Joint Japan-GRZ-UNHCR Japanese funding : SPEECH FOR HON. DAVIES MWILA

SPEECH FOR HON. DAVIES MWILA, MP. MINISTER OF HOME AFFAIRS, AT A ceremony to announce a donation by the government of japan to the REFUGEE programme in zambia

24^th MARCH, 2015.

 

1. Your Excellency, I wish to welcome you and your staff, the UNHCR Officer In Charge and his staff as well as Senior Government Officials present and indeed members of the press to the Ministry of Home Affairs.
2. Let me take this opportunity to express my Government’s gratitude to the Government and people of Japan for their generosity in donating US Dollars 1.5 Million to the UNHCR programme in Zambia, which includes the Local Integration activities that are currently going on.
3. Your Excellency, let me mention here that the donation will go a long way in supporting, especially, the ongoing implementation of the local integration process which currently is in dire need of funding for the three pillars of the local integration process (these being the legal, resettlement and socioeconomic components).
4. May I also inform Your Excellency, that Zambia is host to about 49,500 refugees and other people of concern to UNHCR, mostly from Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia and a few from different countries.
5. Your Excellency, I wish to further inform you that Zambia is committed to honoring the pledge it made in Geneva in December 2011, to locally integrate 10,000 former Angolan refugees and that this process was started in October 2012 and that it is going on smoothly.

 

6. I would like to bring to your attention that I’m aware that this is not the first donation your Government has made to the refugee programme in Zambia but that the Government of Japan previously donated US dollars 3.0 million in 2013 and also in 2014. Part of this generous donation helped Zambia launch the local integration programme.
7. Your Excellency, I am aware that a delegation from the Government of Japan and JICA Head Office in Tokyo were in the country from 10^th to 19^th March 2015 to assess possible areas of cooperation as well as checking on local integration projects being funded by the Government of Japan in both Northwestern and Western provinces. I wish to express my confidence that the delegation had a good feel of the situation on the ground regarding the progress and challenges being encountered in the field.
8. The Government of the Republic of Zambia therefore sees this donation by the Japanese Government as key in support of our efforts in Zambia to actualize the local integration solution for former Angolan refugees in Zambia. I wish to call on other cooperating partners to emulate Japan and come on board to support the Local Integration activities for Angolan former refugees.
9. Let me end by assuring your Government and the international Community at large, the Government of the Republic of Zambia’s commitment to the completion of the local integration process and that this contribution by Japan has come at the right time. Zambia is committed to upholding international refugee protection principles as enshrined in the international conventions on refugees to which the state is party.