Unhappy 50th birthday for refugee commission

Next week is the 50th anniversary of the signing of the 1951 Refugee Convention, the most important instrument of refugee law. Yet in its smart offices in Geneva and in its camps across the world, where it tends for 22 million refugees and displaced people, morale in the United Nations High Commission for Refugees is close to rock bottom. Almost 600 staff are being sacked and several of its foreign operations are being cut back dramatically to make up a budget shortfall of $100 million.

When former Dutch prime minister Ruud Lubbers took over as High Commissioner at the beginning of this year, the organisation's budget estimates predicted that - as happened last year, and the year before - several donor governments would not pay the total sum they had pledged to give.

So Mr Lubbers decided to cut staff and operations by 15 per cent - to make up the shortfall. This means withdrawing aid to some of the most desperate and needy people in the world. Many at UNHCR, as well as those who work with refugees, are deeply critical of his approach.

Mr Lubbers, who is also a former businessman and economist, says he doesn't want to cut programmes and sack people, but argues that it is better to face reality and cut in a planned way. He says this makes more sense than to follow the practice of previous years and simply freeze programmes and activities once the money suddenly runs out.

He is outspoken in criticising governments for not honouring their pledges of cash and for simply not giving enough. "We should say to governments: It's a scandal that you are not funding UNHCR to the extent that they cannot provide the basic assistance and make it possible for us to do our work. That's the way I see it." But when UNHCR stops funding, the problem doesn't go away. Other aid organisations try to step in where they can to take on the work left undone. Some may even get extra money from their governments who reckon paying national non-government aid organisations keeps their aid money in the country and gives them more control over its use. But, overall, the work hit by cutbacks to the UN agency will not and cannot be picked up completely by others.

Ms Beth Ferris, refugee policy director for the World Council of Churches, explains that the cuts will directly affect other charities in the field and the local churches: "When UNHCR cuts its budget, particularly money that goes to care for refugees, those refugees and internally displaced people turn to the churches. They always have and they always will and so that trend of budget-cutting has a direct impact on churches, particularly churches in poor countries where they are often in the front line of providing services to displaced people and refugees."

Most of UNHCR's work is funded by governments. The largest funder is the United States, which gives just over a quarter, Britain is paying almost $35 million this year and Ireland is paying $3.5 million - less than 1 per cent. France, which only pays around 1 per cent, is viewed as one of those countries that is underfunding. Mr Lubbers also wants the European Commission to give more than its current 14 per cent.

"I do not see any reason why Brussels would not relate to UNHCR the same way as, say, Washington," he says.

UNHCR is cutting its budget from more than $9.5 billion to $8.5 billion and is axing almost 600 jobs. In Africa, it is cutting back almost three-quarters of the funding to its operations. In at least 10 countries: Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Gambia, Kuwait, Mali, Niger, Swaziland, Togo, UAE and Vietnam, it plans to close offices completely. This has led to concerns that urban refugees, those arriving in towns in small numbers, may be stranded with very little help and at risk. Ms Rachel Reilly, refugee policy director for the New York agency, Human Rights Watch, says the closure of whole country offices will affect a group known as urban refugees.

"In some countries, like Gambia, Benin, Chad, Mali, we know there are asylum-seekers coming from far afield from countries like Iran and Iraq who are in desperate need of protection. They will arrive and find there are no UNHCR offices to go to. And often the cuts are being made in countries which do not have in place their own asylum determination procedures and where refugees really are at serious risk of arrest, detention and even deportation."

The UNHCR charter makes it specifically responsible for refugees, but there is another substantial group of people who share a similar plight - those uprooted and forced to flee their homes, perhaps by civil war but who stay within a country's borders. This group are not technically refugees, because they have not crossed an internationally recognised border. They are known as internally displaced people, or IDPs, and in certain situations, UNHCR may also support them. Currently about a quarter of those it assists - just over five million - are IDPs.

Human Rights Watch argues that IDPs could be badly affected by the cuts. Ms Reilly says this is because UNHCR is placing funding for internally displaced people into a special funding basket. So the future of those programmes will depend on donors' willingness to provide funding. And she cites programmes in Sri Lanka, Columbia, Angola and Eritrea that are at risk, because the funding is insecure.

Mr Lubbers defends this approach, saying that some IDPs are in large programmes, for example those in Guinea, where they can't be split from refugees and are funded together as one programme. Their funding is assured. Those in the group classed as special projects are brought directly before donors, who have agreed to fully fund Columbia, Eritrea and Sri Lanka programmes, but have not provided cash for Angola.

This has caused disquiet in the aid world. Ms Ferris says the situation in Angola is critical: "Churches have been working like crazy for more than 30 years with victims of the war, including increasing numbers of internally displaced people." And she says in Sri Lanka her organisation is already picking up work that UNHCR is not doing, so she is concerned about the uncertainly of further funding.

The other concern voiced by critics of the cutbacks is that UNHCR is withdrawing from work that it is uniquely fitted to carry out because it is an international organisation. This means it has a mandate from governments and is accountable to governments. So it can intervene in delicate situations with recalcitrant governments with credibility and authority. Non-governmental aid groups simply don't have that same clout.

As a top politician, Mr Ruud Lubbers is used to playing political hardball. And for as long as his calls for appropriate funding go unheeded, many say he is simply accepting reality and making it clear that if donors don't pay up, they will have to accept the consequences.

But in making these cuts now he is abandoning hope of pinning all governments to their pledges for this year. As a result, it is not the donor governments - but the most needy people in the world - who will pay the price.