Investigate</a><br
Investigate


SEARCH:
Investigate > End Warehousing > Relief-to-Development

Bridging the Relief-to-Development/Warehousing-to-Freedom Gap

Warehousing “Toxic” to Children’s Psychological Development; the Tyranny of “Need” over Capacity

IRIN’s January 8, 2008 article “Does emergency education save lives?” questions the central implied premise of warehousing, i.e., that “saving lives” justifies restricting rights, here the right of children to an education.  Excerpts:

[Gerald Martone of the International Rescue Committee] pointed out in the IRC report [Educating Children in Emergency Settings - an Unexpected Lifeline] that in most humanitarian crises people are not dying at unusually high rates. "Despite the folklore of our work, these crises are more often not life-or-death situations. Rather the predominant experience of refugees is a hopeless and purposeless existence.”

The average length of refugee displacement globally is 17 years according to Martone. “It is not uncommon to find a generation of children raised without any access to education among the world's refugee ‘warehouses’. We must shift our obsession from how people are dying to how people are living.”

Education expert Nicolai, now deputy coordinator of the Education Cluster in Geneva, said an education response is part of promoting people’s right to a life with dignity, a principle of the Humanitarian Charter.

Emergency responses do not always reflect the needs and priorities of disaster victims, Nicolai said. “When communities are asked what they need in a crisis, invariably education appears on a shortlist of two or three priority interventions,” she said, but “sometimes there is a ‘one-size-fits-all’ emergency response based on preconceptions and previous experience. This is why consulting communities is such an important part of the aid process.”

Martone’s 2007 report goes on to denounce warehousing in even more scathing terms:

The monotonous, boring, and uneventful experience of living in a refugee camp is particularly toxic for a child’s psychological development. A child’s developing mind requires structure, routines, and stimulation for healthy development and the prospect of normality.

Yet in aid work, physiology consistently trumps psychology. The tools of the trade are trucks, warehouses, and sophisticated communication gear. Some relief workers have cynically referred to the habitual commodity-driven aid culture as “truck and chuck” programs administered by “boys with toys”. Refugees are treated like cattle where feeding, watering, and population-based interventions are prioritized for the herd.  …

At times we conspire in this drama through the emotional appeal of our public messages. The portrayal of suffering is presented as short-term, acute crises that are amenable to financial pledges and the charity of Western do-gooders. This perpetuates the action-oriented, anti-intellectual culture of emergency work.  Instead of investing in the underlying vulnerabilities of a situation, we focus on shortsighted relief strategies that can, inadvertently, do more harm than good.  …

Despite the overwhelming reality of capability and competence among war-affected communities, some relief programs have been described as, “the last bastion of the ultra-paternalistic approach to aid and development.  It is hard to think of another area where the blinkered nonsense of the ‘we know what is best for them’ approach survives so unchallenged.”  …

The presumption that underlies the traditional “needs assessment” is that people are “needy.”  Rather than presuming that refugees and displaced people are passive, helpless, and needy, practitioners of aid should conduct capacities assessments. The assessment of a population should include the community’s capabilities, assets, and ambitions as part of the evaluation.  …

Some refugees have even traded food in order to afford schooling. Atuu Waonaje was fifteen years old when he grabbed his younger brother by the hand and fled the Democratic Republic. Waonaje recalls, “To pay for school I had to sell some of the food we received from the World Food Program, even though it wasn’t enough to survive.” [c]

The outside observer might be struck by the apparent contradiction: humanitarianism’s hierarchy, comprised of experts and professional aid workers from wealthy nations, develops policies and

approaches that guarantee survival of the body while aid recipients struggle to preserve their minds and the souls of their societies.  …

In a provocative challenge to the relevance and quality of programs provided by the International Rescue Committee, the former CEO, Reynold Levy, challenged his staff by asking, “If you gave refugees the money, would they buy your services?” 

Half-hearted, Rights-free Development Aid Plus Restrictions Equals Continued Dependence 

In "Sudanese refugees in Uganda and Kenya" in Protracted refugee situations: Political, human rights and security implications (Loescher et al., eds., 2008, pp. 248-76), Tanya Kaiser argues that half-hearted measures that do not address restrictions on refugees' rights to engage in economic activities and freedom of movement will not result in self-reliance.  "[B]oth Kenya and Uganda have from an early stage resorted to the 'warehousing' of refugees in camps and settlements," she notes.  Their policies

emphasize the containment of refugees in camps and settlements and decline to support the temporary or permanent integration of refugees in any meaningful sense.  [They] are not free to choose their place of residence according to employment, family or other factors…  This is only one of many ways in which the warehousing of refugees in camps and settlements has been shown, in these countries and elsewhere, to undermine the rights of refugees.   …  In Uganda, agricultural activity is encouraged, but faces a number of serious constraints, not least of which is remoteness from markets, inadequacy of plots provided as families increase, and exhaustion of the soil.  …

When aid conditionalities have been applied to the government of Uganda, for example by the Department for International Development in 2005, this has been in relation to the slow progress on political liberalization rather than in response to its treatment of … refugees.  …  [A]ny meaningful developmental activity may require a more substantial commitment to the integration of refugees than the government appears willing to contemplate.  If refugees were at liberty to settle freely and negotiate access to land in places where conditions for agricultural activity and trade were favourable, their potential contribution to the economy of Uganda could well increase markedly.  …

In most cases, refugee areas are excluded from development interventions taking place in the wider refugee-hosting area on the grounds that refugees do not yet fall within a developmental remit.  This remains true even in areas where significant numbers of self-settled refugees are living illegally and without external support in border areas and elsewhere.  Notably the Ugandan communities supporting these refugees are also not targeted for help by either development or humanitarian actors.  …

[I]t has been a constant struggle for any developmentally oriented organization seeking to support long-term investment in refugee communities to secure funding or even agreement that this is an appropriate response to refugees in exile.  As such, interventions including capacity building, peace and civic education programmes, training and higher educational supports have been few and far between, much to the frustration of refugees stranded in camps and settlements.  …

A major step in the direction of the enjoyment of refugee rights would be for states to remove the requirement that refugees live only in designated camps and settlements, rather than allowing them to integrate freely with the local populations in each respective country.  …   A developmental approach predicated on the removal of the constraints of settlement living and the meaningful integration of refugees, in conjunction with a realistic budget in the short to medium term, could lead to very different outcomes…

[G]overnments must be persuaded that they run no greater risk than was previously the case, either in terms of security or in relation to the economic burden they are to carry…  [A]ssistance organizations, both local and international, need to find ways to work creatively with both refugee and non-refugee groups as a matter of course.  [This] requires funding arrangements which are more conducive to mixed-mandate operations at the international and national levels.  …

[O]nly developmental approaches to asylum and refugee management in Uganda and Kenya provide an optimal preparation to each and all of the three durable solutions…  The main obstacles to such an approach being adopted remain the inability or unwillingness of international donors to strongly support and contribute to it… and the extreme nervousness of host states about the economic, security and social consequences of so doing.  In response to the latter it is worth emphasizing the extent to which the Ugandan and Kenyan case studies point to the inherent insecurity of refugee camps and settlements.

USCRI Endorses Senate Appropriators’ Call to Cut MCC for Refugees

On September 19, 2008, in our boldest step to date in the campaign to end the warehousing of refugees, USCRI called upon the U.S. Congress  to support Senate Appropriators’  recommended cut in spending on the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) to increase funding for refugee protection activities instead.   For years, USCRI has advocated that MCC include evaluation of refugees’ rights to participate in economic growth among the eligibility criteria for development aid and to cease implying that it does not intend refugees to be include among the beneficiaries of such aid.  (See below.)  Despite some false starts, MCC has persistently failed to do so.  For a detailed update, please see www.refugees.org/mccfailure. 

Please take a moment to write to the MCC and ask them to include refugees!

Senators Write to World Bank on “Regulatory Quality” and Refugee Rights

Senators Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt), chairs of the subcommittees on refugees and  foreign aid appropriations, respectively, wrote a letter April 22, 2008 to the World Bank Institute which measures countries’ “Regulatory Quality” for the Millennium Challenge Corporation and other development agencies to determine whether they merit development aid.  Excerpts:

The annual World Refugee Survey, published by the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, is the most authoritative report on the challenges that refugees face worldwide, and its statistics measure the world’s refugee population on a country-by-country basis.  The publication, which has been in existence for nearly 50 years, has been cited in hundreds of books and scholarly treatises by leading experts in refugee law and policy.

The World Bank Institute has had a constructive role by developing objective measures of Regulatory Quality to assess the degree to which a country’s rules and regulations restrict or promote productive commercial activity, which is of vital interest to refugees.  Two-thirds of the world’s refugees are, in effect, “warehoused” for ten years or more—confined to camps and/or denied their rights to work, practice professions, operate businesses, own property, move about freely, and choose their place of residence.  Millions of refugees are consigned to enforced idleness and dependence, when they could become productive agents of economic growth and development.

The sources used by the World Bank Institute to compile its measurement of Regulatory Quality do not include an assessment of the treatment of refugees in host countries.  We urge you to do so by including sources that objectively assess refugees’ enjoyment of economic rights in your measurements, including the World Refugee Survey.

USDOS and Freedom House Beef up Refugee Rights Reporting

For years, the treatment of refugees' rights to live decent lives in exile in the U.S. Department of State's annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices has been weak or uneven.  However, the Department recently finalized its instructions to U.S. Embassies and Missions for preparation of the Reports after much advocacy by Asylum Access, USCRI, and others.  According to one official,

The section dealing with refugees underwent some of the most significant revisions in the instructions…  Refugee protection is contained in a broader section on respect for civil liberties, and in the context of freedom of movement…  Regarding freedom of movement, the instructions request reporting on government restrictions on the ability of refugees, IDPs or stateless persons to move freely (such as confinement in camps), or their forcible relocation.  Specifically regarding refugees, posts are asked to report on: …

  • Abuse of refugees and asylum seekers, including attacks on refugee camps, gender-based violence (including rape or exploitation), forcible recruitment into armed groups; …·
  • Restrictions on refugees' ability to work or earn a livelihood;
  • Restrictions on the ability of refugees to move freely, such as confinement in camps; …
  • Discrimination or laws barring refugees' access to basic public health care or medical services; and,
  • Inability of refugee children to access public elementary education.

The revised instructions relating to refugees reflect the Department's efforts to capture more fully violations of the rights outlined in the Refugee Convention and Protocol. 

The NGO Freedom House has also changed the questions it uses to addresses Civil Liberties in its annual Freedom in the World expressly to include refugee rights.  The new language is:

Do the country’s laws provide for the granting of asylum or refugee status in accordance with the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, its 1967 Protocol, and other regional treaties regarding refugees?  Has the government established a system for providing protection to refugees, including against refoulement (the return of persons to a country where there is reason to believe they fear persecution)?

This is particularly significant because the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) adopts Freedom House’s Civil Liberties rating wholesale for its Indicator of that name which partially determines whether a country receives its development assistance. 

There is still no word on whether the World Bank Institute will start taking the rights of refugees to work, practice professions, run businesses, own property, and move about freely under its measurement that MCC uses for the Regulatory Quality Indicator.

Briefing on HIV and Refugees Calls for Integrative, Rights-Based Aid
 
UNAIDS and UNHCR’s January 2007 Policy Briefing “HIV and Refugees” makes a number of recommendations to avoid parallel, camp-based aid to refugees in favor of more integrative modes that build local capacity and include host populations.  It mentions the 1951 Convention’s commitment to provide refugees with the same public relief and assistance as nationals and includes the right to work among the “key human rights relevant to responding to HIV.”  It recommends that governments ensure “access to and freedom of choice in work” and protection from “restrictions on freedom of movement on the basis of HIV status.”  It also highlights a positive example of donor policy in Guinea: 

Integrating refugees into HIV programmes
 
In Guinea, funds for refugee health care were paid to the government to provide refugee care through the local health system on a fee for service basis.  The overall yearly cost per person in the local health system was much lower than in the refugee camps—approximately US$ 4 compared with US$ 20.  The resources saved were used to fund new health centres and to upgrade existing centres in the areas where refugees had settled, also improving services for host communities.  Avoiding the creation of parallel services for refugees helps to reduce stigma and discrimination by addressing the misconception that HIV is only an issue for refugees.

Refugee Protection Groups Weigh in on “Foreign Assistance Reform”

Big changes are in store for U.S. foreign aid as the State Department pursues structural changes to reflect unified and “strategic” goals.  What could this mean for refugees?  All of the nearly two-dozen members of Refugee Council USA endorsed an October 16, 2006 letter to Ambassador Randall Tobias, the State Department’s new director of foreign assistance.  Some of their key points include:

  • integrate refugee protection and/or rights-friendly aid into all foreign aid functions, not just humanitarian “care and maintenance,” otherwise there will be no end to warehousing;
  • make protection a key component of humanitarian action, including refugee rights and the restoration of normal livelihoods;
  • ensure that promotion of economic growth includes refugees’ rights to engage in livelihoods;
  • include international refugee law in the promotion of just governance;
  • development programs often exclude refugees, make sure “investing in people” includes them; and
  • durable solutions for refugees are indicators for peace and security and help reinforce it; gross violations of refugee rights are also a threat to peace.

OECD Recommendations in Refugee and Similar Situations

In its 2001 Guidelines of the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Helping Prevent Violent Conflict, the consortium of developed countries recommended the following (headings added):

Think Long Term

Humanitarian relief and humanitarian assistance has too often been left to serve as the only response in complex emergencies and peace-building.  There is a risk of a “suspension” of development-based approaches in relief efforts and of current development activities.  For example, refugee camps rarely provide education even though children may remain there indefinitely.  Humanitarian aid may become a substitute for coherent and explicit policymaking, and opportunities and needs to forge social capital and cohesion may be missed.  [p. 26]

Avoid Geographic Concentration and Dependency

The geographic concentration of people may, from a logistic point of view, facilitate the delivery of relief aid.  But it may also foster dependency by distancing people from their normal means of livelihood and weaken social cohesion.  [p. 106]

Reinforce Local Capacity

Relief has a significant impact on local administrative institutions, which are often by-passed and weakened because of the alternative capacity of well-equipped NGOs.  Reducing vulnerability and building capacity to cope depend on the evolution of competent local institutions.  While heavy use of expatriate teams may be unavoidable at the start, the hand over to local institutions must be a priority.  [p. 106]

Build Constituencies for Rights

Active non-governmental interest groups can be important vehicles for donor initiatives in support of human rights, by providing information in a given country and building a constituency for promoting human rights vis-à-vis governments and public opinion.  Similarly, targeting groups who are close to or represent the victims of injustice and misuse of power can also be effective (e.g. women’s groups, farmer co-operatives).  [p. 115]

Integrate Assistance

When refugees are from the same cultural and linguistic group as the host population, there is often widespread sympathy for their situation.  Where such bonds are weak, friction and resentment more easily arise.  A common source of discontent among the local populace, especially the poor, arises when refugees receive attention and services not available to the local host community.  Aid agencies should attempt to promote equal treatment for those in hosting areas, especially in such fields as education and medical services.  [p. 151]

Malawi:  Refugees Bolt from Camps to Set up Businesses

According to the August 1, 2006, Angola Press article, “Foreign refugees out of control in Malawi,” the Malawi Department for Disaster Preparedness, Relief and Rehabilitation is having difficulty keeping the country’s 10,000 refugees, mostly from Congo-Kinshasa, Rwanda, and Burundi, in designated areas.

Two camps were designated for the refugees, but most of them have reportedly bolted from the camps to set up businesses in Malawi towns and cities.

The Commissioner for the Department, Meria Nowa-Phiri, said government had two months ago ordered refugees and asylum seekers to return to their camps.

But the refugees [obtained] a court injunction restraining Malawi authorities from sending them back to the camps.  ...
 
She said her department was appealing against the court injunction "because as government we have an obligation to ensure that they (refugees) are in safe places."

The Commissioner said this was also necessary for government to determine the number of refugees to be provided with relief items.

Refugees Back in U.S. Development Legislation

Well, sort of.  House International Relations Committee leaders stripped the express inclusion of refugees from the Millennium Challenge Reauthorization Act (HR 4014) as introduced last October (see archives) before the Committee “mark up.”  But at least we got this much in the July 13, 2006 Report that will accompany the bill to the House floor:

Refugee Treatment.  The Committee would also encourage the MCC to take into consideration a candidate country's respect for the rights of refugees when determining eligibility for funding.  The use of additional data sources could help inform this consideration.

But the overall legislation is in serious trouble and will not likely pass the Senate.  The more fruitful course of action will be to seek an “amendment” to the Senate’s foreign aid spending bill in September with all the language we want.  To make that happen, send letters to Sens. McConnell and Leahy, the chair and ranking member of the relevant subcommittee. 

UNHCR: Refugees Have Rights and Can Be Agents of Development

At the June 26-28 “protection” Standing Committee, UNHCR offered a statement of observations and recommendations on the UN’s High-Level Dialogue on International Migration and Development to take place in New York in September.  Making the point that "Refugees have specific rights," the statement added:

[R]efugees can become agents of development if they are provided with an opportunity to make use of their skills and productive capacities while living in a country of asylum.  UNHCR calls on states participating in the HLD to ensure that refugees are enabled to participate in national labour markets, that they are able to engage in agricultural and income-generating activities, and that the qualifications they possess are recognized in their country of asylum.  At the same time, UNHCR encourages the international community to target development assistance at refugee-populated areas and to ensure that such areas are incorporated in national development plans.

NGOs Advance Rights-based Approach to Targeted Development Assistance

According to the NGO consensus Submission to UNHCR’s Standing Committee, June 27, 2006, the anti-warehousing rights of refugees are essential to effective targeting of development assistance.  Excerpts:

Despite more than a decade of dialogue, however, a large gap between humanitarian relief and development cooperation remains.  Evidence of this are the nearly 8,000,000 people who remain in protracted refugee situations worldwide, where they are confined to camps or segregated settlements, or denied the right to work.  These restrictions are particularly inconsistent with a coherent framework for refugee migration and development.  Preventing these refugees from engaging in economic activity effectively wastes the energies and development potential of a labour force the size of a small country.

Targeting Development Assistance for refugees will not fully leverage the synergies between migration and development, nor contribute to the resolution of protracted refugee situations, unless it is accompanied with a rights-based approach towards refugee protection in countries of asylum.  Development actors and developing countries hosting refugees have increasingly recognised that policies conducive to economic growth and that ensure the effectiveness of aid must include basic civil liberties, the rule of law, and quality, non-prohibitive economic regulation.  These policies should also grant refugees their full rights under the 1951 Convention, including the freedom of movement, the right to engage in livelihoods, and the rights to work, to practice professions, to run businesses, to own property, and to choose one’s own residence.

Theoretically, where states face real obstacles in granting refugees their full rights under the Convention, incremental improvements in standards over time may seem appropriate.  In protracted situations, however, this rarely happens.  …

The durable solution of ‘return’ is generally preceded by prolonged periods of camp confinement, characterized by dependency on humanitarian aid for survival, and by hopelessness.  Under such circumstances, the voluntary nature of return is questionable.  …

[On the other hand, r]ecent research in Uganda showed that self-settled refugees were far better equipped to plan their return home than those settled in camps.

UK: Refugee Council Launches “Refugees into Business” Website

On June 22, 2006, the Refugee Council (UK) launched a unique website to help refugees develop their own businesses - www.refugeesintobusiness.org.uk:

Refugees have higher education levels than the general UK population but they are six times more likely to be unemployed. Many have business skills honed in their country of origin, but face difficulties in a new culture. The new website, Refugees into Business, provides advice and resources including:

  • A self-help guide on how to start-up a business in the UK
  • A basic business advice toolkit for advisers in refugee communities
  • A refugee awareness toolkit for mainstream business advisers
  • Details on training

The website is part of a year-long project run by the Refugee Enterprise Partnership and supported by the Small Business Service Phoenix Fund which aims to provide long-term improvement in the support available to refugees wishing to set up in business.

Is it Important to Include Refugee Protection in the Millennium Challenge Account?

According to an April 11, 2006 Harvard study on the impact of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), the administrator of the Millennium Challenge Account, “Even though the MCC is still in its infancy, we find substantial evidence that countries respond to MCC incentives by improving their indicators.”  (Abstract)

[O]n five indicators—civil liberties, education expenditure, health expenditure, inflation, and regulatory quality … candidate countries are more than 25 percentage points more likely to reform after the MCC was created than before it, even after subtracting the difference in reform between these two time periods experienced by poor non-candidate countries [p. 17, emphasis added].

On five indicators—political rights, civil liberties, health expenditure, education expenditure and immunization rate—candidate countries are at least twice as likely as poor non-candidate countries to improve their performance [p. 15, emphasis added].

Note that the “civil liberties” and “regulatory quality” indicators are of the greatest relevance to refugee rights, if MCC properly interpreted them.  The framers meant the former to promote human rights generally, including refugee protection, and the latter should address restrictions on enterprise, including that of refugees and those who wish to engage with them.  To see why this is not happening, see “How the Millennium Challenge Account Fails Refugees’ Rights and their Potential as Agents of Development.”

How the Millennium Challenge Account Fails Refugees

On March 20, 2006 USCRI issued “How the Millennium Challenge Account Fails Refugees’ Rights and their Potential as Agents of Development” a policy paper describing why the amendments the Refugee Council USA seeks are necessary.

Sen. Allen Says Committee Should Consider Refugee Rights Amendment

On March 14, 2006 U.S. Senator George Allen (R-Va.), member of Senate Foreign Relations Committee and possible presidential candidate, told USCRI that his committee “should consider” amendments such as those the Refugee Council USA seeks.

Refugee Council USA Seeks Refugee Rights Amendment

On February 28, 2006 the Refugee Council USA wrote to U.S. Senators Richard Lugar and Joseph Biden, Chairman and Ranking Minority Member of the Foreign Relations Committee respectively, asking them to amend the Millennium Challenge Act to include refugee protection in its eligibility criteria for development assistance and more support for civil society participation.

IGAD Commits to Include Refugees in Development

On February 21, 2006, ministers of the seven-nation Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, including Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, and Uganda, issued the Nairobi Declaration, committing themselves to “effective protection” of refugees and “to include refugees, returnees, and IDPs and host communities in our development agenda.”

U.S. Campaign to Include Refugee Rights in Development Aid

USCRI is mounting a grassroots campaign to amend the Millennium Challenge Act of 2003 to include a demonstrated commitment to refugee rights as an explicit criterion for eligibility in the $1.7 billion program, to broaden citizen-centric language, and to encourage the Administration to support participation of “a broad spectrum of independent civil society representatives” in the development and implementation of country plans under the Act.  To learn more about it, click here!  Or, take action directly here!

USAID on Warehousing

The U.S. Agency for International Development’s December 2005 “Livelihoods & Conflict: A Toolkit for Intervention” heavily references the work of the anti-warehousing campaign.  See Chapter 7, “Support Livelihood Efforts for Populations Displaced by Conflict,” pp. 15-17:

Assistance for refugees and internally displaced persons is often based on the assumption that they will soon be able to return to their homes.  Little if any effort is made to provide livelihood support in the weeks and months after the initial influx. Yet return may not be possible for months or years, and many refugee camps become holding centers: 7.4 million of the world's 12 million refugees have been living in camps or settlements for more than a decade.  

UNHCR has recently begun to devote more attention to the issue of promoting refugee livelihoods.  In addition, the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants has launched an anti-warehousing campaign that explicitly calls for promotion of refugee livelihoods by allowing people to move freely in and out of camps, providing them with access to employment and productive assets, including education and training.

Some host governments are opposed to promoting refugee livelihoods out of fear that refugees will become economically "comfortable" and will not want to return to their homes.  However, research has shown that refugees who have been educated, developed useful skills, and acquired resources that they can bring back may fare better upon return than those who have lived for years in camps dependent upon humanitarian assistance (Crisp 2003).  …

This may require a "cross-mandate" approach where similar assistance is offered to groups who might not be included in an agency's traditional focus.  …

Some of the most innovative and successful responses have come from people who have challenged the bureaucratic status quo.  …

Want to Know More?  …

The US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI)'s works for the promotion of refugee livelihoods by providing opportunities for employment, fostering their mobility in and out of camps, and supporting education and training.  Their anti-warehousing website contains links to other documents and information on this subject.  www.refugees.org/warehousing

Millennium Challenge Corp. Picks Countries for Aid; Civil Society has Role in Refugee Rights 

On November 8, 2005, the board of the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) selected 23 countries, including refugee hosts Armenia, Benin, Gambia, Mali, Namibia, Senegal, and Tanzania as eligible to apply for Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) assistance in 2006.  According to the MCC’s new CEO, Ambassador John Danilovich, however, “Selection does not guarantee funding. … Newly eligible countries will now begin a broad-based consultative process to develop proposals that address the country's barriers to poverty reduction and economic growth.”  This means NGOs, business, faith, human rights, and labor groups can have a major influence in directing the funding towards refugee rights, but only if they get involved in the process.

 Namibian flag
Namibia

What is the Millennium Challenge Account?

The MCA is a new development program that makes aid contingent on prior performance according to 16 indicators divided into three basic categories: Ruling Justly, Investing in People, and Economic Freedom.  The Board may select countries that score above the median on at least half the indicators in each category and on a corruption indicator.  To get the money, selected countries must engage civil society (yes, that means you!) in developing Compact proposals that will improve the country's score on one or more indicator.  This can make money available for improving refugee rights, but how?

"Civil Liberties," "Regulatory Quality," and Refugee Rights

Two of the MCA indicators especially implicate key anti-warehousing rights of refugees under the 1951 Convention including the rights to work, to practice professions, to run businesses, to own property, to move about freely, to choose their place of residence, and to have access to travel documents.  One is "Civil Liberties," which falls under the Ruling Justly category.  It rates countries on human rights, personal autonomy, and economic rights, as measured by Freedom House, which includes state control of travel, residence, and employment, and the rights to own property and establish businesses in its performance Checklist.  According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, these are to apply to all persons, including refugees.  (Unfortunately, Freedom House is uneven in its application, considering treatment of refugees in its evaluations of Lebanon and Thailand, for example, but neglecting to do so in the cases of Egypt, Kenya, India, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia and other countries.)   

Tanzanian Flag

 

 

 

Tanzania

The other is "Regulatory Quality," which is considered under the Economic Freedom category.  This rates the burden of regulations on business development and other areas as measured by the World Bank Institute.  Clearly, restrictions that keep the entrepreneurial spirit of hundreds of thousands of refugees off the market are burdens to business development.

Here's how to use these indicators for refugee rights:

Role for Civil Society

NGOs, business leaders, faith communities, human rights groups, and labor unions may all play a role in the development of the Compacts through which MCA money is disbursed.  Section 609 of program’s authorizing legislation, the Millennium Challenge Act of 2003, requires “Local Input”:

In entering into a Compact, the United States shall seek to ensure that the government of an eligible country—

takes into account the local-level perspectives of the rural and urban poor, including women, in the eligible country; and

consults with private and voluntary organizations, the business community, and other donors in the eligible country.

Countries receiving grants must identify the role of civil society in formulating the Compact’s specific objectives, responsibilities, benchmarks, and intended beneficiaries.

According to MCC’s Guidance for Developing Proposals for MCA Assistance in FY 2004, “each proposal is expected to reflect the results of an open consultative process, integrating governmental interests with those of the private sector and civil society.”  The Guidance recommends that countries describe the consultative process and “the policy, legal and regulatory actions and improvements that your government has identified as necessary to support the specific program objectives.”  In Country Questions and Answers, MCC says, it expects “that the consultations will have been meaningful and not merely a formality.”

If you represent a civil society group in one of the refugee hosting countries that have been selected:

  • find out who the government has nominated as its point person on MCA;
  • tell that person and/or the head of your foreign affairs ministry that you want to participate in the process of developing the MCA Compact;
  • propose integrative assistance projects that will assist refugees and the communities that host them in rights-friendly ways;
  • suggest public information and advocacy campaigns that will help facilitate a policy environment more conducive to refugee rights; and
  • tell us all about it so that we can share your lessons with others in other countries!

On the threshold

The board also selected 13 countries that failed to meet the MCA criteria, including Kenya, Uganda, and Zambia, to participate in a Threshold Program administered by USAID.  According to MCC, these countries must submit concept papers proposing “policy, regulatory or institutional reforms to improve country performance with respect to one or more MCA indicators.”  If MCC and USAID accept the concept papers, they will ask the country to develop a more detailed Threshold Country Plan for up to two years’ aid.  USAID will oversee implementation and work with the country “to consider the full range of implementing partners” including local firms, NGOs, and international organizations. 

Refugees to be included in the Millennium Challenge Account?

The U.S. Millennium Challenge account is a new development assistance program that requires recipients to show prior demonstrated commitments to democratic governance, economic freedom, and investment in people but currently has no specific reference to refugees and some language expressly excluding them.

On October 7, 2005 U.S. Congressmen Henry Hyde and Tom Lantos, chair and ranking member, respectively, of the House International Relations Committee (HIRC) introduced the Millennium Challenge Reauthorization Act of 2005 (H.R. 4014 ) which 

 

Tom LantosHenry Hyde

 

 

 

 


Rep. Henry Hyde          Rep. Tom Lantos
  • expressly adds “refugees” as persons to whose human and civil rights eligible countries must have a demonstrated commitment, 
  • replaces “citizens” with “individuals” among those that eligible countries must commit to economic policies encouraging to participate in trade and markets, 
  • includes “a description of the existing constraints to sustainable development in the country, including the productive capacity of the poor” among the things Millennium Challenge Compacts should include, and
  • allows the Millennium Challenge Corporation to make contracts or grants that “include supporting the meaningful participation of a broad spectrum of independent civil society representatives” in the development and implementation of Compact Proposals and their amendments.

This could give host country civil society some important new tools to press for programs facilitating refugees’ rights to freedom of movement and livelihoods, i.e., by identifying warehousing as a constraint to development and productive capacity and by crafting integrated development projects to end it. 

Joint NGO Statement on UNHCR and MDGs

USCRI delivered the joint NGO statement (version française) on UNHCR’s “Relevance of UNHCR’s Activities to the Millennium Development Goals” at the 34th Standing Committee meeting September 22, 2005, upholding refugees' rights to earn livelihoods and freedom of movement as essential to realizing the MDGs and an integral part of UNHCR's core protection mandate.

Good Humanitarian Donorship Includes Rights

The 2003 Principles and Good Practice of Humanitarian Donorship, also know as the “Stockholm Conclusions” define humanitarian action to include human dignity, protection, and implementation of international refugee law.  As one of its General Principles, it lists:

Respect and promote the implementation of international humanitarian law, refugee law and human rights.  …

Provide humanitarian assistance in ways that are supportive of recovery and long-term development, striving to ensure support, where appropriate, to the maintenance and return of sustainable livelihoods and transitions from humanitarian relief to recovery and development activities.

MCA Must Include Refugee Protection: InterAction 

In its May 2002 white paper, “The Millennium Challenge Account: A New Vision for Development,” the consortium of international humanitarian and development aid agencies, InterAction, proposed “an initial framework for policymakers designing the Millennium Challenge Account, and positioning it in the broader mosaic of an overarching foreign policy.”  In it, the group affirmed that “There must be strong linkage to humanitarian and refugee assistance efforts.”  Further excerpts (emphasis added):

Elaborating on the president’s eligibility criteria, recipient countries should have demonstrated a commitment to, and should be taking steps toward  … protecting and treating displaced people, refugees and asylum seekers fairly…

There must be strong linkage to humanitarian and refugee assistance efforts.  … 

Development assistance cannot replace refugee and disaster aid, nor can it succeed without them.

Americans are a caring and giving people, who consistently support giving life-saving assistance and protection to refugees and displaced people, wherever they may be, and helping them be resettled.  Development and humanitarian assistance need to be more closely aligned. In that way, humanitarian interventions provide a foundation for development