In its appeal of 18 May, OXFAM said UNHCR must take on a more robust leadership role and ensure that it has enough staff to coordinate the aid effort for Kosovo refugees. It also asked donors and NGOs not to undertake unilateral initiatives.

The clear message was, as [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] Mrs. [Sadako] Ogata said, that there was inadequacy on the part of the United Nations, and particularly of UNHCR, in their response in the first phase of this disaster. That's been recognized by UNHCR as much as by organizations such as OXFAM. The High Commissioner has since made considerable effort to bring in the level of leadership necessary for the scale and complexity of this catastrophe-given that you're dealing with perhaps the single highest profile humanitarian event since the Second World War. The TV cameras are all there, and there's an enormous interest across Europe and North America.

Secondly, the situation is extremely complicated. You've got the NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] Governments, who are a party to this war and who are also the providers of humanitarian relief. It's difficult enough coordinating the European and North American Governments in a place like Central Africa where they don't have a direct and military interest in the play of the war. It's much more difficult to coordinate them when they are actually a party to that war. You need an even stronger leadership in the latter case.

Our appeal was essentially aimed at the principal donors: to say we are getting seriously off track and if the international response continues to be uncoordinated - with the principal donors striking bilateral deals with the Governments of Albania and Macedonia, excluding either by commission or omission UNHCR and the UN system in terms of the establishment of new camps, the extending of protection for refugees in those camps, the access of information on those refugees - then we are about to fail, and fail disastrously, the refugees in those two countries.

So, actually, it was an appeal to ask [British Prime Minister] Tony Blair to champion with his peers a stop in what has been going on up till now in the international humanitarian response and to say: "We need a change of culture. We need to readopt essentially the ways of work which we know have brought the best results in the past and that demand a respect for and an empowering of the High Commissioner for Refugees to really take the leadership and coordinate this response." Without that, we all know what it leads us into: an uncoordinated, incoherent international response with all manner of difficulties, which are all avoidable.

How successful has OXFAM's effort been?

The first thing to say is that the whole of the international humanitarian community was ill prepared for this disaster, despite there having been clear warnings that it was about to happen. I think everybody was less prepared than they should have been, and we include OXFAM in that criticism. We didn't have the contingency plans properly in place.

Now, that's a major criticism of UNHCR; it's a criticism of the NGO movement; it's also a criticism of the principal donors. I've spoken with donors who've admitted they have a culpability in the sense that they weren't checking with UNHCR if there were contingency plans, despite their having more access to security intelligence, etc.. So, there is culpability across the board in terms of the lack of responsiveness.

It is also the case that there were some NGOs that responded very well; but the principal plaudits have to go to NATO troops who were able to stand in for the international community and get tents erected, camps established, food into bellies, in situations where otherwise there would have been nothing. I think Mrs. Ogata's been right in acknowledging that role, but also in asking the military to limit their role to the establishment of camps, to the support of infrastructure, and not to the actual running of camps. As far as I can make out, NATO-in the sense of military forces and not in the sense of member States-has respected that and quickly handed over the running of camps to the UN or to NGOs.

We have found that because of the military approach to the establishment of those camps, it was all kind of difficult. There were ranks of tents which were far too close to each other-which was absolutely fine when the refugees were being provided with cooked NATO rations-but it's awful when the camp gets handed over to an NGO or to the UN, who then has to rearrange the tents at greater spacings because, first of all, we will need a space ourselves and also the refugees will now need a place to cook, etc..

There were all kinds of standards. If UNHCR had been there at the start, they would have been able to insist on those standards being met. What we're seeing now is the danger of disregarding the simple standards that have been developed and represent a lot of learning over a number of disasters. Mistakes are going to be repeated if the principal donors continue to establish their own camps and don't get UNHCR in.

UNHCR just didn't have the leadership in there. They had people who I am sure did everything to the best of their ability, but you've got to have someone with clout to go in and argue against Generals. You just can't expect a middle-ranking bureaucrat who's essentially been in a relatively quiet place to suddenly become capable of telling Generals and senior politicians from NATO countries what they have to do. They have to have clout coming directly from the High Commissioner and the Secretary-General.

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