Warden to an endless human tragedy

The UN refugee agency, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), has a stated purpose to lead, coordinate and safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees worldwide. It exists to ensure "everyone can exercise the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge in another State, with the option to return home voluntarily, integrate locally or to resettle in a third country." And by UNHCR's own count, business is unfortunately quite good, and has only been getting better since the agency was established at the end of 1950. UNHCR today lists 31 million people to be in some state of concern around the world -- directly assisting 4.5 out of 11 million refugees, and advocating for the rest. It's an admirable job, with Africa, the Middle East and Asia, getting most of the attention. Wherever there is trouble, you'll probably find the UNHCR logo fluttering in the parched, smoky and quite possibly, violent winds.

Critics of UNHCR however hardly see the agency doing anything admirable, and charge that the agency's main focus is not its mandate or tragic charges, but rather the agency's own continued existence. The numbers bear out the accusations -- instead of improving the lot for asylum seeks fleeing war, political violence, rape and murder -- UNHCR has morphed into the patron for "prisons of the stateless" -- providing a haven for those who prey on the weak and defenseless. Part of the problem is the structure of UNHCR. It's not part of the UN General Assembly, but is an independent agency that operates on its own mandate, which is dictated by the whims of the rich donor countries, of which we're one. Instead of finding safe refuge elsewhere in the world for those fleeing conflicts, rich countries prefer to locate refugees in temporary camps in countries not far from their home -- or even within their own countries. Rich countries balk at extending a sustained hand to the plague of refugees. With no home, temporary camps become the home for generations who will know nothing else.

UNHCR is doing some navel gazing with the publication of "A surrogate state? The role of UNHCR in the protracted refugee situations" -- a research paper coauthored by one of their number. The paper accepts the criticism and recognizes that it needs to do more to extract itself and its wards from the protracted situation it has inadvertently created. Knowing the problem however, and working towards sustained solutions however, is easier said than done. The political will simply doesn't exist in the world. Worse yet, UNHCR has become a state for the stateless, and getting out of that bind is going to be even more difficult than corralling the global political will to do the right thing.