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Integrating Human Rights in Humanitarian Work
What is the Refugee Program Doing?
A
Human-Rights Based Approach to Refugee Assistance (2001)
International Rescue
Committee
CARE
SPHERE project
Refugee
Council USA
International Refugee Policy Asylum in the U.S.
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Refugees, Humanitarianism
and
Human Rights
“As
brutal civil conflict becomes the hallmark of war today, and governments
continue to derogate their responsibilities to protect refugees,
adhering to the humanitarian aid criterion of ‘impartial
and non-political’ becomes more and more difficult. Engagement
with the daily implications of delivering aid is now a vital task
for humanitarian organizations grappling to redefine their responsibilities
in an increasingly complex and chaotic world.”
-Michael Posner and Deirdre Clancy,
A
Human Rights-Based Approach to Refugee Assistance
The Challenge
Around the globe, a dizzying array of actors square
off in increasingly brutal and complex conflicts. Millions are driven
from their homes and forced to take refuge in areas that are destabilized
by the very forces that exploded into conflict at home. In this
context, international humanitarian aid organizations are being
asked to take on greater responsibility. At the same time they are
forced to grapple with their roles in a changing world.
The Rwanda
crisis was one example of this. Unfortunately, the failure
to separate those intent on prolonging the violence from the genuine
refugees in need of protection meant that the camps were quickly
taken over by forces looking to divert aid resources to refueling
their war machine (For more on this see the Security
section.) Humanitarian workers were faced with a gruesome
dilemma: withdraw from the camps, possibly abandoning hundreds of
thousands of refugees to starvation and disease or continue to provide
aid, fully aware that a portion of it would be used to fuel the
violence that had already left nearly a million dead. In the end
one prominent organization, Médécins Sans Frontières
did withdraw, but most others remained.
At other times, humanitarian aid organizations face difficult choices
about how to provide aid, rather than whether to provide aid. For
example, Liberian refugees in Guinea were dismayed when their familiar
foodstuff, rice, was replaced with bulgur wheat. Those responsible
for the aid deliveries claimed to have made the change because bulgur
wheat is said to be more nutritious than rice. Unfortunately, because
the refugees didn’t know how to prepare the wheat, the real
value of the already scant food basket (consisting only of bulgur
wheat and oil) was diminished. This scarcity may have a detrimental
knock-on effect as well. Will refugees be forced to forage for food
in unsafe areas? Will women feel compelled to resort to prostitution
to feed their children?
These are just some of the complex array questions facing humanitarian
organizations.
Integrating Human Rights in Humanitarian
Work
These issues are gaining new prominence as humanitarian organizations
are increasingly recognizing their role in protecting and promoting
human rights. Some humanitarian organizations have created programs
to integrate human rights into their work. For example, the International
Rescue Committee (IRC) set up a Protection Department to
deal with human rights in the organization’s daily work, including
training field staff in the in the principles of refugee protection
and supporting advocacy effort related to human rights issues raised
by field staff. Another humanitarian organization, CARE
, has established a Human Rights Initiative. The Initiative aims
to raise awareness of human rights within the organization and to
facilitate the integration of a human rights-based approach in CARE’s
programs. The Initiative also publishes a newsletter, “Promoting
Rights and Responsibilities.”
Other projects are working to create standards and promote the idea
that humanitarian organizations are accountable to the populations
they serve. These include the SPHERE
project, which aims to create minimum standards for the
provision of services. In addition, human rights organizations are
increasingly recognizing the importance of working with humanitarian
organizations.
What is the International Refugee Program
Doing?
The Lawyers Committee is working to encourage the adoption of a
human rights framework in humanitarian assistance by integrating
these considerations into our work and by fostering closer cooperation
with humanitarian organizations.
One important way in which the International Refugee Program has sought
to address these relationships in our work is by integrating them into
our work to support refugee
protection capacity in West Africa. When we set out to bring together
a group of NGOs from across the region to enhance their ability to advocate
on behalf of refugees, we considered it important to include both human
rights and humanitarian organizations. The two groups were able to complement
each other by provide a variety of perspectives on refugee protection.
Humanitarian organizations who worked to provide refugees basic needs
might be aware of situations where those needs were not being met, but
little knowledge of the advocacy strategies necessary to approach those
problems. Human rights organizations could be a useful ally. The activities
of WARIPNET, the network that grew out of our sessions, with regards to
the social and economic rights of refugees show a strong interest in humanitarian
issues.
This work on economic and social rights, on which the Lawyers Committee
and WARIPNET have collaborated, is one way in which the Lawyers
Committee is working to promote a human rights approach in humanitarianism.
By raising awareness of the social and economic rights protections
afforded to refugees under international law, the Refugee Program
seeks to promote a rights-based approach to humanitarian issues.
Few would dispute the importance of food for refugees. However,
viewing this as a right, to which refugees are entitled under law,
rather than a need governed by the vagaries of charity can radically
change the response. In the example cited above of Liberian refugees
who received bulgur wheat rather than rice, a rights-based approach
would argue that whenever possible refugees should be provided with
culturally appropriate foods. It would also point out that rice
could be purchased locally, benefiting the local economy and helping
to improve the relationships between refugees and host communities.
If it proved impossible to distribute rice, refugees should be instructed
in how to prepare the bulgur wheat to make it more palatable. The
Refugee Program’s examination of the economic and social rights
situation in West Africa has attempted to bring attention to ways
in which humanitarian aid can be more effectively tailored to respect
refugees’ social and economic rights.
The Refugee Pogram has also worked with other human rights and humanitarian
organizations in a project sponsored by the Social Science Research Council
which examined, among other things, the way that Sierra Leonean refugees
in the Gambia experienced the right to work. Read more about the Forced
Migration and Human Rights project.
In an effort to work more closely with humanitarian organizations,
the Lawyers Committee has signed a memorandum of understanding with
the International
Rescue Committee pledging to work together to promote human
rights. Collaboration to this point has included training for IRC
field staff in Guinea provided by Refugee Program staff, and a briefing
on the crisis in West Africa for Lawyers Committee staff by the
IRC. With more projects in the pipeline this promises to be a fruitful
exchange.
The Lawyers Committee has also joined an umbrella organization known
as the Refugee
Council USA. The Refugee Council USA brings together agencies
humanitarian and human rights NGOs in the United States to advance
common advocacy agendas. It includes organizations that work primarily
with refugees resettled into the United States in helping them to
integrate, agencies which provide direct assistance to those seeking
asylum in the United States and human rights organizations monitoring
global refugee policy. |
