almotamar.net google - The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is at present holding an international conference in Geneva to address the humanitarian needs of refugees and internally displaced people in Iraq and the region. Representatives from more than 60 national governments, as well as a number of NGOs, will be involved in the conference.
It can only be hoped that there will be as much involvement in actually providing relief to more than one and a half million Iraqis who have become internally displaced and around two million others who have fled to neighbouring countries, chiefly Syria and Jordan. These sorts of conferences are notoriously long on good intentions and short on concrete pledges to back them up.
Many of those forced to take what they can with them and head for the nearest border or a relatively safer place in the country were not-so-long-ago hopeful of their chances to participate in a new day for Iraq. Obviously the best solution would be an abrupt halt to the sectarian and other violence, but not even the most optimistic followers of United States President George W. Bush believe there is much possibility of that.
So the best possible alternative outcome at this time depends on the generosity of the international community, which an Amnesty International report, coinciding with the UNHCR conference, calls on to "agree on concrete steps to address the needs of Iraqi refugees and internally displaced persons. These should include: the provision of effective protection for all refugees from Iraq; financial, technical, and in-kind assistance to the governments of Jordan, Iraq and Syria, and to UNHCR, as well as to national and international humanitarian organisations in order to provide vital services, including health care and education, to Iraqis in Jordan and Syria."
The Amnesty International report also calls for countries outside the area, particularly the United States and European Union nations, to establish generous resettlement programmes to assist refugees, especially those most at risk "in starting new lives well away from the conflict zone and to afford all refugees and rejected asylum-seekers effective protection."
Clearly, an immediate response to this situation in terms of money and manpower is called for. Failure to rise to the occasion not only puts innocent citizens who have already been ravaged by war at further risk, it also almost certainly will lead to instability in Syria and Jordan, where relief agencies are already overwhelmed by the growing number of refugees.
The United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees came into force in the early 1950s. Signatories to the convention are bound to give certain kinds of legal, social and humanitarian assistance for bona fide refugees, which includes in most cases education and health care.
The UN convention is an important and necessary development in a world full of war, famine and disaster. Yet, the provisions of the convention can be extremely difficult for host countries to satisfy.
Thailand is a nation that, better than most, can relate to the difficulties faced by Syria and Jordan, having long been host to a large number of displaced people, especially those who have fled political persecution and violence in Burma. Thailand has been justifiably commended and justifiably criticised for the handling of its internally displaced persons and immigrants.
Jordan and Syria cannot be expected to absorb all the refugees from the Iraq war, especially as the incoming tide may remain high for some time. Perhaps it is better to treat the war itself as a separate issue when discussing the refugee situation, yet it is obvious which nations have the most responsibility to the displaced of Iraq. It is only right that a sizeable fraction of the cost and effort of conducting the war should be devoted to them now, and that every avenue to end the conflict should be explored.