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A. Kreczko: The United States, the United Nations, and Humanitarian Assistance
Written by Alan Kreczko, Acting Assistant U.S. Secretary of State
Wednesday, January 23, 2002
Delivered at an International Symposium on the United States and the United Nations,
“Exploring the Future of U.S.-U.N. Relations,” January 23, 2002
I am going to comment on what perhaps is the strongest and least contentious element in the United States’ relationship with the United Nations, and that is the humanitarian work. When it comes to providing food, shelter, health care, and protection to victims of conflict and natural disaster, the United States and the United Nations work effectively together as part of a broader partnership to address the needs of vulnerable populations.
The United States seeks to advance its humanitarian objectives through a wide range of bodies within the U.N. system. On the political level, the U.N. body that is most frequently charged with humanitarian issues is the General Assembly, and within that the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). But humanitarian and social issues also have found their way onto the calendar of the United Nations Security Council. Looking back even over the past few years, we have seen the Security Council address the issue of internally displaced persons. We have seen it address the issue of the safety and security of humanitarian personnel, which is unfortunately an increasing problem, as humanitarian workers often find themselves targeted as they do their humanitarian work. We have also seen the humanitarian issue discussed in the context of much bigger political issues as, for example, when the Security Council fashioned its sanctions against the Taliban for supporting terrorism, and worked in a humanitarian exemption to those sanctions. Thus, on humanitarian issues we sometimes work through the political bodies.
On a day-to-day basis, though, our humanitarian work is accomplished through several U.N. humanitarian agencies, including the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the World Food Program (WFP) and the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), which work in concert with the Red Cross movement and with non-governmental organizations to provide humanitarian assistance. Funding for these organizations is largely voluntary. In the United States we have strong bipartisan support for humanitarian response. We are a leading donor, if not the leading donor, to many of the humanitarian agencies. We are also well represented in the leadership of these organizations. Americans have served as heads of UNICEF, the WFP, and IOM, the International Organization for Migration. There are Americans in the deputy positions at the U.N. High Commission for Refugees and United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA). The head of the emergency branch of United Nations Development Program (UNDP) is now an American. So, in terms of both financial and political and personnel support, the United States is a strong supporter of the U.N. system for humanitarian response.
The U.S. and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees
I will provide an example of an organization with which we work, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, and then offer two examples of humanitarian response. The UNHCR is the organization with which my bureau in the State Department works most closely. But I could as well speak about the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), for which the United States is the largest funder, or the World Food Program, for which we are also the largest funder. Our bureau has the lead within the State Department for addressing refugee needs. Our largest partner in that exercise is the UNHCR. The UNHCR has the mandate to lead and coordinate international action, to protect and seek durable solutions for some 21 million refugees, returnees and other persons of concern throughout the world.
The United States is the largest donor to UNHCR, annually committing some $250 million, or approximately 25 percent of UNHCR’s total budget. We provide this money largely unearmarked in order to give the UNHCR maximum discretion to respond to need on the basis of the vulnerabilities of the population. Given the large amount of money we give in an unearmarked fashion, how do we influence the policies of the UNHCR? Like many countries, we participate in the governing structure of UNHCR. We are active participants in the executive committee and we are also active participants in its standing committees. One of our newest and important tools for conducting our relationship with the UNHCR is something we call an “agreement for cooperation.”.In so doing, we negotiated with UNHCR a broad framework for cooperation in which we mutually identify priorities for the coming year. For example, we identified the following types of issues as priorities: mainstreaming the needs of refugee women and refugee children into all of UNHCR’s programs and policies; enhancing UNHCR’s capacity to prepare for and respond to emergencies; expanding the base in contributions of other donors; increasing American staffing in the organization; and increasing UNHCR’s protection presence in the field. We sit down periodically with UNHCR to see how it is doing in terms of addressing these common objectives.
From our perspective, we consider the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to be an extremely competent, professional, and efficient organization. We would not be able with our congressional oversight to provide them with such a substantial amount of money in largely unearmarked fashion if we were not convinced that they were a competent, efficient organization.
Afghanistan and the humanitarian response
To give you an example of how we work with the U.N. system, I would like to address the issue of Afghanistan and the humanitarian response there. Most humanitarian emergencies do not produce only refugees, but they produce also internal humanitarian crises. In addressing these overall humanitarian situations, the United States works in partnership not just with the UNHCR, but with other U.N. agencies, international organizations, and nongovernmental organizations.
Afghanistan was in the midst of a huge humanitarian crisis brought on by years of drought, war, and Taliban misrule long before the terrorist events of September 11. Taliban restrictions on women and on aid workers presented particular challenges to providing humanitarian relief inside Afghanistan. The humanitarian community reacted by asking the United Nations to draw up a strategic framework for assistance in Afghanistan. The aim was to make sure the assistance effort and the political effort to find solutions for Afghanistan were integrated and mutually reinforcing.
On the humanitarian side, the United States and other donors developed what was called “principled, common programming.” All projects were to be reviewed by the United Nations for consistency with certain overarching principles. Number one, humanitarian assistance programs inside Afghanistan should not reinforce discrimination against women. Number two, they should not build up the capacity of the Taliban, since the Taliban was not recognized by the United Nations as the governing authority. There were other principles along those lines.
Donors then pledged that those projects that were reviewed and put into the consolidated appeal for Afghanistan by the United Nations would be the only projects that donors would fund. This meant we would not go outside of the U.N. system to fund projects in Afghanistan in order to guarantee a consistency in our response to the humanitarian crisis there. The United Nations also organized something called the Afghan Support Group, which brought together the largest humanitarian donors in Afghanistan to coordinate a response to some of the Taliban’s challenges on humanitarian assistance. For example, this occurred when the Taliban challenged the World Food Program’s efforts to monitor its food distributions.
The humanitarian challenge magnified greatly after September 11 with the drought worsening, winter coming, and the prospect of U.S. military action. The United Nations increased its estimate of the number of people at risk from five million to 7.5 million. The U.S. president decided very early on that he wanted to increase even more the U.S. government’s contribution to address the humanitarian crisis. On October 4, President Bush pledged $320 million in additional new dollars for humanitarian response. Through diplomatic efforts with other countries, we generated an additional $500 million in pledges in the United Nations from other countries. The vast majority of the humanitarian response funded by these donations went through the U.N. system.
We faced two major challenges: one inside Afghanistan dealing with the drought and the impending famine, and one outside Afghanistan dealing with the prospect of refugees. We relied on three U.N. agencies in addressing these two challenges: the World Food Program, primarily for assistance inside Afghanistan; the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, to deal with the potential for refugees flows to Pakistan, Iran and the other countries in the neighborhood; and the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance to make sure that the overall relief effort was coordinated.
The United States purchased 100,000 metric tons of wheat and other food in the United States and provided it to the WFP for shipping and delivery. The WFP used our cash contributions to buy food locally. The result was a record infusion of food, with over 200,000 metric tons being provided to Afghanistan in four months, keeping people alive, even in the midst of heavy fighting. It was an extraordinary humanitarian effort by the U.N. system, by the donors, and by the Afghan local staff that stayed in Afghanistan to provide the relief.
There was a similar massive effort by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to prepare for the possibility of refugee outflows. At one point the United Nations was estimating that there would be up to 1.5 million new refugees. This was a particularly daunting challenge for the UNHCR, since at the time Pakistan and Iran were together already hosting over three million refugees. Both had expressed weariness about the fact that they had had to host this large refugee population for up to 20 years. The United States was the largest donor to the UNHCR. It brought increased staff into Pakistan and Iran, along with tents, medicine, and other relief supplies, in order to be ready for a refugee flow. The undersecretary for Humanitarian Assistance did a great job coordinating the humanitarian response, and in particular working with the neighboring countries like Tajikistan and Turkmenistan to ensure that aid could get into Afghanistan across borders.
There was an issue of cooperation and coordination with the military. Frequently in a situation of ongoing conflict, the humanitarian community is wary of communication with the military for fear that it will somehow compromise their neutrality. In this case, the U.N. system worked very well with the U.S. military to make sure that there was no conflict whenever possible between the military and the humanitarian objectives.
I have to say that overall it was an extraordinary success story. While much humanitarian work remains to be done, and we still have the challenge of moving from relief to recovery and reconstruction, a widespread famine was averted. A refugee crisis was averted because a strong partnership existed between the United States, U.N. agencies, other donors and the Afghan local staff.
Bosnia
I want to comment briefly on Bosnia. Bosnia is a good example of the United States working with the U.N. system, not just on humanitarian response, but on post-conflict recovery, and in particular on the return of minorities. We know the story of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. The United States has worked very closely with the UNHCR, providing over $400 million since 1991 to facilitate and enable people to return to their homes, not just the homes in their country but return to their homes in the areas whence they came. This is important for humanitarian reasons so people can go to their homes, and for political reasons so ethnic cleansing could be reversed.
Again, after a very difficult start, a lot of political resistance, and a lot of on-the-ground hostility, significant progress has been made by this partnership with the United Nations. Record numbers of minority returns have occurred in the last few years. From January 1999 through 2001, an estimated 200,000 minorities have returned home in Bosnia. I can give other examples, Timor, West Africa, East Africa are all great examples of the partnership between the United States and United Nations agencies to provide humanitarian response.
Imbalance
My one closing remark would be to say that sometimes the relationship is too strong. I will give the World Food Program as an example. The United States is now making over 50 percent of the contribution to the WFP. It is not in our interest or in the interest of the WFP for the United States to become too dominant a player in any of the humanitarian organizations. This is because it could create the perception that the WFP is an arm of U.S. foreign policy, whereas their neutrality, and their perceived neutrality, is critical to accomplishing their mission. WFP is able to operate in situations where the U.S. government would not be able to do so. In order to correct this imbalance it is very important that these humanitarian organizations regain some of the contributions that they have lost over the last several years from other leading donors.
Correcting this imbalance is also important to maintaining solid U.S. government support. I know from the standpoint of congressional oversight that while there is very strong support for humanitarian agencies, we are repeatedly questioned if the U.S. share in those organizations becomes too strong.