A. INTRODUCTION
Having worked for the United Nations over thirty years, I feel constantly compelled to share my thoughts about the system, and how it can be more helpful and more credible. For obvious reasons, I am now looking at the world with raw eyes, now that I live my own community experience. Still, I am part of a minuscule group of privileged Mozambicans, or Africans, to have worked in the United Nations System for long. And it afforded me very qualified readings, particularly after having also been a junior diplomat.
With so many world events challenging its very existence as a relevance, such as the ongoing unbridled genocide against the Palestinian people and the encouraging and enabling role of America and Europe in it, one is genuinely seeking to validate the United Nations as the guardian of standards of an entity called international community, whatever international community means. Am I partial? Of course I am. One would ask, what about Ukraine? One would respond, what about the history that brought Europe to that situation?
Seen from outside, the world reality is different and not related. And in that qualified view, one of the strategy statements advanced by my previous employer (UNHCR) is worth analyzing and emulating. EXIT.
Exit when you are no longer needed.
Exit when the reason for your coming no longer exists.
Exit when you have contributed to a solution.
Take a bow and do not overstay your welcome, or you will be amalgamated with the problem.
Either exit, or repurpose and retool, or be ready to be replaced.
Naturally, one thing is to exit, another is how you orchestrate that exit in a manner that first, everyone is satisfied that the problem that brought you where you are, has been solved fully and in a durable manner.
B. SOLUTIONS DO HAPPEN
So, at one point, exit means success. Exit means telling the truth and living by the expectation that the organization has come to bring a solution. Be it as it may, I have seen solutions that UNHCR has brought to refugee situations. In that sense, I have always been proud to belong to UNHCR. These solutions are not predicated on the efficiency of a humanitarian programme; they are political: inclusion, respect for life and individual and collective rights, the return home, the rebuilding, the end of asylum. Repatriation. Of course there are other solutions such as
Resettlement, but that is negligible and often overstated.
Local settlement is also a durable solution, but it requires huge political capital and courage, not given to every leader, and particularly not acceptable in a world where nationalism is interpreted narrowly, racially, ethnically, exceptionally and exclusionary.
I have personally participated in facilitating solutions and in facilitating exit of UNHCR from parts of a country or totally from a country: Tanzania, Zambia, Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone. We (UNHCR, a few times through me) have closed offices, reduced the number of staff in a country, and left in others.
THE HUMAN RESOURCES SIDE OF SOLUTIONS
There is no gainsaying, an exit is not a straightforward proposition. It is complicated by human individual aspirations. People need job security, people need a career, they need to build a retirement credit and the less they change the employer, the better they can build their retirement package. Because of this, many staff fall into the trap of career, often forgetting that some of the UN Agencies, like UNHCR, are about solutions to humanitarian situations, and therefore, once a solution is found, we are expected to negotiate an exit that has career continuity implications.
Reducing staff in UNHCR is done through a process called staffing review. The philosophy is simple: if you have five staff performing the same line of function and you now only need two given the changed circumstances, which three will you let go? Equity dictates, and administrative instructions require that a comparison be made, based on three criteria: workload, last-in/first-out, and quality of performance, the latter being the most important. A committee sits and proposes, the Representative decides. It is much easier said than done; the emotional charge of the moment, the career aspirations of staff, and most importantly, the inadequacy of some staff to the employment market outside represent great elements of anxiety and of process handicap.
All solutions come at a price, a human price, an emotional price and an institutional price. Many times, our insistence that conditions are not yet ripe for a durable solution becomes a battleground between UNHCR and certain governments, who then find pleasure in accusing us in UNHCR of protecting our jobs. As if they were not worried about their jobs as well, and naturally.
Let me take the closure of the offices in Ngara and Karagwe, Kagera Region, Tanzania, after the sudden repatriation of Rwandan refugees, 1997, where I played a decisive role, under the efficient supervision of a Representative called Marjon Kamara (God continue to bless that lady!):
Two offices with a combined staffing of 98 international and 321 national staff.
Two offices with a combined number of 45 NGOs, national and international, with a total of more than 7,800 national staff.
Two offices with a total of 345 light vehicles and 131 trucks, loads of generators of all sizes, computers, offices and residences on rental, suppliers of goods and services.
A whole industry (no pun intended). What did closure mean and how long did it take? It took ten months and I had colleagues and partners crying on me in this emotionally-charged process.
a) It meant telling all NGOs that in the following three months they would have to terminate contracts and dismiss staff, return all equipment to UNHCR, pay outstanding dues to suppliers, terminate commercial contracts (of goods/services) and close financial books. And thank you for the good services while they lasted.
b) It meant telling many colleagues with whom we were working that in 6 months their employment would end. Good luck with the next appointment somewhere for international staff, and for national staff, telling them how administratively some of them would have to go about leaving the organization. That the HR Unit would help them calculate their terminal entitlements, including how to get compensated for their contribution to the Pension Fund.
Unfortunately for staff leaving before retirement maturity, the Pension Fund reimburses their contribution in a lumpsum. Say you have worked nine years, your nine years of contribution is given to you in a lumpsum. It looks great at first sight, until you look at it again six months down the line, after your failed experiment with the chicken coop: half of the chicken died and the other half was given away during funerals, weddings and other family events. We are Africans, and our hard-earned money is not just for us individually, it is for the extended family!
HOW DO WE STAND WITH GOVERNMENTS
I thought I spend some time on the personal drama that solutions to refugee situations bring to staff. But to the relations between the UNHCR and the government, solutions and closure of office represent a job well done. A real solution and an exit. It is highly appreciated.
Of course there are also government employees in refugee departments that make a lot of noise about repatriation, closure of camps and solutions. Eventually they also join the ranks of staff that are dissatisfied with the end of refugee operations, where they were getting not just the monthly stipend that is not declared to government sometimes, but they get free vehicles, free fuel (and use them outside the areas of operation with no consequence), travel to conferences and trainings. In the process they get double payment for the travel, and do not declare to government what they get from UNHCR, and do not declare to UNHCR what they get from government.
Small human dramas that surround a major positive event: solution and exit. Governments tend to believe in and value an organization that brings visible solutions. They are also sensitive when solutions do not seem to come soon enough. Such as the refugee situations in Dadaab, Kakuma Kenya (Kakuma never closed despite the independence of South Sudan), in Nyarugusu, Tanzania, etc.
SOLUTIONS OR SOLUTIONS?
I closed the Nduta camp in Tanzania, to show the government that UNHCR is serious about solutions. And to reduce the running costs of an operation starved of funding. If I had stayed another two years, the camps in Kigoma Region would be consolidated into one. They ought to be run economically, in line with the resources that are becoming more and more difficult to mobilize, with refugees receiving the short end of the resource scarcity. Reducing the number of camps would also encourage more refugees to return. For many of them, staying in Tanzania is really about a better economic situation in the poor camp than in their country, with a residual fear for the future back home, where services are payable, distances to access those services are enormous, and the services themselves may not even have the minimum supplies. There are also real fears that shall not be dismissed, related to land and property.
Solutions depend in a major way on how services are provided in the refugee camp. If after the emergency period everything remains free; if after the emergency period, people are still given food instead of tools to grow food,
we create an immense dependency that deforms the human impulse for self-reliance;
we create a dependency syndrome that is promoted by humanitarian staff needing to be in the camps at all times (the logistics cost and the social cost of disempowering community-led solutions by being constantly present);
refugees do not work for what they get;
the District does not use refugee human capacities to develop, and
refugees learn to wait for assistance, thirty, forty years in exile.
What initiative to expect of human beings treated this way? Do we still wonder why they resist repatriation, even where objective conditions do allow for such a solution?
What am I saying? I am positing that forcing refugees to become dependent on humanitarian assistance works against repatriation, against solutions. In fact, government people claiming that there should be accelerated repatriation are shooting themselves on the foot, because they are the ones enforcing encampment, ignoring human capacities that Districts could use for road repairs, food production, building and construction. I can state with certainty that refugees are a real security threat 20% of the time, and a desired security threat 80%. Talking of solutions and working actively against any seed for solutions in the minds and behaviours of refugees[1] is self-defeating (own goal-scoring).
In conclusion, solutions, and closure of offices are a joint responsibility, and where it does not materialize, blame should not be apportioned to one party alone.
OTHER UN SYSTEM PROGRAMMES AND FUNDS
In the end, my main message is: solution and exit is perhaps the best offer of a UN Agency to a government: we came, we dealt with the problem, that took us fifty years, and perhaps we have solved it and we are closing offices. Please call us if you have other problems in our line of expertise, we will be happy to return.
The UN’s credibility rests in really providing solutions to the reasons that brought us wherever we are. UNHCR is a case in point and my area of expertise. One could cite other agencies such as FAO, WFP. Understanding as well that other UN Agencies do not fit into the phase-out philosophy, they could still fit in with the development outcome philosophy. Meaning that a UNDP that purports to help countries develop, should also be able to show what they have achieved in sixty or fifty years of operating in a country: have they really brought development? Can we show?
Never leaving gives an impression of careerism. Never leaving and pretty little to show for it transmits a negative and image-damaging message. Maybe serious introspection is necessary in the UN system, in order to re-credibilize our presence, particularly in African countries. Even for UN organizations whose vocation is not about solving and leaving, there must be a sense of solutions brought about due to their presence. FAO: how has the food situation evolved since you set presence in that country? WFP: How come you still import most of the food you need to provide assistance to food-deficit populations? Is food provision the most efficient solution. Or should you rethink? (do you have the autonomy and courage to rethink?) UNESCO: what can you show for your forty or fifty years in that country? Etc
The United Nations needs to reflect on how they can renew their credibility, in particular given the huge challenge to its efficacy in countries such as Mali[2], DRC[3]. Those who think that the challenge is limited to UN peace-keeping missions, think again, because UN Peace-Keeping is the image of all of us[4]. Not pretty in both countries.
Of course, how one closes offices is also important: keep a foot on the door, as they say, so that return is not a totally new beginning. Train government people on early warning and early response, to guarantee that should a similar situation occur, there is capacity and knowledge to deal with it while new teams of the organization are being mobilized.
After hearing a discussion between a group of mid-level government officials about the UN, which went approximately like this: The UN is about multiplying business processes. We have very little to show for the Millenium Development Goals[5] invented by one Secretary General, that we already have the Sustainable Development Goals[6] by another Secretary General. Wait for another iteration of the same under a different name by the next Secretary General. Were it not for the fact that I did not say I came from that United Nations, they would have grilled me instead. I wish they did, but I would not jump into a conversation I was not invited to.
But then it set me asking myself: What solutions are we the peoples of the United Nations bringing to Africa[7]?
Jose
Tete, January 2024
[2] https://www.crisisgroup.org/global-mali/what-future-un-peacekeeping-africa-after-mali-shutters-its-mission
[7] https://www.swp-berlin.org/assets/afrika/publications/MTA_working_paper/MTA_WP_07_Tull_UN_Peacekeeping.pdf
UNHCR Warehouses in Tete, Mozambique, closed and handed when the office closed in 2004
Comments