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The Senate Foreign Relations Committee today is holding a hearing on the Obama administration’s nomination of Eric Schwartz as the State Department’s Assistant Secretary for Population, Refugees, and Migration. Schwartz will testify and then respond to questions from the Committee. Schwartz’s nomination was long overdue, and Refugees International hopes that the confirmation process will be swift. With the PRM position held by an Acting Assistant Secretary for over a year, and the USAID Administrator and director of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance positions also held by placeholders, the Obama administration’s management of its humanitarian responsibilities has been hobbled.

Schwartz will face a number of immediate challenges. In Pakistan, the government offensive against militant groups has displaced more than 2.5 million people in a little over one month, a situation which the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees is calling the most rapid large-scale displacement since the immediate aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. The Refugee Bureau and the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance must ensure that U.S. funding is provided swiftly to organizations with the capacity to make an immediate difference in the lives of displaced people, most of whom are living with host families rather than in camps. It is especially important for Schwartz and his colleagues to ensure that UNHCR is able to respond on a scale commensurate with the need.

In terms of policy, Schwartz needs to be actively involved in discussions on the role of the military in emergency response, with the goal of reducing the continued militarization of foreign aid. The lack of support for civilian agency control over foreign aid was evident in the previous administration, with its over-emphasis on utilizing military capacity even when it was not required or appropriate. Schwartz needs no introduction to this issue, since he is moving into the administration after a stint leading the Connect U.S. Fund, which has made analyzing the civil-military imbalance and proposing ways to correct it one of their top funding priorities.

The other major policy challenge, which should be a preoccupation of the entire Bureau under Schwartz’s leadership, is defining a U.S. position on the proper role for UNHCR in the face of the rapidly changing environment for displaced people. High Commissioner Guterres has tended to be rather expansive, at least rhetorically, embracing the agency’s role in responding to internal displacement; establishing a budget pillar for work on statelessness, which is part of UNHCR’s mandate; and initiating discussions on migration and displacement due to natural disasters and climate change. The U.S. response to these actual and incipient initiatives has been mixed --- sometimes encouragement has been offered; at other times PRM staff have expressed concern about UNHCR deviating from its core mandate for refugee protection.

Refugees International believes that the world has changed dramatically since 1951 and UNHCR needs to adapt to the times. But any expansion beyond the core mandate has significant cost implications that the U.S., as the largest donor to UNHCR, will need to grapple with. The key from a U.S. policy perspective is to be clear: what should UNHCR’s priorities be and what is the best means for the agency to respond to these challenges? Schwartz needs to direct an internal policy process as soon as possible so that the U.S. is giving clear, coherent policy guidance to UNHCR’s leadership.