YEAR IN REVIEW 2000: SOCIAL-PROTECTION

HUMAN RIGHTS Major issues that involved human rights during 1999 included war crimes and crimes against humanity, efforts by ethnic minority groups to obtain greater autonomy and self-determination in their countries, expanded coverage of human rights standards to include private individuals rather than just government officials, and increased attention to gender-based abuses involving persecution and discrimination targeted against women. Priority was given to the issue of war crimes and crimes against humanity and to the measures necessary to secure criminal prosecution of those committing these atrocities. REFUGEES AND INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION Continuing the trend that began in 1998, there were no massive refugee movements in the early weeks of 1999. This pattern changed dramatically in the last week of March, however, with the beginning of armed conflict in Kosovo, a province of the republic of Serbia. In that week alone 100,000 Kosovar refugees entered neighbouring countries, mainly Albania and Macedonia, and the outflow continued to number in the thousands on a daily basis during the weeks that followed. Against a backdrop of violence, military action, failed political negotiations, and international tension, close to a million persons from Kosovo (mainly ethnic Albanians but also Serbs and other minority groups) fled or were forced either into the rest of Yugoslavia or neighbouring countries during the first half of 1999. A humanitarian evacuation program was launched soon afterward from Macedonia. By June more than 86,000 refugees had been evacuated to 30 countries. After military aid was provided for the Kosovars, they returned to their homeland at a rapid rate. Well over 770,000 had returned to Kosovo by September, many of them finding their homes damaged or destroyed. Yugoslavia in 1999 was host to 508,000 refugees, mostly from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and to approximately 700,000 internally displaced persons. At the year's end some 1.2 million refugees and internally displaced persons from the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina remained in need of durable solutions. At the beginning of 1999, the global number of refugees and persons of concern to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) stood at 21.5 million, which represented one out of every 280 people on Earth. Close to half of this number (11.4 million) were refugees, while the remainder comprised internally displaced persons, returnees, asylum seekers, and stateless people. The vast majority of refugees and persons of concern were in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Half of this population were women, and 14% were children under five years of age. Approximately 986,000 refugees returned to their countries of origin in 1998. While repatriation remained the preferred solution in many crises, some 21,200 refugees were also assisted in resettling in third countries. Movements along and across borders were particularly alarming in Africa during 1998 and the first half of 1999. In West Africa the crisis in Sierra Leone forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes. As of June 1999, approximately 450,000 Sierra Leoneans had fled from hostilities in the country, mostly to Guinea and Liberia. Elsewhere in West Africa, more than 330,000 refugees returned to Liberia, mainly from the two largest host countries, Cte d'Ivoire and Guinea. Recent incidents in Liberia, however, raised concerns that this might lead to fresh outflows of refugees. The repatriation of some 135,000 refugees to Mali and Niger marked the end of a displacement situation that had persisted for the past four years. As 1998 drew to a close, the armed conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia led to a new round of displacements and mass expulsions in the Horn of Africa. At the end of 1998, The Sudan was host to an estimated total of 392,000 refugees, primarily from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Chad, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Congo [Kinshasa]), and Somalia. During 1999, however, some Ethiopian refugees were able to return from The Sudan, and small numbers of refugees returned from Ethiopia to northwestern Somalia, which indicated that some degree of peace and stability had returned to parts of the Horn of Africa. In the Great Lakes region of Africa, the extremely complex pattern of war in Congo (Kinshasa) and the Republic of the Congo (Congo [Brazzaville]), which started in August 1998, forced people to crisscross those countries' borders. More than 700,000 persons were internally displaced in Congo (Kinshasa), most of them inaccessible to relief organizations. The fighting also compelled thousands of Congolese refugeesreaching a total of more than 90,000 by late June 1999to flee into Tanzania. More than 25,000 persons also crossed into northern Zambia in March 1999. Refugees also flowed into Congo (Kinshasa) from the Congo (Brazzaville) as a result of renewed conflict there. The signing of a tripartite agreement between the Congo (Brazzaville), Congo (Kinshasa), and UNHCR in April 1999 led to the creation of a humanitarian corridor that allowed the return of some 36,000 Congolese refugees back to Brazzaville by rail and river. The situation in Burundi remained fragile, with fresh episodes of violence forcing more people to flee the country. In Tanzania UNHCR provided assistance to more than 260,000 Burundian refugees. Despite the instability, however, more than 200,000 refugees had returned to Burundi since 1996. For three decades Angola had been devastated by war. More than 300,000 refugees fled to neighbouring countries, mainly Congo (Kinshasa) and Zambia. Almost one-third of those refugees left the country after the upsurge in fighting between May 1998 and June 1999. In addition, 1.5 million people were believed to be internally displaced. In Southeast Asia the violence that erupted in East Timor during the first half of 1999 led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of persons. As of October there were more than 400,000 people of concern to UNHCR in East and West Timor and other areas of Indonesia. With the deployment of peacekeeping forces in September, humanitarian efforts were refocused on helping those who wanted to repatriate to East Timor. The situation of some 100,000 Karen and Karenni refugees from Myanmar (Burma) accommodated in 11 camps along the Thailand-Myanmar border in Thailand remained unresolved over the year. Continued strife in border areas within Myanmar in the first half of 1999 forced thousands more refugees to flee to the camps. The majority of the 250,000 refugees from Myanmar, however, had returned to the country since 1993 under a UNHCR-assisted repatriation program, which left some 22,000 in two camps at the end of 1998. Following the peace settlement of December 1998 between the government of Cambodia and resistance forces, the repatriation of the remaining 36,000 Cambodian refugees who had fled their country after the political and military developments of 1997 was completed in June 1999. Renewed conflict in Sri Lanka between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) prolonged the plight of some 650,000 internally displaced persons in that country. Nevertheless, since 1997, some 140,000 internally displaced persons had returned to their places of origin in the Jaffna Peninsula. In Central America the return of Guatemalan refugees in Mexico was largely completed in 1999. Some 42,500 refugees who had sought sanctuary in southern Mexico in the early 1980s returned to Guatemala under UNHCR's auspices by June 1999. In South America internal displacement in Colombia reached record levels in 1999. It was estimated that up to 1.6 million people had been displaced and had spread throughout the country. Displaced Colombians also fled to Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela. On the southern border of Russia, fighting in Dagestan displaced 33,000 people. Also within the Russian Federation an escalation in the fighting between Russian troops and rebel groups in Chechnya in the latter part of 1999 forced tens of thousands of refugees to flee to neighbouring Ingushetia. In the Transcaucasia region, well over one million people were refugees or internally displaced in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, where the conflicts that led to their uprooting remained unresolved. In Afghanistan renewed fighting caused fresh movements of refugees during the year. More than 150,000 people were estimated internally displaced at the end of 1999. In 1998 UNHCR assisted the repatriation of about 107,000 refugees to return to Afghanistan, of whom 93,000 returned from Pakistan and 14,000 from Iran. In 1998 the 15 member nations of the European Union received a total of 304,000 asylum applications, an increase of 21% over 1997. In North America Canada was host to an estimated 159,000 persons of concern to UNHCR. Nearly 24,000 requested refugee status in 1998, and of those, 55% were approved. In the United States more than 35,000 applications for asylum were submitted in 1998, a decline of more than 50% from 1997. The U.S., however, remained the leading destination of refugees resettled by UNHCR, accounting for half of all resettlement worldwide. During fiscal 1999 the U.S. authorized the admission of 78,000 refugees. UNHCR Social Protection Debate over social security reform, often guided by concern about the financial viability of the various social protection programs, was the main topic of discussion in many countries during 1999. Governments and social security administrators continued to modernize programs, provide services more effectively, and raise public awareness of the importance of welfare beneficiaries' assuming greater responsibility for their own welfare.