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UNHCR's Partners find new approaches in the region

The first regional meeting of UNHCR partners resulted in developing concrete steps, aimed at enhancing solutions for refugees, and prevention and eradication of statelessness.

Most of refugees in Central Asia live mainly in urban settlements for many years. The majority of them came to the region many years ago, but still have limited access to basic human rights due to their status. UNHCR in cooperation with partners and governments in the region was working on finding solutions to their situations, and many tangible results were achieved. Currently, UNHCR is giving more emphasis to the role of partners, making them independent actors in the projects and activities, designed for achieving solutions and reduction of statelessness.

“Currently NGOs became the most active contributors to the development of national frameworks, bringing their unique local expertise, knowledge, skills and capacities. Today’s event allowed sharing regional expertise and developing best practices of partners for the benefit of refugees, asylum seekers and stateless persons. All UNHCR partners did a great job in the region for these years and today and I am confident that we will continue our fruitful cooperation for many years in the future” – said Mr. Bernard Doyle, UNHCR Regional Representative and Regional Coordinator.

Kyrgyzstan partner, which operates on the south of Kyrgyzstan and mainly involved in peacebuilding activities, underlined that the meeting was useful; in particular, he underlined issues of self – reliance for refugees. “I admired the experience of my Tajikistan colleagues, who achieved considerable results in implementation of self-reliance projects. I think this experience we can also use for the benefit of refugees and asylum seekers in Kyrgyzstan” – said Akylbek Toshtabekov, Director of Center for International Protection.  

Sabir, Director of NGO “Keik Okara”, UNHCR partner on legal issues in Turkmenistan, said “It is important that in the times of global crisis, Turkmenistan started to implement practice of multipurpose grants for refugees, which I believe will help us by reducing expenses, allocate more funds for the benefit of asylum – seekers  and refugees”.
Najiba Shirinbelova, Director of “Rights and Prosperity” NGO from Tajikistan said that it was one of a rare meetings, when partners did not only discuss the refugee problems, but were suggesting concrete solutions. “What is more important, we were trying to get rid of traditional approaches, and were able to explore innovative methods to solve problems” – said Najiba.  
As a result, the meeting concluded in an Action plan of concrete steps for all the partners in the region, focusing on issues, such as livelihoods, solutions, alternative stay arrangements, self- reliance and others.