CLAIRE KEETON, Pretoria | Saturday
THE UN refugee agency is having to cut back its Africa programmes because funds from donor governments are insufficient, its southern Africa director said this week.
“The UN budget for Kosovo was 90% funded. Africa only got 60% of its total budget. This means cutting down on programmes,” said Ilunga Ngandu, regional director for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) at a ceremony to mark the agency’s 50th anniversary.
“How can we realistically fulfil our mandate to refugees, to the six million on the African continent?” he asked.
In effect the UNHCR spent about $120 per person in former Yugoslavia in 1999, more than three times the $35 per person in west Africa, the UNHCR said in a statement.
Ngandu challenged the world to apply “the same standards and the same protection” to refugees in all countries, 22.3 million of whom are under UNHCR care.
Zambia, with wars being waged in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola on its northern and western borders, hosts vastly more refugees than other Southern Africa countries: of the 340000 refugees in the region at the end of August, 224 704 were in Zambia.
The next largest host is South Africa with 14692 refugees, followed by Namibia with 14000.
In response to a question, Ngandu agreed that Zambia was a timebomb. “The civilian population is crossing (into Zambia) as refugees and combat troops also cross the border,” he said.
Besides refugees, the UNHCR is also concerned about millions of internally displaced persons (IDPs) forced to flee their homes.
For example, Angola has about 3.6 million IDPs and Liberia half a million, said Ngandu. “How does the international community deal with close to 20 million IDPs? They need assistance as much as refugees do.”
Ngandu noted that 50% of refugee children in Africa were deprived of education.
South African Human Rights Commission head Barney Pityana called on South Africans, both civil society and government, to make a commitment to support refugees.
In particular he called for the establishment of a body to meet the basic needs of refugees in South Africa and on the government to clarify its asylum policies. – AFP