UN High Commissioner for Refugees praises UAE for helping Yemen

Antonio Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, visited the UAE this week to seek funding for the Enhanced Voluntary Return and Reintegration Package that aims to help repatriate Afghan refugees living in Pakistan.

Antonio Guterres UN High Commissioner for Refugees with Lt Gen Abdul Qadir Baloch, the Pakistani Minister of State and Frontier Regions. Mr Guterres was in the UAE seeking funding for an Afghan refugeShow more

ABU DHABI // Antonio Guterres, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), this week praised the UAE for its continued support of people affected by the conflict in Yemen.

“Yemen is a very poor country, with enormous gaps of resources,” he said.

“There is a serious problem of food security, health, all basic life-supporting aspects, not to mention the disruption in the education sector and infrastructure that will require a very heavy effort of reconstruction.

“But for the moment, we are particularly concerned with the need to immediately respond to the humanitarian problem.”

Mr Guterres was speaking on a visit to the Emirates to ask for help to solve a decades-long refugee crisis in another country by contributing to a project that could allow thousands of Afghan families to return home.

Mr Guterres was seeking funding for the Enhanced Voluntary Return and Reintegration Package (EVRRP) that helps to repatriate Afghan refugees living in Pakistan.

“We have about three million of them, of whom 1.6 million are registered and the remainder are undocumented,” said Lt Gen Abdul Qadir Baloch, the Pakistani minister of state and frontier regions who accompanied Mr Guterres. “They have been there for about three-and-a-half decades.

“We are going to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, because they are countries with more resources, to join us in this effort.”

The hope is for the UAE to fund a pilot project for the first 100,000 refugees. Families of up to six people will receive US$1,500 (Dh5,509) on top of the $200 the Pakistani government has already pledged to each refugee. This will go towards the cost of shelter and starting a small business.

“It is now a priority to end internal displacement and to create conditions for a sustainable and attractive return for the Afghans,” Mr Guterres said.

“We have so many conflicts in the world that the attention of the international community is divided between Iraq, Syria, Yemen but also South Sudan, Burundi, now even in Europe there is a refugee crisis and there is a risk of Afghanistan being forgotten.”

In Syria, the conflict has resulted in more than four million people fleeing abroad and more than seven million displaced inside the country.

“More than half the population is in need of humanitarian assistance,” said Mr Guterres. “We see the desperation gaining ground and we see they are moving onwards in dramatic circumstances as we are witnessing now in Europe.”

He appealed to all countries to consider accepting Syrian refugees. “A third of the population in Lebanon is now either Syrian or Palestinian,” he said.

“You can imagine the impact on the economy and society, especially in a country that is in itself a divided country that suffers from the Syrian conflict.

“The generosity of Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt should be matched, including support to refugees themselves, structural support to these countries and a burden-sharing commitment facilitating the access of Syrians legally to other countries through more flexible visa policies.”

During his visit to the UAE Mr Guterres met Sheikh Lubna Al Qasimi, Minister of International Cooperation and Development, and Dr Mohammed Al Falahi, secretary-general of the Emirates Red Crescent.

“The meetings went very well,” he said. “There was a positive attitude and we hope to start the [EVRRP] project this year.”