percent compared to that in While this total remains well below the historic peak of more than 672,000 in 1992, the system is not yet able to deliver consistent, high-quality asylum decisions and protection to all those who are entitled to them. The European Union has received a steadily increasing number of syrian asylum applicants since the conflict began in 2011, rising to a total of almost 90,000 claims by May 2014 for the 28 Member States and immediate Western European neighbors, of which some 51,000 claims were made in 2013 alone. However, with nearly 2.7 million Syrian refugees being hosted in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt, this number is arguably well within the Union s capacity to manage. Imbalances are also evident in the varying pressures felt by different Member States from asylum seeker and migrant arrivals at borders. States at the southern and southeastern frontiers, especially Italy and Greece, but also Malta, Cyprus, and Bulgaria, repeatedly ask for solidarity from other Member States to help them respond to the needs of those arriving, including for accomodation, food, medical treatment, asylum claim processing, and protection in the longer term for those found to be refugees. The most important problem of the Syrian refugee crisis has been the misinterpretation of the Syrian civil war by European countries and Syria s neighbors. Many governments have failed to foresee the longevity of the conflict. Unfortunately since the crisis started, Syrian refugees have been held in temporary refugee camps in neighboring countries, many of which have been open

8 for several years. Host countries have resisted classifying refugees as permanent settlers because of concerns that they may never return to Syria once they permanently resettled. The lack of a coherent collective plan in Europe has led to serious challenges that threaten the survival of a unified Europe itself, not to mention the long-term future of displaced Syrian refugees. Discussion Starters and Questions In general, the legal, policy, and institutional frameworks for protecting those who are displaced by humanitarian crises are woefully inadequate. Remedying the inadequacies of these frameworks presents great challenges to the international community. Protections afforded to those who are displaced by humanitarian crises should include physical and legal safeguards as well as access to humanitarian assistance and durable solutions. The legislative and administrative environment should be improved by, among other measures: completing the review of the Refugees Act 1998 to bring it in line with international standards; increasing the capacity of host communities to lend effective protection to refugees; strengthening partnership with national NGOs in refugee protection; intensifying public information aimed at combating negative attitudes towards refugees; and, supporting long term development activities in refugee hosting areas. 1. Legal recognition of protected status and equal protection should be ensured by: instituting screening/rsd procedures that are efficient and in accordance with due process of law; and, providing refugees with documents such as attestation letters for asylum seekers, identity cards, birth certificates, death certificates and marriage certificates. 2. Refugees should be protected from violence, coercion or deliberate deprivation by: enhancing security in an around camps; redoubling efforts to combat sexual and gender based violence (SGBV); ensuring that refugees receive food and non-food items in sufficient quantities; promoting school attendance and expanding opportunities for education; and working towards achieving a greater synergy in current development initiatives to strengthening the health and education sectors to the benefit of both refugees and host communities. 3. Refugees should be accorded more freedom of movement and opportunities for self reliance by harmonizing practices regarding issuance of travel/exit permits; harmonizing rules on wages and general conditions of employment for refugees to help meet demand for casual labour; helping refugees acquire marketable skills; and expanding opportunities for vocational training, and agricultural and other income generation activities in ways that also benefit host communities. The Kew Gardens principle argues that an agent has a positive responsibility to help when four conditions are present: (1) there is a critical need; (2) the agent has proximity to the need; (3) the agent has the capability to assist; (4) the agent is likely the last resort from whom help can be

9 expected. Subsequent reflection has added a fifth condition: (5) the action can be taken without disproportionate harm to the one providing assistance. What are the mental health issues of GARs (government assisted refugees) and what treatment models and/or approaches are culturally appropriate? What are some affordable alternative ways of maintaining mental health? (E.g. social groups, physical activity, nutrition, etc.) What are the health needs of older adult refugees and of refugees with disabilities? What are the impacts of health issues on social and economic integration? What are some of the barriers that refugees face in accessing existing language training programs? Do refugees face barriers in terms of access to housing? Does discrimination based on refugee status play a role in the housing market? What are the housing experiences of refugees outside of major urban centres? Is there a role for cooperative models of housing for refugee settlement? What are the settlement outcomes for refugees (e.g. labour market participation, use of provincial income support, impact of language requirement for citizenship, impact of religion/spirituality)? What factors contribute to barriers/successes and how can longitudinal settlement outcomes be measured? How should integration be measured? (E.g. alternative approaches to outcome measurement with regards to employment success and other integration factors; considering refugees sense of belonging as measure of integration.) What might be some innovative ways for refugees with work experience in their home countries to use their skills? (Anecdotal evidence suggests that many refugees have transferable skills that go unrecognized.) How do these measures of settlement outcomes change for refugees and humanitarian migrants during the first few years of their settlement and with increased duration of residence? What are the factors that are associated with positive or negative changes in these measures during the settlement period? The factors that should be examined include: migrants demographic, social and economic characteristics and health status, including age, sex, marital status, country of birth, religion, English language proficiency, education, qualifications, occupational skills, pre- migration employment history, physical and mental health; migrants residential location, particularly between capital city and regional area; family situation and resources; social and ethnic networks and engagement with the community; linkages to the country of origin; pre-migration experiences including employment experience in country of origin; the migration process: the context and reasons for migration, offshore/onshore visa application, visa subclass, time spent in refugee camp and/or detention and country of location, time spent in transit countries;

10 References - REPORT OF THE TANZANIA NATIONAL CONSULTATION - Strenghtening refugee protection and meeting challenges - The Impact of Externalization of Migration Controls on the Rights of Asylum Seekers and Other Migrants Bibliography Adger,W. Neil., Juan M. Pulhin, Jon Barnett, Geoffrey D. Dabelko, Grete K. Hovelsrud, Marc Levy, Úrsula Oswald Spring, and Coleen H. Vogel Human Security. In Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, edited by Field, C.B., V.R. Barros, D.J. Dokken, K.J. Mach, M.D. Mastrandrea, T.E. Bilir, M. Chatterjee, K.L. Ebi, Y.O. Estrada, R.C. Genova, B. Girma, E.S. Kissel, A.N. Levy, S. MacCracken, P.R. Mastrandrea, and L.L.White, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Guéhenno, Jean-Marie Conflict is Key to Understanding Migration. Capitals Series: Strategic Europe. Brussels: Carnegie Europe. strategiceurope/?fa= IDMC. 2015a. Global Estimates 2015: People Displaced by Disasters. Geneva: IDMC. globalestimates-2015/ global-estimates-2015-en-v1.pdf. Martin, Susan F International Migration: Evolving Trends from the Early Twentieth Century to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CBO Martin, Susan F., Sanjula Weerasinghe, and Abbie Taylor Migration and Humanitarian Crises: Causes, Consequences and Responses. New York: Routledge Books. UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) Global Trends: Forced Displacement in Geneva: UNHCR. UNHRC (United Nations Human Rights Council) Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic. A/HRC/25/65, 25th Sess.