Lout Hyltonasked Her Majesty's Government:
What was the outcome of the recent executive meting in Geneva of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees: how the needs of 15 million refugees for relief and resettlement will be funded in the next three years and whether cuts in budgets have recently been imposed.
§ Lord Brabazon of TaraThe extraordinary session of the Executive Committee (Excom) of UNHCR meeting in Geneva on 28th to 30th May approved (i) the report of the Excom temporary working group, which, inter alia, examined administrative and budgetary reforms; (ii) the UNHCR budget for 1990 and (iii) the organisation's programme of activities for the current year.
Refugee programmes for which UNHCR has responsibility will continue to be the subject of annual budgets presented by the High Commissioner and approved by Excom. Some economies have had to be applied in recent months due to the financial crisis UNHCR found itself in at the end of last year. However, the High Commissioner's budget for general programme activities for 1990 has now been approved at $378.9 million, to which donors will subscribe as well as responding to the special appeals which UNHCR issues during the year. The UK will continue to be a major subscriber.