19th April, 2019
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has expanded its Africa Bureau by adding three Regional offices to handle issues across the region for effective response.
Mrs Liz Ahua, UNHCR’s Regional Representative to West Africa, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday in Abuja.
Ahua explained that previously, the UNHCR had just one Africa Bureau based in Geneva but with the enormous issues facing the region, just a Bureau was not sufficient to respond swiftly.
She said that African Bureau covered 38 countries but decision had been taken to split it to three Bureaus with three Bureau Directors and the regional offices remained.
“Presently, UNHCR is going through a reform process to make us more agile, more responsive, especially when we have emergency situations.
“This is because in the past, UNHCR was known as an organisation that was extremely rapid, extremely flexible but overtime that rapidity has slowed down so we have engaged in a process of our decentralisation and regionalisation.
“With the expectations that it will yield more nimble and compact structure that responds more quickly to emergencies and will also be closer to the people than Geneva is.”