 
UNHCR News Story: Guterres says UNHCR and NGO partners must face challenges together
UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres speaks at the annual NGO consultations at the Palais des Nations, Geneva. / UNHCR / S.Hopper / July 1, 2009
Guterres says UNHCR and NGO partners must face challenges together
GENEVA, July 1 (UNHCR) – UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres on Wednesday outlined major challenges facing his agency, including the shrinking humanitarian space, and said it was crucial to work closely with non-governmental organizations (NGO) to tackle these obstacles.
"It is indeed essential for UNHCR to keep a very close strategic relationship ... with civil society in general, and the NGO community in particular, because when one looks at the present trends in humanitarian action it is more and more clear that the challenges we face can only be overcome if we work together," Guterres told the annual UNHCR-NGO consultations in Geneva.
In his closing address to the three-day meeting in Geneva's Palais des Nations, the High Commissioner said that the shrinking human space in which forcibly displaced people can find shelter and aid workers operate, was the "biggest concern, I feel, at the present moment."
Noting that he had discussed the issue in several fora, Guterres said: "I do believe that we are facing a very dramatic change that is affecting our capacity to deliver and unfortunately I do not see any signs that things are going to get better before they get worse."
He identified three main factors behind the shrinking humanitarian space: the changing nature of conflict, particularly the multiplicity of parties involved; a hardening of attitudes on state sovereignty; and the increasingly difficult situation where humanitarian aid workers are present in conflict areas.
"It is more and more difficult to be able to guarantee to our staff the minimum of security conditions," he said, adding that this was true for NGO partners and other UN organizations. He cited the killing of two UNHCR staff and the abduction of one more in Pakistan this year as well as the slaying in northern Afghanistan of three staff from an NGO partner of the refugee agency.
Guterres also discussed the shrinking of asylum space, highlighting the development of xenophobic attitudes and its implication in the way migration and asylum are being perceived, particularly recently in Europe. "There are clear tendencies to see foreigners in general as the problem, or the enemy, and that has a serious implication for both your and our actions."
Other global challenges and "mega" trends identified by Guterres included demographic pressure; urbanization; climate change and related environmental degradation and the devastating impact of the global economic crisis on the developing world.
"With the impact of the global economic impact on our resources, and with the shrinking humanitarian space and the shrinking asylum space, I think we are in trouble," he said, adding: "To be honest, I look to 2010 as a very difficult year for our common work."
The High Commissioner outlined reforms undertaken by UNHCR to cut structural costs and channel more funds to field operations, including through NGO partners. These had helped put UNHCR in better shape to face the challenges and to enhance its partnerships – in 2008, work implemented by partners for UNHCR accounted for 35 percent of the agency's budget, up from 31 percent in 2005, according to Guterres.
Some 380 people from about 140 organizations, including 70 national NGOs, attended the meeting, which began on Monday and discussed a wide range of issues of mutual concern during regional and thematic sessions.
There was particular focus this year on urban refugees, protracted refugee situations and the agency's new global assessment programme aimed at determining the real needs of refugees and internally displaced people, the costs of meeting those needs and the consequences of any gaps.
"It's a time for UNHCR and NGOs to meet at the strategic level and for the senior staff of UNHCR to be available for questions and discussion with our partners from all over, not just the partners from Geneva or the headquarters, but also from the deep field. That's what makes it unique," Bernard Doyle, head of UNHCR's inter-agency unit, said earlier this week.
NGOs are vital partners for UNHCR, implementing programmes for refugees and internally displaced people in some of the world's most remote and difficult places.
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UNHCR News Story: Viet Nam sets the pace for Asia with new law to prevent statelessness
At home in Ho Chi Minh City, Phan Thi Phuong Loan says life is better now for her and her six-year-old daughter, Phan Nho Y, who soon will be able to start Grade One at a free state school./ UNHCR / K. McKinsey / June 2009.
Viet Nam sets the pace for Asia with new law to prevent statelessness
HO CHI MINH CITY, Viet Nam, July 1 (UNHCR) – Growing up in her native Viet Nam, Phan Thi Phuong Loan never gave a second's thought to the rights her citizenship conferred. Not, that is, until she married abroad, lost her citizenship, came back home and entered the twilight world of the stateless.
Loan, 40, is one of thousands of Vietnamese women who became stateless in the last 15 years when they married foreign men – usually from Taiwan, South Korea or China – almost always for economic reasons. In most cases they were compelled to give up their Vietnamese citizenship, but if the marriages collapsed, they ended up back in the country of their birth without any legal status.
On Wednesday, Viet Nam was set to enact a law that will keep women like Loan from falling into this trap in the future. In addition, Vietnamese authorities have been working hard over the last few years to help the stateless economic brides get their citizenship back.
Taiwan required such brides to renounce their Vietnamese citizenship to be naturalized there, but often the marriages failed before they could acquire the new nationality. The new law does not allow a Vietnamese person to renounce citizenship until the person has acquired another nationality, and also permits dual citizenship.
"I know about the new law," Loan says, sitting in her aunt's home over a sewing-machine shop. "I have been reading about it very carefully in the newspapers. It will be very helpful to a lot of women still in Taiwan. Many women there have a much worse life than I did."
Loan felt the pressure of being an "old maid" when she still hadn't found a husband at the age of 27, so she married an older Taiwanese man who promised her a ticket out of poverty.
The marriage foundered on economic woes, linguistic confusion, in-law problems and cramped living quarters. The final blow came when Loan gave birth to two daughters, not the sons her husband desperately wanted. As she tells it, he brought her back to Viet Nam to give birth the second time and then deserted her, leaving her stateless and adrift.
Between 1995 and 2007, some 144,000 Vietnamese women married foreigners, according to Vietnamese government statistics. An official survey in 2005 showed that about 10 percent of the women married in Taiwan got divorced within three years, almost all of them ending up stateless.
When Loan came back, she says she was offered several good jobs, including one as a nurse, but they all fell through because she no longer had Vietnamese citizenship. Her older daughter could not attend a free state school.
It took Loan more than two years of running from office to office to get citizenship for all three of them. It also cost her about US$1,000 to pay all the fees – a hefty sum for someone who only makes US$10 a day as a cleaning lady.
But it was well worth it, she says in the crowded bedroom-cum-living room she shares with her daughters, now aged nine and six. "Now we are like other Vietnamese," she says. "We don't have any worries about our legal status. My children can go to state schools and we can buy social insurance and health insurance, which was not the case before. Now I can own a motorcycle."
Vu Anh Son, UNHCR's chief of mission in Viet Nam, worked closely with the government to make sure the UN refugee agency's concerns for resolving and preventing statelessness were reflected in the new nationality law. "I'm glad that Vietnamese women who marry abroad will never have to become stateless again," he says.
"Statelessness is incredibly traumatic and stateless people are at greater risk of exploitation and human rights abuse, so prevention is the best possible response," says Mark Manly, head of UNHCR's statelessness unit in Geneva.
"It's very clear the Vietnamese government has taken a look at unforeseen consequences of its nationality legislation and has taken action to address these gaps," Manly added. "This demonstrates leadership in Asia."
Even so, Loan feels that at 40 it may be too late to get her life back on track in a country she says prizes youth. "I wish there had been a law like this when I got married," she says tearfully. "Then I could have returned to Vietnam without any worries. I could have returned to my company and could be earning a much better income for myself and my children. Now it's difficult for me to get a job in a company because companies require younger workers with better education. Now I will just devote the rest of my life to my two children."
By Kitty McKinsey In Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam
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UNHCR News Story: Annual UNHCR-NGO consultations begin with focus on urban refugees, protracted situations
UNHCR's annual consultations with NGO partners at the Palais des Nations, Geneva. / UNHCR / S.Hopper / June 29, 2009
Annual UNHCR-NGO consultations begin with focus on urban refugees, protracted situations
GENEVA, June 29 (UNHCR) – Annual consultations between the UN refugee agency and its non-governmental organization (NGO) partners began in Geneva on Monday, with particular focus this year on urban refugees and protracted refugee situations.
Some 380 people from about 140 organizations, including 70 national NGOs, are attending the meeting, which will discuss a wide range of issues of mutual concern over the next three days during regional and thematic sessions.
"It's a time for UNHCR and NGOs to meet at the strategic level and for the senior staff of UNHCR to be available for questions and discussion with our partners from all over, not just the partners from Geneva or the headquarters, but also from the deep field. That's what makes it unique," said Bernard Doyle, head of UNHCR's inter-agency unit.
He said the main themes to be discussed this year were protracted refugee situations, urban refugees and UNHCR's Global Needs Assessment, a worldwide programme aimed at determining the real needs of refugees and internally displaced people, the costs of meeting those needs and the consequences of any gaps.
"We have a session on Global Needs Assessment because that's a big priority and we need to discuss this more with the NGO partners."
Ed Schenkenberg, coordinator of the International Council of Voluntary Agencies, said the meeting would discuss short-term issues and longer-term policy issues. "These consultations are a unique opportunity for interactive dialogue on an equal footing between NGOs and senior UNHCR staff."
He identified some issues of concern, including tighter funding flows, the inter-agency cluster approach in dealing with internally displaced people, and the shrinking humanitarian space in which aid organizations can work and the forcibly displaced find shelter.
Schenkenberg, whose organization helped organize the consultations, expressed particular concern about the situations in Pakistan and in northern Sri Lanka. He mentioned the lack of access to camps in Sri Lanka for aid agencies and the lack of freedom of people in the camps.
He told delegates this trend of restricting the work of international NGOs was seen in a growing number of countries. "I hope we use these consultations also to look at this issue of humanitarian space of NGOs to work in countries such as Sudan, Sri Lanka and others."
UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner for Protection Erika Feller, who was also concerned about the shrinking humanitarian space, told the participants that non-governmental organizations had an incredibly important role in the area of protection.
"Not only as advocacy partners for UNHCR, but as doers of protection, and not only as implementing partners, but as partners in your own right with your own set of objectives, your own mandate responsibilities and your own contributions to make," she added.
Lloyd Dakin, director of UNHCR's Division of External Relations, stressed the importance of partnerships for the refugee agency. "We have to be able to work effectively with partners. There is no way UNHCR can deal with all of these issues on its own," he said.
"In an increasingly more complex and challenging environment we have to find ways to undertake our parnerships together as effectively as possible. And that's why these consultations are so important, because this is the opportunity where we can interact and have a true dialogue."
For the past two decades, the annual consultations have brought together NGOs and UNHCR managers to examine all aspects of their partnership on behalf of the world's uprooted people.
NGOs are vital partners for UNHCR, implementing programmes for refugees and internally displaced people in some of the world's most remote and difficult places. The UN refugee agency works with more than 600 NGOs worldwide.
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UNHCR News Story: Resettlement of Myanmar refugees from Thailand camps hits 50,000 mark
Plu Reh sets off for the bus station on the first leg of his journey to Bangkok and then by plane to the United States. UNHCR/U. Furukawa / June 2009.
Resettlement of Myanmar refugees from Thailand camps hits 50,000 mark
MAE HONG SON, Thailand, June 30 (UNHCR) – With a look of apprehension on his face, a traditional woven pink bag slung over his shoulder and his wife and baby daughter at his side, a young school teacher today became the 50,000th refugee from Myanmar to be resettled from Thailand under the largest resettlement programme in the world.
"There's no hope in a refugee camp and I cannot go back to my country," said 23-year-old ethnic Karenni, Plu Reh, on Sunday as he waited for one final medical check before boarding a bus for Bangkok, where on Tuesday he caught a plane for the United States. He and his 20-year-old wife will settle in Camden, New Jersey, with their two-year-old daughter.
Despite some nervousness at the coming 28-hour flight into the unknown, Plu Reh said he was looking forward to his new life. "I heard mostly positive things about the States," said the refugee, who taught health and social studies to Grade 3 and Grade 4 students at one of the primary schools in Ban Mae Nai Soi camp in northern Thailand's Mae Hong Son province.
"If you work hard, you can achieve many things there. I want to continue studying in the US. Education is important not only for my child, but also for us to improve our lives." A member of Myanmar's ethnic Karenni minority, he fled to the refugee camp – still home to some 18,000 refugees – in 1996.
"Life in Burma was very difficult," he recalled. "We have no rights, no work and no education." He said soldiers "often raided our village to take away food and people to use as porters."
After the United States made a generous offer of resettlement to registered refugees in the nine camps along the Thai-Myanmar border in 2005, Plu Reh decided to apply because "my child has no opportunities in the camp. The most important thing for us is that my child gets an education."
The highly successful resettlement programme has provided new hope for refugees in the camps in Thailand, said UNHCR Resettlement Officer Oliver Smith. With little hope that refugees can return to Myanmar in the foreseeable future, and scant possibility that they can settle permanently in Thailand, resettlement to a third country is often the best prospect. There are still just over 112,000 registered refugees in the nine camps.
"We at UNHCR are very grateful to resettlement countries for changing the lives of 50,000 people so far by so generously giving them a chance to start over again," said Smith. "This represents an enormous accomplishment for the Myanmar refugees. It's not often that we can mark such a positive milestone when so many refugees can find such a hopeful solution to their plight."
Major resettlement countries accepting refugees from Thailand are the US, Australia and Canada, with Finland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden also accepting significant numbers. His year, a further 6,000 to 7,000 refugees are expected to depart from Thailand to start new lives abroad.
For Plu Reh, going so far away from Myanmar certainly does not mean turning his back on his homeland. Speaking again of the higher education he and his wife hope to get in the US, he said: "If we have education, we will be able to help my country and our people in the future."
By Urara Furukawa
In Mae Hong Son, Thailand
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UNHCR News Story:Iraqi refugee youngster flown to Monaco from Syria for heart surgery
Basim in France with the host family he will be staying with.
Credit: Michele Faramia/ Rencontres Africaines
Iraqi refugee youngster flown to Monaco from Syria for heart surgery
MONTE CARLO, Monaco, June 30 (UNHCR) – An infant Iraqi refugee has been flown to Europe for live-saving surgery under an accord signed here less than two weeks ago between UNHCR and the Mediterranean principality of Monaco.
Basim Omar Basim, aged two-and-a-half, flew out of Damascus on Friday and is being looked after by a host family in southern France. Basim, the first child to benefit under the landmark agreement signed on World Refuge Day (June 20), is expected to undergo heart surgery in Monaco early next week.
"This child's departure for Monaco gives a concrete expression of the benefits of the agreement and we hope more medical evacuations will follow in the near future," Philippe Leclerc, UNHCR's acting representative in Syria, said shortly before the young boy left for Europe.
Basim was chosen for surgery when two Monegasque doctors, François Bourlon, a cardio-thoracic paediatrician, and orthopaedic surgeon Tristan Lascar, were flown to Damascus by UNHCR and the Monaco government in early March to examine Iraqi refugee children in need of medical treatment not available in Syria.
Dr. Bourlon recommended that the seriously ill young Iraqi be sent to Monaco for urgent surgery, believing that it would improve his chances of survival. Basim was flown free of charge to Monaco by the Aviation Sans Frontieres charity. "This complicated and very expensive open-heart surgery is not possible in Syria," explained Adam Musa Khalifa, UNHCR's senior public health officer in Damascus.
Basim's family were not able to travel to Syria and they have found it difficult being without their son, but they realize that this is a crucial and rare opportunity that could ensure that he lives a healthy, dignified and long life.
Funds for the programme were raised last year by various charity groups to mark Prince Albert of Monaco's 50th birthday. UNHCR has been handling administrative and logistical aspects of the programme as well as working with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent to identify children in need of care.
The Principality of Monaco, situated on the French Riviera, is the world's second smallest independent nation. It has a surface area of 196 hectares (485 acres) and is home to around 32,000 people, making it one of the most densely populated countries on earth.
Francois Hurstel in Damascus, Syria contributed to this article
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Uploaded on Jul 1, 2009
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