Management and co-ordination problems of refugee programmes in Kigoma - A familiar tale?

The upsurge of violence in Eastern Zaire towards the end of 1996 led to an influx of Zairian refugees into the Kigoma area of Tanzania. On arrival, the Zairian refugees were placed in a holding centre in Kigoma approximately 120 kms from Nyargasu camp. Although there were some delays in transferring refugees to the camp because of shortages of plastic sheeting, numbers in the camp rose from approximately 15,000 in early November to 32,000 by early January 1997.

Rita Bhatia, chief nutritionist in the Programme and Technical Support Section of UNHCR carried out an evaluation of UNHCR operations in the Kigoma area at the end of 1996. According to her report the response by humanitarian aid agencies to this emergency appears to have raised familiar UNHCR/NGO co-ordination and management issues related to emergency food and nutrition interventions. These types of issues have been highlighted in several emergency programme evaluations - most recently the multi-donor evaluation of the Rwandan emergency (ODI 1996).

Her report argues that the emergency in Kigoma was unnecessarily prolonged because of the slow response by UNHCR and implementing partners. At the time of writing the report (early 1997) it was felt that unless certain problems were resolved, the risk of epidemics and large numbers of deaths remained high amongst new arrivals. The report expressed particular concern about the operational performance of both IJNHCR and a number of implementing NGOs.

One problem identified was the way UNHCR selected NGOs and assigned tasks, citing instances of duplication of tasks leading to confusion and tension between the various NGOs and IJNHCR. A related problem was lack of consultation by UNHCR sub- office staff in Kigoma with the field officers and technical staff at camp level so that in many instances UNHCR field offices were not even aware of the selection and tasks assigned to NGOs. The report also identified a lack of support from the sub-offices to field officers and poor co-ordination between Kigoma and the field offices regarding the movement of refugees. A further problem was that letters of intent with NGOs did not clearly define the obligations on the part of NGOs and UM{CR. This lack of clarity was exemplified by a situation where during the hand-over of one NGO programme to another, the departing NGO received little external support even though the agency was required to increase activities at a time when agency resources were being reduced.

The report also identified specific problems and weaknesses with NGO implementing partners. For example:

• insufficient NGO capacity to manage all sectoral activities in a camp;
• complacent attitudes of some NGOs in not adhering to standard guidelines and protocols leading to weak interventions in the nutrition sector (the report partly links this with the fact that particular NGOs were self- funded and were therefore able to ignore UNHCR directives); and
• the need for greater NGO headquarter support for field level staff.

The types of weaknesses that occurred in nutrition activities were late implementation of selective feeding programmes and the use of inappropriate eligibility criteria for the feeding centres.

The author concluded from this experience that food and nutrition programmes may not be the priority of medically oriented NGOs, especially given their limited expertise on food and nutrition issues and capacity to respond. Because of the epidemics of cholera and dysentery that occurred early on, all efforts were
devoted to reducing deaths from these diseases so that the need for management of the precarious nutrition situation was not properly addressed. The report went on to suggest that there should have been a specialised NGO responsible for food and nutrition in the initial phase of the programme. This NGO could then have set up appropriate programmes and systems in close collaboration with medical NGOs who in turn would have eventually taken on responsibility for these programmes.

The report also made the following recommendations:

• that performance and evaluation of NGOs should be carried out jointly by UNHCR programme and technical staff together with the NGOs before formalising agreements in the long term;
• that sub-agreements with NGOs should clearly indicate what is expected of agencies, work plans, and reporting and staffing requirements, etc; and
• that UNHCR field offices need further strengthening and continuous support from the sub-office and that there was an urgent need for deployment of, or a mission of, UNHCR technical and logistic staff to strengthen the existing programme.