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Distinguishing Means and Ends: The Counterintuitive Effects of UNHCR's Community Development Approach in Nepal
Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, and Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford muggah{at}hei.unige.ch
UNHCR's community development approach (CDA) consists of a disparate set of guidelines designed to strengthen the self-reliance of refugees during protracted displacement. It envisions refugees as agents of their own development, and aims to prepare them for a durable solution. But in the absence of basic standards and benchmarks, the CDA is being used—by implementing partners as well as specialized units with the agency—as an opportunity to advance rights-based development. This raises a number of concerns related to the desired aims of the CDA, the accountability of UNHCR and its implementing partners and its capacity to administer development while preserving its core mandate. This article casts a critical eye over CDA as experienced in Bhutanese refugee camps in Nepal. It contends that UNHCR must develop appropriate standards for CDA. At the very least, the agency must move beyond basic emergency benchmarks and toward minimum standards that strengthen self-reliance and empower refugees, but do not simultaneously undermine prospects of achieving a durable solution.
1. This article was written in parallel with an independent evaluation of UNHCR's community services function. The findings of the evaluation are on-line at www.unhcr.ch. The author visited the Nepal refugee camps in 2002 as part of the team commissioned to undertake the community services evaluation. This article represents his own views, and not those of UNHCR or NGOs working in Jhapa, Nepal.
2. A working group on services and community development was set up in the early 1990s in order to review how UNHCR programmes might benefit from a community approach in care and maintenance activities. It noted that limitations in the conventional approach ‘could be overcome by empowering refugees, treating them as resourceful and active partners in all assistance and protection activities’ (UNHCR 2001: 4). The Group included NGOs such as the Dutch Relief and Rehabilitation Agency, Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, Save the Children Norway/Sweden, International Catholic Migration Committee and the Norwegian Refugee Council. See also UNHCR (1996, 1992).
3. In 1978 the Commission on Human Rights recognized the right to development as a specific human right for the first time and asked the Secretary-General for further study on the conditions needed for the effective enjoyment by all of the right to development. Rights-based development is now central to the mandates of many development agencies. See also Harris-Curtis (2002) and Sen (1999).
4. It has been argued that Nepal's acceptance of the Bhutanese proposal was a diplomatic blunder that led to protracted negotiations. According to regional experts, the Bhutanese refugee problem is a trilateral issue involving Bhutan, Nepal and India—as Bhutan's foreign policy is officially guided by India under a treaty signed between Thimphu and New Delhi in 1949. See, for example, Tiwar (2003). Nepal maintains that the refugees are Bhutanese citizens and should be allowed to return. Bhutan maintains that not all refugees are genuine. India contends that the refugee problem is a bilateral issue between Bhutan and Nepal and, therefore, declined to participate in the process.
5. UNHCR sent an investigation team in November 2002 to assess the situation. It found 18 cases of sexual abuse and exploitation. This was subsequently reported by Amnesty International in the same month. The findings of the investigation ultimately revealed that ‘there had been no wrongdoing on the part of the staff members, that no instructions had been willfully disregarded, and that therefore the conduct of the staff members did not justify disciplinary action’ (UNHCR 2004).
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