PRESS RELEASES

Protecting Refugees A National Obligation, State Official Says

By David Anthony Denny
USINFO Staff Writer

May 9, 2007

Washington – The United States, in keeping with a national government’s responsibility to protect refugees within its territory, has a strong asylum system and strives to help other nations develop similar systems, according to a State Department official.

Kelly Ryan, a deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of Population, Refugee and Migration Affairs, told the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) May 4 that the United States has “a very robust asylum system with many review levels. I think it’s the best in the world.”

The United States talks to other countries about their asylum systems and has worked with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) doing joint training programs with Mexico and Central America, she said. The United States also has advised various countries on the development of their asylum laws and has a very good relationship with many countries that are just beginning to have a formalized asylum system, Ryan said.

“We’ve had one [an asylum system] in place for quite some time, and we’ve had experiences where we’ve been successful, and we’ve had experiences where we needed to change a certain procedure because we were getting an outcome we weren’t entirely satisfied with,” she said.

Ryan, during her 10 years at the Department of Justice handling the application of asylum law in the United States, worked very closely with UNHCR. That organization gives the United States supervisory advice on its obligations under international conventions, particularly the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 protocol.

According to Ryan, UNHCR mobilizes national governments to help and protect refugees, but “there are rogue states throughout the world that are unwilling or unable to help refugees,” she said.

“UNHCR is there, as is the United States, trying to make sure that refugees are protected from physical or mental harm, from forced return, and from being disadvantaged by their status,” she said.

In promoting international protection of refugees, the United States believes UNHCR performs a very valuable function, Ryan said.

“There are places in the world where the United States is not welcomed, liked or influential,” she said, and in those places UNHCR can be a particularly effective advocate for refugee protection.  There are also places where the United States is more effective than UNHCR. In those places, the United States shares its information with UNHCR and works collegially. On other occasions the two entities can accomplish more together than if they worked separately, Ryan said.

Ryan described the overall relationship between the U.S. government and UNHCR as “very respectful,” and said the agency was also “very responsive” to U.S. requests. However, Ryan said, on occasion UNHCR has disagreed with positions taken by the U.S. government and has filed amicus curiae [friend of the court] briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court when U.S. government policies faced legal challenges. Such filings, submitted by parties not directly involved in the litigation, offer additional information the court might wish to consider in reaching its decision.

Ryan said the United States is UNHCR’s largest bilateral donor and works with UNHCR throughout the year to talk about priorities for the United States. In addition, the United States is assisting UNHCR in voluntary refugee returns in southern Sudan, Afghanistan and Liberia, “where people are finally able to return home and begin their new lives,” she said.

The United States also is helping UNHCR continue its work in Sudan’s Darfur region and in Chad, and is cooperating with the U.N. agency on the humanitarian corridors created in Lebanon to permit access by the International Committee of the Red Cross and those providing humanitarian aid to victims of the conflict. The United States has worked on local integration, though this is not greatly welcomed by some states.  Ryan said a recent example of refugee resettlement and local integration efforts coming together occurred with Burmese refugees in Thailand.

John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and now an AEI senior fellow, also said national governments are accountable for refugees. The fact that many governments leave deciding who qualifies as a refugee to UNHCR constitutes “ducking the hard political choices,” he said.

-End-

(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)