55th Session of the UNHCR
Executive Committee of the High Commissioner's Programme
Geneva, 4 - 8 October 2004

Evaluation and Inspection Activities
NGO Submission
Agenda Item 7

Mr. Chairman,

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

Internal oversight mechanisms play a critical role in ensuring that UNHCR is able to fulfill its international protection mandate in all operations. They can enhance the capacity of all UNHCR staff to carry out their responsibilities and can work to strengthen management accountability. In this regard, the NGO community welcomes the reports on the activities of the Office of the Inspector General¹ and the Evaluation and Policy Analysis Unit (EPAU).²

In relation to evaluation and policy analysis, NGOs appreciate the efforts of EPAU to involve the NGO community in its activities, such as through joint evaluations, training, and participation in the Follow-Up Steering Committee on the three evaluations on refugee women, refugee children, and the community services function.

This close cooperation has been in place for several years. More particularly, NGOs actively participated in EPAU's comprehensive review of UNHCR's 1997 policy on refugees in urban areas, and contributed to the development of draft Guiding Principles and Good Practices on Protection, Solutions and Assistance for Refugees in Urban Areas. However, we are extremely concerned that these draft Guiding Principles and Good Practices have not yet been adopted by UNHCR. We are also concerned at the sometimes long periods of time that it takes to release reports.

As highlighted in a number of NGO interventions, asylum-seekers and refugee women, men, girls, and boys living in urban areas continue to be subject to a wide range of abuses and are often without any access to protection. In particular, they are at risk of arbitrary detention, refoulement, physical insecurity, sexual and gender-based violence, and a lack of legal status. They are routinely denied access to fundamental economic, social, and cultural rights. We feel that the adoption of the Guiding Principles and Good Practices in relation to urban refugees would help UNHCR more consistently, coherently, and effectively address these serious concerns.

The report of the Evaluation and Policy Analysis Unit notes that the Unit maintains a strong focus on protection in the selection of evaluation topics.³ In this respect, we would be interested to learn when the previously planned evaluation on protection staffing will take place.

Furthermore, we would like to strongly recommend, as was suggested at a previous session of the Executive Committee, that an independent evaluation be carried out on UNHCR's refugee status determination (RSD) activities. As noted in our statement on International Protection to EXCOM, we are concerned that UNHCR's role in RSD can potentially compromise the organisation's mandate to protect refugees. UNHCR currently conducts RSD in more than 60 countries and more than half of these are parties to the 1951 Convention.

We would suggest that such an independent global evaluation be carried out by a team that includes international human rights lawyers, international and national NGOs working on refugee issues, academics, and legal aid practitioners. The issues that should be examined in the evaluation include an inventory of the RSD procedures that are applied in each UNHCR field office, with an examination of the possible solutions to the political, financial, and human resource constraints that contribute to RSD procedures that do not fulfil practices advocated by UNHCR. The evaluation should recommend rights-based RSD procedures to be followed consistently by all field protection officers with a mechanism to ensure their implementation.

NGOs would be interested to learn of the processes that have been put in place to follow-up on recommendations of evaluations, such as the Report on Enhancing UNHCR's Capacity to Monitor the Protection and Well-Being of Refugees. While the establishment of a database to compile and catalogue recommendations is a good idea, we would appreciate information on how, at the current time, conclusions and recommendations in evaluations are being incorporated into UNHCR's policies and operations, and the extent to which lessons learned are adopted by the organisation as a whole.

For example, we would like to know how the review of UNHCR's involvement with IDPs has influenced new policy developments in relation to IDPs and how the recommendations from the Liberia evaluation have been incorporated in other IDP operations. We would also like to learn of the extent to which the findings from the real time evaluation in Chad have been adopted in this operation, and how they will be used to guide UNHCR's future emergency operations.

Turning now to activities of the Inspector General's Office, the NGO community welcomes the commitment of UNHCR to "reinforcing principles of accountability throughout UNHCR's management,"⁴ including through revising the IGO's terms of reference to make them broader and more robust.⁵

In relation to inspection, NGOs would be interested to learn of the results of the testing of the UNHCR Code of Conduct and sexual and gender based violence checklists in future investigations. NGOs would also like to engage in a dialogue with the Inspection Unit in relation to the monitoring of the activities of UNHCR's NGO partners, in order to enhance the performance of NGOs, but also to ensure that UNHCR treats all partners in an equitable, fair and transparent manner. Given the experience that NGOs have of working directly with refugees, we would like to propose bringing that knowledge to joint inspection missions with UNHCR.

The report of the IGO indicates that almost all countries inspected substantially strengthened RSD and resettlement procedures and controls. Nevertheless, NGOs have expressed a number of concerns in relation to UNHCR's RSD operations in a number of countries, and the IGO report itself refers to 17 cases of resettlement fraud. Consequently, we would be interested in more information as to the specific improvements that have been made by UNHCR offices in relation to these core protection responsibilities and how such improvements will be adopted on a more global basis.

With respect to investigations, the High Commissioner has expressed the view that "effective investigation and the follow-up action that these entail, including disciplinary action, are among the key policy priorities of the Office."⁶ NGOs welcome this view and feel that a number of measures should be taken in order to ensure that these priorities are met. First, the UN Secretary-General should endorse the appointment of the Inspector General and the reports of the IGO should be shared with the UN Headquarters in New York. Second, in the same manner that the UN's Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) reports to the General Assembly, UNHCR's IGO should provide detailed and substantive reports to ExCom, and should consult on a regular basis with the ExCom Bureau throughout the year. The IGO budget must be a priority in the regular programme and guaranteed for the budget year. Finally, the findings and recommendations of oversight reports - both positive and negative - must form an integral part of a staff members' formal performance appraisal.

Strengthening the accountability of NGOs is also a key priority for the NGO community. Working closely with UNHCR, a joint inter-agency project has been developed that involves NGOs and UN agencies. By building on work already done to prevent abuse and exploitation, the project aims to help put in place processes and procedures to enable NGOs to undertake investigations into allegations of abuse and exploitation. The Building Safer Organisations project will produce two sets of training material. One set, aimed at senior managers, will outline the range of implications for organisations of having Codes of Conduct. The second set will be for those individuals designated to undertake investigations into allegations of abuse or exploitation of beneficiaries by staff. The project will develop a handbook for NGO staff, with checklists and tools, to outline the steps to be taken in fully operationalising an effective Code of Conduct. The project itself will develop and extensively field-test these products and develop a network of individuals experienced in investigations who will mentor and guide future investigators to ensure sustainability of the process after the project is completed by the end of next year. NGOs remain committed to improving our ability to better contribute to the protection of refugees - in this case, by ensuring that we have the right procedures and processes in place to prevent abuse and exploitation.

Thank you.

NOTES

1.UNHCR, "Report on UNHCR's Inspection and Investigation Activities," A/AC.96/993, 29 July 2004.

2.UNHCR, "Evaluation and Policy Analysis: UNHCR's Plans and Activities," A/AC.96/994, 29 July 2004,

3.UNHCR, "Evaluation and Policy Analysis: UNHCR's Plans and Activities," A/AC.96/994, 29 July 2004, para.22.

4.UNHCR, "Report on UNHCR's Inspection and Investigation Activities," A/AC.96/993, 29 July 2004, para 1.

5.Ibid.

6.Enhancing Oversight and Accountability in UNHCR, A Joint Supplementary Funding Appeal for UNHCR's Inspector General's Office, Division of Human Resources Management and Legal Affairs Section (August 2003 - December 2004), section 1.