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"World Refugee Day: Addressing the Needs of African Refugees"
Hearing - House Foreign Affairs Committee
Sub-Committee on Africa and Global Health
June 20, 2007
Testimony of PRM DAS William E. Fitzgerald

Chairman Payne and Ranking member Smith, as well as other members of the Committee, thank you very much for inviting us to participate in this hearing. We welcome the opportunity to discuss our efforts related to African refugees. I would like to point out that it is fitting that this hearing takes place today, June 20, on World Refugee Day -- which many will know was originally Africa Refugee Day.

Thanks to the generous support of Congress and the American people, the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) programmed more than $344 million in Fiscal Year 2006 for protection and assistance to refugees, conflict victims, internally displaced persons, and vulnerable migrants in Africa. This year - FY2007 - we anticipate programming at least $306 million. I would like to provide some highlights on our efforts, as well as on the challenges that we face across the continent.

By "Africa", of course, I mean the whole continent, including North Africa. Given the size and diversity of the Africa region - more than 50 countries with a variety of ethnic, political, disease burden, and economic challenges - it is not surprising that the refugee and migration landscape is a constantly changing one.

And by "we", I will often mean the international humanitarian community since the United States generally approaches these issues as multilateral responsibilities in which the United States plays a leading, but not solo, role. Earlier this year, for example, I co-led a USG-European Community mission to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to assess with our European donor colleagues what was needed and how we could together better support UNHCR and partner organizations in the return and reintegration of Congolese refugees from Tanzania, Zambia, and the other neighboring countries during this window of opportunity.

There are a number of "good news" stories on the refugee front in Africa.

First of all, first asylum - the first principle in refugee work - is generally intact across the continent. We worry that Africa's legendary hospitality to refugees, codified in the generous 1969 OAU Convention on Refugees, is disappearing. But despite some very strong complaints recently that refugees bring instability, insecurity, and disease, most African countries allow people in need to enter for the purpose of seeking asylum. There are some worrisome situations. Tanzania has recently expelled Rwandans and Burundi that it says are illegal migrants rather than refugees. Kenya's border with Somalia has been officially closed since January. We are working with these governments, advocating greater adherence to refugee asylum principles.

Peace agreements have ended some long-running conflicts, enabling refugees to voluntarily return to their home countries. With repatriations, the total number of refugees on the continent has been declining since 2002. Returned refugees remain of concern to UNHCR and to us during the reintegration period.

More than 200,000 Sierra Leonean refugees returned home, with the end of the formal repatriation program in mid-2004.
• Some 400,000 Angolan refugees have gone home since 2002.
• Refugee returns to southern Sudan have recently topped 154,000 with the active caseloads in the Central African Republic and the DRCongo having all returned.
• Returns to Burundi (over 340,000 so far) and the DRC (over 100,000) are well underway, if far from finished.
• More than 250,000 Liberian refugees and more than 320,000 IDPs have returned home with USG assistance to rebuild their lives and contribute to Liberia's overall recovery. Organized refugee repatriation ends June 30.

We recognize that this is the third time that we have supported refugee return to Liberia since war broke out there on Christmas Eve in 1989. But there is reason to believe that peace will be more durable this time, with important transformations in Liberia underway, with a UN peacekeeping force deployed there, and with Charles Taylor in custody in The Hague. Liberia illustrates well that tackling such challenges as insecurity, extreme poverty, and a lack of political dialogue requires action by governments and non-humanitarian partners to create a context in which displacement can end.

Africa is notable for having been the incubator for a number of humanitarian approaches - for example, bridging the gap between relief and development when refugees go home or when local integration is called for in protracted refugee situations. It is critical to help create conditions in the home country that will encourage voluntary repatriation. It is equally important to protect our investments in humanitarian assistance over the years with enough development aid to keep the transformations going. We are closer to the mark in southern Sudan, for example, but the relief to development gap is wide in most places such as Burundi and the DRCongo. It is a problem that neither the U.S. Government, nor the UN system, nor the international community has resolved.

Another humanitarian approach piloted largely in Africa has been the international effort to set and reach minimum protection and assistance standards. Some of these are captured in the "Sphere Standards" developed by humanitarian practitioners. Some are captured in the UNHCR standards and indicators process. Some standards, such as our focus on combating gender-based violence, arose from the fact that rape and other violence against women and girls is far too common. Some arose from scandals over exploitation of refugees in West Africa and Nepal, leading to codes of conduct for all humanitarian personnel. Some arose from basic common sense such as U.S. inter agency cooperation to ensure that refugees also benefit from the President's HIV/AIDS and malaria initiatives. All guide the Department's strategies to deal with each refugee and conflict victim situation.

Chad is one of the best current examples of where a concerted effort to apply the range of minimum protection and assistance standards has paid off. I know that many of you on the Sub-Committee and your staffers have made the arduous trip to eastern Chad to review the situation of the over 230,000 Sudanese refugees now in twelve camps. We in PRM have traveled there regularly, but would appreciate hearing your perspectives on this rapidly evolving situation. The international emergency response to the Darfur refugees in Chad was slow off the mark in 2003 and 2004. Malnutrition rates among refugee children were among the highest ever recorded. NGO implementing agencies were few and far between. Under USG pressure and persuasion, UNHCR raised its first appeals from under $20 million to a more appropriate $105 million -- and recruitment of more implementing agencies brought malnutrition rates down well below the minimum standard and ended the need for special feeding programs. We are funding a full range of activities in eastern Chad, some of which are considered supplementary or even luxuries in other settings - for example, secondary education, animal husbandry, income-generating activities, sports, and mental health.

Let me hasten to add that Chad is also one of the places that best exemplifies many of the toughest challenges that we face.

• Security and neutrality of the Sudanese refugee camps. Some are too close to the Sudanese border. Yet refugees have refused to move and finding alternative sites has not been easy. Education is one of the key points of entry in keeping children and youth safe from recruitment to rebel causes. PRM has funded additional gendarmes to enforce law and order but humanitarian operations require more robust security. We welcome the new French Government's renewed resolve to address this need and look forward to the Darfur Contact Group meeting in Paris June 25.
• Security for humanitarians. With UN "phase 4" security level in place, humanitarian personnel are required to travel in convoys which limits contact hours with the refugees and threatens the recent gains in reaching minimum international standards. The killing last week of a first tour aid worker with Medecins Sans Frontières in a clearly marked car in neighboring Central African Republic underscores the of danger to many humanitarians these days. We will need expanded humanitarian space if we are to carry out any resettlement activities of the most vulnerable Darfur refugees.
• The carrying capacity of eastern Chad. Water and fuel wood are scarce. With water tables possibly dropping from use by refugees who outnumber local inhabitants, UNHCR may target a lower standard of only 10 liters of water per person per day. One often hears the word "unsustainable" though the conflict in Darfur shows no immediate sign of reaching a point where refugees could repatriate in safety and dignity.
• Implementing capacity. Given the challenging working conditions, most humanitarian agencies have had difficulty in recruiting personnel for eastern Chad and have experienced extraordinarily high turnover. Obviously, this is not helpful in terms of program delivery and continuity.
• Impact on local Chadians. Those who have shared their land, their water, their grazing resources, their fuel wood, and sometimes their food with the refugees are primary donors despite their own acute poverty. It has become more common for the international refugee protection and assistance architecture to include local people affected by the presence of refugees. In the case of eastern Chad, five percent of the UNHCR budget has been set aside for affected Chadians but when resources are short, refugees naturally get priority. Our own USAID has provided funding to address some of the needs of affected Chadians but has been stymied to some extent by the same issues of security and implementing capacity.
• Lack of publicity/visibility. Most people have heard of Darfur. Chad is another story. And the 50,000 refugees in Chad from the Central African Republic are rarely noticed. Donor support is correspondingly rare. As Chad becomes a protracted refugee situation, attracting adequate resources will become even more difficult.

As you know, Chad is itself in the throes of armed conflict as various rebel groups seek to depose the Deby regime and as ethnic conflict in the east between tribes, and now also between "Arab" and "non-Arab" Chadians, increases insecurity. The conflicts in Darfur and Chad are also mutually reinforcing in some ways. As a result, among the conflict victims, there are now some 140,000 internally displaced Chadians - as well as Chadian refugees who have fled to Darfur. We have increased our support to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and to UNHCR, which under the new "cluster approach" is charged with protection, IDP camp management, and emergency shelter. Our USAID colleagues have provided support to the Office of the UN Humanitarian Coordinator (OCHA) and to some of the NGOs that are trying to aid the IDPs as well as the refugees. Once again, the issues of insecurity that limits humanitarian access, of implementing capacity, and of scarcity of water and fuel wood for large concentrations of people arise as challenges to getting another emergency response up and running.

The "cluster approach" is designed to assure that IDPs, like refugees, will predictably benefit from international protection and assistance. Piloted in the DRCongo, Liberia, and Uganda, but also quickly applied in new situations such as Chad and Somalia, the "cluster approach" is too new to be legitimately evaluated - although a system-wide evaluation is currently underway, with its findings expected later this year. IDPs have typically benefited from international assistance; but protection efforts have fallen short, in part because of issues of national sovereignty. It is thus in the realm of protection and in the role of UNHCR that we are probably seeing the greatest change owing to these humanitarian reforms.

As another example of the Bureau's work, I would mention the latest crisis involving refugees from Somalia where flooding of the refugee camps in Kenya combined with some disease outbreaks and an influx of new refugees into Kenya, Ethiopia, and Yemen created a particularly complex regional humanitarian emergency. The President has authorized several draw downs from his Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance Fund to provide additional support for the International Committee of the Red Cross inside Somalia and to UNHCR and NGO implementing partners for support to the new Somali refugees. The Defense Department responded to our request for airlift of tents and other non-food items to the flood stricken refugee camps in Kenya.

The Bureau also addresses the needs of a variety of other vulnerable migrants in Africa.

• The migration flows through North Africa of people primarily from sub-Saharan Africa who are seeking to reach Europe is a challenge that falls into the bailiwick of the International Organization for Migration. Yet there is also a role for UNHCR in determining that none of the migrants would have a claim to refugee status -- as happened for example last year when asylum-seekers in Morocco attempted to get "into Europe" by jumping the fences into the Spanish enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta.
• In southern Africa, we have funded a migration dialogue among immigration authorities and NGOs from the region's countries in a bid to counter some of the xenophobia in South Africa and its neighbors.
• In the area of anti-trafficking, PRM has helped to implement some projects under the President's Anti-Trafficking Initiative.
• Statelessness has once again become a concern in the world as some demagogues seek to deprive long-time inhabitants of a country of their de facto citizenship as has occurred in Côte d'Ivoire and the DRCongo. We have seen the right of return denied to some refugees from Eritrea and Mauritania and requirements for documentation of citizenship has become more common, creating problems for many people who find themselves without it.

The Department is increasing its attention to statelessness by devoting a distinct sub-section to this issue in future country Human Rights Reports. In Africa, we are engaged with UNHCR, the agency mandated to protect stateless persons, on resolving problems of potential statelessness among Mauritanian refugees in Senegal, and among refugees and migrants in Cote d'Ivoire. We also seek to prevent statelessness through supporting universal birth registration and documentation, particularly for refugees preparing to return home to Sudan, Burundi and the DRC.

Finally, I would like to highlight the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program, which is a vital component of protection for vulnerable African refugees in need of this durable solution. In recent years, the number of African refugees resettled in the United States has reached its highest levels since the passage of the Refugee Act. Since 1980, more than 200,000 African refugees have been resettled in the United States. In fiscal 2007, we anticipate admitting approximately 18,000 refugees from Africa, originating from some 23 countries, with the largest numbers from Somalia, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, and Eritrea. With no near-term end to the Darfur conflict in sight, we plan a mission to eastern Chad later in FY 2007, security permitting, to explore enhanced resettlement opportunities for Darfur refugees there.

I have touched today on only a few illustrative examples of how my Bureau is putting into practice the best humanitarian traditions of the American people, assisting some of the world's most vulnerable populations - refugees and victims of conflict across Africa.

This concludes my remarks. I would be happy to try to answer any questions that you might have.