Rescuing the Refugees

Arthur C. Helton

From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2002

Summary:  The world's focus in Afghanistan is shifting from waging war to picking up the pieces and helping the long-suffering Afghan people. But can action follow words? Modern refugee crises require solutions that pair crisis response with nation building, and private agencies with national and international actors. But the organizations devoted to such tasks remain outdated, uncoordinated, and shackled by politicians and bureaucrats. The system is broken, and it cannot be fixed from within.

Arthur C. Helton is Senior Fellow for Refugee Studies and Preventive Action and Director of Peace and Conflict Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of the forthcoming The Price of Indifference.

How would SHARE work? Like a think tank, it would have a deep research capacity with a small core staff who could draw on expert consultants. It would be a repository of expertise related to managing humanitarian crises. It would complement the work of others and be linked to the U.N. system as well as international financial institutions, NGOs, and the private sector. It could even be conceived of as a standing advisory mechanism for the U.N. secretary-general.

This new entity could initially emerge from the NGO sector. But ultimately, only an intergovernmental agreement would ensure both its political legitimacy and sufficient funding from donor governments. Support from the United States and other major governments would be crucial, as would be involvement by NGOs and independent scholars. SHARE would be an intellectual resource, not a political body; it would identify and categorize issues and bundle tasks that could then be addressed by like-minded donor and recipient countries.

Some international agencies may assert that they are already doing such work, and others may question the need for yet another layer of intermediaries. But SHARE would be a small and nimble collection of experts, not an unwieldy bureaucracy. It would fill gaps in the current patchwork and establish and promulgate "best practices" in the field. Indeed, international organizations could use SHARE to support and enhance their work, turning it into an advocate for devoting greater attention and resources to humanitarian problems. The new center should also appeal to governments by serving as an intellectual resource that could help plan more effective and efficient interventions. And, finally, the serious pursuit of this new alternative could serve as a welcome stimulus for existing institutions inside and outside the U.N. system to get their houses in order -- if only for fear of losing resources, responsibility, and prestige.

THE LONG JOURNEY HOME

An entity such as share could improve the response to the crisis in Afghanistan in a number of ways, primarily by bringing intellectual and historical perspective to bear on contemporary challenges. It might, for example, stress the need for a regional framework for refugee repatriation and reintegration, develop quick-impact projects linking short-term relief and long-term development, fashion strategies to strengthen the local NGO community, and design rule-of-law packages that marry general principles to the specific features of the Afghan case.

Refugees are not merely passive beneficiaries of humanitarian aid. Depending on how their cases are handled, they can contribute to either instability or reconstruction. In Afghanistan, where the displaced constitute nearly 20 percent of the country's population, they will have important effects on societal recovery. Afghan refugees, moreover, are a regional problem, not merely a national one, and require an appropriately regional strategy. They are located not just in Iran and Pakistan but throughout Central and South Asia. They participate in the economies of host countries and send an estimated $1 billion a year back home to support their extended families. What happens to them, therefore, will have a dramatic impact not only on Afghanistan but also on its neighbors.

Approximately 80,000 Afghan refugees had already returned to their homes as of early January 2002 without international assistance, and many more may follow by spring. The authorities in Pakistan and Iran will undoubtedly apply pressure on refugees in their countries to go back now that the Taliban has been deposed. But the vast majority of the refugees will not be able to repatriate soon -- because of the deep roots they may have established in their host countries, Afghanistan's limited absorptive capacity, and its dependence on external assistance and migrant remittances for the foreseeable future.

An entity such as SHARE could assemble the historical lessons derived from similar situations and work out how best to incorporate them into the evolving international response. In 1992-93, for example, some 2.9 million Afghan refugees returned from Pakistan and Iran, and their experiences have much to teach about what kinds of policies may be in order. But officials on the ground or in chancellories back home rarely have time to analyze the past or link it to the present, and at best may call in a few experienced practitioners for a quick tutorial and brainstorming session. SHARE could ensure a more careful and systematic process, and the result could well be more effective operations.

In addition to a vast refugee population, Afghanistan also has a large number of internally displaced persons who will have to be reintegrated. Unlike with refugees, no single international organization has a mandate to protect internal exiles and help them re-establish themselves, and this situation is bound to raise complicated coordination issues among a variety of agencies. The pace of repatriation, furthermore, will need to be managed through a careful balance of humanitarian and development assistance for Afghanistan and its neighbors. Here, too, SHARE could provide an expert setting in which decisions could be negotiated to mutual advantage, while at the same time building a body of expertise that could be drawn upon during future crises.

Afghanistan will need a substantial, multiyear reconstruction program to make any kind of refugee return sustainable. Such efforts should draw on the available local talent and address local priorities wherever possible. As the U.N. Development Program puts it, "Afghans must be in the driver's seat." The initial focus will naturally be on discrete measures designed to bring tangible benefits to as many Afghans as possible. These efforts will be supplemented and followed by a wide variety of quick-impact programs involving such matters as education, power and water supply, health, employment, irrigation, agriculture, and drug control. According to the World Bank, such programs will probably cost many hundreds of millions of dollars over the next couple of years. An organization such as share could improve the odds of success by drawing on the lessons of reintegration projects in Cambodia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Mozambique. Little literature exists on which quick-impact initiatives worked and which did not, but SHARE could convene the people who designed and implemented these projects and serve as a conduit for their advice as the current crisis unfolds.