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Letter from Assistant Secretary Julia Taft, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration.
Dear Friend of PRM:
This is the second installment in our quarterly effort to keep
friends abreast of developments involving the Bureau. This letter
covers the period of April through June 1998.
UN High Commissioner Visit. We arranged a series of meetings for Sadako Ogata, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, during her May 18-22 visit to Washington. Mrs. Ogata met with Secretary Albright and Ambassador Gelbard, and she participated in useful roundtable discussions with Africa Bureau and PRM staff. She also visited a resettlement site in Maryland. Primary areas of focus were the UNHCR funding shortfall, the results of the UNHCR-OAU Kampala workshop on refugee principles, security for relief workers, and Bosnia/Kosovo. She appreciated the opportunity to meet with many of our NGO partners, Members of Congress, and the media.
New ERMA Items. The President decided on May 29 to authorize the drawdown of $37 million from the President's Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance Fund (ERMA). This was the first time this year the President has authorized use of ERMA funds. Besides Sierra Leone, the funds are intended to meet urgent humanitarian needs in Liberia, the Great Lakes Region of Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Southeast Asia. Close to $25 million will be allocated for UNHCR. The remaining ERMA funds will be used to support programs of the International Committee of the Red Cross, World Food Program, and NGOs.
Donor Coordination. Prompted by the horrific account of atrocities and the outflow of 200,000 new refugees, I led a multi-donor mission to Sierra Leone and the region June 13-20. We coordinated our mission with the EU, which was represented by the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Sweden, and the European Community Humanitarian Office. UNHCR and WFP participated in the week-long trip. Our mutual goals are to call attention to this forgotten tragedy, support the most effective humanitarian response in Sierra Leone and in neighboring countries, and identify urgent requirements the donors can agree upon.
Improved donor-UN coordination was an important theme of my travels in April and May. I led the U.S. delegation to an April 21 Iraq humanitarian assistance meeting hosted by the British. Other participants at the London meeting warmly welcomed U.S. Government advocacy for more targeted assistance to children under age 5 in Iraq. It remains to be seen if the Iraqi Government is prepared to cooperate fully, under the "oil for food" program, in implementing special activities designed to assist the most vulnerable among the Iraqi people.
Our U.S. Government assessment mission to Afghanistan in April and May fortunately coincided with similar missions from Canada and the EU. We benefited greatly from each other's observations and recommendations that we presented at a May 5 Afghanistan Support Group. Donors, NGOs, and UN agencies agreed to support a common programing approach for Afghanistan that we hope will increase the effectiveness of assistance and assure adequate attention to gender issues. Recent Taliban restrictions on NGOs in Kabul and women's access to health and education, however, remain a serious cause of concern.
Reorganization. Thanks to PRM and senior State management, the Bureau is undertaking an internal reorganization to be completed by September 1. Essentially, we are creating one new office--for policy planning, resource management, and monitoring and evaluation--and realigning several functions among the offices of refugee assistance. Our objectives are to:
--Create the new Office of Policy and Resource Planning (PRP);
--Strengthen PRM's capacity for external outreach to international
organizations and NGOs, the Congress, media, public, and academic
institutions (MCE); and
--Strengthen the Bureau-wide impact of our migration function,
integrating migration policy with refugee policy in our regional
assistance offices. The new geographic alignment of the two migration
and refugee assistance offices will be Africa and Asia (AAA),
and Europe, the Near East, and the Americas (ENA).
We'll provide more on these changes in a later letter. Meanwhile, visitors should note the new Office of Policy and Resource Planning (PRP) is on the third floor of State Annex 1 in Columbia Plaza, which is also the new home of the Comptroller's Office. For some, locating your PRM counterparts may prove the hardest part of reorganization!
Admissions. Admissions Director Terry Rusch and I traveled to Russia and Ukraine in April in preparation for the President's proposal for FY 1999. The main focus of the trip was to review the refugee processing operations in both Moscow and Kiev and to plan for an additional processing effort involving UNHCR in which third-country nationals will receive increased attention. We also hope to encourage the provision of refugee protection by providing financial as well as "burdensharing" (through resettlement to the U.S.) support to both Russia and Ukraine as they struggle to cope with large-scale migration and asylum issues.
The FY 1999 admissions proposal was signed by the President in late June and forwarded to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. We hope that the Secretary will be able to initiate consultations with the Congress on this proposal prior to its August recess. The proposed admissions level is 78,000.
Population. Our population staff is planning for the upcoming fifth anniversary of the UN International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), or "ICPD +5." PRM has the lead in coordinating official U.S. participation in this review process, and we will continue to work closely with NGOs as well. The review process will assess the progress in implementing the agenda agreed upon in the ICPD Program of Action. Delegations from nearly 180 countries endorsed this Program of Action, which provided a new vision for population and development programs based on core values of human rights, gender equality, reproductive health and rights, and improved quality of life for all. There will be an international forum in The Hague in February for governments, NGOs, intergovernmental organizations, and others dealing with population and development. Later in 1999, the UN Commission on Population and Development and the UN General Assembly also will review implementation of the ICPD Program of Action.
UNRWA. Responding to a budget shortfall, PRM provided an additional $7 million to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, boosting U.S. support for UNRWA to a record $77 million for this fiscal year. Deputy Assistant Secretary Marguerite Rivera Houze attended the UNRWA donors meeting in late May, where she announced the pledge. A June intersessional meeting on vocational training and human resource development was held in the context of the Middle East Peace Process Working Group. This was attended by representatives of the Palestinian Authority, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, and more than two dozen other countries. The countries focused on practical steps to improve vocational training opportunities for Palestinian refugees.
Migration. Amb. Brunson McKinley was elected by acclamation May 28 as the new Director General of the International Organization for Migration. His 5-year term begins in October. PRM looks forward to working with a former Bureau colleague.
As part of the public process on migration, PRM held a Seminar on Human Rights and Migrants April 23-24 in Arlington, VA. Officials from the Regional Conference on Migration--the 10 governments of North and Central America--NGOs, and others attended the event, which proved successful from our viewpoint. Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Alan Kreczko also attended the Intergovernmental Consultations in Geneva, where participants discussed the unwillingness of some countries to accept the return of their nationals. Several countries stressed the direct connection between maintenance of public support for the institution of asylum and the ability to return rejected asylum-seekers to their countries of origin.
I hope you find this informal summary useful.
Sincerely,
Julia V. Taft
Assistant Secretary of State
of Population, Refugees, and Migration
[end of document]
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