UNHCR and Refugee Rights

Maura De Lorenzo raises questions about the UNHCR in the Washington Post today:

You cannot sue the United Nations. If the UN violates your rights, that’s just too bad. There is no judge with jurisdiction, no independent tribunal, no possibility of compensation or justice. A culture of impunity is built into the DNA of the UN, and some of the clearest examples can be found in the work of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), mandated by the UN General Assembly to protect refugees around the world. Wherever UNHCR is responsible for determining refugee status, it fails to meet its own guidelines for fairness. And wherever UNHCR warehouses refugees in camps — sometimes for decades — it colludes in human rights violations on a large scale, with support from the American taxpayer.

In some eighty countries, UNHCR decides who is a refugee and who isn’t. National governments play a secondary role, if any. In 2005, UNHCR offices received more than 88,000 applications for asylum, making it the largest refugee status decision-maker in the world. Members of the UNHCR staff conduct interviews, assess claimants’ credibility, and make legal judgments about whether a claimant has a “well-founded fear of persecution.” In other words, UNHCR does globally what the Department of Homeland Security does here. Click here for the rest of the column.

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