Social integration: a major challenge for host countries

UN Chronicle, June, 1995

Refugees and displaced persons were among the most tragic victims of social disintegration and closing borders was net going to make the problem go away, High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata told the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen on 10 March.

And. she said, ranks of the world's 23 million refugees would continue to swell unless Governments tackled the root causes of displacement, supported aid programmes in host countries, and promoted the social integration of those returning to their homelands.

She said: "Social stability is not threatened by refugees, but by human rights violations and gross social inequities which uproot people. This reinforces the need to address the underlying causes. so that people will no longer be forced to flee." Citing strife-torn nations such as Rwanda, Burundi. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Somalia and Afghanistan, Mrs. Ogata warned that the threat of new refugee flows "remains very much alive".

Over the past five years, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had helped nearly 9 million refugees go back home to such places as Afghanistan, El Salvador, Iraq, Ethiopia, Cambodia and Mozambique. But the ultimate success of those repatriation programmes, Mrs. Ogata said, would depend on the social integration of the returnees, "a major challenge" for all the war-torn countries to which refugees were returning.

To promote social integration at the grass-roots level, UNHCR had a worldwide programme of "quick-impact micro-projects': which addressed the needs not only of returning refugees but also of the internally displaced and the local community. These ranged from building schools and clinics and drilling wells to constructing access roads so people can get their produce to market.

"A multi-dimensional concept of peace must include not only freedom from war, but also from want", Mrs. Ogata stated. "Without that, people may come home, but for how long? And at what cost to the peace process itself?"

In addition to helping countries of origin, she said, the international community must also support host countries, citing the examples of the United Republic of Tanzania and Zaire, which had to absorb some 2 million people fleeing Rwanda. Unless host communities were supported, their own development, as well as their ability to continue to receive refugees, was likely to be jeopardized, she added.

In addressing the Commission on Human Rights on 7 February in Geneva, Mrs. Ogata said UNHCR had seen intensified human rights field operations in several areas, including the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Burundi and Guatemala. International tribunals had been set up to prosecute the perpetrators of grave human rights violations.

The human rights regime must be translated into a visible and effective field presence, and documenting horrendous crimes must be backed up by effective redress to establish proper accountability and remove the myth of impunity, she said.

UNHCR field officers were expected not only to observe and report human rights violations, but to act upon the information by seeking remedial action from the concerned authorities.

In Tajikistan, field officers monitored the well-being of returnees and were in close contact with local attorneys to ensure that returnees enjoyed the full protection of the law. In the former Yugoslavia, UNHCR staff regularly visited areas where identifiable minorities might be at risk and protested acts of "ethnic cleansing", both at focal and central levels of authority. Where those attempts to prevent expulsion failed, as was regrettably too often the case, victims were assisted in their efforts to seek safety elsewhere.

In particular, the situation in Rwanda had brought into sharp focus almost all facets of the complex interaction between human rights and humanitarian efforts, and had shown the vital importance of effective human rights monitoring in post-conflict situations as an integral part of collective efforts to enable uprooted populations to return home in safety and dignity.