THE world will pay an enormous price if it ignores the plight of refugees and fails to find them homes, the new UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Ruud Lubbers, has warned.
He said “it would be nonsense to praise UNHCR for its care for refugees” unless the international community made “political efforts and, where needed, military efforts” to prevent and solve the problem.
He was speaking at a news conference after briefing the Security Council on the situation in the West African state of Guinea, where UNHCR says it faces its worst humanitarian crisis.
Lubbers praised the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which has agreed to send more than 1 600 troops to patrol the borders between Guinea and Liberia and Sierra Leone.
But he said this “key initiative” would fail without international support in terms of money and logistics. In that case, he said, the crisis would worsen, with “refugees, too scared to stay in camps, on the run.”
The council said it shared the “deep concern” expressed by Lubbers at the plight of a quarter of a million people trapped by fighting in a border zone known as the parrot’s beak.
Lubbers, who took over from Sadako Ogata as head of UNHCR on January 1, noted that the crisis on the border was part of a wider problem facing Guinea, which has become home to 370_000 Sierra Leoneans fleeing the war in their own country, and another 135_000 Liberians.
Relief agencies said thousands of refugees had managed to leave the border area for the capital, Conakry, or other towns in Guinea, but at least 180_000 refugees and 70_000 displaced local people were still trapped there.
Lubbers repeatedly emphasised the contrast between the misery of the world’s 30 million international and internal refugees and the ease of those living in the wealthiest nations.
“My responsibility is to solicit funds from this rich world for those who need protection,” he said. “Countries and peoples are more and more connected to each other, through trade and investment and what have you, but there is a downside to all this,” he said.
“We will pay an enormous bill if we neglect the problem,” he added. – AFP
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