Jean-Pierre Hocké

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Jean-Pierre Hocké (born March 31, 1938 in Lausanne ) is a former Swiss diplomat and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees .

Life

Example

The Vaud Jean-Pierre Hocke graduated from the University of Lausanne a degree in economics and worked as a commercial teacher at a high school as well as in the private sector. For three years he worked in Nigeria as a commercial agent for a large French import-export company. From 1968 he worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) , in 1973 became the ICRC's general representative for the Middle East and from 1976 to 1979 director of the ICRC's operations department. In this role he managed all field operations of the IRK.

Personally, Hocké had missions in Lebanon and Jordan (1973), Cyprus (1974), Angola (1975 and 1981), Vietnam (1975-1978) and Cambodia (1979-1980) as well as in Latin America (1982) and in Ethiopia (1984) directed. He risked international criticism in 1979/80 when the ICRC engaged in aid operations for the refugees on the Thai border and could only with difficulty evade supplying the military camps of the Khmer Rouge .

Hocké was seen as assertive, decisive and full of ideas and was popular among Geneva journalists, even though he was not part of Switzerland's political establishment.

High Commissioner for Refugees

choice

After difficult international votes, Hocké was elected head of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) at the end of 1985 on an American proposal, where he prevailed against the later UN Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali . Other competitors were the Dutchman Max van der Stoel , the Norwegian Tom Vraalsen , the Swede Carsten Thunborg and the Finn Martti Ahtisaari . The United States in particular had campaigned for Hocké's election in advance, as the Reagan administration hoped that he would lower the American contribution to the UN budget. With Hocké, a Swiss citizen took over the office of High Commissioner for Refugees for the third time and thus a leading position in a specialized agency of the United Nations , although Switzerland itself was not yet a member of the United Nations.

Term of office

On January 1, 1986, he was appointed by UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar as the successor to the 72-year-old Dane Poul Hartling , who had held the post for seven years and waived another term, as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He held the post for two terms until his resignation at the end of 1989.

activity

During his tenure, the crisis over refugees from Indochina , the so-called boat people , continued. The comprehensive action plan that was drawn up during this period established procedural provisions for regional refugee status and the promotion of voluntary return to Vietnam.

He also played an important role in the implementation of the "CIREFCA process" in Central America ( Conferencia Internacional sobre Refugiados Centroamericanos , Central American Refugee Conference ) in order to consolidate peace in this region. The expansion of assistance not only encompassed returnees, but also the population affected by the fighting and confrontations in a broader sense.

In addition, the UNHCR, which he heads, was largely responsible for the establishment and administration of large refugee camps for Ethiopian refugees in Sudan and for Somali refugees in Ethiopia. Hocké did not shy away from temporarily suspending support for the Somali camps when he learned that the Somali government had given the number of people cared for in their camps twice as real in order to divert aid funds to equip their army.

Hocké urged UN officials and donor countries to make more efforts to eliminate the causes of displacement. It is not enough to ask neighboring countries to accept and grant asylum in order to end chronic refugee crises such as the permanent residence of Afghan refugees in Pakistan . Rather, it is important to fight poverty and persecution in the countries of origin effectively. Hocké's term of office fell at a phase in which the great powers increasingly lost interest in the proxy wars waged as part of the Cold War , such as in Afghanistan, due to the détente between the blocs . Governments like that of the USA showed less and less willingness to provide money for the politically no longer interesting refugee issues and tried to reduce their contributions.

A visit to the Federal Republic of Germany in November 1987 made a positive impression on him. In January 1988 he had a circulation of 140,000 copies of the UN magazine Refugee crushed because he disliked a critical report on German asylum policy. Refugee organizations accused Hocké of showing too much understanding for the restrictive refugee policy of some countries and not doing enough for the legal protection of asylum seekers.

In retrospect, the role of Hocké and the UNHCR in the treatment of the Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong , many of whom the Americans had supported in the Vietnam War , was also viewed critically . Thousands of Vietnamese were forcibly repatriated in their homeland, despite the risk of persecution , because the small British crown colony's capacity was exhausted. Hocké described the repatriation of these refugees in 1989, when the UN refugee agency was in the midst of a serious financial crisis, as the "only realistic alternative to unlimited reliance on aid".

Fall

After the overall disappointing tenure of his predecessor, Hocké had great expectations. Despite his successful work, the working atmosphere within the UNHCR deteriorated noticeably soon after he took office, as many employees and project managers disliked his leadership style and he offended politicians and employees with unconventional measures. The background to the resistance was, among other things, his attempt to reorganize the bureaucratic authority. Fewer funds were raised than had been spent, so that the UNHCR had to show a budget deficit for the first time in its history (around 7 million US dollars in 1988 , around 40 million US dollars in 1989, which corresponded to around 170 million D-Marks ). The Americans dropped Hocké when he ousted Vice Gene Dewey, a supply and logistics expert in the US military who was instrumental in Hocké's appointment. His re-election in 1988 was accordingly controversial.

Finally, in 1989 the so-called "Affair Hocké" came about: dissatisfied UNHCR employees leaked a discrediting dossier about the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to a Swiss television team. A media campaign was then launched against him for allegedly misusing the money from a Danish fund for personal purposes. In the fall of 1989, the UNHCR Hocké Executive Council launched an austerity plan and ordered a thorough investigation into its agency's spending, but confidence in the management could not be restored. Hocké, who did not deny the expenses but considered legitimate and coordinated with his predecessor, resigned at the end of October under pressure from international criticism triggered by an exposing " Rundschau " article . The Norwegian UN Ambassador Thorvald Stoltenberg was appointed his successor on November 20, 1989 , and took over the office on January 1, 1990.

Right up to the end, Jean-Pierre Hocké underlined the alleged voluntariness of his forced withdrawal. He later spoke of a "stab in the dagger" that had ended his refugee work. While the criticism of Hocké came mainly from the western industrialized countries, some developing countries saw the affair as an attempt by rich countries to curtail refugee programs and feared cuts in humanitarian aid. In contrast to other agencies of the United Nations, the Hocké affair was the only serious public scandal that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees had experienced in its history since 1950, well beyond the 1990s.

Afterlife

Hocké also dealt with refugee issues in later years, for example in the 2006 referendum on the Swiss Asylum Act or in November 2010 with the plans of the Swiss People's Party to “expel criminal foreigners” from Switzerland. For many years he exposed himself as a member of the Patronage Committee of the Zurich Limmat Foundation , an international financing organization assigned to Opus Dei .

Honors

In his capacity as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Hocké received the Balzan Peace Prize in 1986 .

swell

Web links and literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ squat, Jean-Pierre in the database Dodis the Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland
  2. ↑ Alois Riklin : The permanent neutrality of Switzerland. In: Peter Häberle (Hrsg.): Yearbook of the public law of the present. New series / volume 40. Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 1992, ISBN 3-16-145903-2 , pp. 1–44, here: p. 40 in the Google book search.
  3. ↑ United Nations High Commissioners for Refugees (rulers.org, accessed January 2019).
  4. ↑ Samantha Power : Sergio. One Man's Fight to Save the World. London 2008, p. 547, note 2.
  5. ↑ a b Samantha Power: Sergio. One Man's Fight to Save the World. London 2008, p. 547, note 4 and 5.
  6. ↑ Nicholas Hendry (Author), Alex Cunliffe (Review): Did the UNHCR Fail Vietnamese Refugees in Hong Kong? Online publication at E-IR , June 29, 2012, access on April 24, 2019.
  7. ↑ Samantha Power: Sergio. One Man's Fight to Save the World. London 2008, p. 547, note 3; Indicated in D-Mark according to the Munzinger archive .
  8. ^ Paul Lewis: UN Refugee Chief Quits Over His Use of Funds. In: The New York Times , October 27, 1989, accessed January 5, 2019.
  9. ↑ Three front men celebrate the 50th birthday of the “Rundschau”. In: Blick , January 1, 2018, seen January 6, 2019.
  10. ↑ Samantha Power: Sergio. One Man's Fight to Save the World. London 2008, p. 547, note 6.
  11. ↑ Samantha Power: Sergio. One Man's Fight to Save the World. London 2008, p. 190.
  12. ^ «A dangerous sham package». The civil committee takes action against the Asylum Act (PDF; 35 kB). Leaflet dated July 13, 2006.
  13. ↑ Sophie Chamay: Jean-Pierre Hocké: "Cette initiative fait fi du contexte social, culture des personnes visées" ( Memento of November 10, 2010 in the web archive archive.today ). In: Tribune de Genève , November 3, 2010 (interview).
  14. ^ Peter Hertel : Creeping takeover. The Opus Dei under Pope Benedict XVI. Oberursel 2007, p. 140.
  15. ^ Annual report 2002 of the Limmat Foundation, Zurich 2003, p. 19; 2008 annual report of the Limmat Foundation, Zurich 2009, p. 43; Annual report 2015 of the Limmat Foundation, Zurich 2016, p. 27; not recorded since 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Hocké, Jean-Pierre
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH March 31, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Lausanne