UN refugee chief hails Latin American efforts to boost refugee protections

Against a backdrop of growing national security concerns, the fight against terrorism and increasing migration controls in the Americas, Latin American countries have approved a plan of action to improve refugee protection in what the head of the United Nations refugee agency has called a triumph for human rights.

"In a worldwide context of restrictive asylum policies and erosion of protection principles, it is encouraging to see that countries in Latin America are committed to uphold high protection standards," UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers told a meeting yesterday in Mexico City commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Cartagena Declaration on Refugees.

Senior officials from all over Latin America as well as experts and leaders from civil society reaffirmed the relevance and endurance of the Declaration, a landmark document that offered an innovative approach to refugee protection and solutions and broadened the refugee definition applied in the region.

They adopted a new plan of action that includes boosting Latin America's capacity to protect refugees by training key decision makers and developing refugee law and doctrine specific to the region.

It confronts two main aspects of the refugee situation in Latin America today - an increasing number of refugees concentrated in urban centres and the large number of Colombians displaced by decades of war in need of protection who remain invisible and vulnerable in the border areas of neighbouring countries.

Projects will be developed to help refugees, particularly women, in urban centres to become self-sufficient; to provide documentation, legal status and basic assistance to Colombians in need of protection; and to build regional refugee resettlement programmes mainly for Latin American refugees.

"Cartagena's pragmatic and solution-oriented spirit is as relevant today as it was when adopted in 1984," Mr. Lubbers said, noting its emphasis on core human rights principles and durable solutions, including local integration, with its recommendations to grant refugees social, economic and cultural rights.

"I am convinced that this is one of the most important long-term contributions of Cartagena: recognizing that refugees are human beings with dignity, whose first concern is to attain a level of self-sufficiency and to avoid dependence on hand-outs and humanitarian assistance," he added.