Kelly T. Clements is the deputy high commissioner for UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency.
Classes taught under trees, overstretched clinics offering the most basic health care, long walks to reach clean water, and the chilling shadow of sexual violence … These were just some of the privations recently relayed to me by refugees in Chad’s remote eastern border with Sudan.
Since armed conflict erupted in Sudan last year, over 8.2 million people have been forced to flee their homes, seeking safety wherever they can find it, inside or outside the country.
Most of the refugees arriving in this arid region in the last year — almost half a million individuals — wouldn’t be alive today without the United Nations, its donors and partners. And yet, as the world turns to other preoccupations, financial support for the U.N. humanitarian agencies — and hence, millions of refugees — is dwindling.
It’s not just funding that’s waning — moral backing is eroding too. We hear it argued that the U.N. should be scrapped, that it makes no difference; is broken, bureaucratic and corrupt.
Some of this is longstanding griping coming from those who will never want tax dollars spent outside their own neighborhoods or countries. Some of it is also misinformation — like reports wrongly suggesting that the U.N. is encouraging people on the move to head to the United States border.
Yet, my agency carries out lifesaving humanitarian work — from Ukraine to Yemen to the Darién. It provides life-sustaining aid to tens of millions of the most vulnerable people. And it also provides hope.
Sustaining such a massive global response requires skilled and brave staff, intricate contextual knowledge of crises — and significant funding. Much of the work is behind-the-scenes and highly specialized. And, as someone who has been immersed in humanitarian responses my entire career — most recently at the U.N. Refugee Agency, UNHCR — I’m privileged to have a close-up view.
Over the years, aid agencies have traveled far — often pushed by donors and affected people — in improving accountability and removing opacity. We’re now better at learning from and working with business. We do not fear reform.
The U.N.’s humanitarian work with partners is more important and complex than ever — not just in terms of saving lives, but also stabilizing communities and countries. And what we do in Chad does matter to those in Chicago, Copenhagen or Canberra, even if it’s far.
Within days of the Sudan conflict starting, for example, UNHCR and partners were deploying to the borders, finding ways through. U.N. logistics have been built over time and currently outstrip the abilities of the private sector and state agencies to reach those in need — whether via the U.N.’s Humanitarian Air Service, or trucks and ships from supply warehouses in regional hubs. And the work is complicated: Solutions require time, planning, local agreements, negotiating access, procuring aid and stretching budgets. In addition to that, logistics are expensive, as remote areas are sometimes only reachable by air — and Sudan has 7,000 kilometers of borders.
Even through political storms, the work continues. In Ukraine, UNHCR provides cash, housing and relief items. In Afghanistan, we reached 29 of 34 provinces last month with protection, shelter kits and essential winter items for women and children. U.N. agencies specializing in refugees, food, health and children work through local organizations, via structures and relations that have been built over decades, supporting host communities.
Humanitarian work can also be exceedingly dangerous and stressful, and aid workers make enormous sacrifices — away from their families, working in dangerous conditions that can shorten life expectancy. UNHCR personnel were victim to more than 450 security incidents last year. For our sister agencies, losses can be much greater.
Yet, our funding model is creaking. Last year, UNHCR was only able to raise half of what it needed for basic planned programs. We face impossible decisions to meet the greatest demand we’ve ever seen.
This year’s outlook is even bleaker, with costs rising everywhere. So, we have been cutting — our own staff, the vital aid we offer: cash for Syrian refugees in Jordan, female hygiene kits in Uganda, protection monitors in the Democratic Republic of the Congo … The human costs are immediate.
And while most of our funds currently come from the U.S., the European Union and a handful of others, we’re trying to diversify to the private sector and other parts of the world. But this shift takes time.
For those who argue that charity begins at home, there’s another stark lesson to be learned from Chad: If we cannot facilitate people living and becoming more self-reliant where they are, they will move.
On Sudan’s border, 27 year-old Mohammed — a married refugee with two children — told me he planned to make the dangerous crossing to Europe. “What is there for me here?” he asked. I found myself struggling to answer.
A proper response to Mohammed will take time and effort. We will need new actors, investors, funding models and approaches to create the conditions that will allow individuals to rebuild when they’re uprooted. And for that all to happen, the U.N. needs support. Starve us of funds, these structures will disappear.
And once they’re gone, they won’t come back.
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