UNHCR Suremia Simulation Overview

The simulation will be held across various classrooms and floors in the Social Science Building. It will start at 8:30AM and will run to 4:30-5PM. Participants will begin by meeting at 8:30AM in Social Science Room 5230. Participants should bring with them a hearty bag lunch and something to drink for the day.

The Exercise

The UNHCR Suremia exercise is a day-long simulated refugee relief operation. It can be run indoors, in many kinds of settings but does require the use of several different rooms, and some on-site preparation. The participant group (24-36 people) is asked to manage a fictional emergency refugee operation.

The exercise is typically preceded by a quick briefing the day before and a longer debriefing the morning after. Participants acting in a wide range of simulated roles carry out many of the activities associated with the management and coordination of an international relief operation. It has been designed to accomplish a number of specific objectives. The simulation:

· creates an awareness of the response environment, the typical constraints and the activities associated with managing emergency relief operations.

· helps to identify issues associated with emergency relief operations.

· provides a concept of emergency relief operations as a total entity, a set of systems.

All of the participants have a great deal of flexibility in playing out the roles. Actions within this simulation are partially guided by two documents, which participants receive before the beginning of the simulation: 1) The Participant's Guide, which contains an overall description of the simulation, its rules, and the activities that will take place. 2) A separate, individual role guide which provides the detailed information regarding the role to be played.

Activities

Many relevant activities take place. Refugees arrive and require assistance. Resources have to be requested. The resources arrive and have to be allocated. The conditions in and around the camps change and these changes must be dealt with. Participants must also satisfy reporting requirements associated with managing the overall operation.

The situation portrayed in Suremia has evolved over the past two years and there is already a small ongoing refugee program there. A slow influx is continuing and may well get worse in the foreseeable future. Each participant is responsible for managing some aspect of this relief operation. This means that, on one level, the group is responsible for the feeding, health and shelter of refugees that are currently located in three different camps. At the same time, they must deal with the broader aspects of the problem — protection, planning, coordination, media relations, and stress.

As a result of hostilities exacerbated by famine conditions in the neighboring countries of Mardon and Tulera, there is a sudden influx of Mardian and Tuleran refugees into Suremia. Although preliminary statistics are very incomplete, it appears that the numbers will increase significantly in the near future. The figures include people who were already in refugee settlements before the start of the current influx and who are still not self-reliant.
Other Elements Simulated:

Food and Job Scarcity
Two years of bad harvests followed by additional problems have severely depleted local stocks of basic foods and caused a marked increase in prices.

Political Concerns
The situation in Suremia has two very important political dimensions.

1). The situation has arisen as a result of the political conditions existing in Suremia, Mardon and Tulera. Some groups feel that many of the refugees are soldiers or political operatives.
2). They have generated considerable international attention.

Personnel
All of the government and relief agencies are stretched to the limit in terms of personnel and other resources. There has been difficulty in finding experienced officials, especially at the senior and middle management levels.

Facilities
Early relief operations have resulted in the construction of adequate temporary housing facilities, warehouses, and other essential facilities. Shelter and housing for the refugees are adequate for the people now located in the 3 camps in Suremia.

Results

The exercise is open-ended — the operation may be successful or may fail in the short-term. The exercise simulates 6 months of operations, after which immediate actions may have either helped or hindered other longer-term and more sustainable initiatives. Coordination may help to save lives of the refugees, failure to coordinate programs may lead to wasteful duplication and gaps in key lifeline services. It is up to the participants playing the parts of government, local and international NGOs, UN agencies, local markets, and the refugees themselves. The debriefing on the following day allows for discussion in these and other areas.