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| SEEKING REFUGE | |
 July 22, 1999 
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Sadako Ogata, United Nations high commissioner for refugees, talks about the refugee situation in the Balkans and in the rest of the world.
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SADAKO OGATA: Thank you very much. Nice to be here. JIM LEHRER: The Kosovo refugees, how many of them remain outside Kosovo at this point? SADAKO OGATA: In the neighboring countries, the number would be something less than 100,000 now. JIM LEHRER: And are they there by choice or is there no place yet for them - SADAKO OGATA: No, no. I think many of them are still planning to go back. And it's just a question of choosing when to go back. I think some are going to stay a little longer to see how things develop. |
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| Kosovo refugees returning home | ||||||||||||||||||||
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JIM LEHRER: But it's up to them. SADAKO OGATA: Oh, yes. JIM LEHRER: There isn't a situation that makes it impossible for them to go back right now. SADAKO OGATA: No, it's open. JIM LEHRER: Open. They could go back if they wanted to.
JIM LEHRER: That's astonishing, is it not? SADAKO OGATA: Yes, they all said they wanted to go back. But their desire, I think, it's because they think they can go back to a place they can call their home and their country. JIM LEHRER: Now there's still some who are not in the neighboring countries but are in other countries. SADAKO OGATA: Yes, about 90,000 who were evacuated out of Macedonia. JIM LEHRER: Including here. SADAKO OGATA: Including here. But some are beginning to go back, too. JIM LEHRER: So it was widely said at the time when the bombing began that the overwhelming majority of these folks did want to go back home when the bombing ended and it turned out to be correct, did it not? SADAKO OGATA: It turned out to be correct. JIM LEHRER: How does that compare with other refugee situations through history? |
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| Refugees and the Balkans | ||||||||||||||||||||
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JIM LEHRER: Now, what has happened to those refugee camps that we all saw on television, this program and elsewhere, on Macedonia and Albania. What has happened to them? SADAKO OGATA: We are putting -- cleaning them. I think we have to restore the camp sites so that the environment is no longer destroyed. Many of the camps have been closed. There's only one camp left in Macedonia, and in Albania, too, we are consolidating and cleaning them. JIM LEHRER: Now, what is the situation for the returned refugees back in Kosovo? SADAKO OGATA: Well, I was there about two weeks ago, and they are all in their villages or in friends' houses. Some are camping. We have given camps for them to camp in their garden or in their field while they are trying to clean up and maybe get a room or two to live in. And we're also giving them a lot of sort of emergency shelter repair kits. JIM LEHRER: But basically it's working, do you think, from your point of view? SADAKO OGATA: I think it's working in most places. At the same time there are cities in Western Kosovo, Pec and Jakovica, which is very, very heavily destroyed, and there I think a lot more emergency reconstruction work will have to start soon. JIM LEHRER: And is it underway? Is it coming? SADAKO OGATA: Well, the big reconstruction is not quite there yet. JIM LEHRER: Now how is the relationship going between your effort, the refugee effort, and the military peacekeeping force? SADAKO OGATA: Oh, very closely because the military are there to help the law and order, also the security, looking after the mines also, so they are - we liaise with them constantly. JIM LEHRER: Are you uncomfortable about that at all, working with the military? SADAKO OGATA: Well, we have worked with the military in many ways. During the Kosovo crisis, in the neighboring countries, they helped us set up the camps, build them, sometimes transporting people and goods. We needed their services because it was such a big outflow over such a short time. JIM LEHRER: And there hasn't - usually -- I won't say usually. Sometimes in these situations there's a cross purpose, sometimes - SADAKO OGATA: Yes. JIM LEHRER: -- in mission and in orders and who's in charge. That hasn't happened this time? SADAKO OGATA: Well, we want to keep the camps civilian in character. That means that the refugees should not be armed, should be disarmed. But the military helped us maintain the camps as civilian as possible. They did help us in giving food but they were not doing military action. And they -- I think there was a coordination that was quite good.
SADAKO OGATA: Many of them went back on their own self-organized return. And what we have done is help those who did not have cars, means of transportation. The weak and the poor, vulnerable people we helped with the buses and bringing -- transporting them. So the distances are very short, too. They all -- from Macedonia to Skopje, it's about an hour and a half to get back to Pristina, so that helped, too. So the return itself is not monumental. But I think that what happens from now is going to be a monumental task. JIM LEHRER: What is that? Describe that. SADAKO OGATA: Well, because the United Nations has been given the task to set up something of an interim administration. There's no courts, no laws exactly to apply, no police. Some are coming from the UN, and reconstruction starts from now: The schools, all the public hospitals, they are not really functioning fully. So it's going to set up a society with all the characters of government that has to be brought in, it has to go in now. And the reconstruction and eventually there has to be elections and government set up. JIM LEHRER: So the hard work is still to come. SADAKO OGATA: Oh, very much so. JIM LEHRER: Are there resources being made available to you and your colleagues?
JIM LEHRER: You have to go buy things. SADAKO OGATA: Yes. You have to buy things ahead of time. Before the winter comes. JIM LEHRER: Ms. Ogata, help us understand -- put this in a worldwide context. You're in charge not just of Kosovo; you're in charge of refugees all over the world. SADAKO OGATA: All over the world. Exactly. JIM LEHRER: All right. Help us understand, compared, for instance with specific situations in Africa, like Sierra Leone, any context you want to use. How us understand how big this one is. SADAKO OGATA: This was one was big, with an enormous impact on Europe, because the Balkans is part of Europe, and there is a strategic interest. And the fact that the NATO forces came and there was the air activities, the bombing, which made it very, very tense, and in security terms, it was a very serious one. But in terms of the size of refugees and the need to keep them in camps and so on, there are many, many large operations we're doing in Africa, for example. JIM LEHRER: Like where? |
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| Media attention makes the difference | ||||||||||||||||||||
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JIM LEHRER: 750,000 - SADAKO OGATA: 750,000 people who are displaced and the conflict is going on. Many of the Rwandans who were in the camps in Goma and so on in what used to be called Zaire have gone back but there are still some who are left. And even today just in the last few days there were some Congolese who are taking refuge in the neighboring countries so there are quite a lot of problems still going on. So there was not that neat end of a conflict that we've seen. But in Kosovo, too, I have to remind one thing -- that there are the Serbs and the Romas, these people are fleeing Kosovo today because they do not think that as minority they can survive the ill feelings that predominate. JIM LEHRER: Now the difference between, like the situations you mentioned in Africa and the situation in Kosovo is what? Because NATO was involved, the sponsoring countries were larger or more heavily involved and all the media attention, it's hard to get media attention in some of these other situations? SADAKO OGATA: That's exactly the problem because when there is no media attention, no political determination to solve the problems, the conflict and the misery of the refugees tend to drag on. And we have seen situations of long-term protracted refugee problems. Sierra Leone refugees, half a million are in the neighboring countries of Guinea. I went there earlier this year. It has been going on for quite a long time. JIM LEHRER: You've been doing this work for eight years. SADAKO OGATA: I have been High Commissioner for a little over eight years. JIM LEHRER: Rewarding, satisfying? SADAKO OGATA: Well, it's an enormous challenge, yes. And when we can make a little difference, especially when I'm going to go and close the refugee camps of Guatemalans in Mexico next week, it is enormously satisfying but the road to satisfaction is a difficult one many times. JIM LEHRER: Thank you very much. Good to see you again. |
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JIM
LEHRER: And now to a Newsmaker interview with the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata. Madam Commissioner, welcome.
Good to see you again. 
SADAKO
OGATA: Certainly. But it's the fastest return I have seen. Some 800,000
people left Kosovo starting end of March in about two months and a half.
And after the Serb forces withdrew, they started going back. We were
a little bit afraid that the security situation in the country may not
be quite up to it but they all wanted to go back. And out of 800,000,
710,000 have gone back as of yesterday. 
SADAKO
OGATA: Well, first of all I think this one is a majority of the people
going back. In Bosnia, the situation changed so drastically that many
of the people who were out of the country had to go back to a country
that was divided into two sectors. This time it's all mostly Albanians
going back to a place that are going to be really for the Albanians.
JIM
LEHRER: There were a lot of people who said when the bombing -- as the
bombing was beginning to wind down, while it was going on and even when
it ended, this was going to be a monumental task, getting these 800,000
people back into that country and back into a real, some kind of real
life. Was it as monumental in implementation as it appeared it was going
to be? 
SADAKO
OGATA: We've been appealing very strongly for cash to be coming in quickly
because we're trying to do emergency shelter assistance, some of the
infrastructure assistance which needs cash, we cannot do these things
on credit cards or things like that, so we're appealing -- 
