UN needs funds despite saving

2008-10-06 21:45

Geneva - The UN has saved millions of dollars by scaling back its refugee agency's Swiss headquarters, but remains short of funds, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said on Monday.

Addressing the UNHCR's executive committee, Guterres said $22m had been saved from an overhaul of staffing policies.

Moving some jobs to Budapest from Geneva - one of the world's costliest cities - would save a further $9m a year from 2009, the former Portuguese prime minister said.

He told the panel, whose 76 member states include major donors such the US, Japan, Sweden, the Netherlands and Norway, that the UNHCR needed more funding to assist the 31 million desperate and displaced people it cared for.

"While we are doing our very best to minimise costs, our budget does not allow us to meet the global needs of our beneficiaries," he said, explaining that high energy and food prices had made life even harder for those forced from their homes.

The UNHCR expected to spend $1.6bn in 2008, up from $1.1bn two years ago. While recognising that governments were under fiscal pressure, he said a squeeze on aid could cause more upheaval that might prove even costlier to deal with.

Global credit crisis

"I fully recognise the challenges of the current financial environment," he said, referring to the global credit crisis that could affect aid flows.

However, he said: "If we fail to meet the basic needs of the world's poor then we can only expect more social and political turmoil in the years to come."

There were 11.4 million refugees worldwide at the end of 2007, with 80% living near their countries of origin. Poor countries such as Chad, Ecuador, Iran, Pakistan, Syria and Tanzania bore much of the burden and needed the UNHCR's help to shelter, feed and protect them, according to Guterres.

A further 26 million people had fled their homes because of violence without crossing into another country - classified as "internally displaced" - and many of them also relied on the UNHCR for their survival, he said.

- Reuters