Posted on 05/09/2002 3:23:33 PM PDT by GeneD
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. refugee agency has assigned more female employees to refugee camps following charges aid workers had abused women and child refugees, the agency's head said on Thursday.
``Women and children are sometimes exploited and abused so (the UNHCR) is based on an attitude of zero tolerance. Already one case is too much, so we go for stricter policies,'' Ruud Lubbers, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said at a U.N. summit on children.
A report released this month by the Geneva-based UNHCR and Save the Children in Britain found that locally hired aid workers in West Africa had traded food rations for sex with child refugees.
The report was based on interviews and group meetings with 1,500 adults and children in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Among the new rules adopted by the agency after the report was that food aid would be distributed to women by women.
A U.N. investigation into the matter was still going on but initial allegations that the problem was widespread were exaggerated, Lubbers said at a news conference during the three-day summit.
``What we know now is that allegations of widespread (abuses) are certainly not correct. It isn't widespread but even one case is one too much.'' he said.
``A rule has been adopted and we have made it stricter, but there is not one case of (involvement by) a UNHCR staff person proven,'' he said.
Turning to the millions of Afghan refugees in camps in Pakistan and Iran, Lubbers said the situation had improved in recent months in some of the camps in Pakistan, where conditions had been ``miserable'' a year ago.
In a tour of one of the camps last year, Lubbers said, ``I remember walking around and I saw a very young boy who was bleeding. I said this boy has to go to a hospital right away. His father said, 'Don't do that.' His father said, 'This boy is going to die anyway. Why go to the hospital?'''
UNHCR hopes to return 1.25 million Afghan refugees home this year, he said. The agency has so far helped nearly 350,000 refugees in Pakistan and some 40,000 refugees in Iran return home to Afghanistan.
Lubbers called on governments to provide more funding so his agency could offer food and shelter -- and more -- to newly returned Afghans and particularly to the children.
``When I'm in camps, kids always say they want education. Beyond that, we have to come to a situation where we do not see them as miserable persons but as persons who have an identity and want to do normal things,'' he said.
I hope Mr. Steyn will have a look at all the EPA folks jet-setting around the world for the UN as well.
American Policy Center on-line Declaration of Independence from the U.N.
Also, I recall that the un has one or more "contingency sites" located in other nations... let's banish them there--
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