Standing Committee of the Executive Committee
of the High Commissioner's Programme
(29th Meeting)
9-11 March 2004

Agenda Item 5
NGO Statement on International Protection

Mr. Chairman, Distinguished Delegates,

This statement has been drafted in consultation with, and is delivered on behalf of, a wide range of NGOs.

In the NGO community, we are conscious that we, too, have a role in implementing the Agenda for Protection. NGOs are involved in a vast array of activities at the local, national, and regional levels that further the various goals of the Agenda for Protection and enhance the protection of asylum seekers, refugees, internally displaced persons, returnees, and stateless persons. In fact, a number of the goals and principles of the Agenda for Protection are mainstreamed throughout NGOs' operational and advocacy activities.

At the operational level, NGO efforts range from the development of methodologies to better ensure refugee participation in the identification and resolution of protection problems to producing handbooks to build NGO protection capacity in the field. Two such initiatives currently under development are a handbook aimed at helping NGOs to receive and respond to allegations of staff misconduct and abuse and a toolkit on camp management, which will contribute to enhancing protection.

Contributions are also being made by the NGO community to enhance international refugee protection standards. One NGO will be publishing a set of core human rights principles that are integral to ensuring that responsibility- and burden-sharing arrangements do not lose sight of the centrality of the protection of the human rights of refugees in such arrangements. It is hoped that this Standing Committee and the High Commissioner's Forum will consider ways to integrate these principles into the forthcoming ExCom Conclusion on framework considerations for responsibility-sharing. Another group of NGOs is working to better define the concept of effective protection.

For the June Standing Committee, we will attempt to obtain more detailed information on the various specific initiatives in which NGOs are involved in this respect. We hope that this will include information about the activities of NGOs on the ground, many of which are unable to attend meetings of the Standing Committee or ExCom. We would welcome information from UNHCR on related activities it is undertaking in collaboration with its NGO partners.

NGOs would also underscore an observation that the UK government and the Director of the Department of International Protection made during the EXCOM meeting in 2002: that NGOs have an important role, not only as operational and implementing partners of UNHCR, but also as intellectual partners. In this regard, we welcome the protection partnership retreat that was organised in December 2003, and would encourage UNHCR to continue this initiative and to expand such processes of consultation to the wider NGO community. We are pleased to note that the retreat recognised the complementary and mutually reinforcing interaction of UNHCR's mandate in protection and the role that NGOs can play in operationalising their responsibility in certain protection areas. We look forward to working together with UNHCR to take forward the plan of action that was developed at the retreat.

Thank you.