Civil Society, Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean, Migration & Refugees

COLOMBIA: UNHCR Threatens to Leave If Gov’t Insists on Dictating Terms

Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, Jun 17 2005 (IPS) - If the Colombian Foreign Ministry insists on establishing official rules for the terms to be used by the international aid community when referring to this country’s civil war, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) "would have to consider pulling out of the country," the agency’s representative in Colombia told IPS.

Local UNHCR director Roberto Meier is the first foreign diplomat to publicly speak out on the "Guidelines for the approach to be taken by international cooperation projects", issued Jun. 8 by the president’s High Commissioner for Peace Luis Carlos Restrepo.

The document was addressed to United Nations agencies, foreign ambassadors, international development aid agencies and humanitarian groups active in this country.

The government’s "guidelines" ask the international community to refrain from using terms like "internal armed conflict"; "armed actors" or "parties to the conflict" when referring to the security forces; "non-state actors in the conflict" to refer to the left-wing rebels or extreme right-wing paramilitaries; or "peace community", "peace territory" or "humanitarian zone" – expressions often adopted by communities in Colombia that have declared themselves neutral in the conflict.

When referring to the over four decades of violence in Colombia, the right-wing government of Alvaro Uribe refuses to describe it as a "civil war" or "armed conflict", talking instead about the "terrorist threat" posed by leftist guerrilla groups.

The government also asked the international community not to refer to "humanitarian" activities when proposing projects in Colombia.

In addition, the 22-point, four-page document states that "any kind of activity that could imply any contact whatsoever with the illegal armed groups is seen as unacceptable by the national government."

The ban on contacting "illegal armed groups" is understood here as referring to contact with the guerrillas, who are fought by the Colombian armed forces with heavy financial and military support from Washington.

"There is such a thing as international refugee law, and there is terminology that we have been using for 50 years, which has been approved by the (U.N.) General Assembly, and a state cannot simply change that," said Meier.

The UNHCR, which has been in Colombia since 1997, "is present in 116 countries, mainly where there are conflicts, whether non-international armed conflicts or international conflicts," he said.

"A state has neither the authority nor the right to tell other states, for example, that are cooperating with it, what vocabulary they can or cannot use. There are very clear United Nations mechanisms for this," he added.

"If a state wants to change (the terminology), it must address its concerns to the General Assembly to get the terms modified. That is the appropriate channel. So for us, this document is non-existent," said Meier.

"If Colombia decided that these guidelines were to go into effect, it should have pushed them through the appropriate channels. Because it failed to do so, we believe these guidelines are simply an internal memorandum of the national government," he said.

On Monday, Foreign Minister Carolina Barco backed the content of the document, but criticised the way it was distributed to the diplomatic corps and aid agencies. She also announced that she would meet with the representatives of the international aid community to explain the guidelines.

But if the document is received through the Foreign Ministry, "that will be another story," said Meier. "If that happens, then I sincerely believe that the UNHCR would have to consider pulling out of the country."

The U.N. official’s warning came a day after a meeting in Bogota of the group of donor countries, U.N. agencies and multilateral lending institutions that are working with Colombia, although what was discussed in the meeting was not made public.

"The position would be that if (the document) comes officially from the Foreign Ministry, it would be the Colombian state trying to impose its terms. We would then have to analyse the question very carefully, and consider whether under these terms, we could continue working with the Colombian state," Meier clarified.

The UNHCR is one of the sources that provided information for the Colombia chapter of the report on the humanitarian situation in the world, to be released Jun. 21 by U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland.

After years of solely concerning itself with refugees who cross international borders, in the mid-1990s the UNHCR broadened its mandate to cover people displaced within their own countries.

The Colombian government, which provides conservative figures with respect to the humanitarian crisis generated by the armed conflict, admits that the number of displaced persons in Colombia is over two million.

But the non-governmental Consultancy on Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES) estimates the total number of people forcibly displaced since 1985 at 3.2 million.

Word has it that Egeland’s report will paint a dismal panorama of the situation in this South American country of 43 million, and that the Colombian government is already aware of this and is not at all pleased.

Meanwhile, Colombian civil society groups that have joined together in the Cartagena Consensus are expected to oppose the government’s new "guidelines" on terminology.

The Consensus is made up of the National Business Council, the Colombian Catholic Bishops Conference, the National Planning Council, the Confederation of Non-Governmental Organisations, and the Alliance of Social Organisations for Cooperation for Democracy and Peace.

The Consensus will put out a communiqué rejecting the guidelines, said Rojas, of CODHES, which belongs to the Alliance.

The Alliance was created on the occasion of the July 2003 meeting in London of donors working with Colombia, who condition an increase in aid on compliance by the Colombian government and armed forces with U.N. Commission on Human Rights recommendations.

The donors met once again in the northern Colombian city of Cartagena, on the Caribbean coast, in February. On that occasion, the Colombian civil society organisations founded the Cartagena Consensus, which has issued public statements on two earlier occasions.

In its third communiqué, "we will first ask the government whether the ‘London process’ is still alive, because it included a series of agreements between the government, the international aid community and NGOs, which contradict Restrepo’s ‘guidelines’," said Rojas.

"We will also issue a public warning that the government is throwing up major barriers to international cooperation with Colombia, at a time when the humanitarian crisis is deepening and the civilian victims of the conflict are increasing in number," he added.

According to Meier, "the situation remains very difficult and complex, and more and more people are displaced every day – in small numbers, but if we add up the total, it keeps rising."