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[VISCOUNT BRENTFORD.] number of people. Of course, the refugee is no new phenomenon in the world. I exercised my mind to try to work out who were the first refugees in the world and I suggested to myself that perhaps Adam and Eve were the first refugees. They fell out with the lawful authority in the Garden of Eden and were driven out. I imagine that they must have had a problem in finding a government in any host country with which to register, let alone any representative from the commission. Refugees we have always had with us and, I suspect, always shall.
However, my Lords, I do not want to talk about famine relief, which is dealing with the urgent needs. That is a subject which has been discussed before in your Lordships' House. My concern is to see long- term development aid stimulated for refugees. There is an enormous problem nowadays arising from the fact that the countries to which refugees go are what I call the "LICS"--the "low income countries". This is in contrast with the post-war generation of refugees.
The question of refugees does not lend itself so well to publicity as does that of famine relief. I find that many people ask, "Why bother about long-term solutions when the immediate needs, such as the need for food, are so urgent?” I read in today's newspapers that it was claimed that 1,500 people were dying daily from starvation in just one area in Ethiopia. The needs are horrendous. But I contend that we must not lose sight of the needs in long-term situations. Some 15 years ago the commission's funds were mostly spent on these durable solutions, on long-term solutions. But at the beginning of this decade that proportion fell to just over a quarter. It is hoped, however, that during this year the proportion will have risen to 40 per cent. I am very encouraged by that increase.
I should like to make a number of practical points which I shall illustrate largely from East Africa and that area of Africa. First, I feel very strongly that a refugee is not a person dissimilar from everydody else on this globe. Every refugee is a human being like the rest of us and deserves the same care and courtesy. I am sure that your Lordships with your traditional courtesy extended to faltering maiden speakers will understand what I mean. Therefore, I should like to urge officials who are concerned with registering refugees to humanise and simplify the procedures for registration wherever possible. I have come across many instances where a great deal of mental suffering is caused by those procedures.
The second point I should like to make is that I feel that more encouragement should be given to refugees to help themselves. A recent conference agreed that refugees should not be treated so much as people for whom we must do something, but rather as people whom we must assist in doing what they want for themselves. I believe that that is a very important distinction. Many refugees are skilled or semi-skilled and among them there is a great reservoir of energy and power to help themselves. I believe that the more refugees themselves can be involved, both in planning about refugees and in action taken to support them, the better.
Thirdly, I would suggest that the aim should be to make as many refugees and groups of refugees as
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possible self-supporting. To provide the means of work for people who have been displaced from their homes will strengthen their dignity in a way that to receive food handouts for 20 years will not. However, refugees must not have more favoured status than the nationals of the host country.
Let me illustrate this from the problem of Sudan. Officially, I gather, the total figure for Sudan a couple of days ago was 990,000 refugees--which, I estimate, probably means that by the end of this debate in your Lordships' House, the figure will have passed a million. Many people put the number substantially higher. In East Sudan alone, the area next door to Ethiopia, there are officially three-quarters of a million; but, again, many people put the figure there at a million refugees. But in that area there are only 21 million Sudanese nationals. This illustrates the problem that there is in providing for refugees. In Sudan itself there have been cases of friction arising with local Sudanese farmers, arid it is important that they are not seen to suffer in relation to the refugees. Close co-operation is needed between host Govern- ments, refugee relief agencies and other development agencies so that refugees and nationals are both assisted.
Fourthly, I believe that more attention should be paid to the land factor. Experiments in leasing or lending land have taken place. Land projects have gone on in Zambia and in Tanzania and experiments have taken place in Western Kenya; but there is a problem of some people discouraging land experi- ments because of land shortage. I suggest that more attention needs to be given to methods by which land is borrowed for the benefit of refugees but in ways that do not threaten the nationals.
Fifthly, I should like to see more research into refugee development aid to ensure that the limited resources available are used as effectively as possible. I have come across very little accountability among the voluntary agencies—I do not include the commission in that--and there seems to be very little evaluation of their efforts. I have heard stories, as I am sure have many of your Lordships, of a substantial waste of money taking place. More research into problems of integration and resettlement, as has already been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord McNair, is needed.
Finally, the other topic I should like to mention is the need for more training of people managing refugee programmes at grass roots in the countries where there are refugees. Such training would enhance the capacity of host countries to cope much more effectively with the refugees in them. One of the few organisations I have come across that deals with both the research and the training I have mentioned is Queen Elizabeth House in Oxford. I believe that the Government should ensure that its programme continues. I should like to see this country taking the lead in the world both in research and in training of nationals and agriculturalists, of whom we have many in this country in both these fields.
3.33 p.m.
Lord Soper: My Lords, it is my privilege to be the first to felicitate the noble Viscount on his maiden speech. I do so with alacrity and with gratitude for the
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way in which he blended a genuine concern for the refugees with a reasoned argument as to the way in which those refugees might be succoured. I believe this to be a very important issue, alike because it is relatively unknown and because it does not immediately command the kind of response which a glimpse of a naked and starving child can evoke, as compared with the best-laid panorama of concern for those who are refugees. It is for that reason that not only do I thank the noble Viscount who has just spoken, but also offer my thanks to the noble Viscount who initiated this debate for the passion with which he invested this problem and for the fact that here we are presented with a matter of such overwhelming importance as to escape, unfortunately, the concern and interest of a great many people who could be emotionally stirred; but it is much more difficult emotionally to promote that kind of response among those who are refugees.
To me, the outstanding and all-important element that belongs to this problem-alongside, of course, the sheer misery that it contains is its epidemic characteristics. Reading through the Churches' document on refugees, it is interesting and informative to note that almost every page contains a reference to the characteristic nature of the refugee problem in the modern world. I believe that to be so, and unless we are prepared alike to look at the human suffering of the refugee and at those causes this wholesale condemnation of so many of our fellow human beings to misery, and unless we are prepared to see these in context, I think that we shall not properly utilise the opportunity which the noble Viscount has so generously offered to us.
It is perfectly obvious that by the Convention of the United Nations of 1951, by the Protocol of 1967 and by the decision of the Organisation for African Unity in 1969, it is now possible, with certain reservations, to denote who are refugees and where they are to be found. There is a welcome recognition now of the definition of the refugee, which enables people to spotlight the problem much more clearly than heretofore; I only wish they would.
Secondly, it is perfectly obvious, to me at least, that if the problem is epidemic, as I suggest beyond any peradventure it is, then it has to be faced not only from the standpoint of humanitarianism, but also by asking the question, which the Churches' report also repeatedly asked: Why has this problem become so general and what are the underlying causes? I propose to use what little time I have to say something on this last subject and on that particular theme.
There is no doubt at all that the refugee is the residuary legatee of fear; and in a world of armed might it is not surprising that the threat of war, let alone the actuality of war, has promoted fear in countless millions of people. I am well aware of the conviction, which I hold as clearly as ever I have done, that only a process of wholesale disarmament can begin to meet this kind of universal fear. But I shall not dilate upon that theme because there is one which is even more apposite or even more immediate.
The translation of the concept of the nation-state of Northern Europe to the third world has contained within itself one great and almost impossible situation.
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We know that a great many of the areas of Africa do not naturally fall within the boundaries that have been allotted to them by colonialism in the first place and by later divisions of territory. I should like to give an example of it which is perfectly simple. There are many Somalis living on each side of Ethiopia. The fact that there are now 1 million refugee Somalis living in Somalia (which is an intolerable burden for Somalia itself) is entirely due to the fact that the lines of demarcation between Ethiopia and Somalia were artificially drawn in terms of the nation-state and not in terms of tribalism at all.
Secondly, with regard to Nigeria, it is now a matter of common knowledge that the Hausa, the Ibo and the Yoruba are tribally distinct, not only in their habits but in the fact that the Hausa are generally Islamic and, although they are not particularly ardent Christians, the Ibos and Yorubas have a Christian background. In that is a promotion of fear, particu- larly with the kind of aggressiveness which now belongs to much which is called "religious fervour”. I turn to that with regret, but I think in honesty it needs to be said.
It may surprise your Lordships to know that probably among the first refugees were Canaanites those who belonged to that heavenly country in the Negro spiritual-who were turned out at the behest of the Lord in order to make room for the Israelites. This is not a matter of conjecture and I would particularly refer it to those who have a slavish addiction---shall we say?-to the Old Testament. It is to be found in the 33rd Chapter of Exodus. I find insufferable the Judeo-Christian tradition-in regard to which, in many respects, I suppose Islam must be regarded as a heresy-as an attitude to the nation-state which is incompatible with what I believe to be the true prospects of peace on earth and the reclamation of the refugee. I protest as vigorously as I can at the attitude of imperialism which still belongs to much of organised Christianity, to say nothing of Jewry and to say even less of Islam. Here is a situation in which those who slavishly regard the idea of God as having predestined certain groups to certain places--and, whatever happens to those that were first there, they should be turned out in the interests of God's will-seem to me to be entirely irresponsible and contrary to the spirit of the Christian faith to which I should like to adhere. We in the Christian Church today represent a dominant and very largely a proud authority over parts of this earth to which we have no rights whatever.
That leads me to the only other matter that I wish to raise. I think that we are in an apocalyptic age. It is almost silly to say that in such a short debate. The nuclear age is apocalyptic-of course it is. But I believe that there is no precedent for the kind of problems which now confront a world which cannot solve its problems in terms of the traditional ideas of governmental authority as represented in the West. It is in that regard that I hope that this debate will not only inform a great many who are indifferent, will not only stimulate many to see why the refugee is so common and so afflicted, but will also be some way to a recognition that we have now to do what we can to move, however desperately it is in practice and however difficult it is so to do, away from the concept
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