The Executive Committee of UNHCR has declared since the 1980s that voluntary repatriation is the preferred durable solution, favored over resettlement and local integration.2 The High Commissioner has furtherdeclared that the 1990s would be the decade of voluntary repatriation.3 In an era when the search for solutions to refugee crises has been focused on repatriation, NGOs have increasingly questioned the effectiveness of the protection role played by UNHCR in voluntary repatriation. However, the efficacy of UNHCR protection must also be considered in light of significant retrenchment in the international community's commitment to protect refugees. In this context, Human Rights Watch on the whole welcomes the release in March 1996 of UNHCR's explication of the intersection of protection and voluntary repatriation, Handbook-Voluntary Repatriation: International Protection as a means of reiterating and clarifying important guidelines for protection in voluntary repatriation.4 Nevertheless, there are a few aspects of the Handbook on Voluntary Repatriation that we are concerned may impede further refugee protection. In addition, the handbook is silent on some significant areas in which refugee protection has deteriorated. We question the ultimate effectiveness of the handbook, unless vigorous efforts are undertaken to implement the guidelines set forth therein, since it largely reiterates previously established UNHCR principles which have nonetheless been violated in many instances. These concerns are heightened in light of recent changes in UNHCR's organizational structure under the Delphi Plan of Action. The Delphi Plan appears to weaken the ability of the agency to promote implementation of such guidelines.
In this document, Human Rights Watch seeks to raise concerns about some disturbing trends in the protection of refugees it has observed in the course of researching human rights abuses. In doing so, we focus on issues relating to voluntary repatriation in part because these trends figure prominently in that context, and also because durable solutions were the focus of the October 1996 Executive Committee meeting. Since that meeting, where the Delphi Plan was formally endorsed, Rwandan refugees were forcibly repatriated from Tanzania in December 1996 with little protest from UNHCR or the international community. This event, as well as previous forced returns from eastern Zaire and Burundi, are clear examples of the erosion of international protection for refugees documented by this report. We also focus the discussion on those situations where Human Rights Watch has conducted field research directed at refugee rights and UNHCR operations in conditions where we have had access to refugees themselves and refugee camps. This document does not purport to be a comprehensive assessment of the protection policies and practices of UNHCR; nor does it discuss in any detail some of the major current crises-including Bosnia, Zaire and Kurdistan5-where our research has not focused on UNHCR or specific refugee conditions.
While Human Rights Watch focuses here on protection issues arising from voluntary repatriation settings, we will also address the implementation of UNHCR's 1991 Guidelines on the Protection of Refugee Women and its 1994 Refugee Children-Guidelines on Protection and Care with the view that such protection measures, should be integral to any discussion of refugee protection, especially as women and children comprise some 80 percent of the total refugee population worldwide. We discuss in detail UNHCR's efforts to protect Somali refugee women in Kenya, as that program constitutes UNHCR's most extensive program to date for the protection of refugee women, and briefly examine the forced recruitment of Sudanese refugee children in UNHCR camps in Ethiopia and Kenya.
As States are ultimately responsible for refugee protection, we note the major trends in the international community's retreat from its protection obligations. We also address briefly the role NGOs and other international organizations (IOs) may play in refugee protection. We do not intend here an analysis of the Handbook on Voluntary Repatriation, although we do make some preliminary observations on it. In addition, we comment on the Delphi Plan of Action in order to raise concerns we believe are relevant to the protection of refugees. We hope by this document to raise issues for further debate.
2 "The Executive Committee [of UNHCR]. . . [r]ecognized that voluntary repatriation constitutes generally . . . the most appropriate solution for refugee problems." Executive Committee of UNHCR Conclusion 18 (XXXI) (1980). Executive Committee conclusions provide guidance for State practice and are not binding on the High Commissioner. Executive Conclusions 18 (XXXI) and 40 (XXXVI), however, have also been endorsed by the General Assembly. (See below at note 7.) The Handbook-Voluntary Repatriation: International Protection clearly indicates the influence of these two conclusions on UNHCR policy.
3 Speech of the High Commissioner, June 26, 1992. See also United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, State of the World's Refugees: In Search of Solutions, (Geneva: 1995), p. 31.
4 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Handbook-Voluntary Repatriation: International Protection (Geneva: 1996) (hereinafter, Handbook on Voluntary Repatriation).
5 Human Rights Watch has, however, written numerous reports on abuses in those places. See, e.g., Human Rights Watch/Helsinki, "The Fall of Sebrenica and the Failure of U.N. Peacekeeping," A Human Rights Watch Short Report, vol. 7, no. 13, October 1995; Human Rights Watch/Helsinki, War Crimes in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Volume II (New York: 1993); Human Rights Watch/Helsinki, War Crimes in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Volume I (New York: 1992); Human Rights Watch/Middle East, Iraq's Crime of Genocide: The Anfal Campaign against the Kurds (Yale University Press, New Haven: 1994). Human Rights Watch/Africa is planning a mission to Central Africa in 1997 to research the plight of refugees and returnees there.