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We are often quick to chastise a country when it fails to meet its obligations under international law, but how often do we applaud and support them when they do take these laws seriously? One such case that comes to mind is Ecuador. The country is making an impressive attempt to meet its obligations to Colombian refugees, but so far, no one seems to care enough to make sure their program succeeds.
Right now, I'm part of a Refugees International mission to Ecuador that is following an innovative effort to register tens of thousands of Colombian refugees. This "Expanded Registration" process ensures that these refugees have all the protections and guarantees to equal treatment under the law that the UN Refugee Convention calls for. It gives registered refugees access to public hospitals and schools, and even gives them the right to work in Ecuador. It offers them official identification cards that have these rights printed clearly on them in an effort to fight discrimination against Colombian refugees. After eight weeks, over 6,000 refugees have been registered, and there are plans to continue registering Colombians around the country for a full year.
Refugees International has been able to witness this process first hand. Last week we spent two days in the city of Esmeraldas, near the Colombian border, watching people wait patiently while, one by one, they were interviewed to make sure that they met the legal standard for being declared a refugee. The UN Refugee Agency, along with civil society actors from Jesuit Refugee Service and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, were able to monitor the process and offer additional counseling to refugees on site, making the process transparent. At the end of each day, hundreds of refugees are granted legal status and issued identification cards on the spot. We interviewed dozens of refugees as they exited the registration facility who told us that they had been treated with dignity and respect, and that this would make a real difference in their lives in Ecuador. You can't get better than that.
Despite the success of this program, we asked the Ecuadoran team running the registration campaign why they could only process a few hundred people a day when there are an estimated 135,000 refugees that might eventually be registered. The quick answer was resources. Despite their hard work at doing the right thing, only the UN Refugee Agency is helping the Ecuadoran government fund this operation. Not one developed country, such as the US, is making a significant contribution to the program.
As a poor country, Ecuador recently had to cut the registration program's budget in half because of financial constraints due to the global economic crisis. How much money do they need to do this properly? One million dollars. While that may sound like a lot of money, the US has spent billions of dollars on military and police aid to Colombia over the last decade.
The contradiction here is that the US government regularly encourages countries to sign the UN Refugee Convention, and to abide by the obligations under the convention. It funds dozens of refugee programs worldwide precisely because host governments can’t do this. But when countries like Ecuador do the right thing, the lack of international support jeopardizes these programs that we should want to see succeed.
In the end, the lack of support for programs like Ecuador’s sends a clear signal to countries around the world that when it comes to putting their money where their mouth is, industrialized nations often fall way short.
The process in Ecuador is just in its beginning stages, and has all of the possibilities of helping refugees live in this country, while also showing the rest of the world how to properly meet obligations under the Refugee Convention. Hopefully, governments will step up to the plate and demonstrate that if you do the right thing, you won’t have to go it alone.
-Sean Garcia
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