PERMANENT MISSION OF INDIA
GENEVA
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65th Meeting of the Standing Committee of the Executive Committee
of the High Commissioner's Programme (UNHCR)
(15-17 March 2016)

Agenda Item: UNHCR's Proposed Strategic Framework for 2018-19

Statement of India

Mr. Chairman,

At the outset, we wish to place on record our sincere appreciation to the Distinguished Chair for successfully steering the proceedings of the meeting of the 65th Standing Committee of the EXCOM of the High Commissioner's Programme. We would also like to place on record our appreciation to the UNHCR team for detailed digital documentation and preparations for this event.

We are confident that the High Commissioner would continue to provide the highest attention to finding durable solution for millions of refugees and keep it central to the UNHCR'sprogrammes. We would have preferred to see a prominent reference to this core mandate in the first page of this Framework.

While expanding strategic partnership to broaden the capacity and network of expertise to respond to emergencies; equal if not higher effort should be made to bring down the costs of various solutions through localisation of procurement of goods and services, appropriate selection of products and processes along with wider participation of the relevant stakeholders, particularly the refugees, in all decision making processes.

We would like UNHCR to stay focussed on its core mandate of providing protection to refugees and only act in other situations if it is warranted. Issues like environment conservation, renewal energy and livelihood strategy, education strategy, public health, etc. which are prominently mentioned in the Biennial Programme for 2018-2019 are best handled by the UN Specialized Agencies who have core competence in these areas, with maximum possible localisation. If for any reason, UNHCR is required to do these activities on its own, it should ideally match the local standards of that country and remain cost competitive as per local market conditions.

UNHCR should continuously make needs-based assessment with the rapidly changing situation on the ground. The allocation of resources and manpower should be done in a more scientific manner, and match in a commensurate manner with the actual refugee situation.

We continue to stress that UNHCR's involvement in situations of internal displacement should only be done at the invitation of a Member State, in no condition this should be perceived as an imposition on them.

While implementing gender sensitive policies, UNHCR should fully implement these policies in its programme of finance but should not drift away on the broader issues of gender equality, which has risk of entering into the mandate of other UN organisations.

We are confident that UNHCR would take on board suggestions made during the deliberations and suitably amend the Biennial Programme 21: 'International Protection, durable solution and assistance to refugees 2018-19',and also elicit comments from the Member States to the revised Strategy before its finalization.

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