Word: unhcr
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Instead, the committee announced a seemingly unassailable selection for the 1981 Peace Prize: the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for its aid to the "tremendous and increasing number of refugees" around the globe. The choice cheered refugee workers, who are not only keeping 10 million refugees around the world alive, but also are contending with attempts by most member countries, including the U.S., to stem the flood of refugees arriving on their shores. In his acceptance statement on behalf of the UNHCR, Commissioner Paul Hartling said of the award that the "voices of millions...
...prestige attached to the $180,000 Peace Prize may make it easier for the UNHCR, which also won the award in 1954, to raise funds for the refugees. Still, it is scarcely likely to persuade a country like Thailand, awash with 300,000 Indochinese, to accept more refugees. Similarly, the award will not dispose the U.S. to take additional Haitians and Cubans. "No country welcomes refugees today," says one high-level refugee aide. "The situation for them is as bad as it was for Jews fleeing from Nazi Germany in the 1930s." As a result of the increasingly hostile reaction...
Ironically, the UNHCR received its highest accolade at a time when several donor countries were questioning its management methods. The agency's executive committee convened at its Geneva headquarters last week partly to look into widespread criticism of UNHCR inefficiency and poor morale. Though few UNHCR staffers and other relief aides criticize the motivation of High Commissioner Hartling, 67, a former Danish Prime Minister who has held the top post at the agency since 1978, some believe he lacks the leadership qualities needed to cope with a far-flung and slow-moving U.N. bureaucracy...
...processing problem is just as bad in Hong Kong. More than half the 67,000 refugees there have not even been interviewed by the understaffed local UNHCR office...
Inevitably, the refugees pay in shattered hopes for the administrative confusion and excessive red tape. When vacancies appear in a country's quota, refugees are ordered to go, even if the country is Norway and their relatives are in Arizona. Says Hong Kong's UNHCR Director Angelo Rasanayagam: "We take the necessary measures to those who refuse an offer. We explain the realities. We disabuse them of their illusions." Explains one volunteer caseworker who quit a Hong Kong refugee program in disgust: "Those who refuse are told they'll go to the bottom of the list...