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[ 27 FEBRUARY 1985]
in the country itself. That help is very great, but of course it is nowhere as great as UNICEF would like—and that is because of insufficient funds.
At the request of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, UNICEF have provided water supplies in a great many cases in the refugee camps on the border-both by the provision of hand pumps and by the loan of drilling rigs. They have provided also medical supplies, including the oral rehydration salts which are a great life-saver for the many children who are suffering from the killing disease of diarrhoea. UNICEF have also provided vaccines for measles and, in one case, for cholera.
So far as the camps for displaced persons within the Sudan are concerned, UNICEF have provided a great deal in the way of water supplies and food of high nutritional value, particularly for the children who are growing more and more malnourished as the drought worsens. UNICEF have of course had to divert a considerable amount of their funds in response to the emergency. They have so far diverted half a million dollars to creating help in the emergency, and this is in addition to their normal water and health programme. But to be fully effective in response to the real need, UNICEF have made an appeal for the Sudan alone of around 5 million dollars, to carry out emergency programmes. I fear that only £500,000 has been pledged or given towards this, apart from £100,000 which has been transferred from the United Committee for UNICEF and which has been sent to the Sudan for its accelerated programmes.
However, there is a great worry about the rest of the money. The British Government, I know, provided I million dollars to the general appeal for 67 million dollars made in October last by the Executive Director of UNICEF. Since then, there has been nothing. How will UNICEF carry out these important projects? As the noble Viscount said, projects which have long- term benefits are of great importance, and, as a development agency, UNICEF has always focused on this very much indeed. I do not, of course, have to say how great the impending catastrophe will be if the rains expected in May or June do not arrive, as they have not come for the last four harvests. It is a very real fear.
Finally, I feel that the present situation is unprece- dented, in that we in the rich countries are aware of the extent of the human catastrophe facing the people of the drought-ridden areas of Africa, but we are not doing anywhere near enough to avert it. This analogy occurred to me: it is as if a group of well-to-do people were standing on the pavement in safety watching a defenceless and vulnerable person standing in the middle of the road in the path of a colossal vehicle which is bearing down, bent on his annihilation, and are doing nothing to stop it. I feel that a response from the governments of the richer countries is very necessary.
4.12 p.m.
Lord Chitnis: My Lords, like all noble Lords who have spoken I am grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, for introducing a debate on this fearsomely difficult subject. I suppose all refugees have enormous problems, and always have had, but perhaps contemporary refugees have a new problem.
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In an age of rapid but fickle media concern they have to fight for the attention of the world.
Therefore, I should like to press the case for those who in some dreadful scale of values are second class refugees; that is, those who have not only lost all they have but also do not have the protection of the 1951 United Nations Convention of Refugees. In my experience these come in two kinds. First, there are refugees in their own country. I know that the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster-or if not him, the Oxford English Dictionary-apparently does not accept that these people are refugees. Indeed, they have a name of their own: the internally displaced. That is about all they do have.
I first saw this problem at first hand in El Salvador, where, a few years ago, I found a small group of people living in abysmally awful conditions. Very naively, I thought the conditions so awful that something could and must be done about them, so I wrote to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees suggesting that something be done. I was astonished to receive a long, charming and even mellifluous letter in reply. which, when translated into plain language, asked me, please, to go away because these people had nothing to do with him as he did not consider them to be refugees. So far as I can make out, for budgetary rather than humane reasons, the present High Commissioner is rather more restrictive in defining what is a refugee than was his predecessor, because at the same time as I am talking of the Government of El Salvador asked UNHCR for help in dealing with its internal refugees but was refused.
The condition of these people is every bit as appalling as that of any other kind of refugee. They are trapped in basements, confined in camps or slums without any facilities and living in fear of their lives. It is not something that happens just in El Salvador, Guatemala and Central America. It happens, of course, in parts of Asia and Africa, too. I find absolutely no way of differentiating their plight from the more conventionally recognised refugees. So, difficult though it is, I hope that Her Majesty's Government will do more in pressing on the relevant organisations, particularly the United Nations and UNHCR, to expand their definition of the term "refugee" so that something can be done to help these people. What certainly must not be done is leave this matter to the International Committee of the Red Cross, because it simply will not be able to cope.
The other kinds of refugees who do not have the protection of the United Nations convention are those where the covention is not accepted. I find it particu- larly sad that among these places should be included Hong Kong. Although China, Japan and the Philippines have been able to adhere to the 1951 convention, Britain still continues to maintain that it cannot be applied to Hong Kong. The result of this affects thousands of people. I have not seen them myself but staff of the organisation I have the honour to chair-Refugee Action-have.
I am referring particularly to the refugees from Vietnam who are living in open and closed camps. I should have thought that the closed camps were a particular cause for concern. I have been told that I must not describe them as deplorable but I see no reason why I should not because surely they are.