54th Session of the Executive Committee of the
UN High Commissioner for Refugees' Programme
29 September - 3 October 2003

PROGRAMME, ADMINISTRATIVE, AND FINANCIAL MATTERS

NGO SUBMISSION FACILITATED BY ICVA WITH INPUT FROM A WIDE VARIETY OF NGOS
2 October 2003

Mr. Chairman,

One of the principal themes of the 2003 UNHCR-NGO Pre-ExCom consultations has been partnership.

NGOs welcome the High Commissioner's renewed emphasis on the value and role of partnership expressed in the IOM/FOM he has issued. We also welcome this opportunity to reiterate our conviction that partnership is a way of leveraging potential and resources to better meet the needs of affected populations. Partnership should be neither a short-cut nor a cut-price option. The IOM/FOM provides a good starting point for a more detailed discussion in both headquarters and the field of what partnership and burden-sharing should entail. We appreciate it as a critical further step in a process that is of paramount importance to us all, and to refugees most of all. We look forward to working with UNHCR in working out the details and mechanisms of how to ensure a consistent and inclusive approach to implementing it in all areas of operations.

We would like to share our concerns that the definition of partnership implied in the IOM/FOM suggests that it is based principally on the financial resources that a partner can bring to the table. We would like to stress that the capacity, competence, and experience of NGOs are also important indicators and ingredients of partnership. Although we recognise that many Northern NGOs are in a position to contribute some of their own resources from other sources to complement donor funding to UNHCR, it is important to recognise that smaller international NGOs and local and national NGOs, whose access to Northern networks and resources is already limited, would be severely and inappropriately penalised if the provision of own resources became a criteria for partnership.

The IOM/FOM does not overtly speak to the possibility of improved partnership opening up opportunities for enhanced advocacy to donors for adequate support. NGOs are prepared to play their role in this, and we exhort our UNHCR partners and the donors to play theirs. We can all agree that the greatest responsibility for funding this vital humanitarian work rests with governments, and we believe it is worth repeating that those whom funding gaps affect the most fundamentally are not UNHCR or the NGOs, but the refugees themselves.

We note and welcome warmly the efforts made in recent years by UNHCR to invest in building the capacity of local and national partner NGOs and agree that international NGOs should also increase their existing efforts in this area. We must all be vigilant not to waste that investment by limiting those organisations' access to the very funds that allow them to exercise and further develop that hard-earned capacity and experience. It is those organisations that should become the backbone of a standing capacity to respond to refugee issues in their areas of origin, and we hope we can agree that this is an objective towards which we should all be working in concert.

The shift towards needs-based budgeting and joint assessments and planning outlined in the IOM/FOM and UNHCR's commitment to develop a situation analysis tool are both supported and applauded by NGOs. We have long advocated for such a shift in order to be able to meet better the protection and assistance needs of refugees and we note that this approach chimes well with the positive steps being made by donor governments through the Good Donorship Initiative. A needs-based budgeting process requires commitment and transparency on all sides and will undoubtedly increase the trust and equality in partnership. In light of the cost-efficiency for which the High Commissioner commends partners, we hope that this transparency will extend to recognising and supporting the reasonable operating costs of NGOs, especially including security costs.

In this spirit, focusing on maximum benefit to beneficiaries in a framework of cost-effectiveness and cost-efficiency, we also call on UNHCR to work with us in making better, and more creative, use of programme and logistical resources - a key facet of our joint efforts.

We were impressed by the efforts reported to us by UNHCR and its partners in Sierra Leone to inform refugees about expenditures on programmes of which they were the beneficiaries. Building on that, we hope that both we and UNHCR can improve our record in working with all key stakeholders, including the refugees themselves, not just in reviewing our performance as partners, but in planning, fundraising for, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating that performance. A crucial feature of this joint budgeting and programming process should be recognising and planning for the vital role that community services, and education in particular, play in protection and sustainable assistance for every refugee.

On the practical options for taking advantage of partnership relationships suggested by the High Commissioner, we welcome and support his consistent emphasis that standards must not drop even where the volume of services provided significantly rises. We emphasise again the existence of minimum standards and reaffirm our own commitment to achieving those and to supporting UNHCR to do the same.

The essential question remains, however, that a gap may still persist between available resources and those required to meet needs. Given that donors are currently unable to commit to fund the full requirements of resource-based budgets, and given that UNHCR's pilot exercises have shown that needs-based budgets will in fact be significantly higher than these, NGOs call on donors to make a new commitment to fully support the needs-based budgets which they themselves will be involved in developing. Approving UNHCR's budget also entails a responsibility to ensure that budget's full funding.

In conclusion, we call on ExCom and UNHCR to continue to work with us to develop further and implement improved strategies for partnership and to ensure that needs-based funding is appropriate and sufficient to support the needs of displaced people. This will enable NGOs and UNHCR to enhance protection and promote durable solutions that meet minimum standards for refugees and IDPs around the world.

Thank you.