Foreign Aid 2011 02 - State Department BPRM

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State Department: Human Security is NationalSecurity: Reflections from Liberia on Budget Battlesand Saving Lives

BUREAU OF POPULATION, REFUGEES, AND MIGRATION

February 17, 2011

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

I’m writing from the remote town of Saclapea in the tropical rainforest of northern Liberia, a four-hour drivefrom the national capital, Monrovia. The lush hills on the edge of town are breathtaking, but it isn’t the rawand untapped beauty that brings me here. This is a largely hidden place that has endured more than itsshare of sadness and depredations. Not far from where I now sit, the infamous Charles Taylor launchedhis rebel attack on Christmas Eve 1989, plunging Liberia and its neighbors into armed conflict andgruesome human rights violations that dragged on for more than a decade, killed an estimated 150,000

persons, and forced some two million Liberians to flee their homes before a credible peace was restoredin 2003.

Diplomatic and financial support from the United States – and from the State Department's Bureau ofPopulation, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) – played a key role in providing the shelter, food, water,health care, and other basic services that helped Liberian refugees survive for years in the refuge ofneighboring countries. And today, Liberia’s people are busy rebuilding after their country’s longnightmare.



Liberian children and their families have benefitted from the Shello Health Clinic since it was built in 2008 with U.S. government support provided through PRM. The clinic is located in Lofa County, the region that in recent years has seen the most refugee returns. Photo by Nnenna Ofobike, PRM Program Officer

I am in Saclapea because Liberia, once one of the largest refugee-producing nations in Africa, hassuddenly become a country of asylum. Political instability in neighboring Côte d’Ivoire has pushed morethan 35,000 new Ivoirian refugees into Liberia, and we are deeply concerned that those numbers could

rapidly climb far higher. Saclapea has become the gateway into the world’s newest refugee zone, wherefrightened Ivoirians have congregated in search of protection and assistance at locations not easilyreached by the outside world.

It’s clear that the resources of the U.S. government and other donor nations are needed here to ensureadequate protection, shelter, sanitation, and other basic supplies for the Ivoirian refugees. And after adifficult start, humanitarian operations are well underway and aid providers are preparing for tens ofthousands of additional people who might need to flee here if dangers in Côte d’Ivoire continue on theirominous path.

Although I am thousands of miles from Washington, the federal budget debates – and current proposalsto massively cut the kind of U.S. assistance that has helped save Liberians and is helping to sustainIvorian refugees – seem very close at hand. As I sit here after a day of visiting a new refugee camp underconstruction and talking with refugees, I find myself both inspired and reflective about the essential nature

of the work that PRM and our implementing partners do to save lives and alleviate suffering. The work notonly reflects a moral imperative, but helps to promote peace and security when despair and desperationthreaten stability and U.S. national security interests.

UNHCR supports the reintegration of refugees from Burundi as they rebuild their lives after years of conflict and displacement. Photo by Wendy Henning, PRM Program Officer

For these reasons, I also find myself deeply concerned – even heartbroken – by the prospect of proposedhumanitarian aid reductions of historic and devastating proportions.

During this month marking the centennial of the birth of President Ronald Reagan, it is fitting to rememberthat the former President lovingly referred to our country as “a shining city upon a hill,” whose morals andvalues serve as a beacon to all the world and draw others to our leadership and our commitment to dowhat is right. His eloquent words expressed his core understanding that we serve our national interestbest when we help to bring stability to others in their hour of need. More than 20 years later, PresidentObama made a similar point when he said that “the only way forward is through a common and persistenteffort to combat fear and want wherever they exist. That is the challenge of our time, and we cannot fail tomeet it.”



Our civilian overseas assistance programs, at a cost of less than one percent of our nation’s budget, arepowerful instruments in our exercise of international leadership. They save lives and create conditions forstability. In short, civilian and humanitarian aid programs are remarkably effective and inexpensiveinvestments, and it is not hard to find examples that reflect this basic reality.

Beyond Liberia, U.S. government aid to all corners of the African continent has been crucial to promotingpeace and reconciliation, and averting the kind of large-scale violence that inevitably results in calls for

costly and dangerous military intervention. U.S. assistance programmed through PRM has been critical tothe peace process in Sudan, assisting the return of some 330,000 Sudanese refugees since the peaceagreement was signed in 2005. Last year PRM also provided humanitarian aid to the 270,000 Darfurrefugees in eastern Chad, addressed some of the enormous gaps in protection in the DemocraticRepublic of the Congo, and helped combat xenophobia in South Africa. And over the past ten years, thehumanitarian aid programmed through PRM has been critical to the largely peaceful return of over twomillion African refugees to their countries of origin throughout the continent.

Working through PRM's NGO partners, U.S. assistance has long supported a variety of programs that teach displaced populations new livelihood skills. Here, a group of Afghan women insisted they be given the opportunity to learn, along with the men of their village, how to weave nets to hold rocks in place during the construction of retaining walls. Photo courtesy of Shelter for Life.

In Afghanistan, where the U.S. military has shouldered the heaviest responsibilities and paid the highestprice in lives lost, U.S. government civilian humanitarian aid providers have an essential complementaryrole of facilitating the largest peaceful repatriation of refugees in world history – the voluntary return homeof more than five million Afghans since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001. Some 100,000 additionalAfghan refugees are expected to repatriate this year. PRM-managed support programs for Afghanrefugees – we programmed over $75 million last year alone – have also helped to encourage Pakistani

policies of tolerance and support to the roughly 1.6 million refugees who remain in that country. Thesewise investments help to promote the future stability in a region of critical national security importance tothe United States.

As many of you know, we promote these humanitarian objectives in coordination with importantinternational organization partners, such as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and theInternational Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), as well as many non-governmental organizations.From Colombia, where 10,000 displaced children now have a chance to be reintegrated into the nationalschool system with UNHCR support, to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where ICRC is providingcrucial assistance to victims of rape and other abuses, our generous support for these organizations



enables us to drive international humanitarian policy and action around the world, while leveragingcritically important funding from other donors.

PRM's partners are frequently among the first organizations to respond to emergency situations. Here,International Relief and Development (IRD) works to distribute food, and hygiene and habitat kits to thousands of internally displaced Afro-Colombians in Tumaco. Photo courtesy of IRD Colombia

To be sure, this is a time of deep concern about the federal budget, and all programs – foreign anddomestic – require close scrutiny. We welcome the scrutiny, as we know from decades of experience atPRM that the work we do makes a critical difference in the world’s trouble-spots, and helps to avoid theneed for far more costly interventions when prevention fails. Our work reinforces our nation’s role as aninternational leader, a beacon to the rest of the world.

In closing, I suppose it is indeed fitting that I write these words from Saclapea of all places, because the

experiences of this town and of Liberia underscore the importance of the work we do. Thanks to ourhumanitarian and diplomatic help during the past decade, the people of Liberia have returned to theirhomes, and are engaged in the challenging process of recovery and development as a friend of theUnited States. But as reflected in the new arrivals just down the road, progress in this region – as in somany others – is fragile. It requires that we sustain the engagement, commitment, and leadership thathave, for so many years, reflected not only our key interests, but our most noble values.

Many thanks, and best regards.

Eric SchwartzAssistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration

Documents

Foreign Aid 2011 02 - State Department BPRM