The Nobel Prize-winning U.N. agency caring for 15 million refugees around the world is broke.
The Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, which depends on voluntary contributions from governments, says its financial situation is so desperate that it could "result in unacceptable suffering and could even take its toll in terms of human lives."The agency needs $80 million to make ends meet this year and examples abound of the day-to-day problems it faces while trying to provide food and shelter to refugees in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Staffers say the agency cannot afford to buy food or blankets for 800,000 Mozambicans who have fled civil strife into neighboring Malawi.
"In Ethiopia, where a new famine is looming, we are unable to set up buffer stocks of food, while in some refugee camps in Sudan and Malawi malnutrition has already gone up by 30 percent," said spokesman Raymond Hall. "The long-term prospects are frightening," he added.
A camp on the Indonesian island of Galang, built for 2,000, currently houses 12,000 Vietnamese boat people.
"This means that the extra 10,000 have to sleep on the beach and we can't even buy plastic sheeting for them," said Sergio Vieira de Mello, head of the agency's Asia and Oceania division.
"More refugees, less resources," was how High Commissioner Thorvald Stoltenberg of Norway summed up the situation he found when he took over from Jean-Pierre Hocke in January.
Hocke, a 52-year-old Swiss national who ran the agency for almost five years before he resigned in November, had been blamed for rising costs and low staff morale. During his tenure the agency went beyond mere emergency assistance, branching out into education, self-help and social services programs, all of which sent costs soaring.
But officials also point out that the agency, which was set up in 1951 to deal with 1 million displaced people in Europe, now cares for 15 million on five continents.
The staff has risen to 2,400 from 60 in the mid-1950s, when the agency won its first Nobel Peace Prize for taking care of post-war refugees.
It won the Nobel Prize again in 1981 after coping successfully with a tripling of the world refugee population in a decade - the result of an exodus of Vietnamese after the communist takeover, the war in Afghanistan and civil strife in the Horn of Africa.
Vieira de Mello feels the U.N. body should return to its original mandate and hand over some of its activities to other specialized agencies and non-governmental organizations.
"There is a great need for rationalization, for going back to basics," he said.
This is precisely what the agency's 43-nation Executive Committee, which groups major donors such as the United States, the European Community and Japan, recommended at a meeting last October.
"Donor countries want the UNHCR to limit the scope of its operations to the survival of refugees - food, water and housing - and leave education and self-help programs to other specialized bodies," Hall said.
A follow-up meeting is scheduled for May 28 in Geneva, where delgates are expected to review the agency's financial situation and approve a 13 percent cut in staff at the Geneva headquarters and a 7 percent reduction of field operatives.
However, escalating costs alone do not explain the agency's dramatic financial difficulties. Governments and public opinion are increasingly wary of an ever-swelling and seemingly endless refugee tide and are turning their attention to other issues.
Relief officials say humanitarian causes face increasing competition from issues such as the need to rebuild Eastern Europe after the collapse of communist rule, pressing environmental problems and the war against drugs.
"Compassion fatigue has set in and there is a limit to what donor countries are willing or able to do," said Vieira de Mello.