Working Paper
Council : United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
Topic : Afghanistan Refugees in COVID-19 Pandemic between Human Rights and
National Interest
Signatories : Sweden, Norway, UK, USA
Key Issue:
- Lack of Healthcare
- Inequality of Vaccines Distribution and Exclusion from the Vaccination Program
- Discrimination Towards Refugees
- Financial (Economic Inclusion)
- Education
- Refugees visa
Solutions:
1. Healthcare for Refugees
a. Acknowledge and recommend UNHCR to continue to advocate and support
the access of asylum-seekers and refugees to asylum, livelihood and durable
solutions to every state.
b. Recommend member states to gave every person (including migrants, refugee,
asylum seekers, etc) the rights of medical healthcare that include: major
trauma and wounds; including primary wound treatment; body cavity injury;
open fractures; amputations; maternity needs; serious infectious diseases; and
attempted or intended suicide, acute psychological disorders.
c. Encourage UNHCR to cooperate with relevant institutions of each country for
helping member states towards creating an ensurement of refugee’s medical
support due to COVID-19.
d. Cooperate with IOM to provide access to medicine and health care services
and IFRC to establish women shelter in order to provide female-specific
necessity;
e. Collaborating with the governments, private sectors, non-governmental
organizations and other related parties to build refugee shelters across host
and transit countries, in which has accessible health care, food security, and
decent sanitation. The shelters development needs to be based on UNHCR
COVID-19 Preparedness and Response Plan;
f. Recommends the implementation of Public Private Partnership (PPP) in
national level, in order to build safe-houses in order to ensure humanitarian
aid supplies such as mask, hand-sanitizer, establishing more refugee shelter
in order to prevent the overcrowded, and providing an installation of water,
sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) facilities in order to help refugees avoid
coronavirus.
2. Vaccination Program Throughout the World
a. Encourage manufacturing countries to provide vaccines for refugees throughout
the globe. Until today there are only 91 countries that offer vaccination to
refugees, we believe that to ensure refugee survival in COVID-19 pandemics all
the manufacturing vaccine countries must work together to ensure refugees
medical and vaccination needs.
b. Recommend all vaccine producer countries to work and collaborate together to
solve the lack of vaccine distribution especially to the refugees issues
c. Recommend member states to update and refine migration contingency plans for
best practices in vaccinating migrating children, given lessons learnt and
difficulty of the timeframe for treatment.
d. Develop communication strategies for refugee, asylum seeker and migrant
vaccine awareness, health promotion and disease prevention.
e. Encourage all developed countries that have overstock their vaccine to provide
their portion to the refugees and make an agreement between members of
UNHCR to actively share their vaccine and medical support for refugees.
f. Collaborate with International Organizations in order to accelerate “global-herd
immunity”, such as:
I. WHO “COVAX Initiative” through GAVI to provide equitable access
to vaccines and immunization;
II. UNHCR to ensure that refugee have the accessible access or guarantee
on vaccine opportunity;
III. Non Government Organizations (NGO) for being a sponsor or private
sector that is funded and responsible for corporate social responsibility.
3. Discrimination to the Refugees
a. Invite refugees to interact and work together with the host country citizen by
making Events,Sports, and Seminar that directly involve the refugees and
local,socializing to locals about the refugees, by helding a campaign of anti
discrimination to reduce the tension between locals and refugees.
b. Reducing the gap between locals and refugees by involving refugees in daily
activity with the locals, and ensuring the refugees and local needs are well
fend for themselves to avoid social conflict between the refugees and locals.
c. Implementing law that protect refugees from discrimination and prosecute
heavily for those who broke the law.
d. Regulate and Monitor refugees with the help of UNHCR to maintain refugees'
needs and its medical support or education.
4. Financial and Funding Mechanism for Refugees:
a. Recommends the financial division with agreeable terms and conditions from all
parties involved;
b. Request every member state needs to report and make general financial report
and their needs to fund the programs through:
1. Working alongside respective member states Ministry of Finance to
file financial reports,
2. Establish a clear threshold for the amount of funds required for every
member state based on provided databases including country’s GDP,
nation’s reporting cases, and other relevant data. Further mechanisms
will depend on each state cooperation form with another;
c. Reaffirm the division will be under the supervision of UNDP and UNIFEM, the
funding distribution will be based on the financial reports.he board of auditors of
the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) takes control of
the member states to allocate the funding for the member states in need;
d. Encourage member states to make a new policy which states that each country is
obliged to give some money or a small part of their money to help the welfare of
refugees in the world. The money will be kept by UNHCR as the council
responsible for refugee rights.
5. Education aids for Refugees:
a. Providing education and language assistance for both children and adults to
help them adjust with the host and transit countries’ culture, in case of
avoiding any exploitation and discrimination.
b. Encourage member states to ensure the proper education among refugees to
avoid the education discrimination among the citizens of the host countries
and the refugees.
c. Urges the host countries to enrol refugees children in national systems, with
a proper curriculum, all the way through primary and secondary school, to
allow for recognized qualifications that can be their springboard to university
or higher vocational training.
