Honoring an Unpopular Cause

The Nobel peace award cheers the U.N. refugee program

When Swedish Dynamite Tycoon Alfred Nobel established a peace prize in his name 80 years ago, he specified that it be given for the "best work for fraternity between nations." In the past decade some of the Nobel choices have caused more friction than fraternity, notably the 1973 joint award to North Viet Nam's Le Due Tho and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, for their role in ending the Viet Nam War; and the 1978 prize to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat for the Camp

David agreement, a joint selection that roiled the Arab world. This year the Nobel Committee in Oslo seemed determined to avoid contention. Passed over last week was the front-running candidate, Polish Trade Union Leader Lech Walesa, a choice that would have sorely aggravated the Soviet Union.

Instead, the committee announced a seemingly unassailable selection for the 1981 Peace Prize: the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for its aid to the "tremendous and increasing number of refugees" around the globe. The choice cheered refugee workers, who are not only keeping 10 million refugees around the world alive, but also are contending with attempts by most member countries, including the U.S., to stem the flood of refugees arriving on their shores. In his acceptance statement on behalf of the UNHCR, Commissioner Paul Hartling said of the award that the "voices of millions of refugees in the world have been heard and acknowledged." He added: "It couldn't have come at a better time."

The prestige attached to the $180,000 Peace Prize may make it easier for the UNHCR, which also won the award in 1954, to raise funds for the refugees. Still, it is scarcely likely to persuade a country like Thailand, awash with 300,000 Indochinese, to accept more refugees. Similarly, the award will not dispose the U.S. to take additional Haitians and Cubans. "No country welcomes refugees today," says one high-level refugee aide. "The situation for them is as bad as it was for Jews fleeing from Nazi Germany in the 1930s." As a result of the increasingly hostile reaction to the refugee flow, the UNHCR has had to scramble for funds, personnel and cooperation from host countries. Its $100 million 1978 budget doubled in 1979, then doubled again in 1980 in response to the refugee waves rippling out from Indochina, Afghanistan and Ethiopia.

Ironically, the UNHCR received its highest accolade at a time when several donor countries were questioning its management methods. The agency's executive committee convened at its Geneva headquarters last week partly to look into widespread criticism of UNHCR inefficiency and poor morale. Though few UNHCR staffers and other relief aides criticize the motivation of High Commissioner Hartling, 67, a former Danish Prime Minister who has held the top post at the agency since 1978, some believe he lacks the leadership qualities needed to cope with a far-flung and slow-moving U.N. bureaucracy.

Quarreling among top agency officials sometimes slows down operations. As a result, the UNHCR'S chief of mission in Pakistan, Roman Kohaut, is retiring in disgust. "I'm fed up with the mess in Geneva," Kohaut told TIME'S Wibo Vandelinde last month. "UNHCR resembles a delicatessen that has grown into a huge supermarket but has never adapted its management. Geneva refuses to listen to urgent advice from the field."

Perhaps more serious is the criticism by some independent relief agencies that UNHCR is not aggressive enough in protecting refugees in the countries to which they have fled. "UNHCR is the hostage of the host countries," says one top relief official. "The agency is much too timid about protecting, let alone acting upon flagrant violations of the refugees' rights." Among such violations: Thailand's return of 60,000 Cambodians to famine-struck Kampuchea in 1979, though most flooded back within days, and Hong Kong's repatriation of 10,000 Chinese who escaped from mainland China to the crown colony in the past year.

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