UN agency advances international efforts to resettle Latin American refugees
International efforts to resettle hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people across Latin America took a step forward
this month with a landmark meeting held by the Latin American arm of the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR).
Staged in the Ecuadorean capital of Quito, the two-day session organized by UNHCR’s Bureau for the Americas let
officials from eight countries of the region harbouring vulnerable populations share ideas and experiences with four
developed nations with strong resettlement programs.
“Its (meeting) impact is likely to be felt well beyond Latin America because what is being created here is a model for a
successful regional resettlement programme that can serve as an impetus for other regions,” said Erika Feller, the
refugee agency’s newly appointed Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, in a statement released on Tuesday. She
added that the meeting initiated a positive North-South dialogue on resettlement issues.
In her first mission since assuming her new post in January, Ms. Feller travelled through Colombia and Ecuador last week
to spotlight the plight of millions of vulnerable people in the region. Over the years, large numbers of Colombians have
fled conflict in their homeland and taken refuge in Venezuela and Ecuador, which harbours about 250,000 Colombians of
concern to UNHCR.
Officials in Brazil, Chile and Argentina last year offered to resettle about 250 Colombian refugees as part of the
Mexico Plan of Action, a regional strategy adopted two years ago. Last week’s gathering in Quito handed officials a
chance to review the Plan’s progress and encourage more countries to move on concrete measures to meet its goals.
“The basis of this programme is international solidarity, particularly solidarity with the countries most affected by
the Colombian crisis,” said Philippe Lavanchy, Director of UNHCR’s Bureau for the Americas, adding that the help of
countries outside the region is crucial.
Resettlement is the granting of permanent residence in a country other than the nation where a refugee first took
asylum. It can be especially useful when dealing with long-term refugee situations and help countries that border
conflict areas with large influxes of refugees.
Only a few countries in the world have run large resettlement programmes. In 2004, for example, about 42,000 refugees
were resettled with UNHCR’s help to the “traditional” resettlement countries of Australia, Canada and the Nordic
countries (Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark), as well as New Zealand, the Netherlands, the United States, the United
Kingdom, Iceland and Ireland.