UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY 55th SESSION
Third Committee
Item 109: Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Statement by H.E. Ms Penny Wensley
Ambassador and Permanent Representative
7 November 2000
Madam Chairman
Australia wishes to acknowledge the invaluable contribution of the outgoing High Commissioner for Refugees, Mrs Ogata, and her devotion to the cause of the world's refugees. We welcome the Secretary-General's decision to appoint Professor Lubbers to lead UNHCR through the next challenging period.
Australia remains strongly committed in its support of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and to the Refugees Convention and its Protocol. Australia's statement to the UNHCR Executive Committee meeting in Geneva in October this year affirmed that commitment and restated our desire to see the international protection system operating in the most effective way possible.
Today the global community faces significantly more complex challenges than those the international community had to deal with 50 years ago when it created the Office of the High Commission for Refugees and drafted the Refugees Convention.
Both have served us well, but now we must look to the future and equip UNHCR to meet the challenges ahead. We must be as bold and ambitious as our predecessors were. We must make certain that the structures we have in place to protect those most in need are such that the international protection system remains viable and relevant and delivers fair and effective outcomes to refugees.
In Australia's view the challenges lie not with the refugee convention but with the way the international protection system operates.
International Protection
Madam Chairman
As Australia's Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, Mr Ruddock, highlighted during this year's meeting of EXCOM, the international protection system is at a crossroads.
The system is jeopardised by global trends such as mixed migration flows, global mobility, differentials in economic and social opportunity, unmet demand for economic migration, the changing nature of conflicts, terrorism, people smuggling and the abuse of asylum systems.
Increasing numbers of asylum seekers are adopting inappropriate approaches to achieve migration outcomes or to choose their country of protection - whether or not the destination country has legal migration avenues. This diverts states' resources, often to the detriment of those in greater need of protection.
The solutions to these problems lie with our finding comprehensive and integrated approaches involving international cooperation and coordination.
Australia welcomes the global consultations as an opportunity for states and UNHCR to work together to address these challenges and to strengthen the international protection system. It gives us an opportunity to cooperate on finding solutions to achieve a more effective international protection system for refugees.
One aspect of a comprehensive approach is to provide support to countries of origin to take practical steps to sustain people in their home countries so they are not forced to leave. For instance, Australia recently provided emergency drought relief to Afghanistan through the world food program's appeal. Our contribution helped to alleviate the suffering of people affected by the drought and to reduce the potential for further displacement.
Another aspect is to give priority, and to find resources, to determine in the countries of first asylum, who are refugees in need of protection and who are not. We must also generate timely durable solutions, so the incentive to find asylum in another country is minimised.
Australia believes that it is imperative that countries of first asylum and other donors work together in providing temporary protection while durable solutions are found.
More needs to be done to support first asylum countries in particular.
Resources
We speak of burden or responsibility sharing as a cornerstone of the international protection system. But this language does not bring into sharp focus the finite nature of states' capacity to provide resources. If we want new resources, we must find innovative ways to generate them.
At a conservative estimate, western states are spending, each year, ten billion U.S. dollars on determining refugee status for half a million asylum-seekers within their borders, of whom only a small percentage are refugees. This is the cost of individual asylum determination in developed systems of administrative law, with their multiple layers of review.
By comparison, UNHCR has an under-funded budget of one billion U.S. dollars with which to respond to the needs of the more than 20 million refugees and persons of concern.
Saving just one tenth of asylum determination costs could double UNHCR's budget.
The resources currently allocated to refugee determination in a number of destination countries could be better used to support both sustainable repatriation and the economies of countries of first asylum which bear the costs of hosting refugee populations, despite their own often limited economic capacity.
People Smuggling
Another concern for Australia is the problem of people smuggling.
People smuggling is a growing international phenomenon. The organisers are criminals and their motive is profit from the misery of others. Their efforts threaten the integrity of the established system of protection and endanger programs of regular migration designed to alleviate the plight of those refugees who are most in need. It is a feature of modern times to which we need to put a stop.
To address this problem Australia has developed a comprehensive strategy encompassing:
• prevention - minimising the outflows and providing support to countries of first asylum;
• interception - working with other countries to interrupt people smugglers and their clients en route; and
• reception - developing appropriate arrangements for unauthorised arrivals to Australia.
These activities aim to tackle both people smuggling and protection issues.
Reform and governance
The UNHCR is a crucial agency in the international protection system and it needs to work efficiently and effectively in focussing on its core mandate. As noted in the High Commissioner's report, management and oversight issues continue to receive attention.
In a constantly changing environment Australia emphasises the need for UNHCR to continuously review and reform its activities. The Executive Committee of UNHCR can be a forum for meaningful and interactive debate on issues of concern, provide intellectual leadership and guidance and set directions to be implemented by UNHCR.
Australia has been vigorously pursuing reform of the governance and budgetary processes. There is now a noticeable movement toward a greater focus on the core mandate, on roles and responsibilities; on multi-year strategic planning and priority setting tied to the budget; on better matching the budget with expected revenue; and on giving more attention to emergency preparedness and response capacity..
Madam Chairman
We look forward to working with the new High Commissioner and other member states to strengthen the system for the international protection of refugees.