Stop sending Somalis back to Mogadishu, says U.N. refugee chief

Thursday, October 14, 2010

By Emma Batha and Julie Mollins 

Somali children stand outside their makeshift shelter in Kakuma Refugee camp in northwest Kenya, March 2, 2010. REUTERS/Frank Nyakairu

OXFORD, England - The U.N. refugee chief has called on countries to stop sending refugees back to the war-torn Somali capital Mogadishu and the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

Antonio Guterres also said it was time rich countries shared the global refugee burden more fairly with developing countries and revealed tentative plans to set up an enlarged EU-wide resettlement programme.

Guterres described Somalis as the most "systematically undesired, stigmatised and discriminated against" refugees in the world.

Many have perished in deserts, been shot while crossing borders or drowned at sea as they tried to reach the Arabian Peninsula. Those that make it to another country are often subject to xenophobic and racist attacks.

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Some have even been deported to Mogadishu - a city under nearly continual shelling, from which more than 200,000 people have fled this year, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said.

"In short, it is difficult to conceive a situation more abject than that of the Somali refugee," he said in a speech on Wednesday at the Refugee Studies Centre at Britain's Oxford University on Wednesday night.

"Mogadishu is, obviously, not a place we can ask people to call home."

On Iraqi refugees, he said countries should not send people back to places like Baghdad and Mosul for the moment.

"The message that forced repatriation sends to countries such as Syria and Jordan, which host the largest numbers of Iraqi refugees, is unhelpful.

"Were those countries to adopt such an approach, a new outflow could be triggered many times greater in magnitude than the current numbers in Europe," Guterres warned

Guterres also highlighted the increasingly protracted nature of refugee crises and the unwillingness of some rich countries to share the burden.

Only 250,000 of the world's 10.5 million refugees returned to their home countries last year, the lowest rate in two decades.

"With fewer refugees able to go home, the length of time people remain as refugees will grow," he said.

UNEQUAL BURDEN

More than half the people the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) is responsible for have been in exile for more than five years.

But Guterres added: "Contrary to what populist politicians might have us believe, the burden of hosting these refugees is borne very predominantly by the developing world, where, indeed, four-fifths of all refugees live."

The 25 most seriously affected countries are all in the developing world. He said Pakistan was the most heavily burdened with 745 refugees per $1 of GDP per capita. The United Kingdom by contrast has just seven refugees per $1 of GDP per capita. Guterres said developing countries hosting large refugee populations had come under increasing strain with the global financial crises.

"In this context, UNCHR has called for a new deal on burden-sharing, to ensure that the generosity of host countries and communities is matched by solidarity from the developed world," he added.

Guterres suggested richer countries could help both financially and by accepting refugees for resettlement.

UNHCR estimates as many as 800,000 refugees need resettlement, yet the number of places available annually is only about a tenth of that number.

But Guterres said there were moves to create a larger more streamlined resettlement programme in the European Union.

Europe provides around 6,000 resettlement place a year, or about 7.5 percent of the total worldwide.

"A larger programme would provide very much needed solutions to refugees currently without them, and demonstrate to major host countries in the South that Europe is ready to increase its solidarity with them," Guterres said.

He described the patchwork of different national asylum systems in Europe as "totally dysfunctional", in particular in the so-called Schengen area where European Union citizens can travel between or through 24 states in the area without having their passports checked.

"Mainly in the countries that belong to the Schengen area people can move freely from for instance Lisbon to Berlin without showing any passport or without even changing money," Guterres told AlertNet after the speech.

"In this context it's very dysfunctional if each country has a totally different asylum system.

"The truth is, for instance, if you are a Somali, your rate of recognition as a refugee if you ask for asylum varies from 4 percent to 90 in different European countries.

"This creates a tendency of secondary movements for people shopping for asylum where they believe they have a better chance, and that is totally against the principal of a European space." Guterres did not say how many more refugees he wanted Europe to take or elaborate on the plan.

Source: Reuters

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