US prepared to accept additional Iraqi refugees
Iraq-USA, Politics, 4/2/2007

The United States is prepared to increase significantly the number of Iraqi refugees it admits as the civil unrest in Iraq drives a greater number of people from their homes.

Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration Ellen Sauerbrey told reporters at a Washington briefing March 23 that previous reports about the United States accepting an additional 7,000 Iraqi refugees in the coming months are inaccurate. She said this figure simply reflects the number of US referrals the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) feels it realistically can expect to make in the coming months.

"UNHCR, which has the international mandate, if you will, to do the protection and make referrals for resettlement has indicated... that they had the capacity to be able to register, identify the vulnerabilities and make referrals of about 20,000, and that they anticipated that they would refer 7,000 to the US resettlement program," she said.

Sauerbrey emphasized that there is no cap on the number of Iraqi refugees the United States is willing to resettle. The only limit is set by the presidential determination that identifies the total number of refugees the United States will accept from around the world in any given year. In 2007, that number stands at 70,000.

The assistant secretary said the United States will be accepting referrals from places other than the UNHCR as well. These include referrals from US embassies and nongovernmental organizations working in the region. However, the United States will not accept resettlement requests at the U.S Embassy in Baghdad for security reasons. Sauerbrey explained that the resettlement program is designed for vulnerable individuals and said that if people are truly in danger in Iraq, they would be ill-advised to remain in the country while their applications are processed.

"[T]he advice that the embassy is giving to people... who feel that they are jeopardized is to get to a UNHCR office outside of the country and get the protection letter quickly and then make their application to be considered," she said.

Sauerbrey said there are 10 categories of vulnerability the United States will consider in making its determination of whether an applicant is in need of resettlement. Some of the key categories are single women with children and no financial resources, unaccompanied children with no family, elderly people, individuals with extensive medical needs, certain ethnic and religious minorities, and people who are endangered because of their association with the United States and the multinational forces.

She emphasized that although the United States feels a strong moral commitment to those Iraqis who have worked with the US government, the program is not limited to those individuals. "[W]e want a broad range of vulnerabilities to be considered," she said.

Sauerbrey said the US Department of Homeland Security is working to devise a program that would expedite the issuance of family reunification visas for Iraqis who already have family living in the United States. This would be an effort separate from the refugee resettlement program and would increase the total number of Iraqis the United States could admit.

She said that there are currently 1,500 to 2,000 Iraqi refugees being processed for admission to the United States.

The assistant secretary emphasized that resettlement is not a practical solution for the vast majority of Iraqi refugees now living in countries of first asylum, such as Jordan and Syria. She praised those countries for their generosity in assisting the displaced Iraqis and said the international community must step forward to help them deal with the strain on their political, social and security systems. An April 17-18 donors' conference in Geneva will address this issue.

Here is a transcript of the Q&A:

Ellen Sauerbrey, Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration; Lawrence Bartlett, Deputy Director, Asia and Near East Assitance Office; and Whitney Reitz, Overseas Processing Section Chief, Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration


Sauerbrey: (In progress) We expect that appeal will probably go to 100 million. Then -- that's -- no one has laid that out specifically but in the April conference -- we're anticipating that UNHCR is going to increase the appeal from (inaudible) to probably to 100 and we would be looking at making an appropriate U.S. (inaudible).

Question: Do you expect any change in the U.S. help during the conference in April?

Sauerbrey: We would hope to be able to (inaudible) the commitment that we have made to date and we will be looking to see what UNHCR is asking as their appeal goes up and how within the supplemental budget that we're all waiting for to be approved from Congress -- how much additional assistance we can provide. We've tripled so far from 3.3 million in the past fiscal year to NGOs. We've tripled our assistance budget for NGOs to 10 million. We have at this point 30 million in requests from -- in proposals. We put out a request for proposals to NGOs for telling us what areas of assistance they think they can provide. We have about $30 million in requests. We're in the process -- and that came from 27 NGOs. We're in the process of evaluating which of these are the most important and we will be funding them in order as the money becomes available. We know that we can fund the first 10 million and we hope that with the supplemental that we'll be able to do more. But until the Congress takes action we don't know how much money specifically we will have.

In the case of Jordan, Jordan is more interested in working bilaterally with the United States and we are trying to figure out how to tailor our programs best to meet the comfort level of the countries in terms of how we get assistance basically to the ministries that are providing education, healthcare and shelter.

So I think the trip was very helpful in getting a better understanding of how we can be of most assistance.

Question: So you think Syria doesn't want to give -- through bilateral relation would U.S. want to go through the NGOs because of the problems between U.S. and Syria now?

Sauerbrey: Syria --

Question: Is it effective enough to work through NGOs and not directly --

Sauerbrey: I think we all understand that in addressing the needs of Syria that from both the U.S. perspective and the Syrian perspective the best route to get assistance is working through international organizations, which is the way we would normally work. We would make contributions not directly. In most cases, we do not make contributions directly to the government ministries. We make them through UNHCR, usually UNICEF, World Food Program and so forth, and they then work through implementing partners on the ground, usually NGOs that are accepted by the governments on the ground to get the assistance directly.

In the case of Jordan, they have indicated that they would be -- they would like to see more bilateral relationship, although we have also talked about working through UNICEF in terms of assistance in education. And education, we see as crucial because there are -- for example, in Jordan, the estimate that we got from NGOs when we were there was that there were probably 200 million -- 200,000, excuse me, Iraqis of school age that need to be in school and a small percentage are actually in school as best we can determine at this point. And we don't want children to be deprived of an education. There are the children that are the next generation that is going to rebuild their country and they've got to be prepared. So this is really critical that we develop very quickly the ability by the time the school semester starts in the fall -- the next school semester starts in the fall -- we want to make sure that the capacity is there as well as the political will in the countries in the region to allow Iraqi children to get an education.

Moderator: Can I just ask you to --

Bartlett: I want to add to one on that, and that is that both in Jordan and Syria -- I mean, again, as Ellen said, one of the biggest needs is education. And nobody is talking about NGOs, for example, setting up parallel systems. I mean, these are -- there are existing schools, there's an existing curriculum and existing textbooks and, you know, the intent is that the refugee children funnel into the existing system. So the quandary is how to support the ministries that provide that assistance and it's largely going to be, I think (inaudible) through the UN.

Question: Are the governments facilitating that -- the governments of Syria and Jordan?

Bartlett: I mean, both governments have -- both governments are. I mean, Syria -- the government has said that its schools are open. In Jordan the government has said also that the schools are open. But the capacity of the schools isn't enough really to accommodate the number of children, so the question is how can you expand.

Question: Open new schools.

Bartlett: Right.

Sauerbrey: And I think a very important point that I -- we certainly made throughout the trip and I want to make today, is that the countries in the region are -- we know are being very generous in terms of their commitment to provide asylum and assistance to the displaced population. In most cases, and certainly in Jordan and in Syria, they refer to these not as refugees but as displaced Iraqis. But they're doing the things that they should be doing in order to meet basic international standards of how you address refugee outflow. And the international community and certainly the U.S. as a major leader in humanitarian assistance recognizes the load that these countries are carrying, the strain that it has put and we heard this in great detail on the political system, the social system, their security systems. And the conference that is coming up in April is going to provide a very good opportunity for a response not only from the U.S. but from a broader involvement of the international community which we hope we will see.

Moderator: If you could identify your news -- name your news organization (inaudible).

Question: Thank you. Ron Baygents with Kuwait News Agency. I would be interested in hearing some -- to the degree that you have it and I'm sure it's somewhat not clear -- the numbers, the estimated numbers of displaced Iraqis in Jordan and Syria. And also if you have any information about the social -- how many of these are professionals versus poor people, also do you have any sort of idea about when this -- is there a peak period of this surge of people out? Is it just steady ongoing throughout the last four years? Is it more now than it was a few months -- this sort of information, could you kind of talk about that a little bit?

Sauerbrey: First, I have to say that nobody has verifiable numbers.

Question: Right, I'm sure.

Sauerbrey: But the numbers that we heard when we were in the region, in Jordan the King has -- was cited as having said 750,000 Iraqis in Jordan. The minister -- deputy minister that we met with in Syria said that they think that it could be as many as 1.2 million. That's higher than a number that we had heard before. And Egypt now thinks that they have about 120,000, Lebanon about 25 --

Bartlett: I think it's even maybe --

Question: I heard 40.

Bartlett: Forty.

Sauerbrey: And a much smaller number in other parts of the region. In terms of what is the demographic makeup, the early -- I mean, the indications that we have had were that the early outflow, particularly to Jordan, were pretty much well-to-do -- professionals who came with enough money to become registered, to put the money in the bank and to be able to meet the conditions to become legally -- what's the term -- to have legal status in the country. As time has gone on, indications are that there has been more and more of a middle class outflow of people who are coming not with the resources to be able to sustain themselves easily for any period of time.

Syria, the indication has been, I think all along that the people who were going to Syria were coming from a little bit less secure economic circumstances. We recognize that there has been a large Christian outflow to Syria, largely because there's a larger Christian community in Syria and people have been going to where there was a church community or relatives to sustain them.

In terms of the tempo of the outflow, I think one of the interesting things that has not gotten much attention is that until February of 2006, what we were seeing was a return -- I mean, there had been, you know, a large number that had left during the Saddam Hussein period.

And then between 2003 and 2006 February, much of the attention of the international community and our resources were going to repatriation. And about 300,000 Iraqis had returned to Iraq in that period and it was not until after the Samara Mosque bombing that that began to turn around. And it really wasn't until, I would say, the fall of 2006 that the numbers began to become evident that there was a large out flood, because initially the countries in the region did not make reference -- if they were asked how many refugees or UNHCR was asked how many refugees there were in Jordan, they said a couple thousand because the countries do not consider them to be refugees.

And so it was not until these numbers really began to grow in the September period, I would say, when it really first became evident that there was a significant number of people. And what is happening now seems to be -- and I'll turn to my colleagues because you may have a better answer, but I think we're kind of at a steady state where the numbers that are coming out are not increasing rapidly.

Bartlett: I mean, people are continuing to come out of Iraq, but again because there aren't border monitors and because there's no, you know, kind of real-time registration, that's still kind of a work in progress. I mean what's interesting now is that there's some survey work that started in Jordan two days ago by a Norwegian NGO, FAFO (ph) under the guidance of the Jordanian Government that's going to start to look at the needs of the Iraqi population. We're not sure that it'll actually come up with verifiable numbers about what the size of the problem is, but we'll still -- it'll begin to identify that and we're -- the Syrian Government and UNHCR in discussions about conducting a similar survey in Syria.

Sauerbrey: And when I said steady state, what I meant was no surges that we're aware of at this point.

Question: This is Samir Nader with Radio Sawa. The U.S. announced that you will accept 7,000 Iraqis that will be referred by the UN. And inside Iraq, there is 1.7 million displaced. And you said the priority will be on the most vulnerable. Will this be included for the people's assessment in Iraq that you will be selecting most vulnerable to be resettled in the U.S.?

Sauerbrey: Thank you for that question. My -- let me just kind of clarify what we anticipate in terms of the resettlement program. First of all, we haven't just said we will accept -- there's no cap on the number that the U.S. will accept. The number is 7,000. Where that comes from is UNHCR which has the international mandate, if you will, to do the protection and make referrals for resettlement has indicated that over the course of -- at that time, about a nine-month period now, more like a six-month period left ahead, that they had the capacity to be able to register, identify the vulnerabilities and make referrals of about 20,000. And that they anticipated that they would refer 7,000 to the U.S. resettlement program.

We will be accepting referrals from other directions. For example, we will take direct embassy referrals of people who were identified by our embassies as extremely vulnerable. We will be training NGOs in the region to be helping to identify vulnerability and make direct referrals. We also are working with our colleagues at the Department of Homeland Security and we don't -- I can't lay out any specifics, but we're really focusing on how can we craft a program and this would not involve UNHCR referrals, but to identify and get into the resettlement stream, people who are -- who have strong family connections in the U.S. and can come through a family reunification plan.

Now, as this process starts and it's already underway in all countries, particularly now from Turkey and Syria, we already have significant numbers -- in the hundreds -- I mean, like 700 from Turkey and four or 500 in Syria that have already been registered, identified as vulnerable, referred to us and there will be circuit-wides, meaning that our DHS colleagues will be sending a team that will do what happens in all refugee resettlement programs, which is a direct face-to-face interview with a person making an adjudication that, yes, this is a person who qualifies to be a refugee under international and U.S. law. And then that begins a security clearance process, again done for refugees from anywhere in the world, health screening and then ultimately their acceptance into the program and travel to the U.S. That takes months. That is not a quick process.

Question: Can you define --

Moderator: Go ahead and just --

Question: Roula Auoubi.

Sauerbrey: Did I get all your questions?

Question: No, I just wanted -- so I can understand this. Tell us then -- everybody, like within Iraq and outside of Iraq, the process?

Sauerbrey: Here's the problem inside Iraq and we've spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to address the problem inside of Iraq. The security issue for both the people who are coming forward and asking to be considered as well as the security issue to the Embassy and those people residing in the Green Zone where the interviews would have to take place has made it pretty clear that it's not workable inside of Iraq. If a person comes forward and says, I am -- you know, I'm one of these vulnerable people. I've been threatened. Our advice is you need to get out of Iraq because you don't want to be sitting in Iraq for four -- potentially four months while we're going through the security clearance process. As much as we would like this to be a quick turnaround, it can't be. It can't be under U.S. law because of the problems that came about with the 9/11 and the enhanced security reviews that are required. So the advice that the Embassy is giving to people who are -- who feel that they are jeopardized is to get to a UNHCR office --

Bartlett: Outside of the country.

Sauerbrey: Outside of the country and get the protection letter quickly and then make their application to be considered --

Bartlett: I mean, if I could just add something on vulnerability for IDPs. I mean, IDPs -- I mean, people are displaced internally for many reasons. But generally IDPs flow to areas of relative safety. And so in terms of vulnerability, they have in some ways addressed their own vulnerability by simply moving. USAID has programs inside Iraq that seek to try to address some of their humanitarian needs. They provide food, they provide non-food items, they provide some water and sanitation programming through NGOs, so that's the way that vulnerability in a way is addressed because those people haven't chosen to leave the country. They have not felt, in fact, a need to flee. Once people cross the international border, then they become, in fact, eligible for U.S. resettlement.

Question: Thank you.

Moderator: We have a question here.

Question: [Roula Auoubi, BBC Arabic Service] Well, I just wanted to ask if you can define vulnerable?

Sauerbrey: We have agreed with UNHCR on what our basic categories of vulnerability -- generally applied throughout the world. And there are ten categories of vulnerability. They range from the women -- the single women with children who has no resources and is -- and could become a trafficking victim. The unaccompanied children who we've been able to verify have no family and there's nobody there to protect them, very frail elderly people, people who have extensive health needs, medical needs that cannot be met in Iraq. People who are coming from certain ethnic or religious groups that have the least opportunity when peace is restored to be able to return and be accepted into society, people who have worked with the multinational forces and are being threatened because of their association with the U.S. government. These are the kinds of criteria that will be looked at. And it needs to be really clear to people, as you are going to be reporting in the region, that resettlement is not a massive response and solution for everybody. Nor, as I said initially, do we believe that that's what most people want. But for some people, resettlement is the solution that is perhaps the only one.

Question: Hisham Melhem, Al Arabiya. I was going to ask what constitutes vulnerable because it seems to me you're talking about a large category here because there are a lot of people who fall into that -- according to these ten vulnerable -- potentially vulnerable points? I mean, I thought you were focusing only on minorities, people who are already threatened and they prove that they cannot survive in Iraq or people who collaborate with the United States. But now you're talking about elderly and children without parents. I mean, you are really widening and there are a lot of Iraqis who would like just to get the hell out of that miserable place. So, I mean, but is there a mechanism for you to determine who is truly vulnerable or not? That's one question.

And then the other thing is that we heard reports that some of these displaced -- in Syria in particular they were having -- there were mounting pressures and problems and issues of discrimination against them. Could you address that or did you raise that with the Syrians? I mean, the Syrian economy and the Jordanian economy are weak economies and one could see the stress and the strain of the system.

Sauerbrey: Let me start with the first part of your question. UNHCR does this all over the world in terms of being the agency to which we look to do the identification of vulnerability. And, yes, you're right that, you know, these are broad categories. But within those broad categories there are going to be people who have clearly -- are in more desperate straits and those are the people that we expect to be referred. And it is not limited -- I want to make it clear the program is not limited, although we have a very strong moral commitment to people who are vulnerable because of their association with the U.S. and we are very concerned about those ethnic minorities, but there are other categories of vulnerability and we want a broad range of vulnerabilities to be considered.

I forgot your next question.

Question: The discriminatory practices against -- especially in Syria.

Sauerbrey: Well, the one thing that we did hear specific to Syria and this came --

Question: Because there were press reports about this.

Sauerbrey: Yeah, this came from NGOs who said that boys in school are having a lot of difficulty and the dropout rate of Iraqi boys is very high in large measure because of there being real discrimination against the boys. Interestingly, not so much against the girls.

Sauerbrey: Because they're Iraqis or because of their --

Question: Because they're Iraqis.

Question: No, not because of religious background or anything. And by the way, do you have any idea how many -- the breakup between Sunnis and Shia. You hate to ask that question but that's --

Question: Now,I mean, is there's a difference between those who sought -- because those who are close to the city and border, probably happen to be more Sunnis. And in the south, people opt to go to Jordan, probably with (inaudible). I mean, is that correct? I mean, is there anything to corroborate this?

Sauerbrey: We don't have any way to corroborate this. The survey that Larry mentioned, may give us a little bit more information along that line. But as far as the attitude of the people, and we certainly can only say anecdotally that what we heard, not only from our own visit in talking to government officials and NGOs but also what the High Commissioner reported when he came back from the region was that there is growing antagonism because the Iraqis have come in particularly, those who came in in Jordan initially with enough money to buy businesses and to buy housing.

Good question, they've driving up -- I mean, the real estate costs have gone up, the cost of fuel, the cost of food, and this is having an impact on the lives of all people and we fully recognize this and recognize that it's critically important for the international community and the U.S. at the head of the line to help to address these problems because we don't want to see these political -- what could become, you know, political forces that will cause the countries to decide that they cannot continue to be generous hosts as they are today.

Moderator: If you could identify yourself, please.

Question: My name is Talha Gebriel from Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper. You mentioned Syria and Jordan and I think Egypt, Lebanon, but you did not mention Iran. There is no refugees, Iraq refugees in Iran. This is a -- the first question. Second question, going back to following for my colleague Samir, are you planning, there's some speculation that you are going to read the number that the United States (inaudible)? I just want to confirm. Would that represent -- the figure is 7,000 and it could not be added or it's --

Sauerbrey: No, that's not the case. There is no cap. There is no cap on our resettlement number. The 7,000 again is only a number that you UNHCR said this is what we can refer to you.

Question: Oh, I see.

Sauerbrey: But we are going to be taking them from other routes, embassy referrals, NGO referrals, family reunification programs that have nothing to -- that do not necessarily involve -- so it's --

Question: How do you --

MS. REITZ: Can I answer that? The 7,000, the initial tranche of referrals that we're anticipating from UNHCR in the next half year. UNHCR's program of registering and referring those in need of this form of protection will be ongoing, as well, our program to process those that are referred to us. We can't at this point see much further ahead than the first 7,000.

Question: So we have a worldwide dilemma. I mean, there's a worldwide --

Sauerbrey: There's a limit.

Question: Right.

Sauerbrey: Every year the program we do an elaborate negotiation with the Congress and the whole administration to set a plan for the program. It is flexible. It can be increased in the presence of an emergency. We can additional funding in the presence of an emergency, so there's a plan and we try to live by that plan.

Question: So it's not (inaudible) figure.

Sauerbrey: But no. And as we go through every year, we're constantly adjusting what we do. So as we are ramping up the program for Iraqi refugees, that wasn't entirely built into our plan when we thought it up a year ago. But the program was flexible enough that we can accommodate that. And so this first 7,000 referrals to the program, more will be falling right behind it. There's no -- there's nothing magic (inaudible) I want to keep saying about that 7,000 number. It's just the first tranche of referrals that we are anticipating receiving, per UNHCR.

Question: Everyone you get referrals like every six months?

Sauerbrey: Every day. They flow into the program all kinds of ways. Sometimes it's an individual case, sometimes it's a group of people. They come from our embassies. They come from (inaudible), they come from the UN. We have for certain programs that are family reunion based, people can apply directly. So there's new caseloads transfer flowing into the program.

Question: So the number of raised already now is almost how much now actually?

Sauerbrey: For Iraqis, in particular?

Question: Yes.

Sauerbrey: I think our total applicant pool in the pipeline all categories from brand-new cases to ones that have already been interviewed is probably on the order of 1,500 to 2,000 people today. But just the day before yesterday we got a whole bunch of cases from Lebanon. More are coming, all the time on a daily basis.

Question: An ongoing?

Sauerbrey: Yes.

Question: Excuse me. My question on Iran.

Moderator: Yes, you have a question?

Question: I ask a question on Iran.

Bartlett: I can give you a partial answer and that is that, I mean, Iran had been hosting perhaps the largest number of Iraqi refugees before 2003 and there were a whole number of camps that UNHCR was running in conjunction with the Iranian Government. Those camps are, I believe, all closed and the flows that went back to Iraq, the 300,000 or so largely were from Iran and those were Shia flowing back to the south and a lot of that was assisted by UNHCR. I'm not aware that there has been other flows back to Iran. I mean, it's something that I think that we would have to go back and check. But the real -- I think the real question and the real attention has been focused on Jordan and Syria because there we know the numbers are, you know, between 1.5 to 2 million. So frankly at this point, I think Iran is not a large problem.

Question: Yes. Joyce Karam with Al Hayat newspaper. I want to ask you if you can give us an assessment about your talks with the (inaudible) the Syrian Deputy Prime Minister and Deputy Foreign Secretary? Yeah. And is there any communications still going with them and if so, is it going to be on that same level or do you see it going out, you know, to higher ministerial?

Question: In other words, why did you stiff the Foreign Minister? Why did you let them down?

Question: And then my second question is there any (inaudible)

Bartlett: I can hear that question from (inaudible). (Laughter.)

Question: And then the second question is you know, like the experience of the region with refugees is not so happy, you know, with the Palestinians and how radicalized and militarized the camps have become. Do you have any fear that the same experience will be repeated with the Iraqis in Syria in particular?

Sauerbrey: Well, let me start with your first question. First of all, when the Secretary made the decision to send me to region, the response from the Syrian Government was to create the meeting at the deputy foreign minister level. Those were the instructions that I had on the trip and it was clear -- it was made very clear to our delegation as well as to the Syrian Government that my travel there had -- was limited to address the humanitarian concerns and the issues of how the U.S. could be of most assistance.

When the request came for an additional meeting, the determination was that we had achieved what we had agreed to do and what we had set out to do and that there was no reason to have an additional meeting because I was not going to be able to address broader concerns.

In terms of where this goes from here, I don't think that I have any ability to respond to that question because we do know that there will be regional meetings. There will be meetings where U.S. and Syrian and Jordanian and other governments will be talking about the problems from the regional perspective. And we just have to see what comes in the future.

Question: So you don't have any trips planned in the --

Sauerbrey: I'll be going to the April 17th meeting in Geneva, as well, Under Secretary Dobriansky who will lead the U.S. delegation.

Question: And the second part, you know, any fear that those camp --

Sauerbrey: Are radicalizing?

Question: That are radicalizing and you know, arming maybe?

Sauerbrey: There's no question that the government, the host countries are very concerned about the security issue. And the host governments also have been hosting -- particularly Jordan -- have been hosting, you know, a very large number of Palestinians for a very long time. And I think this is -- this explains very clearly why they -- the governments do not want to create new obligations for themselves by considering the displaced Iraqis as refugees. They welcome them as our brothers. They welcome them as displaced Iraqis that need temporary assistance. But they in no way are envisioning this becoming a permanent settlement in the host countries, nor are they interested in creating camps. It's a very different concept. We actually did visit one of the Palestinian camps in Jordan. This is a very different concept because the Iraqi refugees are sheltering for the most part wherever possible with families, if they have extended families, or in -- certainly in urban settings but not -- there's no concept right now of creating camps for Iraqi refugees.

Bartlett: Could I -- if I could just add one more thing on in terms of Syria and Jordan the UNRWA camps where Palestinians are housed, some of them are housed because they're not all certainly in camps, are very open camps. And you know, we toured one in the Baqa'a camp in Jordan. And there -- and these are certainly not radicalized camps, perhaps like the ones in Lebanon. And so again, you know, those societies -- I mean, the way that they have integrated Palestinian refugees, I think is really to their credit and certainly the Iraqi refugees who are there are not in camps or even localized, so to speak, perhaps in some of the suburbs of Damascus people are centered. But they are really living in urban areas and so I think it's quite a different dynamic than, say, the camps in Lebanon, which are radicalized to some extent.

Question: Are you referring to Palestinian camps in Lebanon?

Bartlett: Yes, the UNRWA -- some of the UNRWA camps. Not -- actually not some of UNRWA non-camps currently.

Moderator: We have time for one more quick one.

Question: Thanks. Mine is just ABC for dummies on the April conference. I heard you say 17 in Geneva and Dobriansky and you're going. And just to flesh out any other information now, this is -- who's the main --

Sauerbrey: This is the UNHCR.

Question: Okay.

Sauerbrey: Has put this conference.

Question: It's their conference.

Sauerbrey: Their conference.

Question: Okay. And it's a one day?

Sauerbrey: It's April 17th and 18th.

Question: Okay, two days.

Sauerbrey: It's a regional conference to bring together the governments in the region, looking for cooperation, looking for enhanced visibility of the issue among the broader international community with the hope of getting a lot more involvement on the part of other countries.

Question: Are countries specifically invited or when you say you've got the countries of the region, I mean, is each country specifically invited by UNHCR?

Sauerbrey: Certainly every country in the direct region.

Question: I think it was Iraq -- including Iran?

Sauerbrey: Including Iraq.

Question: Okay, that's why I'm saying --

Question: Donors conference, it's a --

Sauerbrey: No, it's a donors conference, but it's a regional conference. It's really being called more a --

Bartlett: And the focus is really being put on the countries in the region, including Iraq.

Sauerbrey: Yeah.

Bartlett: And so the focus is on those countries what they're already doing and then what other invited countries can do to assist them.

Question: So is it displaced Iraqis only or is it broader than that in terms of donor conference -- you call it a donor conference?

Sauerbrey: The issue is the displaced Iraqis.

Question: Okay.

Sauerbrey: And the -- and it's very important for Iraq to be there as an active participant which we expect they will be. One of the points that we heard from each of the governments that we visited was their hope that Iraq will become more engaged in helping their people who are outside of Iraq and Iraq being of greater assistance -- providing assistance which they have the resources to do to some of the ministries that are providing education and healthcare and so forth.

Question: To make sure that we are talking about -- is it the same meeting, the ministerial one, this is part two of the meeting?

Bartlett: No, no. It's UNHCR.

Question: Okay.

Question: What (inaudible) an international conference? The UN is involved and is --

Bartlett: It is international. It is international. I don't have the number in front of me. Okay, thank you all very much.

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