Refugees and foreign policy: immediate needs and durable solutions - Jonathan Moore's address at the John F. Kennedy School on Apr. 6, 1987 - transcript

US Department of State Bulletin, July, 1987

Refugees and Foreign Policy: Immediate Needs and Durable Solutions

Address at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard in Cambridge on April 6, 1987. Ambassador Moore is U.S. Coordinator for Refugee Affairs and Director of the Bureau for Refugee Programs.

For a long time it has bothered me to hear people talking about how important it is to keep their favorite cause out of politics--currently, as in: "We can't let humanitarian assistance to refugees be dominated by foreign policy interests.' And both in my political experience before coming to the Institute of Politics and the Kennedy School and in my reflection while here, I have come to be extremely wary of single issue, special interest groups--but what do I do now that I'm involved with one? Even though I know what is meant about politics corrupting goodness and the value of concentrated advocacy, I have tended to view politics as a necessary way of getting from her to there and to be more comfortable approaching public policy as the reconciliation of a variety of contending needs.

I've been trying to work out in my own mind what refugee policy should be, if there is such a thing, and, more particularly, what role it plays within larger international contexts; what the relationship is, reciprocally, between refugees and foreign policy. Perhaps we can start to test two principles which I have in mind at the outset:

First, that the commitments we engage and the insights we gain from attending to some of the urgent needs of refugees and enriching our society by bringing some of them here can help enlighten our foreign policy as a whole; and

Second, that there can be found more affinity and mutual reinforcement than conflict or contradiction among the various components constituting a comprehensive U.S. approach to the world's challenges.

So I will take a brief look at the causes, characteristics, programs, and trends of refugee problems; then consider the efforts undertaken to address the immediate needs of refugees in place and the three so-called durable solutions to deal with refugee populations over the longer runf and, finally, examine what needs to be done to get at the root causes which generate and perpetuate refugees--where the refugee-foreign policy relationship is fully revealed and challenged.

Defining the Refugee Problem

It has been said that refugees are "human rights violations made visible.' They live in dislocated, deprived, marginal, ambiguous circumstances with bleak futures. Most remain victims of violence--in the countries they have fled and the wars they sometimes bring with them, from hostile local populations and their own incipient factionalism. They usually go to countries which are extremely impoverished themselves--the average per capita GNP [gross national product] for the primary nations of first asylum is $822.

An ambitious international system of multilateral and bilateral programs, utilizing a huge, far-flung array of collaborators, administers crucial assistance to refugees. These services include life-sustaining support, food, water, shelter, medical supplies and health aid, education, protection and security, development and impact assistance, representation and negotiation to improve immediate and future treatment of refugees, and resettlement. The partners in the effort include multilateral agencies led by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR); international organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Intergovernmental Committee for Migration; a multitude of nonprofit, nongovernmental, voluntary agencies with enormous commitment and skill; and nation states that receive refugees in first asylum, donate money, resettle refugees, and even, in some instances, facilitate their return. The United States has sustained its leadership in providing humanitarian assistance across the globe through a traditional, bipartisan commitment as a major donor and resettlement state, having welcomed well over a million refugees since 1975. This international enterprise has saved and continues to save millions of lives and supports the continued provision of first asylum. It is heroic, absolutely essential, and inadequate.

Trends in refugee affairs include:

A "tightening up' of formerly open and generous policies by many first-asylum countries;

Increasing pressure on states hosting large numbers of refugees for scarce resources and services;

A tailing off of admissions and funding by resettlement and donor countries, including the United States;

A proportional increase of economic migrants and illegal immigrants--aided by better communications and transportation technology crossing increasingly distant boundaries--as distinct from victims of persecution per se;

A downward yet continuing flow of refugees from Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Ethiopia;

A shift of emphasis from reliance upon resettlement to pressing for repatriation of refugees;

Increased arrivals of Third World asylum-seekers into Western Europe and North America; and