Refugee Camps

Baroness Featherstone Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd July 2014 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Lynne Featherstone)]

It is a pleasure, Mr Sanders, to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) on securing this important debate and all hon. Members on their contributions. Hon. Members throughout the House are genuinely committed to the plight of refugees, wherever they are in the world. Meeting the needs of refugees and other forcibly displaced people is at the centre of the UK’s humanitarian work, and I welcome the opportunity to discuss it. I will try to respond to as many points as possible.

The debate is timely. A month ago, on world refugee day, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported that in 2013 the number of refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced people worldwide had, for the first time in the post-world war two era, exceeded 50 million people. The increase from 2012 has been driven mainly by the Syria crisis, as many hon. Members said, but there have also been major new displacements in Africa, notably the Central African Republic and South Sudan.

My first visit to a refugee camp was to the north of South Sudan where refugees came across from South Kordofan and Blue Nile. That was also when I had my first trip in a helicopter, because there were no roads and the rainy season had started. The logistics of bringing in life-saving supplies were quite extraordinary in the direst of circumstances. Having to fly everything into refugee camps there partly explains the cost of the camps. I will go into the different costs, because where camps are situated and the countries they are in are critical to those costs.

This rise in the number of refugees is part of a worrying global trend reflecting the complexity of protracted crisis situations with regional and cross-border dimensions and the quadrupling of overall humanitarian need over the past decade. Increasingly, many refugee situations are continuing for extended periods. In 2011, a UNHCR study of 30 major protracted refugee situations found that the average length of displacement now is almost 20 years, compared with an average of nine years in the early 1990s.

Many hon. Members referred to the longevity of the camps, and I reiterate that primary responsibility for the assistance and protection of refugees lies with the host state. The UNHCR is mandated to lead and co-ordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide, and to seek durable solutions to refugee displacement. I agree with all hon. Members who have said that we must normalise situations that last for a long time by providing skills, education and the hope of life beyond the camps. Solutions may include voluntary repatriation, assimilation within new national communities or resettlement to third countries. In 2013, refugee returns were fewer than 500,000.

The focus of this debate has been conditions in refugee camps, but it is important to note that the majority of today’s refugees do not live in camps. In 2012, a UNHCR study showed that only 35% of the 9.5 million refugees assessed lived in planned camps, and that the majority were living in private or rented accommodation. The hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) referred to that, and I will respond in due course. More recently, it was estimated that 86% of Syrian refugees live outside camps.

It is critical to ensure that those with responsibility for meeting refugees’ needs are able to tailor their responses to different contexts. Camps are not usually the preferred solution for refugees, because they are expensive and often do not have good security. I have seen jealousy in host communities. Many hon. Members referred to education, and when it is provided in camps in countries where children outside the camps are barely in school, the balance must be carefully considered. My Department must consider the context or there may be all sorts of trouble between those inside and outside the camps.

The 1951 United Nations convention relating to the status of refugees and its 1967 protocol laid down the basic minimum standards for the treatment of refugees. The UNHCR has further developed them into detailed standards and guidelines in every sector of humanitarian assistance and protection. Today’s debate has rightly highlighted the fact that conditions vary widely from one camp to another. The issue is complicated. It depends partly on the political willingness and economic ability of a country to host refugees. In the middle east, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire said, host states are relatively wealthy compared with those in Africa and perhaps more politically willing to help with refugees. Certainly, as the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) said, the Turkish refugee camps are of the highest quality. They are quite astonishing. I was at an iftar meal, as I am sure many Members in the Chamber have been. It was a Turkish evening, and the quality of the camps was referred to many times over.

Conditions vary widely depending on how well the camp has been planned in advance and where it is located. Often, as I said, camps are situated in very poor circumstances without proximity to natural resources such as water or wood. The capacity of the camp to expand to more refugee influxes is also a factor, because if different cultural groups are sited in the same place or in close proximity, it results in overcrowding and tension.

A number of Members raised the issue of women and girls in refugee camps. As I am sure everyone knows, DFID puts women and girls, and particularly preventing violence against women, at the heart of all its development programmes. The Secretary of State gave a call to action to address the danger to women and children and their vulnerability in refugee camps, as has been mentioned. One of my earliest meetings was with a number of the agencies involved, and I said that this was a first-order issue. For a long time, food, water, shelter and sanitation were the first-order issues, but it is now becoming recognised that that is not enough any more.

[Pauline Latham]

Is it not true, however, that in these camps, we still do not separate the girls’ and women’s toilets from the men’s toilets and provide security so that they can go safely to the toilet without fear of rape?

[Lynne Featherstone]

My hon. Friend is right, but that is beginning to happen. Camps are at a variety of stages in their evolution. The newest and most modern camps most definitely have separate, safe toilets and all those things, but other camps that have been in existence longer do not necessarily have them. The issue has been raised and everyone is now aware of it. The Secretary of State’s call to action has highlighted the issue and put it on the front page, so that the agencies understand that it is as much a part of humanitarian aid as the more traditional first-order issues. I think we all recognise the danger that women are in. They are vulnerable if they go outside the camps to look for wood; they are at risk of violence and sexual assault, and we have called on others—UN agencies, donors and non-governmental organisations—to do the same as we have and put women, girls and children at the heart of their humanitarian response.

I want to try and answer more directly some of the questions that have been asked. I thank my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward) and the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Hexham for their contributions. Education and food were raised in particular. Enrolment rates in education are higher in camps than outside—in Iraq, they are 57%, in Jordan, they are 67%, and in Turkey, they are 80%. There are three schools in Zaatari and 20,000 children, but there are still problems maintaining regular attendance and reducing the overcrowding in classes.

On food, in camps in Jordan refugees receive a daily allocation of bread and food vouchers valid for two weeks. Those can be redeemed at shops inside the camp, which also benefits the local communities. It is a kind of win-win situation. In one camp, the Emirates Red Crescent provides full catering. Malnutrition rates in those camps remain low, but there is a real spectrum in what is available and where. DFID certainly encourages the use of our cash transfer system, and we are very proud of it. That is one of the great innovations of recent years, because it ensures that money is spent locally, so it benefits the community. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East said, the ingenuity of refugees in camps beggars belief. Stalls arrive and there is a marketplace, and I understand that there is also not the best-tasting alcohol—not in the Muslim countries, but in Africa for sure.

[Jim Shannon]

Will the Minister give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lynne Featherstone]

I will try and get through the points that all the Members have raised, and if I have time, I will come back to the hon. Gentleman.

Gaza was mentioned. Currently, only UNRWA, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society have sufficient access even to respond. DFID is funding both UNRWA and the ICRC, and we have increased funding to both in response to the crisis. More than 100,000 people are now taking shelter in schools and communal buildings under the aegis of UNRWA. The Secretary of State announced £2 million of funding yesterday to the flash appeal, which was launched by UNRWA, but it is a moving situation, as I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East appreciates. It is relatively new.

On the Palestinian refugees from Syria, many of them have fled Syria to Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and elsewhere. They receive assistance from UNRWA in Lebanon and Jordan, and from the UNHCR in Egypt, because UNRWA does not have a mandate in Egypt. There are reports that the Palestinian refugees are finding it increasingly difficult to cross the borders out of Syria, which is a cause for concern. The UK has so far provided £25.5 million to UNRWA to assist it in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

[Dr Phillip Lee (Bracknell) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Lynne Featherstone]

I will, because the hon. Gentleman has not spoken.

[Dr Lee]

Has the Minister’s Department made any assessment of the need for additional medical services, particularly in the Zaatari camp in Jordan? I say that in the context of a debate I held a few months ago in the House, which was on a mobile army surgical hospital facility that Britain could build up and deploy in a place such as Zaatari.

[Lynne Featherstone]

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will write to him on that, because it adds a whole new area to the debate and I have only three minutes left.

The gateway protection scheme was mentioned by the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch. We want to focus our assistance on the most vulnerable people, rather than subscribing to a quota scheme. We have a vulnerable persons relocation scheme, which runs in parallel to the UNHCR’s own Syria humanitarian admission programme. We are determined to ensure that our assistance is targeted where it can have the most impact on the most refugees and those at the greatest risk. Our programme focuses on individual cases where evacuation from the region is the only option, and in particular, we are prioritising help for survivors of torture and violence and women and children at risk. The gateway protection scheme is operated by the UK Visas and Immigration partnership, as the hon. Lady knows, because she was a Home Office Minister. That is the Department from which the immigration side comes. It offers a legal route for resettlement for up to 750 refugees to settle in the UK each year.

We continue to be very concerned about the plight of the Syrian refugees. That crisis is not abating, and the UK has been at the forefront of the humanitarian response. The UK’s total funding for Syria and the region is now at £600 million, which is three times the size of its response to any other humanitarian crisis. My fear is that there are protracted crises looming, all coming together at a time when the world’s humanitarian effort is at its greatest, and resources are being severely stretched.

The UK tackles these issues in three ways. The first is at the global level, by providing support to the UNHCR to fulfil its mandate. In 2013, 43 million people relied on UNHCR assistance. We have a strong engagement with the UNHCR and participate in its executive committee. We also provide predictable and flexible global funding that allows the organisation to respond to the most urgent need.

The second way is through engagement on international humanitarian reform and, together with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, international advocacy on the rights of refugee and other vulnerable populations. I can assure hon. Members that there is a real debate—for a long time the humanitarian effort was stuck, but I think that is moving now and the debate is opening up. The third way is at the country level, where the UK is engaged in many of the world’s most severe crises.

Effectively meeting the needs of growing refugee and other forcibly displaced populations is placing ever-increasing demands on stretched host states and the humanitarian system. The majority of those needs are concentrated in protracted crises in fragile and conflicted states. Access is a nightmare in many countries, and the situation is terrible. I appreciate the difference between the camps, but I think it is explicable by the circumstances in which those camps arrive—

[Mr Adrian Sanders (in the Chair)]

Order. We now move on to the next debate. I call Mr Paul Burstow.