Opening Session of the UNHCR Executive Committee

Assistant Secretary Sauerbrey: Thank you very much. I might also mention that the US has a tradition of including NGOs on our delegation. We have Dick Parkins and Mary Pack who are from NGOs who are highly involved with humanitarian work and are actually each representing one of the large umbrella groups. We're pleased to have them with us also.

What I thought I would like to do is give you a big picture of what my bureau does and talk a little bit about the goals that we have here at EXCOM, and also focus on a couple of the issues that are really very primary to us in terms of Nepal, a protracted refugee situation, and Chad-Darfur, certainly one of the greatest humanitarian emergencies.

First of all let me say that PRM as a bureau has a budget of just about a billion dollars. We are involved in both the assistance side of humanitarian work, and we are the humanitarian bureau for the Department of State. We provide assistance on the ground. We do a significant amount of resettlement. And in the area of resettlement I want to make a point that the United States resettles 60 percent of all the refugees referred by UNHCR. Canada and Australia also take a significant number. Together, these three countries resettle about 80 percent of all refugees who are actually resettled.

We fund about 24 to 25 percent of the UNHCR's  [United Nations' High Commissionar on Refugees] annual budget, so we are very proud of the contribution that we make multilaterally. We also work through NGOs and fund a number of NGOs.

To put a little bit of perspective on what I just said, I just had the opportunity to visit two refugee camps in Thailand along with the High Commissioner. It really focused on the work that the US does. We were able to see a number of the NGO projects that we fund that cover everything from health care to education to sanitation to livelihood training. We are pleased by our ability to work with the Thai government, to encourage the Thai government to allow refugees to have more opportunity to access outside of the camp, to access work employment and to have more freedom. And I also was there when one of the first busloads of refugees, ethnic Karen refugees from Burma, leaving a Thai camp, were leaving for the United States. It was really very moving to see the busloads going out with families that had been in refugee camps for perhaps 20 years, with small children who had been born in these camps and had never seen anything else, and they were heading for the United States and able to start a new life.

One of the things that we are proudest of, really, is our refugee resettlement program. Just within the last week, we presented the President's proposal to Congress for a total of 70,000 that the President has recommended as the ceiling this year. This year we were only able to resettle 41,200, but that's still more than all the other resettlement countries in the world combined. We were restricted in this year's resettlement by not being fully budgeted for the 70,000 that President Bush had recommended, as well as by something that you have probably heard called material support, which is a response from Congress to terrorism and concerns from 9/11. I'm going to come back to that.

We are hoping that Congress will indeed fund us for the full 70,000 in 2007. The new populations that we're looking to would be, for example, the Burundi in Tanzania. Tanzania is a very major hosting country that has probably 400,000 Burundians. We hope to take perhaps 10,000 this year. We also are going to be resettling Eritrean Kanuma that are in Ethiopia, Congolese who are in Burundi.

A focus of our effort this year is on trying to resolve the longstanding problem of Bhutanese that are in Nepal. There are 106,000 Bhutanese refugees in camps in Nepal that have been there for a very long time. We've been working, talking with both the governments of Nepal and Bhutan, trying to work out this longstanding problem.

Let me speak a little bit about the issue of material support. As I said, this is a problem that confronted us this year. The material support amendments to our terrorism/anti-terrorism law have to do with basically anyone who provided support to what is now defined under the broadened definition of terrorism as a terrorist group. A terrorist group now would be if two people are acting together with weapons without the approval of their government: our law has become so broad that they can be defined as a terrorist organization. Obviously the kinds of groups that are being caught up in this were never what Congress intended when they passed this law.

Someone who provided material support to one of these organizations is now not allowed under our refugee admissions law to come into the United States. However, there was provided by Congress a waiver capacity, an inapplicability provision, whereby the Secretary of State in consultation with the Secretary of Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, can find that despite the fact that the law would provide a ban or a bar to admission, that there is this ability to waive that provision.

The first of these waivers was provided for the Tham Hin refugee camp in Thailand. The busload that I mentioned earlier were the first people being resettled from that camp. The waiver has now given us a great deal of ability to include more of the refugees in the camp.

Secretary Rice recently signed an additional waiver for the other six camps. These are Burmese ethnic groups that have been often burned out of their village, driven out of Burma. Our government is extremely sympathetic to the groups that have engaged in resistance to the Burmese when they have been trying to take over their villages. So the ability now to bring in people who have provided material support to these groups will open up the possibility of many thousands from the six ethnic Karen camps in Thailand that we will be able to include in our program for next year.

Briefly let me say after the passage of the North Korean Human Rights Act there's been a great focus in the United States on resettling North Koreans. The first nine arrived this year. We expect that most North Koreans who are able to transit through China to another country are still going to want to go to South Korea, but we will continue whenever they indicate a desire to come to the United States to arrange for their exit from the country in which they have found themselves in transit. We will also continue to do what we can to provide protection and to encourage China not to send North Koreans back involuntarily.

The Chad and Darfur situation is one of the greatest humanitarian tragedies. As I said in my statement earlier today, we see the peace process perhaps falling apart. We see a humanitarian disaster. The United States has been very committed to assisting both the refugees and the IDPs. As you probably know, there are over two million internally displaced persons in Sudan; 220,000 or so have fled from Darfur into Chad. The level of our support this year to Chad has been approximately $40 million, from just my bureau. When you look at the entire US contribution to Chad it's about $65 million that we have been contributing to trying to keep people alive and providing what security we can.

One of the great concerns that we have today is the attacks on humanitarian providers and finding ways to provide protection for the people who are trying to provide the services to keep these very vulnerable people alive.

Finally let me just mention, again, the issue of the Bhutanese. The 106,000 Bhutanese have been living in camps in Nepal. This is one of the very long, protracted situations: for nearly 20 years we have been unable to get the political differences between the government of Nepal and Bhutan resolved. After 15 different governmental level consultations between the two governments, the United States has come forward and said we are willing to resettle a very significant part of this population. We think over the next three or four years that we can easily absorb 50,000-60,000 of the people who are now in these camps. Canada and Australia are also willing to take some of the Bhutanese refugees.

For the first time in response, I think, Nepal has agreed to allow UNHCR to do a census of the camps, which is the first necessity in order to move forward with any kind of resettlement, and has also just recently allowed exit permits for some sixteen very vulnerable, mostly young women. There are three that have already arrived in the United States. The first Bhutanese that have been given exit permits from the camps in Nepal, these were three young girls who were victims of sexual exploitation. We are very very happy that there is seemingly now some movement on this situation. We will keep working at every opportunity with the two governments to try to move this process along.

I think that's probably a pretty good overview and I'd like to now just throw it open to questions.

Question: I have two questions, one for you, ma'am, and one for Mr. Langlois.

The first one is, what about Iraqi refugees? What is the quota for asylum seekers that you would admit between now and 2006?

And for Mr. Langlois, my question is about the film that was released yesterday about Muhammad Atta and the other hijackers? I understand you're from Homeland Security. So my question is, five years after 9/11, why has it appeared, and what are your interpretations of airing such a video?

Assistant Secretary Sauerbrey: To your first question, my office is not involved in asylum. We only are addressing the issue of refugees -- refugees being people who are not already within the United States.

We have been urging UNHCR since 2003 to give us referrals for Iraqi refugees and we have been able to resettle a small number, mostly refugees who had fled in the pre-Saddam era that were in Syria or Jordan. We know there are a significant number who are in Syria, Jordan primarily, Lebanon to some degree, and some of them have long ago used up their resources and their ability to sustain themselves in any kind of dignified fashion.

So we continue to urge UNHCR to do more referrals and this will certainly be part of my discussion with the High Commissioner when I meet with him later this week because at this point we're not seeing many. I think it's for many reasons, security being the biggest issue. The concerns that happened following the passage of the law that I referred to earlier, the material support bar, is a part of the problem. But we have also indicated, and will indicate again, that we are willing to make more resources available to UNHCR to help fund their ability to do referrals to the United States. We have to have a way to have the vulnerable and the true refugees defined to us in order for them to enter our program.

Question: So you don't have a quota for Iraqi refugees? How many would you admit?

Assistant Secretary Sauerbrey: We have 70,000 in the President's ceiling for this year. Fifty thousand of them have been defined in terms of populations that have already been identified. Many of them are in the pipeline, where they've been registered by UNHCR and they're moving through the process. More than 20,000 are in that category of being in the pipeline. But we have a 20,000 unallocated number that we will take from areas where we are able to make new breakthroughs and certainly Iraq being one of those.

Mr. Langlois: I have not seen this film so I really cannot comment on the film. I've received no comment from the department on the film.

Question: I would like to ask you on Latin America, how is the situation today with the US, and how do you think the fence that is being, is planned to be built between Mexico and the US will help in any way the US regarding Latin American either refugees or illegal immigrants?

Assistant Secretary Sauerbrey: I won't comment on the fence because that is really not in my area of jurisdiction. Let me just say as far as Latin America is concerned, however, we are very concerned and working closely with the government of Colombia and UNHCR to address the needs of the very large number of internally displaced persons in Colombia. That's been our major focus in Latin America and the largest humanitarian concern that we have.

We also have been working with governments in the region to encourage them to become refugee hosting countries. There's a great deal of capacity with some of the Latin American countries to absorb and to help with this problem of resettlement.

We have actually funded through UNHCR a program in Argentina, Chile and Brazil to develop a capacity for refugee resettlement and we will be continuing to urge other countries in the region to join us in this work.

Mr. Langlois: I'm not going to be commenting on the fence. However, I do want to point out that individuals that come to our ports of entry, or individuals that are apprehended between our ports of entry that don't have proper entry documents to come into the United States, no documents, fraudulent documents. These individuals are expeditiously removed from the United States, but before they're removed, of course, they're given an opportunity to apply for asylum. It's a process called expedited removal /credible fear.

An individual expressing a fear of return or a desire to apply for asylum speaks to an asylum officer in the United States. That's the group that I manage. We determine if that fear is credible, and if it is credible the individual will have a full hearing on his case in front of an immigration judge.

So the law in the United States is that individuals can approach our territory through the port of entry. Even if they're caught trying to clandestinely come into the country, they will have an opportunity to apply for asylum if they do have a credible plan.

Question: How many Colombian refugees are there in the US ? Or how many Latin American refugees overall, are there?

Assistant Secretary Sauerbrey: I can't give you a total number of people that have been resettled in the United States from Latin America. I can perhaps get back to you with that number.

There have been a number in previous years that had been resettled from Colombia. And of course over a period of time we have taken refugees from other areas in Latin America as well, but let us see if we can get you that number.

Question: I would like to know if you have any quota for this year and 2002 to 2008 for Colombian refugees. And also I would like to know if apart from programs, US funds in I think you said Argentina, Brazil and Chile to resettle refugees, what kind of other incentive you give to letting American countries to collaborate with you in this effort.

Assistant Secretary Sauerbrey: We have been working through diplomatic channels trying to encourage other countries in the region to resettle refugees. Let me make clear that what we have funded is capacity building, helping them to develop their own programs so they are capable of resettling refugees. This means being able to have some sort of a registration program and to do the health screening and security screening, and then to have the capacity that the United States has developed for addressing the needs of refugees when they arrive.

I didn't speak to that, but let me just say that we have in the United States 365 resettlement offices. They're all over the country. One of the most inspiring things that I do is visit some of these resettlement offices, where you see refugees arriving from all parts of the world. We took refugees this past year from 55 different countries. The resettlement offices are usually non-government organizations. They identify a number of things for the refugees when they arrive. First of all, they provide housing and are required to provide certain basic household goods. They identify for the refugees schooling opportunities for the children. They work towards language training, skills training, and one of the most important things is getting the newly arrived refugee quickly into employment. They connect them to groups in the community that would be ethnic groups they could identify with.

So it's a very comprehensive effort that we make to quickly integrate refugees who arrive in the United States into becoming Americans. This is what we are trying to work with the countries in Latin America that I mentioned to develop similar systems so that refugees can be resettled in, as I said, Argentina, Brazil and Chile.

We continuously talk to other countries and urge them to consider, and we'll be happy to collaborate and work with them when we find a willingness in the same way.

Question: Quotas for Colombians?

Assistant Secretary Sauerbrey: In terms of Colombia, our numbers unfortunately are very restricted until we can resolve the issue of membership in organizations that are now defined under this law as terrorist organizations and those that have provided support. We are certainly here to say that the consequences that have come from this law have been very unintended. It is preventing people who certainly have, in the minds of most of us, genuine refugee needs and protection needs, from being considered for our program.

So until we are able to work through that issue, the number that we expect to be able to resettle from Colombia will be very small this year.

I'm not going to try to set a number. I can only tell you that those that are referred to us that do not bump into the consequences of this law will be taken into our program as they have been in the past.

Question: Has the figure 70,000 been the standard figure since 2001? Or has it been affected by the war against terror, up and down?

Assistant Secretary Sauerbrey: The number at one time, before 2001, had reached as many as 140,000. That would have been the high point, because we were taking large numbers from Southeast Asia at that time.

After 2001 we saw a very precipitous drop because of the new requirements for security screening. The numbers have been building back up again. President Bush for the last several years has been recommending the 70,000 number. We haven't been able to reach the 70,000 number because of lack of funding. The presidential determination is one part of it, but Congress has to provide the funds for that number to be resettled.

So the numbers were building back up until the consequences of the passage of the amendments to our INL law went into effect. The material support issue really hit our program very hard this year.

Question: You've mentioned that this material support program has caused quite a hit on refugee programs and numbers. Is there any talk within the administration to revise that law or to scrap it altogether, or to redefine what it is to be to give material support to a terrorist group?

Assistant Secretary Sauerbrey: The first ability to address the problem was provided in the existing law with what I described before, the inapplicability provision, which we call a waiver, to be simple. Our first effort was really to get some waivers into place so that we could see how the waivers address the problem. The first waiver was finally signed over the summer by Secretary Rice, and then the most recent one just about a month ago I -- the one that expands the ability to resettle from all of the ethnic Karen population. But the material support bar has hit us in many many different areas of the world, ranging from anti-Castro Cubans to a number of groups in Africa, to all of the Burmese refugee groups. Chin. Who are in Malaysia. Tibetans. It is a very widespread problem.

We've now had an opportunity to see how the waiver has impacted us in terms of the settlement from the one camp in Thailand, and it has significantly helped the numbers that we were able to resettle. However, we also recognize that there remain a problem that cannot be addressed in the existing law and that is, if you are a member of one of these groups or a combatant in one of these groups, there is no waiver.

So someone, for example, who belonged to an organization called the Karen National Union, who defended the village from being burned out by the Burmese military, is considered a member of an organization that is inadmissible under the current law.

There has been a great deal of interagency discussion, trying to figure out how to address this problem. Different agencies in our government have different responsibilities, different equities, so it is still under discussion with the great intention of trying to find a way to address the problem.

Question: I have two questions, if I may. The first one, given the experience your department has made so far, both with refugees, asylum seekers, [inaudible], would you have any kind of advice how the European Union should deal with the situation at the southern borders? Referring to the refugee flows coming from Africa toward Spain Italy.

My second question refers to your remarks on Darfur and the remarks you quoted by Secretary Condoleezza Rice. Given the situation there and the security situation you are also quoting, isn't it somewhat a form of betrayal or self-betrayal if you still appear to UNHCR and others to do their job there? I mean hasn't the situation reached a point where there is no possibility any more for humanitarian organizations like the UNHCR to do anything? And shouldn't we be now talking about some kind of UN intervention, maybe even against the will of the government in Khartoum, to save those lives in western Darfur ?

Assistant Secretary Sauerbrey: I think you're probably well aware that the United States has been leading the effort at the United Nations for some time to try to get agreement for a UN force. First and foremost, people have to stop fighting. There has to be the ability to come to some sort of a peaceful resolution to this conflict.

The US was heavily engaged and drove the process for the peace between, for the north/south agreement, and that so far is holding. But we have not been successful as an international community in being able to get a resolution to the Darfur situation.

The effort within the Security Council has not been one that has been able to be moved. There are countries that do not support the idea that you should be able to bring in UN troops without the permission of the government. So there's a great deal of frustration with the whole process, and I guess the thing that I can say most clearly is that the US has not hesitated within the international community and at the UN to be saying what needs to be done and to be trying to provide in the mean time, until we can get some kind of agreement, to be providing in the mean time the great majority of the assistance that is getting to the refugees, including a very high percentage of the food and funding of the NGOs on the ground.

I don't think anyone would say that UNHCR and the humanitarian workers should withdraw. What we do need to do is work harder to get security in place and most recently we did provide some additional funding to UNHCR specifically for additional gendarmes to provide some protection to the camps. But these camps, as you know, are spread out along a very long border, and as you see the increased attacks on humanitarian workers not only taking cars and equipment which was in the early days but now actually targeting human beings, it's a horrendous situation. We have now, Secretary Rice has now appointed a specific person, Andrew Natsios who was the head of USAID, as a special envoy to go on the ground and to try to drive this to a better conclusion.

Question: Do you have any advice to the EU?

Assistant Secretary Sauerbrey: I would not presume to try to give advice to the European Union on how to handle their problem.

What I would say, however, is that I think the US does have something very good to offer to other countries that are wrestling with the problem, and that is the success that we have in integrating refugees within our borders. We don't look at refugees as a problem. We look at refugees as people who bring something very positive to the United States.

I can cite one city in New York, Utica, New York, which has been called “The City That Loves Refugees.” Utica, New York was a city that lost a military base. Large manufacturers had been moving out. And the city was really in decline and welcomed in the early stages of our resettlement program, welcomed refugees from the Balkans, from Somalia, from Sudan, from really all over the world from the areas that we settle refugees from, and has become the quintessential American melting pot.

The result has been a phenomenal rebirth of the city. Refugees that came with nothing, with no education, that were able to get their education, refugees that started businesses and are now helping to rebuild the economy of the city. This is the attitude that Americans have to the refugee situation: that these are people who come to our country and want to become Americans, who embrace the American dream, the opportunities that America provides, for their children to get an education, for them to save, if they work hard, to invest, to build businesses, and to build not only better lives for themselves but to better the communities in which they find themselves.

I think this is the example, the whole basis of our resettlement efforts, that we can provide as a solution to those countries that still see refugees as a problem, not an opportunity.

Mr. Parkins: I'm Richard Parkins with the Refugee Council, USA which is a coalition of 23 agencies, nine of whom are resettlement agencies, all of us are committed to the issue of refugee protection, refugee rights, and refugee welfare.

I'd just like to add a couple of comments to what the Assistant Secretary has said.

We share, of course, the strong concern that the government has that the material support bar be dealt with because we want to continue to be as generous as we can possibly be in admitting refugees to the United States. That's been our tradition. We have, of course, a very vibrant, a very robust public/private partnership, and the resettlement agencies are eager to have our capacity fully utilized to respond to the world's refugee crisis.

So we are concerned that this issue be resolved and are working as closely as we can with our government partners to find a resolution for that. We do welcome the waivers, but we recognize that this is not the permanent solution to the problem, but it is an important interim one.

I also want to underscore what [Assistant] Secretary Sauerbrey said about the emphasis that we place upon the ability of refugees to come and then to advance themselves and to achieve self-sufficiency upon arrival in the US. We feel that integration is something that it is our responsibility as NGOs to facilitate, working in communities and working with our federal partners, our state partners, and our local government partners. I think this has been, along with the public/private partnership that we enjoy, has been a unique feature of the US resettlement program and one which we would comment to others to look at as they consider the responsibility sharing that the High Commissioner has called upon the other countries to do.

So we are willing to be allies and to be supporters of the initiatives that we see forthcoming from other countries.

Question: Madame [Assistant] Secretary, you present the America which everybody looks up to, but you in the State Department, do you think this notion of the American dream has not been tarnished by Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and the Middle East ? Don't you think there is an image today that is a little bit different from the beautiful image you are portraying here today?

Assistant [Assistant] Secretary Sauerbrey: The United States has over its lifetime as a country been committed to building not only democracy and freedom and opportunity within our own borders, but to helping to bring it to other parts of the world. Americans may have differences about how we go about it, but the commitment to achieving freedom, democracy, rule of law, economic prosperity for as many people as we can help around the world is part of our humanitarian tradition as well as part of our political psyche.

Sometimes it's very hard to tell in the short run how issues, how developments are going to evolve. I've heard Secretary Rice talk about the aftermath, the immediate aftermath of World War II and the chaos that was seen and the complaints about the fact that there had been a breaking down of stability. I've heard her say many times, who would have thought at that time that you would see a Europe that comes together in freedom and prosperity, that you would see at a point in time the fall of communism?

So I think as we look at this issue today it's a little hard to tell in the short run what it's going to look like in ten years, but as Americans are also very optimistic and see the glass half full, not half empty, we continue to believe that the people of the Middle East have the same aspirations for their children to be able to go to school, get an education, become productive citizens, and help to build the country that they live in. And given the political environment in those countries, we think they can achieve the same kinds of freedom and opportunity that Americans have been able to achieve.

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