Mr Harbi,
Speakers and Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Coming here is an astonishing experience for a novice
in telecommunications. Obviously, this is the showcase
of a whole new world of opportunities opportunities
to get in touch, to learn, to know, to grow. These
amazing achievements fill me with admiration. I am
grateful to the International Telecommunication Union
for inviting me. And yet, I cannot help but think of
many of the places where my UNHCR colleagues are
struggling to protect and assist 22 million refugees and
other uprooted people worldwide dangerous and remote
places, very cold, or very hot, or very dusty; often
without electricity; cut off from all networks
places where communication is hardly possible. I cannot
help but think of the refugees themselves. Many of them
have never used a phone in their life. Many others (and
I do not know what is worse) had to leave behind them
places in which they took easy communication for
granted, like we do. Refugees, of course, are not
just victims they are women and men able to make
extraordinary contributions to society. Einstein was a
refugee. Some of the leaders in your industry, like Andy
Groves of Intel, for example, were refugees. But
refugees, in their vast majority, were either born, or
were thrown, on the wrong side of the "digital
divide".
Let me introduce UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. Our
work started in December 1950. We were a small
organization, with a staff of 23 and a yearly budget of
less than 5 million dollars. In those days, UNHCR dealt
mostly with individual refugees fleeing communist rule
in Eastern Europe. Almost fifty years later, we employ
over four thousand people. Our yearly budget, since
1992, has constantly exceeded one billion US dollars.
Twenty years ago, we dealt with 2.5 million refugees.
Today, the Office cares not only for 12 million
refugees, but also for more than 10 million other people
such as persons displaced within their own country,
returnees, and so on.
Increasingly, huge logistical means must be mobilized
to bring assistance to uprooted people many of you
will remember the airlift which kept the city of
Sarajevo alive for three years during the war in Bosnia;
or another airlift, which brought emergency assistance
to a cholera-stricken population of one million Rwandans
in the Zairean city of Goma. The images of the Kosovo
refugee tragedy are still vivid in our minds. As we
speak, my colleagues are facing another challenging and
difficult day to help refugees in places such as East
Timor, Burundi and the North Caucasus.
UNHCRs work is not simply
"humanitarian". We deal, specifically, with
refugees, returnees and other people who are either
displaced, or trying to resume a normal life, at home or
in another country. They are all people on the move,
people separated from their children, parents and
friends, deprived or traumatized people, people who
therefore desperately need to communicate.
On the other hand, to ensure their protection and
provide them with assistance, we must be with the
refugees, next to them. This means that the staff of
UNHCR and of its partner agencies must often work in
remote, isolated places. Think of Sierra Leonean
refugees in the Liberia rainforest, for example one
of the most inaccessible areas in the world. Think of
the 150,000 internally displaced people in Afghanistan,
a country in which simple telecommunication technology
is as accessible as science fiction. And these are not
just under-equipped places. They are also dangerous,
especially if you cannot communicate effectively. Good,
efficient, accessible telecommunications are therefore a
key element of refugee operations. I would even go
further and say that they are an essential tool to
protect refugees and to provide security to staff
working with them.
Just like any other human activity, humanitarian and
refugee programmes today require professional and
dedicated backing, including state-of-the-art support in
the field of communications and information technology.
One of the most typical features of todays refugee
crises is frequently the size and speed of
forced population movements. In these emergencies,
UNHCRs traditional information, communication and
refugee registration systems designed for more
manageable crises have come under incredible strain.
The Kosovo crisis was a turning point. It attracted a
lot of attention, including from business companies
eager to help us address the movements of enormous
masses of people, first fleeing Kosovo, and shortly
thereafter returning home. Thanks to British Telecom, in
some locations, refugees were able to call, free of
charge, their relatives in other countries. This helped
family reunification, and was of great psychological
help. Thanks to Eutelsat, we are continuing our efforts
to improve communications in Kosovo today. Thanks to a
very substantial contribution of resources by Microsoft
and several computer companies, we tried a new,
electronic refugee registration package, which we hope
to improve and use in other situations as well. This is
particularly important. In many places we still register
refugees by hand. Given the importance of registration
to ensure fair food distributions, for example; or
for the purpose of tracing lost relatives we need to
make fast progress in this field.
There are other areas in which we must improve our
technology. For example, in carrying out campaigns to
inform refugees about conditions in their own country,
in order to help them make up their mind about staying
where they are, or returning home like in West Timor
today. Our delivery of messages to large groups of
people under difficult circumstances could improve
immensely if we had more effective tools. And I do not
even need to mention the security of staff many
field officers, responsible for what are literally
refugee cities, still rely on old-fashioned
walkie-talkies. Emergency teams setting up vast
operations depend on a couple of satellite phones, and a
few overworked technicians and operators. Yet, effective
communication systems are crucial. The day before
yesterday, a group of UN colleagues survived a rebel
ambush in Burundi because one of them fled the scene
with a functioning portable phone, which she used to
call for help. We are more aware than anybody else of
the importance of good telecommunications for security.
However, limited resources mean that our access to the
best technology is also limited.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Telecommunications today are about partnerships. Few
other fields of business are so dynamic in searching for
synergies, and in maximizing them. I represent here a
very different world, in which partnerships are
nevertheless as essential. And I am here not only to
tell you who we are, and what we do but also to
propose that you be partners in our endeavours to help
people have better, safer lives. The challenges are
immense. Advanced technology will be crucial to
strengthen our communication capacity, especially in
chaotic emergencies between our various offices,
with our partner agencies, with the outside world, and
last but not least with refugees.
I will be very practical and give you some examples.
First very simple and straightforward we need
(on a donation or cost-sharing basis) communication
equipment, particularly satellite phones, VHF and HF
radios, and especially wireless telephony and data
transmission equipment (because we work in some of the
least technologically advanced areas in the world, and
we depend on scarce resources, any system we are
provided with, must be relatively simple, very reliable,
and cost-effective). Second, we have a growing need to
move internal information in a fast, and reliable
manner; I wish to ask the owners, operators and
technicians of satellite links to help us have better
and cheaper access to them. Third, we would like to gain
more access to the Internet, in order to raise awareness
of refugee problems, and perhaps promote a better image
of refugees, particularly in Europe. Fourth, we could
explore together the possibility to launch education
programmes for refugees using computer technology; I am
particularly keen on this project because, as I said,
refugees have potential, and we must give them
opportunities. And last but not least, we badly require
specialized staff support.
I do not wish, however, to talk about partnership and
then just give you a shopping list. We at UNHCR, and in
the humanitarian community at large, are quite serious
about working with you. I say so not only because
we need your resources and know-how, but also because I
sincerely believe that business the
telecommunications business in particular has much
to gain in being associated with humanitarian
operations. UNHCR is prepared to enter into stand-by
arrangements with telecommunications companies, that
could be activated in case of large emergencies, and
through which resources can be made available, and more
importantly, staff can be deployed to provide support in
refugee operations. We are ready through our offices
in countries where your companies are based to talk
with you on how we can make telecommunications be of
real service to refugee programmes.
To paraphrase Thomas Friedman, refugees are among the
people who must still upload, rather than download, for
a living. And although they very much need to
communicate, they are also among the people who have the
least means to do so.
You can help us link them up, so they will have a
voice in the global world.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.