The urgency to amend the Statute of the Office of UNHCR

Aman

(3 min. read)

While you are reading this, hundreds of thousands of people are crossing oceans in search of shelter. Those who have already crossed are searching for food and water and other basic amenities. The world is facing a new wave of refugee influx and it’s neither prepared nor willing to take some bold action to deal with the crisis. In fact, it should not be called a crisis, it is a catastrophe.

Only an ignorant person will say that the refugee problem will have a short-term impact on national and regional geo-political scenarios. The decade old refugee influx from Bangladesh is still haunting India and is a hot topic in its political corridors. The so-called first world and second world countries are closing their doors to the refugees. Some are refusing to dock ships carrying the helpless refugees. The topic has gained such significance that presidential candidates’ have changed their stance on it. It’s anybody’s guess what role the Rohingya crisis is going to play in this year’s national election in Bangladesh.

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According to UNHCR, there are unprecedented 68.5 million displaced people around the world today and nearly 25.4 million of them are refugees! The Agency currently has 20 Active situations throughout the world. You would thus assume that this arduous task is done on an appropriate funding by the UN. You couldn’t have been more wrong. In 2017, UNHCR received a mere 7.7 billion US dollar from UN in funding which amounts for only 1 percent of its budget! The agency is funded almost entirely by voluntary contributions which take care of 99 percent of its expenditure. It is a simple deduction that such voluntary contributions are random and can’t be solely relied upon especially in a time like this where the need for funding is all time high.

The problem of funds has its genesis in Article 20 of the Statute of the office of the UNHCR. The Article proposes that “(u)nless the General Assembly subsequently decides otherwise, no expenditure other than administrative expenditures relating to the functioning of the Office of the High Commissioner shall be borne on the budget of the United Nations and all other expenditures relating to the activities of the High Commissioner shall be financed by voluntary contributions”. (emphasis mine)

Thus the UN fund is only meant for ‘administrative costs’. It’s common knowledge that protecting human life needs much more than desk work but for this, UN asks for voluntary contributions. By its very nature, voluntary contributions are a symbol of status quo and help in furthering the contributors’ geo-political relations. For example an enemy nation Z of country A won’t fund UNHCR’s refugee programme in A, no matter how prosperous Z might be. Exceptions might be there but human lives can’t be protected on the basis of probabilities.

Thus, the ongoing refugee catastrophe should serve as a triggering point for the UN to amend Article 20 of the Statute of the Office of UNHCR or to find some alternative way to increase funding for UNHCR. This demand is not new. In the year 2004, the UN secretary-general had suggested a gradual increase in the budget however it didn’t materialise. But now it’s time for some bold steps to be taken by the world body.

The current UN allocation to UNHCR amounts to 303 dollar per person per year! The world body can do far better that this ‘to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person’ by ‘employ(ing) international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples’ as is enshrined in the Preamble of UN Charter.