EuropaWorld 4/5/2001 Please Stop The Fighting! The Refugee Budget Can't Afford It!

Ruud Lubbers has a problem. The outspoken former Prime Minister of the Netherlands is now head of UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency: and the agency has a problem with its budget. Representatives from its fifty-seven government sponsors meet each year to agree what should be spent on emergency and enduring relief for the 22 million souls in the agency care. The problem is that they promise big….and deliver small.

So yet again the agency is short of cash. The estimated shortfall this year will be around $150 million dollars - about 15% of a budget already shaved of excess. Nor do those that cause families to flee their homes show any promising signs of abating their activities. Temporary improvement in one spot - Sierra Leone, Eritrea or the Congo is matched by a deterioration elsewhere - Liberia, Afghanistan, Angola.

Lubbers has made it clear that he cannot continue to manage an organisation with an unbalanced budget. As governments show no sign of stumping up any more cash, he has said he must cut expenditure - staff, operations, whatever the human consequence.

But Lubbers is not just an old-fashioned cutter of budgets. For he has one card up his sleeve which he manages to play with evident success. To defend his staff and operations Lubbers is prepared to talk to the war leaders in conflict zones in a language that is direct, and which they understand, in an attempt to cut UNHCR's costs by reducing the need for its services.

He set about this strategy in February, little more than a month after taking over the reins at UNHCR's Geneva headquarters. His first mission was to West Africa where UNHCR faced an horrendous situation. Half a million refugees, from Sierra Leone and Liberia were caught up in border fighting in a constricted region difficult to access.

Both the refugees and UNHCR were under intolerable pressure. At the time Lubbers called it the worst refugee crisis in the world. However, his direct intervention was successful. Safe corridors were established for aid workers enabling refugees to be moved to safer sites. Many have now returned home and the situation, though still serious, is under control and improving.

Now Lubbers is tackling Afghanistan, 'probably the worst humanitarian crisis in the world' according to a UN spokesman this week. The country is suffering gravely; the 21 year civil war has displaced many civilians from their homes and shattered the economy. On top of this a savage and persistent drought has shrivelled crops in the ground.

More than three-quarters of the population depend on agriculture in some rural districts. In the ensuing famine livestock have been slaughtered and the seed that would have been used to plant next year's crops has been eaten. With the lack of rain farmers see little point in planting.

UNHCR reckon that some four million Afghans - almost one in five of the population - have fled their homes since the war began. Half a million remain in camps within the country, the remainder have sought refuge over the border in Iran, Pakistan or beyond.

This is costing UNHCR a lot of money. Since 1979 the agency has spent more than one billion dollars in Afghanistan, and the bill is increasing. Other agencies, like the UN's World Food Programme, are also facing heavy expenditures.

So Lubbers is again trying the trick of top level personal intervention. He can do nothing about the drought but if he could bring even a pause to the fighting that would allow aid workers to access the conflict zones, possibly preventing a further exodus of people to the camps. This would relieve pressure on his budget and allow some stabilisation in the humanitarian position.

He in Afghanistan this week, sleeves metaphorically rolled up, to meet the de facto rulers (but officially the rebels) of the country - the fundamentalist Taliban - in Kandahar and Kabul and to meet the de facto rebels (but officially the Government) in the northern town of Faisabad. Iran and Pakistan are also on the itinerary.

His message to both sides is simple. It is that the international community cannot be expected to continue delivering aid to Afghanistan - and take care of the growing numbers of displaced and refugees - year after year, while the parties go on fighting with no regard for innocent victims.

Whether Lubbers' mission proves to be successful will probably take some time to determine. Whatever the outcome it is probably too late to save the jobs and the operations that are now on the line in Geneva and elsewhere. But if the Afghan guns are silent this summer, there will be many ready to award Lubbers five stars. Now if he could bring rain as well…..