TANZANIA
I. INTRODUCTION
Here I was, at the end of the road, time to summarize my itinerary as an International Civil Servant in the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees:
Mozambique: Sub-Office Tete: 1.5 years – NOA Field Associate,
Cote d’Ivoire: Sub-Office Danane: 1.5 years – P1 Field Officer,
Angola: Representation Luanda: 3 years – P2 Programme Officer,
Tanzania: Sub-Office Ngara: 2 years – P3 Field Officer,
Tanzania: Representation Dar-es-Salaam: 4 years – P3 Programme Officer,
Zambia: Representation Lusaka: 3 years- P4 Senior Programme Officer,
Switzerland: Headquarters: 3 years – P4 Senior Programme Coordination Officer for Africa,
DR Congo: Representation Kinshasa: 3 years – P5 Deputy Representative,
Kenya: Representation Nairobi: 3 years – P5 Deputy Representative,
Sierra Leone: Representation Freetown: 1 year – P5 Representative,
Niger: Representation Niamey: 6 months – P5 Representative,
Switzerland: Headquarters: 2 years – P5 Senior Operations Coordinator for West Africa,
Tchad: Representation Ndjamena: 3 years – P5 Representative,
Nigeria: Representation Abuja: 3 years – D1 Representative
Tanzania: Representation Dar-es-Salaam: 2 years – D1 Representative.
Of the more than 32 years and 12 countries in the service of my organization, I spent a quarter of that time and two tours in Tanzania. Also because I married in this country, and because of proximity to my own country, I felt that expense-wise and logistically it would make sense to retire near Mozambique. And so, in February 2020, I reported to duty as Representative in Dar-es-Salaam, determined to do my best in this last lap as an international civil servant, which was ending with the mandatory retirement in November 2021.
II. RELATIONS WITH GOVERNMENT
I arrived at a time when UNHCR Tanzania was running a difficult dialogue with the government (the Department of Refugee Service). Two Assistant High Commissioners had followed each other visiting the country within 12 months to discuss protection of refugees with the government. On my part, I was very well received by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and East African Cooperation, Professor Palamagamba Kabudi, to whom I presented my letters of credence. Immediately after, I met the Minister of the Environment and the Minister of Home Affairs, who were also very welcoming and considerate. Nonetheless, the working relations between UNHCR and the government were clearly quite frosty if not negative, and some 12 national staff had been prohibited from setting foot in the camps for different reasons for more than a year. My first task was precisely to advocate for these staff to be allowed to work. At the end of my assignment, all but two staff had been allowed back to work and the reasons for suspending them became clearly a question of wounded pride and incremental miscommunication.
I must hasten to state that when talking of government, the Refugee Department represents, and talks on behalf of government on all matters refugee. It is inescapable. On the other hand, using these powers to the maximum, the department attempts to monopolize UNHCR and did all it could to prevent other technically qualified, equipped and relevant Ministries from even contributing to delivering services to refugees. And during my time, it has attempted to act as a filter to any truth being known to other branches of government. For example, the annual budget allocated to the Department is not acknowledged in the records of the Ministry of Finance, from where the Department derives its sovereign budget. There are therefore two annual budgets for this Department, and one does not know what the other covers. Neither UNHCR nor the DRS account to the Ministry of Finance on the UNHCR funding.
This, and the fact that UNHCR has been allocating and donating vehicles directly, skipping the mandated role of the Ministry of Finance (that of receiving on behalf of the government any foreign donations) has created a negative relationship based on unaccounted resources. Since this is a long lopsided relationship, until it is resolved, conflict will remain the inescapable outcome. I knew I was not resolving it in a mere 2 years.
Intermittently, other international staff were also prevented from going into the camps and working, including the Head of the Field Office Kibondo, a compatriot from Mozambique. The government also barred me from entering the camps that I was financing, on my first attempt, on pretext that I did not inform the government counterpart. Clearly the management of relations was very adversarial, and I did signal this to the Chief of Protocol in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I also realized that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the key to clarifying procedures and expectations and to improving relations with the Refugee Service. I did use this channel frequently.
In fact, the Refugee Service had several expectations of me, firstly because they knew I was a brother-in-law to Tanzania, and I spoke Swahili. Except none of that was part of my behaviour. I clearly stated that while I allowed anyone to address me in Swahili (or any other language of those I speak), I could only reply in an official UN language so that I could be officially quoted without equivocation because I was representing an institution that was not African.
The Service expected me to provide funding for the expansion or construction of their office premises based on some past event, and I clearly stated that as a service created by law, the government was the sole authority responsible for that. Apparently they were not moving to Dodoma until UNHCR built an office for them there. That was overlooking the fact that this is a government office and therefore part of the institutions of sovereignty. Our support should therefore be peripheral. In the same way as a vehicle worth of a Director should be provided by the authority that appointed the Director. UNHCR’s commitment was to provide project and service vehicles.
It was so bad that even this article becomes depressing to read.
Vehicles: I came to understand that there were a lot of plans on UNHCR vehicles when they were ready for auction at the end of their useful service. The last auction had been suspended before my arrival, and finally authorization was obtained. Only to be suspended suddenly the very day of auction, when people from all over Tanzania had paid the auction entry fees and had gathered in the capital. Our premises in Kasulu were invaded on a quiet weekend by a high government officer (Deputy PS), who came to make a detailed inventory of our vehicles, not caring that our premises are a diplomatic space, not informing any UNHCR manager. And I was summoned to Dodoma, to be informed that the government wanted to accept all the 25 vehicles. I informed the government that they cannot accept what I did not offer, and that our vehicles are used in a system of rental from a central vehicle management pool at our headquarters. I presented a list of the donations of vehicles UNHCR had made through the years, and requested that we be allowed to autonomously manage our assets. So misinformed was the PS of Home Affairs that I cannot say more of what transpired and who was present in the meeting, supposedly to share in the UNHCR vehicles. Someone was seriously misleading other branches of a government that otherwise respected me and accredited me.
It transpired that someone was misinforming that even the UNHCR Representative was among the prospective beneficiaries of the auction; that was a campaign to frustrate the Representative. They never knew that my ethics would not be questioned over vehicles that I manage on behalf of the organization, new or second-hand, according to our own code of conduct, under the concept of conflict of interests. Thirty years into the organization, ethics was a second nature to me.
The serious dent in relations was therefore based on the wrong assumption that I would behave unethically because that is the local norm. And based on those assumptions, someone waged a war while I was simply absent from the boxing ring (shadowboxing). In the process, individuals poison relations between institutions and the government that are governed by international conventions.
III. THE REFUGEE ISSUES
One cannot talk of refugees in Tanzania without mentioning refugees from DRC, who have constituted a longstanding uninterrupted flow into Tanzania since the 1960s.
One cannot talk of refugees in Tanzania without mentioning refugees from Rwanda who have happened in two major waves: in 1958 (case closed) and very dramatically in 1994, bringing into Tanzania some 800,000 Rwandan refugees. By 1998 all had been forcibly repatriated (case closed)
One cannot talk of refugees in Tanzania without noting that refugees from Burundi have come to Tanzania in three influxes: the 1972 group, the 1993 group and the 2015 group. Three influxes that leave behind major demographic features: repatriations have been organized, naturalization had been offered for the 1972 group but not all seized this opportunity. Still, having been self-sufficient since 1982, no assistance or protection has been offered to this group. Tanzania wants them repatriated, Burundi declared its doors open to all Burundians, but manifestly the 1972 group will go nowhere. This is a reality that needs to be factored into any review of policies and approaches. As for the remnants of the 1993 influx, we are also talking of more than 20 years.
Several decisions had been taken at very high levels of government related to refugee welfare before my arrival, including the closure of common markets where refugees exchanged goods and foodstuff with the nationals, the closure of skills training centres and any income-generating activity. On the assumption that these activities were making refugees too comfortable and unwilling to repatriate. Seeing the catastrophic state of quality of services to refugees, I did not have the opportunity to be more forceful in arguing against these decisions, despite the representations I made to the Minister of Home Affairs and other advocacy activities, such as organizing the 4-day field mission with 8 Ambassadors and the 4-day field mission with the 7 UN Heads of Agencies.
The management of refugee issues in Tanzania has not benefitted from the long history and experience of this country in terms of synthesizing the past, reviewing the regional context, and realizing that other more positive ways of managing refugees could have been attempted. Despite the fact that I called for a major conference with the government and civil society in Arusha, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of hosting refugees. Be it as it may, history points to three inescapable facts, among others:
Tanzania will continue to be a country of asylum despite itself and irrespective of the national politics, given the regional realities of exclusion and aggressive behaviour of other states. As it is therefore, managing refugees only as a burden and as a transient issue is: (a) ignoring history, (b) missing the opportunities and (c) wasting refugees as potential human capital (both for the country of origin and of asylum).
Refugees are human beings like any of us and if we treat our African brothers as a threat, we will never take the time to build their human capacities based on the relatively advanced human resources that Tanzania has to offer. Keeping our brothers eternally dependent and undeveloped actually works against solutions.
Anyone, refugee or not, who has been in a country more than twenty years is most likely going nowhere. And Tanzania has some refugees of 1972 (51 years) and 1993 (20 years). The approach of keeping them perpetually in a refugee status does not help the country because that does not allow Tanzania to use their capacities in full. In fact, it creates a prolonged limbo situation, thus incubating future problems of non-belonging called statelessness (another issue of concern to UNHCR). So, not only it is not a solution, but in fact it acts against solutions. This is hard-fact sociology.
There are other critical services provided to refugees that unfortunately are kept de-linked from the social fabric of the country, almost a decade after the last emergency:
Education: the insistence on the curriculum of the country of origin, as written in the refugee policy, is premised on the erroneous notion that people should be taught in the curriculum of their country of origin as a preparation, orientation, and incentive for repatriation. The underlying assumption is totally wrong on two counts: first, there is no empirical evidence to the assumption; secondly, anyone studying outside of their country will submit to the curriculum of that host country. No Mozambican gets a scholarship to the UK in the expectation that in England special arrangements will be done for them to follow the Mozambican curriculum. A Swiss studying in Russia will follow Russian curriculum, mutatis mutandis. And, considering the weaknesses of the curricula in DRC and Burundi, not providing the Tanzania curriculum deprives refugees of better education, deprives African brothers of good opportunities, especially because in Tanzania the supervision and inspection services are very organized and professional. Such inspections do not exist in the camps. It is a pity that refugees stay in Tanzania twenty years and return home ill-prepared when they could benefit from such things as VETA etc. Many years of providing poor services that are not the fault of the service providers but of the philosophical assumptions that inform the policy.
Health: there is little recognition outside the Ministry of Health that refugee influxes represent a very high risk to public health. Public health understood to encompass all human beings in the territory: nationals in any condition, including those in prison, foreign nationals in any condition, including seasonal migrant labour, legally or illegally in the territory, refugees. The health services delivered in the camps are not integrated into the national system. That was more visible during the COVID period, when we were prevented from cooperating with the Ministry of Health. I informed those organizations responsible for delivering these services that twenty years after my first assignment in this country, the health centres and hospitals in the refugee camps have not been gazette. The legislation states clearly that health is practiced in Tanzania in accordance with national protocols. Supervision by the relevant Ministry is a corollary that need not even be stated because health represents direct physical responsibility for lives.
It is in that context that COVID happened and my budget for refugees was increased by $1.8 million. Lockstep, I called my appointing authority in Geneva and asked permission to excise 10% of this amount to donate to government for strengthening services in the refugee-affected areas of Kigoma Region. Authority given, authority exercised, I expressed to the government my readiness to donate the fund through the Ministry. The Ministry was apparently queried about this money, on the reasoning that it should pass through the Refugee Department, and so, it took the Ministry four months to accept the money. While it was interpreted as refugee money, that was my money to donate, as per authorization. That was an explanation that I provided but which was not accepted. I could as well have just kept silent.
Repatriation and durable solutions: much can be said about repatriation, and the pressure to continue repatriation to Burundi in the context of COVID, when cross-border travel had been severely restricted globally. I made the point of suspension of repatriation, but it was not accepted. We were instead accused of working against repatriation to protect our jobs. A lot of vitriol around repatriation made us continue despite the COVID menace. On the Burundi side, the government adopted a quarantine strategy that ended keeping an average of 25 refugees on quarantine per convoy for the standard 2 weeks. And in 2 weeks, we would have operated 4 convoys, putting a lot of pressure on the receiving end. I did take the statistics of COVID positive returnees as received from UNHCR Burundi to my Minister. I received no response, and so, I had no guidance to offer to my field team except to continue. I accompanied two of these repatriation convoys myself, as part of the way I used to do my managerial business.
There was also a running resettlement programme to the United States but its impact on solutions remained small.
There were many protection and assistance problems that I never managed to resolve, in particular the maintenance of more than 40,000 Congolese refugees in a camp without assistance or access to services for over a decade, on some convoluted explanation that they were not refugees, nor persons of concern. Another category was invented, of “persons of no concern”. A bizarre protection abdication that I could not resolve during my time.
And then, the attack on Palma in Cabo Delgado, brought into Tanzania an influx of Mozambican refugees. The Minister of Home Affairs (G. Simbachawene) told me in no uncertain terms that the government did not want to see any humanitarian programmes in Mtwara, because, he said “once you start programmes, you never leave”. I advocated with the government at central level and in Mtwara, and explored ways of working through the religious institutions to offer emergency assistance. In the end it was clear that we would not be allowed to mount any operation, no camp. Other UN Agencies looked to UNHCR for leadership and at every step I had to inform all that the government was adamantly not in favour of any humanitarian response. Eventually, between governments, an arrangement was made for the return to other safe areas of Mozambique of these non-refugee people who were fleeing into Mtwara. Despite the genuine concerns, these immediate returns worked fairly without major incidents. What happened in Mozambique we could not say because we had little knowledge beyond the press.
IV. MY TEAM
The team expected much of me, and with time, and in discussions with them, I made it clear that working relations with the government continued to be difficult. In fact, there was a serious attempt at dictating to me which national staff should or should not work for UNHCR! Three of them found international positions and left Tanzania. I could not solve all my staff problems, including one that was imprisoned for four days without my knowledge, and freed without charges. How a Refugee Department has the authority to detain nationals, it defied my knowledge of the exercise of power in Tanzania.
Registration staff: it was clear that most of the victims of repression of UNHCR staff were the national staff in charge of registration. It was not clear between UNHCR and the government who the authority was on registration, bringing a tug of war that was never resolved. The two institutions delegated to manage refugees were talking past each other. Otherwise, in an environment of trust, registration could have moved from a purely refugee issue (almost a decade after the last emergency) to a national demographic management issue, of which refugees would be considered just as one part, transferring registration to the relevant mandated and technically equipped government department. That flexibility did not exist.
One final training activity I carried out for my staff was risk management and control training provided by PriceCoopers to all my National Officers. National Officers in the UNHCR classification are professional staff serving in their own country, but already at the equivalent of an international P2. Since this is the crop that most probably will breed international staff, I felt that this investment would bring to life some dormant capacities that they could then individually invest on. Good luck.
V. RETIREMENT
By September 2021 I had received my marching orders for retirement; I informed my family and we decided to throw a royal party in November and we invited friends in the organization. I just have to be forever thankful that many found the money to fly to this party from DRC, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Benin. The Resident Coordinator also graced the occasion. Apart from that, the Resident Coordinator also threw a farewell dinner with all other resident Heads of the UN family. In October, a month prior, the Regional Director invited me to a Regional Representatives meeting at the Kenya Rift Valley Lodge, where I was also accompanied to the exit door by twelve fellow Representatives. So, my exit was auspicious, happy and with no regrets. I left tired, I left disillusioned with a battle I never won on behalf of my staff or of refugees. But even in defeat I am proud for fighting. I have left in the office a relay baton (hand-over notes), so the history is available for A LUTA CONTINUA.
After my long service with the UNHCR, my family managed,
to buy an SUV for Dar-es-Salaam, and a sturdy beautiful double cabin for Tete, Mozambique.
to buy a three-bedroom little retirement palace for us in Tete.
to set for me a library and a workstation with desktop in Tete and in Dar-es-Salaam. I am now a blogger and I have a website www.canhandulatete.com and
In my retirement year, I was graced with the advent of a granddaughter (in picture- grandpa for the first time).
I now participate in the social work of my parish in Tete and I spend a few months in Tete and in Dar-es-Salaam alternatively. At least once a year we travel to Songea and we may start a maize farm soon. In summary, retirement is not boring and, with the strong support of Mama Canhandula, I am learning to take care of my health.
I am a social activist, although I avoid the raw one-party politics of my country that can get me kidnapped and killed at this early age. What am I active on? You can see from the blogs. In addition, let me emphasize one issue of importance to me to us Africans: not speaking Kiswahili in my official dealings with a government that conducts official business in Kiswahili was just a matter of principle to show that I was not managing UNHCR as a shemeji of Tanzania. Nonetheless, I have since been involved in a campaign to promote Kiswahili as the first African language that should be admitted as working tool in international organizations. It was and continues to be my contention that it is not enough to call on the adoption of the language. It is not enough that many countries have introduced Kiswahili in their education curricula, mandatory or not. There needs to be a deliberate multi-year investment strategy that should be driven by some country(ies), or some mandated institution, requiring money and sustained effort to promote Kiswahili. It does not work on auto-pilot. In the end, the question remains: who will help us to make Kiswahili an international language of diplomacy and negotiations? As they say in this their language: who will bell the sleeping cat? In any case, I visited and shared my thesis with BAKITA (Baraza la Kiswahili Tanzania), and the East African Community Secretariat who politely thanked me.
Lessons learned
I have learned to give my all to battles, some of which I knew in advance were lost before starting. I still invested energy, intelligence and patience. Living with imperfections became my sobering conclusion.
Retiring without regrets was the desired end spiritual state, knowing that along the years I did my best not to be successful alone, but also to help other colleagues to either enter the UN(HCR), or to unblock their career progression.
Health is the most important asset in retirement. When one retires, one has plenty of time and needs a sense of purpose and direction, and health plays an important part in the quality of life after retirement. Health insurance should be prepared way in advance.
Retirement is no time to start investing for yourself or for family. But it is good time to invest in others through coaching of colleagues we leave behind in the organization so they can prepare themselves for retirement better than us. I have a group of 20 or so avid listeners.
What more could I have done if I had an additional 2 years to go as Representative? This is a genuine question I asked myself. For the record, and for anyone interested in leaving: leave, whether you finish the battle or not, as long as you take care of the relay baton. And so I left, with no wish whatsoever of remaining one more day than the 30th of November 2021, but I still left the following gaps:
Dialogue with government: it is not enough to talk to and through the DRS. The long national refugee experience of Tanzania makes it a public concern, and UNHCR could find a way of inserting an annual briefing to Parliament as part of a routine exercise of its public accountabilities.
Working towards a decentralized refugee management: knowing fully well that the country has a culture of centralization, there still remains the need (a) to give the Regional Commissioners (with rank of Minister in the Tanzania context) a say on a refugee population they have been hosting: security, public health, the environment, national standards of service delivery. And (b) allowing line Ministries with human development responsibilities (health, Education, Gender and the Elderly etc) to exercise their social development mandate and demand from the humanitarian crowd the observance of national standards in their AOR. Of course that would require a modification of the Refugee Act, which in turn requires a tactical approach, lest its reopening be an opportunity to actually be made less refugee friendly.
The refugee policy has become more important than the Refugee Act. Lawyers could advise, but my understanding is that a policy is the ante-chamber to a legislation (Act of Parliament). The policy may have been premised on assumptions that needed wider consultations in a country where institutions are very solid and civil society very well informed and active. I know that for sure because I studied, lived, worked, loved, married, invested and socialized in Tanzania.
Jose, Tete, Mozambique, 19 September 2023
En EXCELLENT piece, Mzee Canhandula, my forever Mentor! Bless you!!!