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

NGO Statement on
Implementation of the recommendations on the independent evaluations on refugee women/children/community services
Agenda Item 5(i)

Thank you, Mr. Chairman,

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

We welcome the follow-up that has been taken to the evaluations on refugee women, refugee children, and community services. The evaluations identified some fundamental problems in UNHCR's protection of refugee women and refugee children. We welcome that UNHCR is scrutinising the problems identified and is following-up on the recommendations made to mitigate these problems. NGOs would like to offer our support and expertise to this process and hope to be able to engage in a constructive and practical manner, both in terms of policy-making, as well as operationally at the field level. We, therefore, hope that the Steering Committee for the follow-up on the three evaluations will be able to move forward in a more interactive and practically oriented way, than has been the case in the past.

The follow-up activities, to date, focus on how UNHCR creates an environment for mainstreaming gender equality, age, and child rights' perspectives into operations, and one of the ways this is to be achieved is through the mainstreaming of these concerns into general UNHCR's policies. It is with great regret that we find the Standing Committee papers very lacking in mainstreaming gender and age concerns. Refugee women and children face particular problems in voluntary repatriation situations, protracted refugee situations, as well as in mass influx situations, which are not adequately addressed in the papers. Similar protection gaps persist at field level as well. In Afghanistan, women were not consulted about the repatriation process and were sitting in trucks in the baking sun; they were not consulted about the placement of wells, with the result that they could not access them; and not all health clinics have sections for women. We hope that the mainstreaming initiative will address these ongoing failures in the context of registration, gender and age disaggregated data collection, participation of women and children, prevention and response to SGBV, and other chronic problems. We hoped to see representatives from DIP on the podium with you today.

The paper refers to UNHCR's efforts to revise its Policy on Refugee Women (1990) and its Guidelines on Protection and Care of Refugee Women (1994). Plans to revise these documents have been discussed for some years, and we would like to know the reason for the delay. In addition, we hope that NGOs will be able to contribute to the revision of these documents.

As NGOs, we hope to be more involved in the "Gender equality and age mainstreaming pilot projects," and to become an integral part of a response to the mainstreaming of age and gender concerns in programming. We would suggest that UNHCR, after finalising these first countries, hold a retreat with the purposes of looking at lessons learned, as well as looking at ways of involving NGOs in a more constructive manner. Further more, once all the pilot projects have been finalised, an evaluation should be carried out, before UNHCR proceeds to a full roll-out of the methodology/approach.

The pilot projects are meant to pilot the first part of the situation analysis tool, however, we have not yet seen any drafts of the tool used. The NGOs would also like to offer our expertise to look at the draft tool on the situation analysis.

On combating the under-reporting of sexual and gender based violence work with partners, governments and NGOs should focus more on establishing and strengthening accessible, safe, and confidential complaint mechanisms. We also need to gather and reflect on the best practices for how we support survivors of sexual and gender based violence, an area where we are still finding difficulties in coming up with appropriate responses, not least with regard to economic support and targeted resettlement. We commend UNHCR for its creation of an SGBV post at headquarters, which will enable the agency to more systematically address sexual violence and exploitation.

With respect to the High Commissioner's five commitments to refugee women, we look forward to reading the up-date provided. In the future, we also hope to receive an analysis of gaps that remain in following through on the 5 commitments and a plan of action to address such gaps. We would like to know in particular how the five commitments have been implemented in urban settings where refugee women are often not visible to UNHCR.

The establishment of child protection networks through regional inter-agency ARC steering committees in three locations is a positive and necessary step for enhancing co-ordinated and efficient child protection. We would, however, encourage UNHCR to take initiatives to establish child protection networks in all locations where the agency is operational, regionally as well as on the national and local levels. Lessons learned so far show that existing networks are based on committed individuals and their energetic efforts. This way of co-ordinating child protection programs has to be institutionalised.

We welcome the request from UNHCR for an NGO-secondment of a Community Service Officer focussing entirely on child protection to Chad. However, we would hope that each protection officer in will be looking at child protection issues. We would like to know how this Community Service Officer will be working with protection staff in Chad to enhance their capacity in this respect.

Critical to the success of mainstreaming efforts, such as gender equality and age mainstreaming, will be to ensure strong political commitment from top and senior management, as well as integrated responses among all staff including protection, community services, and programme staff. The paper deals with the issue of accountability and identifies the need to clarify what accountability will mean in practice, so that each staff member can fully understand what she or he is responsible for, vis-à-vis refugees, the institution, host governments and other stakeholders. It is important that such clarifications on accountability also cover the responsibility of the staff member to work in the multifunctional teams, to ensure the participation of refugee women and children, to work in partnership with all stakeholders.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, NGOs are committed to supporting UNHCR throughout this process in achieving this mainstreaming objective. We are eagerly seeking ways to be able to support the process with our active participation and expertise.

Thank you.