Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed information on the assistance provided to foreign workers who were displaced by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, focusing on the: (1) efforts to care for and repatriate the evacuees in Jordan and Turkey; (2) roles and responsibilities of the various international organizations participating in the relief effort; (3) costs for providing care and repatriation; (4) extent of U.S. contributions; and (5) status of contingency plans for further influxes of displaced people following combat initiation on January 16, 1991.
GAO found that: (1) the overall relief effort was successful in caring for and repatriating the estimated 800,000 people who fled to Jordan and 60,000 who fled to Turkey; (2) a number of governments, international organizations, and nongovernmental groups contributed to the relief effort, with overall coordination by the United Nations Disaster Relief Organization (UNDRO); (3) international donors pledged or contributed an estimated $487 million to the relief effort, in addition to the substantial amounts spent by the governments and relief organizations of Jordan, Turkey, Iran, and Syria; (4) the United States pledged cash, commodities, and services totalling $27.6 million to the relief effort and had donated $23.8 million as of December 1990; and (5) UNDRO issued a contingency plan for handling another surge of evacuees into the countries neighboring Iraq on October 16, 1990, and updated it on January 11, 1991.
