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Anti-Warehousing Campaign Listserv
This is the first listserv bulletin of the U.S. Committee for Refugees'
campaign to end refugee warehousing. Please feel free to pass it around. I'm
going to try to send no more than two bulletins per week. If you don't want to
get them, there are easy instructions at the end of this message for getting
off.
This bulletin is an update on what we've been up to since release of World
Refugee Survey 2004-Warehousing Issue last May. In case the links on this
don't work, we've set up a cyber "headquarters" for the campaign at
www.refugees.org/warehousing where you'll find most of the documents I cite
here. We welcome your comments and would like to report on your activities in
the next bulletin. Here's what's covered in this one:
Sign-on Statement
Survey Rollout and Media Work
U.S. Congress and Administration
UNHCR
Other NGO Statements
Site Visit to the Levant
Upcoming Plans
Sign-on Statement
The "Statement Calling for Solutions to End the Warehousing of Refugees"
currently has more than four dozen organizational endorsements from all over
the world including most major international refugee, human rights, and
humanitarian groups, more than a dozen groups from the developing world, and
notable individuals including major refugee scholars (Stephen Castles, Guy
Goodwin-Gill, Barbara Harrell-Bond, James Hathaway, Karen Jacobsen, Gil
Loescher) and three Copenhagen Consensus participants (two of them Nobel
laureates). Members of the Refugee Council USA issued their own sign-on
statement June 14 and links to statements of other NGOs are also on the Anti-
warehousing Campaign website.
Survey Rollout and Media Work
Before the public rollout of World Refugee Survey 2004-Warehousing Issue, we
held private "heads up" briefings for our colleagues in InterAction, Refugee
Council USA, the DC office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR),
and the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Population Refugees and Migration.
On May 24 we held a press conference at the National Press Club to officially
release the Survey. It was televised live on C-SPAN Channel One and was
covered by Associated Press, Agence France Presse, Inter Press Service, United
Press International, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Columbus Dispatch, and
Voice of America News reports; articles in Dutch, German, French, and Spanish
newspapers; radio and newspaper reports in Australia, Canada, Colombia, the
Czech Republic, Eritrea, Indonesia, Iran, South Africa, South Korea, Spain,
the UK, and elsewhere; and by at least 35 local television stations throughout
the United States. The AP, AFP, and UPI wire reports were published in scores
of newspapers around the world and on many websites. (The coverage is
summarized with links to a few of the major articles under the "Articles"
button on the website.) We also published a special issue of Refugee Reports
on warehousing.
May 25-28, we presented the Survey at the Council of Foreign Relations and the
UN Correspondents Association in New York and at the Migration Policy
Institute in Washington. Since then we continue to present it at State Refugee
Coordinators conferences, national voluntary agency meetings, churches, and
academic gatherings. At a June 1 conference on community and faith-based
initiatives where President Bush cited several compelling refugees stories, I
managed to thank him and place a copy of the Survey into his hands without
being wrestled to the ground by Secret Service agents.
On June 4, Philip Peters of the Lexington Institute wrote a great op-ed for
Scripps Howard entitled "America should help refugees instead of 'warehousing'
them." On June 7, we issued a press release calling on the Saudi's to release
the Iraqis warehoused more than 13 years in Rafha Refugee Camp. On June 20th
(World Refugee Day), the Toronto Star ran a moving article, "Rafha camp: 'I
felt I had been robbed of my childhood," and we got a great editorial in the
Miami Herald ("Hope for a normal life after fleeing persecution: Our opinion:
End the indefinite warehousing of refugees").
Most recently, G. Jeffrey MacDonald penned an excellent piece that ran in the
July 22 Christian Science Monitor and again as "'Warehoused' refugees are
caught between conflicts and closed doors" in the July 24 Seattle Times.
U.S. Congress and Administration
On June 14, we briefed about two dozen U.S. Senate staffers from both parties
on the Survey and refugee warehousing and in July met with staffers from the
House International Relations Committee.
On June 18, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) issued a World Refugee Day floor
statement including:
While camps are intended to be way stations, ... they too often become
warehouses. Seven million of the world's 12 million refugees have lived in
camps or segregated settlements for more than 10 years. Think of that: seven
million people who have each forfeited a decade of human potential. The
international community never intended that it be this way. The 1951
Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol - signed
by the United States - give refugees the right to be recognized before the
law, to move freely, to earn a living, and to own property. But in many cases,
these rights are not respected and the loss of human potential endures. There
are no easy solutions to the warehousing problem, but such treatment is
unacceptable.
(Emphasis in original. See also our June 22 press release.)
Senators Brownback (R-Kan.) and Kennedy (D-Mass.) are considering a Senate
resolution condemning refugee warehousing which we hope will pass unanimously
next month. The Refugee Caucus of the House of Representatives plans to
introduce a companion resolution. We also hope to have Members raise the issue
at the annual consultations on refugee admissions between the Administration
and Congress.
Under the "Millennium Challenge Account," the U.S. may condition some
development assistance on a number of criteria. We are exploring whether and
how we might add basic anti-warehousing refugee protections such as the right
to work and freedom of movement to the list.
UNHCR
We expected UNHCR to be a tough audience but, from what we heard in Geneva,
the anti-warehousing campaign could not have been better timed. Many in the
agency seem to be genuinely tired of the long-term care-and-maintenance
approach and long to revive the full protection mandate. But UNHCR is a large
institution and about as nimble as an oil tanker in changing direction. Every
positive statement seems to be matched by another indication of the old ways
dying hard. We try to strike a balance between lifting up its good examples
and smartly critiquing its shortcomings.
Lately an alphabet soup of initiatives has been developed but most of these
programs seem studiously to avoid a rights-based protection approach-kinda
like the Vatican shying away from quoting from the Bible, no? What they will
amount to in ending warehousing remains to be seen.
On June 4, we submitted comments on UNHCR's Group Profile & Proposal document
for the upcoming Annual Tripartite Consultations (ATC) on resettlement in
Geneva. On June 15, USCR Executive Director Lavinia Limón went to the ATC
meeting in Geneva to raise more forcefully the consequences of warehousing and
the strategic use of resettlement to end it.
On June 10, UNHCR issued a remarkable "Protracted Refugee Situations" document
for the upcoming Standing Committee meeting where they affirmed important anti-
warehousing principles, including:
a) that the severity of "protracted situations" depends more on the
conditions, particularly with regard to access to land and/or labor markets,
than on duration; [PARA]b) that refugee reliance on external assistance is
often due to deprivation of basic rights, including restrictions on employment
and movement, and confinement to camps; [PARA]c) that confinement to camps,
while perhaps necessary in times of crisis, is "not in conformity with the
rights enshrined in refugee instruments;" [PARA]d) that spending on care and
maintenance, while often necessary, "can only ensure that such situations are
perpetuated, not solved;" and [PARA]e) that steps to ensure that refugees
enjoy basic Convention rights, including those necessary for self-reliance,
are "core, mandate functions" of the agency applicable even in the absence of
immediate durable solution prospects.
Unfortunately, these statements were undermined by concrete examples given in
the document of UNHCR phasing out assistance to refugees even where they still
do not enjoy these basic rights.
USCR led in drafting the NGO response Director of Research and Policy Analysis
Greg Chen delivered to the Standing Committee in Geneva on July 1 and ensured
that the Executive Committee (ExCom) will address warehousing during its
upcoming October session. ExCom has yet to issue any Conclusions on protracted
refugee situations. Perhaps it's time they did.
At the Standing Committee meeting, Hazel Reitz of the U.S. State Department
commended all in attendance to read the Survey's theme piece, "Warehousing
Refugees: A Denial of Rights, a Waste of Humanity" by yours truly. UNHCR
invited Greg to attend the August conference in Zambia of several African
governments to discuss new ways of hosting refugees. (More news on this when
he gets back.)
On July 21, we issued a tart response to UNHCR's June 25 Convention Plus
document, "Basic propositions on irregular secondary migration." We noted that
it managed to mention protection more than a dozen times without once
specifying that protection must include basic Convention rights to work and
freedom of movement and that the denial of these rights to more than 7 million
of the world's 12 million refugees has a lot to do with such "irregular"
movements.
Other NGO Statements
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops reprinted the May 22 Catholic News
Service release on the Survey and warehousing. The Refugee Council USA issued
a member sign-on statement June 14. Episcopal Migration Ministries and Jesuit
Refugee Service/USA each came out with anti-warehousing statements for World
Refugee Day. Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service's president, Ralston
Deffenbaugh, did an excellent "From the President's Desk" piece on the Survey
and warehousing in the July FYI.
Site Visit to the Levant
Policy Analyst Lisa Raffonelli just got back from a 5-week visit to Lebanon,
Syria, and Jordan this summer to meet with refugees, community leaders,
government officials, and international organizations and initiate discussions
about ending the warehousing of refugees in the region. (See "With Palestine,
against the Palestinians: Warehousing Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon.")
She visited 14 refugee camps during the 5-week visit, assessing conditions on
the ground and ideas about how to move forward. Unlike Syria, which has
integrated Palestinian refugees with full rights short of citizenship, Lebanon
has denied them nearly all Convention rights and views the issue as "100% non-
negotiable." Apparently they are even against refugees' sewage being
integrated: development organizations abandoned work on a new treatment
facility in one southern camp when authorities denied access to the city
lines, after orally agreeing to grant permission for the tie-in!
With increasing unemployment, deteriorating living conditions, and declining
assistance, conditions are bleak. Yet, the refugees remain hopeful that
someday things will get better. In the words of one Palestinian refugee living
in Beirut's Bourj el-Barajneh camp, "We are prepared to fulfill our
obligations in terms of Lebanese law, and we are doing that, but we want our
rights as Arabs, as exiled refugees, just as Syria treats us-we are not
interested in political participation, we just want our rights."
Upcoming Plans
Greg is at UNHCR's conference with African government reps in Zambia as I
write and goes on to Tanzania in the second half of August to meet with local
NGOs to advance the anti-warehousing campaign there.
Our development director, Peter Kranstover, will make a fact-finding trip to
Chad from September 1-15 to investigate assistance delivery to the 200,000
Sudanese refugees from Darfur (warehousing-in-the-making?), how urban and
other non-encamped refugees are getting by, whether local Chadian hosts are
being properly compensated, etc.
I will represent the organization and re-release the anti-warehousing sign-on
statement at the UN's NGO conference in New York on September 8. We have a
meeting with a VP of the World Bank on the 9th and I should be going to the
Pre-ExCom and ExCom meetings in Geneva in late September and early October. If
you're also going, let me know and maybe we can meet up.
In January, I hope to be at the International Association for the Study of
Forced Migration conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil, participating in panels on
warehousing and urban refugees with Kasia Grabska, Barbara Harrell-Bond, Karen
Jacobsen, Loren Landau, Sarah Dryden Peterson, Tara Polzer, and Roos Willems.
USCR also hopes to lead a Congressional fact-finding delegation on warehousing
in Thailand and Nepal in January.
Conclusion
I know that's a lot to absorb! Sorry it's taken so long to get this up and
running. Future bulletins, which I will try to limit to two per week, should
be timelier and briefer. In the next one, I want to focus on what you have
been doing, where you think the campaign should go, and what you would like to
see in future bulletins. So please write and tell me.
In future bulletins I may also briefly review a few books I've been reading
lately including Stephen John Stedman and Fred Tanner (eds.), Refugee
Manipulation: War, Politics, and the Abuse of Human Suffering; Fiona Terry,
Condemned to Repeat? The Paradox of Humanitarian Action; and Guglielmo
Verdirame and Barbara Harrell-Bond's Rights in Exile: Janus-Faced
Humanitarianism. If any of you have any comments on them, please send them as
well.
Merrill Smith
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