Standing Committee of the Executive Committee
of the High Commissioner's Programme (30th Meeting)
29 June - 1 July 2004

NGO Statement on the
Note on International Protection
Agenda Item 4 (i)

Thank you Mr. Chairman.

This statement is delivered on behalf of NGOs.

As stated, the purpose of the Note on International Protection is "to draw attention to the main refugee protection challenges which emerged over the preceding period." The Note is one of the few tools that exist in the humanitarian community to examine the state of protection. We strongly support how Ms Feller yesterday described the role and place of the debate on the Note in the work of the Standing Committee. It should serve as an annual "health check" on the state of protection of refugees and others of concern to UNHCR, which is issued by UNHCR as part of its duties.

While this year's Note addresses some protection challenges and many of the achievements made in the last year, it is always difficult to be comprehensive in listing all the challenges. There are numerous situations around the world where protection remains a challenge and improvements need to be made. We spoke to a number of these situations during the March Standing Committee and in the past, our interventions on the Note have touched on several situations of concern. This year, however, we feel that we should focus on the biggest protection challenge facing us all in the hopes that improvements can be quickly made.

Without a doubt, the situation in the Darfur region of Western Sudan is the biggest failure in protection with regards to the civilian population. The atrocities that have been, and continue to be, committed have contributed to the displacement of over 1 million people.

On the Chad side, there are a number of protection challenges that UNHCR and the international community need to urgently address. Incursions across the border from Sudan by Janjaweed militias continue leaving refugees gathered along the border at risk. There is also a proliferation of arms in the border area further contributing to the insecurity faced by refugees and the host population.

We understand that UNHCR is in the process of establishing critically needed additional camps and that the contingency planning figures are now at 400,000. These figures are four times as high as originally planned and there must be adequate support provided by donors to enable UNHCR and other agencies to prepare for such numbers. The attempts to move refugees further inland away from the border are welcomed and must continue without delay in order to ensure better protection.

We must also ensure, however, that services and protection needs in earlier camps are not neglected, but rather enhanced and that protection is not limited to the refugees that are in camps.

NGOs on the ground are concerned about UNHCR's capacity with regard to protection and security staffing in the field. With improvements in terms of capacity, as well as better coordination with its operational partners, the response to the refugees in Chad could be much improved. We welcome the fact that a UNHCR emergency team has recently been sent back now, but do feel that the emergency team that was sent to Chad earlier this year was prematurely withdrawn. We are concerned that bureaucratic processes and obstacles inside UNHCR have resulted in inadequate protection and assistance in what continues to be an emergency situation.

We very much welcome the decision of UNHCR to conduct a real-time evaluation in Chad. It is critical that the findings and recommendations of this evaluation be shared widely and followed up as a top priority by the agency, donors, and partners.

The situation inside Darfur is even more concerning. Given the scale of the humanitarian crisis, we should not be facing a situation where agencies are still in the process of setting up or increasing their operations. Humanitarian operations are scaling up, but still not to the extent required. The predictions remain for large numbers of deaths in Darfur - deaths that could, and should, have been avoided if adequate steps had been taken sooner. There have been a number of obstacles in place making it difficult for humanitarian organisations to start up or increase their operations. Yet even without those obstacles, it is unclear whether or not there would have been adequate protection and assistance provided by the humanitarian community. With such a massive crisis, resources should not be dictating the parameters of a humanitarian response and the absence of mandates should not be used as an excuse - the humanitarian response must be based on humanitarian need.

The protection gaps facing those in Darfur are even greater than in Chad. NGOs working in Darfur continue to ask why more is not being done to ensure protection for the population in Darfur. The glaring gap in protection must be filled and there is a moral responsibility, if not a mandated one, to ensure that a UN agency or agencies step up to the plate. All humanitarian operations in Darfur must ensure that a protection lens is used in designing and implementing programmes so as to ensure that humanitarian aid does not put people at greater risk. But humanitarian programmes run by NGOs alone will not provide enough protection.

Human rights monitors are still not on the ground in Darfur though humanitarian organisations continue to witness gross violations. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has been talking about getting monitors on the ground for weeks now, but it seems that there are still obstacles in place to ensuring their admission.

There is also a serious shortage of staff with protection expertise on the ground. The response to internal displacement is supposed to be a collaborative one from the UN side in cases where a government is unable or unwilling to provide adequate protection. That collaborative response is supposed to ensure assistance and protection. Yet in Darfur, that protection (not to mention assistance), to date, has been inadequate and begs the question of what is going wrong.

While UNHCR is just starting up a presence in Darfur, this IDP situation is one in which UNHCR must be involved in given its protection experience. Darfur is clearly a situation in which UNHCR should be playing a critical protection role as outlined in its policy paper presented to the Standing Committee in June 2000. UNHCR offices cannot be opened up in preparation for returns without also providing much-needed protection in the midst of an IDP crisis. We are extremely concerned about the low numbers of UNHCR specialist protection staff deployed to Darfur. UNHCR's donors must also ensure that adequate support is provided to enable UNHCR to take on this much-sought after protection function.

Protection Partnerships

Turning briefly to a few other general issues raised in the Note and by the Director of International Protection. The protection retreat held with some NGOs in December was a welcomed initiative and one that should be continued. Many of the recommendations that came out of the retreat were useful in terms of moving protection partnerships forward and we hope that in the future, a broader group of NGOs can become involved.

One of the most practical recommendations coming out of the retreat was to ensure that UNHCR staff meet regularly with NGOs to discuss protection issues. Ideally, this dialogue should happen within the framework of protection working groups, which should be institutionalised in all situations where UNHCR works. In this regard, we hope that UNHCR will be issuing an instruction to the field related to this issue shortly.

In the context of these protection discussions that should take place at the field level, we would like to make the link here with the call, once again, from the Director of International Protection to hear from NGOs of how we are implementing the Agenda for Protection. We appreciate the detail in which UNHCR has gone to demonstrate its commitment to actively implement the Agenda for Protection. While we could provide you with various examples here, we feel that it is more effective for updates and dialogue on implementation of the Agenda to be based at the field level. As Ms Feller noted, the Agenda provides a framework for planning for field offices - that planning should be done in partnership with NGOs and any reporting on implementation done with NGOs as well. In Australia, there has been a joint effort to report on implementation of the Agenda, which is an example that could be followed in other country situations. We prefer to take our limited time to speak to highlight the protection challenges that we must all tackle instead of giving ourselves accolades. We fully agree that emphasis should be less on process and more on substance.

Finally, the Protection Learning Programmes for Partners, which is about to begin, is also an appreciated step by NGOs. While there are only a limited number of NGOs that will directly benefit from this programme, the impacts will hopefully be much wider.

Thank you.