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Important tools is precisely his flexibility within his existing
Imandate (broad and demanding as it is) and the
personal
initiative open to kin as United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees. It is tempting for experts and governments to offer
specific guidance to the High Commissioner in areas where
experience has given lessons.
the time, so too must their solutions, and it would be quite
wrong to allow increasing "transparency" in the operations of
UNHCR to limit the High Commissioner's traditional flexibility
in dealing with new problems (or old problems in new forms).
But just as problems change all
9. In the short term, talk of "solutions" to refugee problems
is perhaps misleading. What we pean is palliatives. But we need
not be apologetic about that.
UNHCR has a proud record of
providing new refugees with international protection and
immediate assistance. (The two go naturally hand in hand.) In
the medium term, there is then the need to provide continuing,
but still temporary, support for the refugees in the countries of asylum. Mass flows have made this a difficult task. We were
impressed to hear from President Nyerere of Tanzania when he
received the Nansen Medal last week of Tanzania's experience in
involving refugees in productive work, not only for its own sake,
but also to improve their morale, and their consciousness that
they have a contribution to make to the country which has given
them refuge.
10. In the longer term, we must think of "durable solutions".
This is an easy label for a complex phenomenon. The label covers
early in fact a dilemma between on the one hand/resettlement in third
waiting for
countries and on the other/repatriation to the country of origin.
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