GLOBAL DIALOGUE
Volume 4 ● Number 4 ● Autumn 2002—The Era of Mass Migration The UNHCR: A Dynamic Agency in a Volatile World
Recently, security has been defined more broadly to encompass not only military threats to state territory but also other threats to individuals or groups, notably to their economic and social wellbeing. This latter sense of the term is widely known as “human security”. As a result, the issues that today hold the attention of governments and demand policy decisions include matters formerly regarded as belonging only to “low politics”. These once peripheral, but now central, issues include environmental problems, poverty, hunger and—the focus of this paper—unwanted and unmanaged massive human migration, both voluntary and involuntary.
In this article, I seek to describe and account for the origins and development of international multilateral activities relating to the protection and security of genuine refugees. I also identify the original mandate of the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and analyse how it has evolved—some would say expanded—during the past half century. Finally, I examine how effectively and at what cost the UNHCR has dealt with the increasing flow of involuntary migrants in the light of shifting governmental priorities that have often impeded the emergence and maintenance of a consensus within the international community. Related to these questions is the matter of ensuring the transparency of the UNHCR and its overall accountability to the many governments on its executive committee and to the United Nations itself. Origins of the UNHCRAs early as the 1920s, governments and the emerging group of international organisations under the League of Nations umbrella gradually began to pay attention to the plight of forced migrants, today usually described as refugees. Most refugees at this time were Europeans. The establishment of new states in eastern and central Europe following the demise of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the emergence of a brutal regime in the recently founded Soviet Union and forced population transfers in Asia Minor had resulted in millions of people being involuntarily displaced and sent in search of new sanctuaries. A decade later, additional millions fled civil war in Spain and totalitarian regimes in Germany and Italy.
In this interwar period, the League of Nations created the post of high commissioner for refugees, but the commissioner’s mandate and budget were extremely limited. At a time when xenophobia was rampant and the worldwide economic depression was the overwhelming priority of most governments and societies, real action to protect refugees and provide them with a haven was minimal at best. Not until the concluding months of the Second World War and the postwar years did states, urged on by humanitarian non-governmental organisations (NGOs), initiate programmes and establish operational machinery to attempt to assist persons forcibly displaced by the hostilities either to return to their homelands or become integrated into other societies.
The prevailing assumption was that the refugee phenomenon, primarily centred in Europe and involving approximately 1.5 million wartime displaced persons, was really a matter of repatriation or integration which, when accomplished, would end the need for refugee assistance schemes. With this in mind, two agencies were created for fixed terms: first, the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), between 1943 and 1947; and subsequently the International Refugee Organisation, between 1947 and 1951. The refugee phenomenon, however, did not disappear but actually grew as more and more people, initially east Europeans but later persons from other continents, fled their homelands to escape political oppression, many forms of persecution and threats to their families and ways of life.
After protracted deliberations, the UN General Assembly on 14 December 2024 passed a resolution creating the office of the UNHCR. Like its predecessor organisations, the UNHCR was initially expected to operate only for a temporary period, but as circumstances causing involuntary migration intensified, the agency became a permanent member of the UN family. The UNHCR has operated for more than half a century and continues to confront a host of seemingly intractable humanitarian and political problems, many of which go back to its infancy. An Expanding MandateAt the outset, the mandate of the UNHCR was quite limited. Basically, its objective was to ensure that bona fide refugees received fair and just treatment from governments. Consequently, governments were encouraged to adhere to the newly drafted 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. This obliged signatory states to provide a degree of legal protection to refugees within their territories, granting them such rights as asylum and permission to seek employment and receive education. The UNHCR, therefore, not only worked to have states ratify this important convention but also monitored the behaviour of signatories to ensure adherence to its provisions.
The UN General Assembly resolution that created the UNHCR also charged the new agency with the daunting task of seeking durable solutions to the world’s refugee problems. To achieve this goal, the UNHCR has focused on three options: voluntary repatriation, integration into the states where refugees have been granted asylum and resettlement in willing third countries.
During its first decade, the UNHCR attained the characteristics of a permanent structure. First, the high commissioner convinced the UN General Assembly that the UNHCR should be permitted to solicit voluntary financial contributions from governments to assist refugees when no other means of support were available. Second, an advisory committee composed of interested governments was established to counsel the high commissioner on how to manage and utilise these small voluntary contributions. Third, the advisory committee gradually evolved into an executive committee with an expanded membership that accepted additional tasks associated with the overall purpose of the UNHCR. By the agency’s tenth anniversary, its concerns had become global as Europe’s refugee crisis was surpassed in size and scope by humanitarian emergencies resulting in the dislocation of millions of distressed persons in Africa, Asia and ultimately Latin America.
The extent of and reasons for the UNHCR’s apparently changing mandate constitute a major theme of debate and inquiry among government and UNHCR policymakers, academic experts and the community of voluntary humanitarian organisations. Some attention to this dynamic mandate seems appropriate here. Since the UNHCR’s inception more than half a century ago, its activities have expanded considerably, the result of a combination of factors. The organisation’s goals and purposes have become more all-encompassing, requiring the adoption of additional strategies. This extension of operations, of which examples will be provided below, has not been welcomed by all interested and informed observers and practitioners in the refugee assistance field. Thus, it is argued that the organisation’s founding resolution clearly limited agency tasks to providing legal protection to genuine refugees and working for the eradication of the world’s refugee problems. This conservative approach asserts that the UNHCR was never intended to adopt active, operational programmes in the field. Rather, the agency was to act as a body encouraging governments to accede to the 1951 refugee convention and thus provide an adequate level of care and maintenance for deserving persons in need.
This conservative view of the agency’s mandate has not won the day. The UNHCR has actually broadened its remit, often by de facto rather than de jure methods. Yet, by whatever manner it has chosen to extend its purview, the agency is quite a different entity now compared to what was intended by government representatives at the time of its origin in the mid-twentieth century.
How, then, does the UNHCR today differ from its beginnings, when it appears more conservative strictures determined its role among governmental organisations and NGOs concerned to manage the world refugee phenomenon? Very early in the life of the UNHCR, the high commissioner, his staff and a few interested governments recognised that a limited mandate, confined to providing legal protection to refugees, was too restrictive if the mounting needs of distressed persons were to be addressed. World events gave the UNHCR the opportunity its senior management sought. When in 1956 more than two hundred thousand Hungarians fled their homeland following an unsuccessful uprising against the Soviet occupation, the United Nations enlarged the agency’s mandate to enable it to acquire voluntary donations from governments and to co-ordinate care and maintenance operations in the field. A further General Assembly resolution permitted the UNHCR to contract out certain tasks to NGOs and government agencies so as to secure adequate material assistance for refugees in need.
Throughout the next three decades, as the number of genuine refugees continued to rise substantially, particularly in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the international community, usually through the channels of the UNHCR, stepped in to help when less developed countries became overwhelmed and unable to cope. This rise in forced population movement was largely caused by the increase in violent conflict in so many parts of the world, taking the forms of external aggression, civil war and massive human rights violations. Internal Refugees and ReturneesThe most significant expansion of the UNHCR’s mandate came in the 1990s when the agency was authorised by yet another General Assembly resolution to offer protection as well as care and maintenance to persons who were not refugees as strictly defined by the 1951 convention,1 but who were in refugee-like situations. This included individuals who had not been able to flee persecution and oppression but remained within their homeland although displaced from their traditional city or region of residence. Conditions in Somalia and the former Yugoslavia typified such circumstances and the UNHCR was expected to offer whatever assistance it could to internally displaced persons in these countries.
In reporting to the General Assembly on its expanding operational activities, the UNHCR stated that its management and executive committee evinced strong support for exploring new options and that the agency would undertake new protection endeavours consistent with its mandate. Referring directly to the plight of internally displaced persons, the UNHCR said it would now offer assistance in situations where it was practically and morally untenable to make distinctions as to who should and should not receive humanitarian assistance or legal protection. Aid would be offered on the basis of need, not on the basis of earlier designated status. On occasion, the UNHCR, without first receiving permission from local authorities, has intervened to assist persons still within their country of origin. Such initiatives have also been taken by other UN specialised agencies.
My final example of how the UNHCR has expanded its mandate, although others of equal significance could be cited, concerns monitoring the wellbeing of refugees who have been repatriated, possibly prematurely. More frequently now than in the past, the UNHCR, encouraged by some government representatives on its executive committee, is endeavouring to limit costs to the agency, and to donor governments, by urging refugees to return to their homelands. While all organisations and governments involved with the world refugee phenomenon are eager to see an end to protracted population displacement, conditions in many states of origin remain politically fragile and conflict has not entirely abated. Intensifying anxiety about the welfare of returning refugees no doubt arises partly from the tragic slaughter in Rwanda in 1994 and the subsequent general turmoil and anarchy in the Great Lakes region of east Africa. Moreover, the tendency of governments to grant temporary rather than permanent asylum to refugees has also contributed to the inappropriate, premature repatriation of displaced people. These factors may have strengthened the UNHCR’s desire to monitor conditions in the states to which refugees have returned, a task not previously seen as part of the agency’s mandate. Yet, unlike the decision to provide assistance to internally displaced persons, for which numerous authorisations can be found, evidence of formal approval for the UNHCR to undertake systematic monitoring of returnees is scarce indeed.
Over the past decade, there has been a profound qualitative change in the political environment in which the UNHCR operates. The agency appears to be under mounting pressure to promote repatriation as a durable solution to the problem of mass population movement. In addition, states providing sanctuary have become more vocal in urging that their ability to accommodate refugees is finite. It should be remembered that the vast majority of refugees are in fact sheltered by economically impoverished and often politically unstable countries. Many of these less developed countries have severe difficulty in providing essential services to their own populations, let alone to unwanted refugees from neighbouring regions. It is uncertain whether the monitoring of conditions in states to which refugees have recently returned can be said to be an accepted, ongoing feature of normal UNHCR operations. The Question of FundingIn the five decades of its existence, the UNHCR has also undergone numerous administrative, managerial and other operational modifications. The changing international political environment, combined with the increasingly shrill, intransigent attitudes and policy preferences of many UNHCR member governments, have intensified the agency’s need to adapt continually. The politicisation of policy- and decision-making processes, particularly the setting of the annual budget, has undoubtedly contributed to the difficulties faced by high commissioners in trying to implement programmes. Muddling through and ad hoc measures have long characterised UNHCR missions. Refugee emergencies, budgetary shortfalls and ambiguous signals from member governments and senior UN personnel in New York provided both an explanation and a justification for the adoption of many informal administrative practices affecting the implementation of policy programmes. Whatever operational schemes or plans were utilised, the UNHCR defended them as necessary for fulfilling its ever-expanding mandate and the humanitarian requirements of the situation.
Budgetary considerations have had the biggest impact upon the structure and workings of the UNHCR. For all intents and purposes, the UNHCR’s funds come from voluntary contributions by governments. These moneys have generally been allocated to programmes for ongoing refugee care and maintenance or to special programmes for unexpected emergencies.
The agency’s budget grew substantially during the 1990s and appears to be remaining at the same high level in the early years of this new century. Between 1990 and 1992, the annual budget took an enormous leap, almost doubling from $544 million to nearly $1 billion. This unexpected growth resulted from a series of significant population displacements caused by wars and near-wars in Iraq, Somalia, Croatia and elsewhere. Following the colossal human tragedy in Rwanda, the UNHCR’s budget in 1995 surpassed $1 billion. In the world of business, this rapid growth would be reason for celebration. In the world of humanitarian agencies, it was a reflection of the anarchy and chaos that have tragically afflicted so many lives since the end of the Cold War.
Not surprisingly, as the budget has grown, monitoring by the approximately fifty governments now constituting the agency’s executive committee has increased. These governments have demanded a greater degree of accountability and transparency from the UNHCR’s departments.
Uncertainty about meeting the agency’s annual budgetary needs has mounted as the sum requested by the UNHCR has grown. Its unstable, unpredictable funding has caused a high level of anxiety among senior officials and was an important contributing factor in the resignations of two high commissioners within eighteen months in the early 1990s.
The almost annual fiscal crises resulted in the formation of a special working group of government representatives. One of its major recommendations, ultimately adopted by the executive committee, was that the UNHCR’s budget be developed only on the basis of available voluntarily donated funds rather than on projected refugee needs. While this policy change brought a greater degree of responsibility to the budgetary process, it has by no means ended the search for funds or the efforts to streamline the agency’s operations at its Geneva headquarters or in the field. The UNHCR has had to try and balance genuine humanitarian concerns with the cold, harsh truths of political and financial reality. In these early years of a new century, anxiety over funding persists and is reflected in a plethora of decisions affecting how the UNHCR accomplishes its mandate. It is clear that the challenges facing the UNHCR are enormous and the search for adequate monetary and political support for programmes must continue. Back to Basics?Many informed observers feel that the UNHCR might be better off if it returned to basics. The seemingly endless expansion of the agency’s mandate, together with the inevitable concomitant rise in financial requirements, has caused member governments on the executive committee and academic and juridical scholars to argue that the best course would be to emphasise protection rather than ambitious and costly relief programmes. Instead of being routinely designated the chief UN entity for humanitarian rescue operations, the UNHCR should concentrate on what its founders had expected it to do, namely, securing the accession of more and more governments to the 1951 convention on refugees and striving to ensure that people gain the human and civil rights guaranteed by this international legal instrument.
Proponents of making protection the priority suggest it would reduce the UNHCR’s budgetary problems and also increase the likelihood that states accommodating refugees would actually provide the material and non-material support needed by persons who have been granted asylum.
This call for a return to basics, of course, is not supported by all observers, or for that matter by much of the UNHCR senior management team. The agency, as this article has indicated, consciously rejected the narrow, confining purposes it was initially assigned. Instead, the various high commissioners during the life of the organisation have to some extent striven to leave as their legacy a more broadly based, activist, hands-on UNHCR. The office has, in fact, pulled member governments along. Rather than being a mere creation and puppet of governments, the UNHCR has routinely sought to take initiatives and act as a lead agency within the international community.
A crucial issue that UNHCR senior personnel and government representatives have had to address in recent years is the physical safety and security of the agency’s humanitarian field workers. Field personnel have been held hostage by bandits and terrorist groups; in a few deplorable instances employees have been killed, as in Guinea, East Timor and Chechnya. This rise in violence has profoundly troubled the UNHCR. Now, whenever possible, field personnel are evacuated from regions known to be particularly dangerous. But if refugees and other persons in need are to receive assistance, international humanitarian organisations must continue to take chances in order to fulfil their mandates. A Challenging FutureEven though the problems confronting the UNHCR are substantial, one should not be left entirely with an impression of despair and pessimism. Without doubt, the UNHCR continues to face considerable financial, administrative and political impediments. Moreover, the forces that cause refugee movements are still all too apparent, giving rise to a seemingly endless series of involuntary population flows on several continents. Political instability persists in many parts of the world and can cause massive population movements surprisingly quickly.
Bleak as this picture may be, the UNHCR, its mandate and its objectives retain the support of the vast majority of the international community. Moreover, the agency stands as a useful illustration of how the concept of multilateralism can be operationalised. No government today questions the need for collective action where refugees require assistance and legal protection. The UNHCR constitutes the centrepiece of an international regime intended to formulate and carry out humanitarian programmes made necessary by widespread violence and turmoil.
Despite all its difficulties, the UNHCR continues to expand its operations in order to address the chronic and the newer problems raised by the world refugee phenomenon. Like all complex bureaucratic organisations, the UNHCR, in its second half-century, will inevitably undergo managerial and administrative modifications in an effort to fulfil its mandate more adequately. The degree to which it meets its objectives will depend upon the finances available, the political will of member governments and the scale of the global refugee crisis.
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