I U — ~~~~~~~ U r M INTERNATIONAL IGRATION ~~~~~ REVIEW ~~~~~~~~ SPECIAL ISSUE UNHCRAT 50: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF REFUGEE ASSISTANCE Vol. 35, Spring 2001 CENTER FOR MIGRATION STUDIES Editor Emeritus: SILvANO M. T0MAsI Editor: LyDlo F. T0MAsI Managing Editor: MARK J. MILLER Book Review Editor: ELEANOR M. R0GG Review ofReviews Editors: EILEEN REITER, NORMAN KANTER Editorial Board: KEVIN APPLEBY • THOMAS J. ARCHDEACON • GEORGE J. BORJAS • MONICA BOYD • ROGERS BRUBAKER • NANCY FONER • AUSTIN T. FRAGOMEN, JR. LAWRENCE H. FUCHS • DONALD E HEISEL • CHARLES B. KEELY • REY KOSLOWSKJ • MARY M. KRITZ • C. MIci-i ~~ L L ~ NPHIER • JOHN J. MACISCO, JR. DAVID A. MARTIN DOUGLAS MASSEY MARKJ. MILLER • PYONG GAP MIN • VICTOR NEE • ALEX PORTES • ELEANOR M. ROGG • RUBEN G. RUMBAUT •ALAN B. SIMMONS • MARTA TIENDA • LYDJO F. To ~~~SI • SILVi ~~ O M. To ~~~ SI • MARY WATERS ARISTIDE R. ZOLBERG Advisory Editors: ADERANTI ADEPOJU R. T. APPLEYARD JORGE BALAN • W. R. BOEHNING JOSEPH CHAMIE MANUEL ANGEL CASTILLO • STEPHEN CASTLES • RICHARD J. CEBULA •BARRY CHISWICK JOCK COLLINS .ANDREW M. GREELEY • DIRK HOERDER •GRAEME HUGO • GILBERT JAEGER • CHRISTIAN JOPPKE .LASZEK A. KosiNslu APRODICIO A. LAQULAN IvAN LIGHT • LIN L ~~ LIM • LELIO MARMORA •PHILIP L. MARTIN • URSULA MEHRLANDER • CHRISTOPHER D. MITCHELL JAN RATH JOHN S ~~ T • SETENEY SHAMI • LASzLO Szoi< ~ • YEN-FEN TSENG HEINZ WERNER JONAS WIDGREN Editorial Staffi RAMONA HESTERHAGEN, DARLENE PFLUGER AND THOMAS M. SULLIVAN The INTERNATIONAL MIGRATIoN REVIEW is published quarterly by the Center for Migration Studies of New York, Inc. (ISSN-0197-9183; LC-85-645414), a member of the Federation of Centers for Migration Studies J.B. Scalabrini, in cooperation with Migration and Refugee Services, U.S.C.C., Washington, D.C. 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Copyright © 2001 by the CENTER FOR MIGRATION STUDIES OF NEW YORK, INC. 209 Flagg Place, Staten Island, NY 10304-1122, USA Phone: ( 718) 351-8800 Fax: ( 718) 667-4598 e-mail: imr@cmsny.org website: http://www.cmsny.org INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW VOLUME XXXV NUMBER 1 SPRING 2001 5 Foreword 7 From Refugees to Forced Migration: The UNHCR and Human Security BY HOWARD ADELMAN 33 The UNHCR and World Politics: State Interests vs. Institutional Autonomy BY GIL LOESCHER 57 Fifty Years of Refugee Studies: From Theory to Policy BY RICHARD BLACK 79 The Protection-Neutrality Dilemma in Humanitarian Emergencies: Wh y the Need for Military Intervention? BY CAROLA WElL 117 Documentation Note The Need for Military Intervention in Humanitarian Emergencies BY LIEUTENANT GENERAL JOHN M. SANDERSON (RETD) 124 Documentation Note Wh y is Humanitarian Action Often a Substitute for a Lack of Political \Will? BY FLORA MACDONALD 130 Refugees: Challenges to Protection BY Gu~ S. GOODWIN-GILL 143 Funding Dilemmas in Refugee Assistance: Political Interests and Institutional Reforms in UNHCR BY RAIMO VAYRYNEN 2 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW 168 Mind the Gap! UNHCR, Humanitarian Assistance and the Development Process BY JEFFREY Cius ~ 192 Bureaucracy and the Quality of Mercy BY ARTHUR C. HELTON 226 Forced Migration and Professionalism BY SUSAN F. MARTIN 244 Humanitarianism with a Sovereign Face: UNHCR in the Global Undertow MICHAEL BARNETT 278 Documentation Note From Nansen to Ogata: UNHCR’s Role in a Changing World BY NICHOLAS BWAKIRA 284 UNHCR: Uphill into the Future BY ASTRI SUHRKE AND KATHLEEN NEWLAND RESEARCH NOTE 303 The International Refugee Regime(s): The End of the Cold War Matters BY CHARLES B. KEELY CONFERENCE REPORT 315 Self-Employment, Gender and Migration in San Feliu de Guixols, Spain from October 28 th to November 2nd , 2000 BY STEVEN J. GOLD BOOK REVIEWS 318 The Volume and Dynamics of International Migration and Transnational Social Spaces By Thomas Faist AHMET ICDUYGU 319 Globalization and History: The Evolution of a Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Economy By Kevin H. O’Rourke and Jeffrey G. Williamson Fr ~~ K VAN NUYS 320 Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World By Alison Games WENDY M. GORDON INTERNATIONAL MIGI ~ TIoN REVIEW 3 321 Immigration et integration: l’état des savoirs Edited By Philippe Dewitte MARK J. MILLER 323 Trade in Strangers: The Beginnings of Mass Migration to North America By Marianne S. Wokeck NUPUR CHAUDHURI 324 Reconstructing Citizenship: The Politics of Nationality Reform and Immigration in Contemporary France By Miriam Feldblum ANN B. MATASAR 325 Fences and Neighbors: The Political Geography of Immigration Control By Jeannette Money ALAN E. KESSLER 326 Separate Destinations: Migration, Immigration and the Politics of Places By James G. Gimpel MICHAEL JONES-CORREA 327 Marketing the American Creed Abroad: Diasporas in the U.S. and Their Homelands By Yossi Sham PETERJ. SPIRO 328 The Victorian Spinster and Colonial Emigration: Contested Subjects By Rita S. Kranidis MARSI-JA L. HAMILTON 329 Disoriented: Asian Americans, Law and the Nation State By Robert S. Chang LISA S. RONEY 330 Rebirth: Mexican Los Angeles from the Great Migration to the Great Depression By Douglas Monroy MARIo T GARCIA 331 Race, Police, and the Making of a Political Identity: Mexican Americans and the Los Angeles Police Department, 1900—1945 By Edward J. Escobar BENJAMIN MARQUEZ 4 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW 332 Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture By Robert G. Lee ANTHONY B. CHAN 333 Chinese Christians in America: Conversion, Assimilation, and Adhesive Identities By Fenggang Yang CS. STONE SHIH 334 If They Don’t Bring Their Women Here: Chinese Female Immigration Before Exclusion By George Anthony Peffer BETTY LEE SUNG 336 Korean Immigrants and the Challenge of Adjustment By Moon H. Jo KWANG CHUNG KIM 337 Crosscurrents: West Indian Immigrants and Race By Milton Vickerman DONALD ROBOTHAM 338 The Marginal Nation: Transborder Migration from Bangladesh to West Bengal By Ranabir Sammadar Gnu RAJ GUPTA 339 Khmer American: Identi ty and Moral Education in a Diasporic Community By Nancy J. Smith-Hefner DAVID W. HAINES 340 Helping Out: Children’s Labor in Ethnic Businesses By Miri Song DAVID W. HAINES 341 Irish Migrants in Modern Britain, 1750-1922 By Donald M. MacRaild DEIRDRE M. MAGEEAN 342 The Germans in the American Civil War By Wilhelm Kaufmann. Translated by Steven Rowan and edited by Don Heinrich Tolzmann with Werner D. Mueller and Robert E. Ward LEONARD DINNERSTEIN 344 REVIEW OF REVIEWS 364 INTERNATIONAL NEWSLETTER ON MIGRATION 373 BOOKS RECEWED 384 INMEMORIAM FOREWORD The fiftieth anniversary of the founding of UNHCR marks an appropriate time for recollection and stocktaking as well as for praise, criticism, reform and renewal. The role of the UNHCR and the refugee phenomenon have changed and evolved over the last half-century. What was originally viewed as a European issue has long since become global in nature. The mandate of UNHCR has evolved and become more complex and controversial with the growth of internally-displaced populations and situations generating calls for humanitarian intervention. Planning for this special issue began years ago, and the Editors wish to thank Barry Stein in particular for his advice and leadership. From the beginning, the commemorative conference and this publication were envisaged as a collaborative project which would bring together specialists from the major centers studying the UNHCR and refugee issues worldwide. With the cosponsorship of the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University, the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, the International Catholic Migration Commission, the International Organization for Migration, the Open Society Institute, the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford University, the U.S. Committee for Refugees and the Center for Migration Studies, an international conference was convened May 15 to 18, 2000 at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University. The Editors wish to thank the latter in particular for their generous support for the conference, in addition to providing an excellent venue for the event. They also wish to thank the U.S. Department of State for its partial support of the conference, and the Ford Foundation for funding the dissemination of the conference proceedings. Drafts of the contributions to this volume were presented at the conference and critiqued by the conferees. Contributors were then accorded several months to revise in light of the criticisms and observations made at the conference. Study of refugees and the UNHCR often strains the limits of the ideology of scholarly dispassion. The Editors, as always, have encouraged the expression of unfettered scholarly analysis and opinion. Constructive criticism can be found in this volume as well as a profound emotion felt by all for the dedication and services performed by UNHCR administrators and employees. All students of migration join in thanking you for the good that you have accomplished over the last fifty years. The Editors © 2001 by the Center for Migration Studies of New York. All rights reserved. 0198-9183/00/3501.0133 IMR Volume 35 Number 1 (Spring 2001): 5 From Refugees to Forced Migration: The UNHCR and Human Security’ Howard Adelman York University Within UNHCR, there has been a shift in the emphasis on the meaning of protection. Protection of refugees is now primarily defined as security of refugees and refugee operations rather than in terms of the legal asylum process. The article examines the significance of UNHCR placing the refugee issue within both the larger context of forced migration as well as within the context of human security. The paper clarifies and documents a current and general focus of forced migration that includes the internally displaced as well as refugees and offers a framework for comprehending and dealing with the refugee problem that has shifted focus to the security dimension. In the document UNHCR Strategy towards 2000 (Geneva, 1997), the primary challenge facing the UNHCR was said to be the fact that “ [Plopulation displacements are more than ever perceived as a threat to economic, social and environmental stability; as well as political security.” Was this additional evidence that the UNHCR was abandoning the concern for the protection of refugees for an emphasis on forced migration in general and in relationship to the political securi ty of states and economic/social stability? Per the UNHCR’s own account, it was only trying to adapt itself and its mandate to changing circumstances to understand the problem of refugees as one aspect of human displacement within the context of the issue of security — security of refugees and humanitarian workers as well as states. The UNHCR was not abandoning its concern with “the security of refugees and refugee operations” (Ogata, 1999). However, protection of refugees was now being defined as security of refugees and refugee operations rather than in terms of the legal asylum process. While seven years earlier, Ogata had stressed the importance of security while maintaining “the continued importance of asylum,” (Ogata, 1992) somehow asylum seemed to have shifted further towards the periphery of UNHCR’s vision (see, e.g., Goodwin-Gill, 1999; Chimni, 1998; Roberts, 1998). The new emphasis positioned the UNHCR concern with refugee protection within a securi ty paradigm. What is the meaning of UNHCR placing am grateful for the comments of the participants that were so helpful in preparing this revised draft. © 2001 by the Center for Migration Studies of New York. All rights reserved. 0198-9183/00/3501.0133 IMR Volume 35 Number 1 (Spring 2001): 7—32 7 8 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW the refugee issue within both the larger context of forced migration as well as within the context of human security? What is its significance? This article clarifies and documents a current and general focus on forced migration that includes the internally displaced as well as refugees. Further, the framework for comprehending and dealing with the problem has shifted to the security dimension — political, social, economic and even environmental instabili ty— that human beings pose when forced to flee their homes. The securi ty focus matches a historical shift because human securi ty is an issue stressed by scholars and state policymakers, as well as the UNHCR. Further, it does not matter whether those people are internally displaced or cross an international border. What does matter is that, in the current emphasis, the forced migration of peoples is seen as adding to an environment of insecurity just as much as the masses who are forced to move are both products and victims of insecurity. After documenting that this is the case and the factors and characteristics associated with this new emphasis, that is, that refugees and the internally displaced are now viewed very broadly through a securi ty lens, I ask a counterfactual question. How else could refugees be viewed and what would the implications be for the UNHCR? I ask the question about possible worlds. If the security lens is the actual one through which we and the UNHCR currently view those forcefully displaced from their homes, what are some other possible ways that we could have viewed those who are forced to move? I ask this question about possibilities not because I want to be nostalgic about what could have been. Nor is it the case that I fancy myself as a writer of science fiction. Most of all, I am not engaging in this exercise because I want to serve as a superego — holding up these alternatives as ways of browbeating and embarrassing the UNHCR — as well as most of the rest of us — for our moral failures. I am not raising these other possibilities to assert that if the UNHCR, or if I for that matter, had been made of stronger moral fiber, if we had been constituted with greater moral strength and determination, then the UNHCR would not have drifted into this wayward path. I will, on the way, point to those who berate the UNHCR for its current emphasis and for its failure in not doing something else. But that is not my purpose. I am not here to offer a moral compass to the UNHCR. Rather, I want to add what I believe is a significant and neglected dimension to explain why the UNHCR is what it is. And I want to do so not by accounting for what the UNHCR is in terms of current constraints, forces and circumstances, though these are undoubtedly important factors. Nor do FROM REFUGEES TO FORCED MIGRATION 9 I intend to trace the trajectory of the development of the UNHCR, though such a story is critical to understanding the changes that have taken place in the UNHCR and explaining the choices UNHCR made to change direction along the way. I intend to ignore that development entirely even though I consider the course of development critical to explaining why the UNHCR is what it is today. Rather, I will engage in hypothetical testing. HYPOTHESIS To understand that test, it is important that I declare what I intend to do. After I have documented the inclusion of the internally displaced within the concern of the UNHCR and have elaborated the securi ty lens for understanding that forced migration, I will then explore a few possible alternative worlds. I then will set forth a thesis about the origins of the UNHCR that conditioned (not determined) the UNHCR to operate within a certain range of possibilities and not in other ways. Let me call this “ the conditioning thesis.” This thesis asserts that in the genesis (as distinct from kinesis, the process of change and transformation in an organization) a template is laid down which limits the choices for an organization. It sets parameters which make it possible for an organization to make some choices and very difficult to make others. Such an account doesnot explain the choices made along the way, but only the boundaries within which those choices are made. The conditioning thesis differs from three other predominant accounts of the development of the UNHCR, but is not inconsistent with any of them exept when they are taken as absolute and exclusive explanatory accounts. One is the continui ty thesis. It argues that although the UNHCR is subjected to external pressures and constraints, as an autonomous actor, the UNHCR seeks to respond and adapt to changing conditions in order to both survive and to protect its mandate as best it can. This is the thesis of the UNHCR itself. It is also the thesis of several of the critical accounts of the UNHCR. The conditioning thesis and the continui ty thesis both differ from the conservative thesis of fundamentalist scholars such as Guy Goodwin-Gill, who argue that the essential mandate of the UNHCR is legal protection which is primarily identified with asylum. The shift to the repatriation paradigm in the nineties, and subsequently to the human security paradigm, in the development of UNHCR as the organization became the preeminent active humanitarian aid agency was perceived by the conservatives as a fundamental subversion of UNHCR’s essential mandate. This is not just an abstract debate. UNHCR, in a pragmatic mode, claimed that it understood 10 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW the Macedonian fear that the Kosovo refugees would have a destabilizing effect on the fragile demographic balance within Macedonia. The UNHCR took the securi ty concerns of Macedonia into account and accepted the principle of burden sharing as a precondition before Macedonia would continue to permit the entry of Kosovar refugees. When the UNHCR adopted this tactic, the fundamentalist essentialist conservative critics of the UNHCR accused the organization of surrendering its principles and succumbing to host government blackmail. The conservative thesis is a moral rather than an explanatory thesis. It does not attempt to explain change as much as document a role said to be essential and unique to the UNHCR and to evaluate the activities of UNHCR in terms of that claimed essential function. There is a fourth position that contrasts with the continuity, conservative and my own conditioning theses. Critical theorists, like political realists, argue that the UNHCR is simply a pawn of state and, hence, capitalist interests. As such, UNHCR is a conflicted organization torn between its legal and human rights obligations and its cow-towing to the Western states that pay its bills. The critical theorists agree with the realists that the UNHCR is not an independent actor but is subject to the interests of the powerful states that it serves. Only the critical theorists regard this as a matter of negative judgement rather than descriptive fact. The UNHCR is a minion of the wealthy Western states and totally externally determined in its actions. This contrasts with the continuity theorists who claim that the UNHCR is an autonomous actor that responds pragmatically to changing conditions within the pressures and constraints under which it operates. Both my own conditioning thesis and the continuity thesis are explanatory rather than evaluative frames for understanding the UNHCR rather than judging it, though such explanations allow room for judgment as to why alternative options were not taken. Though the critical theory perspective claims to be explanato ry as well as evaluative, the conservative assessment is primarily evaluative. The conservatives (they are primarily legal scholars) judge the UNHCR morally, arguing that the UNHCR has acted as an imperialistic opportunist and/or as a coward by betraying its fundamental values in pursuit of institutional hegemony in the international humanitarian field. Whether the UNHCR is influenced by external factors or by internal thought processes, desires and/or fears, I argue that it is also programmed by its genetic origins (by ‘ genetic’ I do not mean that the UNHCR has something equivalent to genes; I refer to genesis, the coming into being of the agency). Those origins have given the UNHCR a disposition to respond in certain ways. FROM REFUGEES TO FORCED MIGRATION 11 This does not mean that it could not change or that it did not change. Quite the contrary. The UNHCR did change in response to external conditions and constraints and pressures. I suggest that the repertoire of possible responses was programmed into the UNHCR from the beginning. Thus, I will describe in some detail the job that the UNHCR inherited when it was founded. It is often claimed that it was the Cold War that set the UNHCR on its path. I argue that the imprinting of the UNHCR came earlier. Though UNHCR’s initial task may have focused on those who feared persecution from communist regimes, this was not necessarily the origin of the template that set forth the realm of possibilities and the parameters for UNHCR. It is certainly correct that this is how the United States viewed the UNHCR and refugees in the beginning (see, e.g., Loescher and Scanlan, 1986). I argue that the policies of the UNHCR were not simply by-products of the Cold War. The framework for the UNHCR’s mandate was set prior to the onset of the Cold War. Institutions, like individuals, are very deeply imprinted in their formative years. These factors do not determine what the organization or individual will become, but they set very strong parameters. Thus, I will emphasize the critical importance of the precursors to the UNHCR that provided the primary template for the UNHCR. Though these early foundations do not determine who we are and who we can be, they set very severe limits. The genesis of an institution predisposes that institution to react to circumstances and challenges in characteristic ways. If an organization, or an individual, is not to be restricted and unduly bound by such parameters, it is crucial that they be brought into the open. As the institution adapts to a changing world, as that institution rediscovers and recreates itself anew in response to those challenges, or is forced and pressured to make such changes, it will only be possible to go beyond the very restrictive boundaries set by those codes and conditions to the degree that the organization understands its own genesis and emotional imprint. I stress the term ‘possibili ty ’ because I am unsure whether an organization can make such a leap. This effort is not a case of retrospective psychoanalysis of the UNHCR. Rather, we as individuals and all institutions have “ gut ” reactions. Very early, we are programmed to respond to certain objects and events with repeatable responses. As the neuro-scientists put it, our visual inputs travel down our cognitive low road, activating the amygdala and stimulating either a strong negative or positive reaction without being processed through our conscious brain (Le Doux, 1999). Very early on, we are programmed deeply to respond emotionally and strongly to certain cues. 12 INTERNATiONAL MIGRATION REVIEW I do not intend to trace the cues that the UNHCR responded to which help explain the shifts in its course. However, the beginning of the Cold War and the identification of the Soviet Union as an empire that persecuted its citizens was certainly such a cue. But it was not the source of the template itself. I argue that the source was rooted in the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis. It was flight from Nazi rather than communist persecution that provided the basic template for the UNHCR. Further, in the political debates at the time, the predominant view was that these Jews had to be resettled and not repatriated. The debate over repatriation versus resettlement set the template for the International Refugee Organisation (IRO) and provided the template for the UNHCR. This article is not only intended to provide a missing element to help explain the character and development of the UNHCR. It is hypothetical because the paper does not document the history to demonstrate just who influenced and how they influenced the parameters given to the TJNHCR. This is not a detailed explanation of the genesis of the UNHCR in terms of original intentions, conditions, goals and anticipations of those who set out to create the UNHCR. That would be a much larger task and far beyond the scope of this paper. Further, this is not an exclusivist explanatory argument. The conservative, continuity and critical theoretical approaches to explaining UNHCR history are not necessarily incompatible except when turned into absolutist doctrines. It is possible to be a moral traitor to a cause and still have a template. It is possible to be an organization that makes choices in response to changing circumstances and still have parameters that limit those choices. It is possible to be strongly (but not totally) influenced by external actors and still have a fundamentally internalized program established in the genesis of the organization. I want to explore the conditioning thesis as a basic contributor to the character that the UNHCR has today. What was the job of the UNHCR when it was founded? Why was it given that task? How did the “hits ” — genetic, psychological, social — that unconsciously framed the UNHCR limit the possibilities for the UNHCR? These are the questions I focus upon once I depict in greater detail the security focus of the UNHCR today and the inclusion of the internally displaced within its mandate. These are the questions that I have in mind when I engage in an exercise of the imagination in depicting other logical, though not likely actual, possibilities. I say focus because there is no effort to provide a definitive historical answer here. Rather, I do so to suggest the importance of this added explanatory factor, to suggest what it might be, and to argue that the current stress on human security and the inclusion of the internally displaced is, in fact, thor- FROM REFUGEES TO FORCED MIGRATION 13 oughly consistent with that original template and one expression of its possibilities. Finally, the aim of this paper is not to berate UNHCR for shifting from its “true” mandate (see, e.g., Roberts, 1998), but to understand the roots of the possibilities in the shifts that actually took place. The intention is to place the issue of refugees within the framework of conditions put in place in the first half of this century. This historical framework moves from the present emphasis in contrast to other possibilities to the origins of the UNHCR as one key reason for explaining why those other alternatives were not pursued. Thus, the article will travel in reverse. It will not begin with a sketch of the situation prior to World War II and then outline the situation that led to the creation of the UNHCR in the context of the conflict over Palestine, but rather end there. For with the creation of IRO and its successor, the UNHCR, new principles for resettling refugees were set forth to override (but not totally displace) the older principles of mass population exchanges and transfers. With the onset of the Cold War, the contrast emerged between refugees as products of war to a shift in emphasis to those who are the result of state oppression. This shift was quite compatible with the original goals and boundary conditions. The legal foundation of asylum and its ostensible relationship to human rights emerged as the UNHCR developed in parallel with the centrality of the Cold War. But with the end of the Cold War, the UNHCR put a major emphasis on repatriation, an emphasis which I believe even preceded the end of that war. The current emphasis, I argue, is that the refugee issue is viewed by the UNHCR through a securi ty lens. Not simply state security. Rather, securi ty is more broadly defined to include issues such as social security, economic security, and environmental security, all encompassed by the phrase “human security. ” This current emphasis is not a deviation, let alone a radical departure, from the emphasis on repatriation or the earlier one of legal protection or the even earlier stress on the aid/development continuum. It was built into the possibilities of the UNHCR from the beginning. That is the essence of the argument that I put forth. THE INTERNALLYDISPLA CED A key part of the UNHCR position is summed up in the following clauses of a UNHCR Report (2000): UNHCR has an interest in the protection and welfare of persons who have been displaced by persecution, situations of general violence, conflict or massive violations of human rights, because of their similarity to refugees in terms of the causes and consequences of their displacement and humanitarian needs. 14 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW This interest, arising from the Office’s humanitarian mandate and endorsed by successive General Assembly resolutions, places upon UNHCR a responsibility to: • advocate on behalf of the internally displaced; • mobilize support for them; • strengthen its capacity to respond to their problems; and • take the lead to protect and assist them in certain situations. In view of the growing linkages between refugee problems and internal displacement, UNHCR is committed to greater engagement with the internally displaced within the parameters of its principles and prerequisites for operational involvement. This wider focus beyond refugees and its connection with the concept of human securi ty can be traced to an earlier UNHCR paper prepared by Jeff Crisp. In it, the following position was taken: First, the notion of reintegration cannot be restricted to returning refugees. When a civil war or communal conflict comes to an end, many other groups of people (some of whom may not be of direct concern to UNHCR) are also confronted with the task of rebuilding their lives and communities: displaced and war-affected populations, demobilized soldiers, and the victims of ethnic cleansing, to give just a few examples. The reintegration process must not only address the situation of these different groups, but must also promote peaceful and positive interactions between them, thereby contributing to the objective of social and political reconciliation. It is therefore essential that UNHCR’s reintegration activities adopt a communitybased approach, rather than being specifically targeted at returning refugees. Second, UNHCR’s reintegration efforts must contribute to broader goals than the promotion of self-sufficiency. Of course, it is essential to ensure that formerly displaced people and other members of society can meet their material needs and enjoy a satisfactory standard of living. But it is equally important to ensure that they enjoy a progressively greater degree of physical, legal, social and psychological security. Only by addressing the issue of human securi ty in this multi-dimensional manner, and by combining the efforts of UNHCR with those of other actors, is it possible to consolidate the reintegration process and to prevent continued instability. In this respect, particular attention should be given to the way in which UNHCR’s reintegration activities can contribute to social and political reconciliation in societies which have experienced violence and armed conflict. THE UNHCR AND THE SECURITY PA RADIGM Instead of discoursing at length on the character, justification and implications of the UNHCR operating within the relatively newly minted notion of human security, I set forth many of the key propositions of the securi ty paradigm within which the UNHCR is now attempting to grasp its mandate. FROM REFUGEES TO FORCED MIGRATION 15 Reconceptualizing Security 1. There has been an intellectual shift in the definition of security once restricted to the study of the threat and use of military force with a concern with its control and management in an interstate context. 2. The conception of security has shifted to the much broader notion of “human security, encompassing non-military and non-state threats (see Krause and Williams, 1997; Baldwin, 1997; Buzan, Waever and de Wilde, 1998). 3. The traditional realist concerns with state security in the new context emphasizes the need to tighten border controls, prevent human smuggling, and stop asylum seekers who may simply be fleeing poverty or a war. 4. This emphasis is at odds with the liberal emphasis on humanitarianism and human rights and, hence, refugee protection encompassed by the larger human security doctrine (see Lavenex, 2000). 5. Human securi ty is expected to encompass both the old notions of state security and the new non-state threats, thereby embracing the notions of protection and human rights; however, by defining refugees as one key source of threat to state security, the notion of “human security ” disguises rather than resolves the contradiction (see Hammerstad, 2000) and increases insecuri ty for the displaced and refugees in places such as Africa. The Prime Threats to Security 6. As the threat of nuclear confrontation has receded, the tolerance for intra-state wars has increased. 7. As totalitarian regimes on the left demonstrated that the ideology on which they were founded was inherently flawed, ethnic conflicts have moved out from the shadows of repression to occupy one ring of the current three ring circus. 8. As the authoritarian, military regimes on the right proved that they were unable to bring about long-lasting economic prosperi ty but rather economically corrupt regimes, largescale criminosis emerged as a primary securi ty threat to occupy a second circus ring in our present volatile world; this criminali ty ranges from car hijackings and seizure of natural resources, such as diamond mines, by militarized forces to what is considered by many American officials to be the most dangerous and threatening issue — narco-traffickers. 9. Though the realms of interethnic conflict and criminal operations interpenetrate one another, they are, in fact, viewed as separate and discrete phenomena. 16 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW 10. Refugees are no longer viewed primarily as indicators of the oppression of the other (and, hence, labeled as “freedom fighters”) and of our own tolerance and humanitarianism, but are increasingly viewed as threats to our own stability, particularly as the new information economy has a declining need for raw labor. Responses to those Threats 11. The movement of large populations displaced by violent conflict or induced to move by human smuggling rings are generally dealt with separately. 12. Populations forced to move are not only the by-products of such conflicts, but strategic outcomes and even one ultimate intention of violent conflict. 13. The lion tamer, whether it is taken as the Securi ty Council or as the United States (the remaining global superpower) not only locates the lions and the tigers in opposite circus rings, allowing them free reign outside of their cages, but himself occupies a separate ring in the center. 14. The lion tamer is unwilling to enter a ring with either tigers or lions let alone one in which they are in the same cage; he cracks his whip, but is unwilling to risk human resources to tame these wild beasts. 15. Though Western strategies have shifted to emphasize the mitigation and prevention of violent conflict and of international criminality with respect to forced population moves, there is no coherent strategy or parallel resolve to commit the human and material resources to even attempt to accomplish the task. Changes to the UNHCR 16. In response to these challenges, the UNHCR during the nineties emerged as the preeminent humanitarian agency in the midst of these complex emergencies. 17. The UNHCR traditional concern with refugee protection has become intimately intertwined with the new role of peacekeepers in intra-state conflicts. 18. As a result, the securi ty of its own humanitarian workers is now a preeminent concern (see UNHCR, 1998). 19. Temporary protection rather than permanent resettlement in third countries of resettlement has been emphasized. 20. Repatriation, even from countries of first asylum, has been given enhanced FROM REFUGEES TO FORCED MIGRATION 17 — some argue exclusive — emphasis, including the willingness to tolerate induced or even forced repatriation efforts (see Black and Koser, 1999). Refugees as Security Threats 21. Further, those same refugees have been used and recruited as refugee warriors (UNHCR, 1999), and the humanitarian aid directed at refugee relief has been utilized to fund the acquisition of arms (Crisp, 1999). 22. Support from a refugee receiving state has often been used to enable refugees to mobilize militarily, causing conflict to spread across borders (see, e.g., Lischer, n.d.). 23. As a result, that insecurity has been extended to humanitarian workers in the field as psychopathic war criminals, often using child soldiers and/or refugees, have targeted relief personnel (Weiss, 1999). 24. The result has been that humanitarianism can no longer be separated from politics; to protect organizational mandates, humanitarians have to be very sensitive to the political context in which they operate. 25. This political sensitivi ty means that the vaulted principles of neutrality, avoiding taking sides with either of the parties in dispute, and impartiality, the positive obligation to treat each side with evenhandedness in dealing with refugees, have had to be set aside in contexts where this general insecuri ty prevails. IMAGINED POSSIBLE ROLES FOR THE UNHCR What other roles could UNHCR play? I do not mean to deal with actual possibilities, such as a return to roles that UNHCR has emphasized in the past. Rather, I am concerned with imaginative possibilities, with counterfactuals, to serve as foils for the present mode of defining its role. I therefore begin by eliminating any reference to actual past roles that the UNHCR has played within the mandate of legal protector which, in certain periods, became the primary emphasis of UNHCR: • political resettlement and integration of individuals fleeing communism • material aid and diplomatic assistance (good offices) in the context of mass movements, initially largely from communist states, to enable both resettlement and sometimes reintegration • humanitarian co-ordinator of humanitarian aid for settlement in countries of first asylum • humanitarian aid agency for large scale resettlement in third countries (e.g., the Indochinese refugees) 18 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW • humanitarian aid agency emphasizing repatriation • an agency focused on all forced migration where it is appropriate and practical to act within the context of a human security framework Do these not cover the gamut of possible activities? ‘What else could UNHCR have taken on without assuming the role of a world government or a global humanitarian banker? Obviously there are possibilities beyond its mandate of providing legal protection for refugees. These possibilities focus both on helping refugees and on its legal mandate. They are intended to be suggestive rather than exhaustive. I now describe one actual historical possibili ty that once was assumed by international agencies within the context of state and national securi ty and not with the emphasis on the protection of the refugees themselves. In order to establish state security, the exchange of populations and the forcible removal of peoples was internationally sanctioned. When the century began, refugees were viewed as products of war largely between states rather than primarily as products of state oppression. The Greek-Turkish conflict following World War I is an example. In that conflict, population exchanges (now known as “ethnic cleansing”) were not just permitted but were endorsed by the international order. Population exchanges were then given a positive moral value. For Greece (Hellas) was assumed to have a universal significance. Greece epitomized universal values and the distinctive character of Europe as possessing a superior civilization (Canefe, 1998). In contrast, the disintegrating Ottoman empire stood for Oriental despotism and decadence. The struggle from the beginnings of the Greek Liberation movement one hundred years earlier from its state as an Oriental vassal (1821-29) to the reunion of all Greeks within that romantic vision of freedom and liberty a century later placed the separation of peoples within a moral context. Though the Greeks had suffered many humiliations in that struggle (1854, 1897, 1908), beginning with the Balkan wars of 19 12-13, the acquisition of territory and populations far exceeded anyone’s expectations. However, that expansion had its limits. In the Anatolian adventure, rooted in Great Britain’ s Sir Edward Grey ’ s offer in January 1915 to Greece of ‘large concessions on the coast of Asia Minor’ in return for Greece joining the Entente, Greece occupied Smyrna in May of 1919. The fact that Greeks only constituted about 20 percent of the population of Smyrna and lonia (2 of 10 million) was ignored in the dream of a higher moral purpose. Sanctioned by the Allied Powers, the Greeks landed in Asia Minor to “ protect local Greek and Armenian populations against a massacre.” In fact, because of that ill- FROM REFUGEES TO FORCED MIGRATION 19 fated adventurism, the scattered Greek population that had lived in Anatolia for millenia was forced to relocate. When the Kemalist forces attacked the Greeks in August 1922, the whole Christian population of Western Asia Minor followed the flight of the defeated Greek army to the Aegean islands and Thrace (the recently restored monarch was overthrown to purge Greece for such a humiliating defeat). In reaction to the homogenizing policies of the young Turks, tens of thousands of Muslim migrants from the Balkans and the Caucasus relocated to Turkey. In the fight for “Turkish independence,” Anatolia and parts of eastern Thrace were redefined as the ‘sole homeland of the Turkish people’ (Landau, 1981, 1995). In the aftermath of the disintegration of the Ottoman empire, Turkey emerged as a Western, albeit an anti-imperialist, state. The cosmopolitan, multiethnic, multireligious heritage of the Byzantine empire and Muslim civilization were rejected along with the Ottoman and Islamic modes of governance. But the struggle was also one for a new political morality. Each nation would have its own state to provide protection for the members of that state. The securi ty of the individual was primarily the responsibili ty of the state insofar as that individual was a member of the nation which the state was dedicated to serve. The modern nation-state was given the sovereign power to exercise supreme authority over its territory and its citizens. The twentieth century can be viewed as an effort at building strong territorial nation-states as the common basis for modernization. In the process, subjects became citizens. Unfortunately, most of the states created consisted of mixed populations. Turkey after World War I and Israel after World War II were created as ostensibly dominant national populations based upon the flight and even expulsion of long-settled historical communities. In both states, as in many with mixed populations, the modernization and secularization impulse produced a reaction by religious-based movements. But this gets us ahead of our story. The first quarter of the century was led by the dream of a free and unique people in a ‘national homeland’ governed by self-determination in which patria or loyal ty was owed to one’s people and the state as the protector of the heritage and destiny of that people. The characterization of the Nazis as nationalists before and during World War II cast a sinister shadow on nationalism and particularly on the forced evacuation of populations. Though the ethos of the exchange of populations persisted after the war, the new ethos stressed protection of people rather than their forced movement. UNHCR was given a legal mandate to protect refugees and not a mandate to create refugees or solve problems of ethnic con- 20 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW flict. There was no possibili ty of the UNHCR playing a role in facilitating the exchange of populations that occurred in Bosnia. Instead, the UNHCR tried to facilitate minority returns — that is, the return of refugees to areas where they would likely remain a minori ty even if they were once the majority. The fact that after the expenditure of enormous amounts of resources, the effort has been largely a failure should not be blamed on the UNHCR. The possibility of UNHCR acting to facilitate property exchanges and resettlement in majority areas was not part of the repertoire in the nineties. A very different example of a possible activity, which I believe no international refugee organization has ever played, follows. As an organization with a legal mandate to protect refugees, it is possible to conceive of the UNHCR becoming a standard bearer for the “right of return.” On the basis of the premise that once all territories were effectively governed by states, then every individual held a membership in a state to which he or she was entitled to membership, to return and to protection by that state. When states failed in that responsibility, the UNHCR could have taken the state or its rulers, using the threat to seize assets or deny travel rights as a form of pressure to ensure that the state acted to protect its citizens and did not produce refugees. I am not suggesting that such a role was historically possible. I am suggesting it was conceptually possible. Further, there were historical actions that could have sanctioned such an activity. By March 23, 1976, the right of return, implied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, was articulated in the Uppsala Declaration (June 21, 1972), the Declaration on the Right to Leave and Return, Articles 9 and 10.“ Every person is entitled to return to the country of which he is a national. No person shall be deprived of his nationali ty for the purpose of divesting him of the right of return to his country. ” Theoretically and based on international law, the UNHCR could have made the right to return its standard bearer. There are obvious reasons why this was not a real possibility. For one, those fleeing communism did not want the right to return. Further, Palestinians had also been given a right to return, but that had a different meaning and a different origin (see Adelman, 1994). It was a right to return to homes and not a homeland. The Arabic word watana means to reside and sojourn in a place as well as to choose a place to live. Though it is now translated as an equivalent of patria, it is really associated with nostalgia and sentimental attachment to a particular place considered as home versus a sense of loyalty to a state and a national identity. When Count Folk Bernadotte added the right to return to the Rhodes documents, it was because he held FROM REFUGEES TO FORCED MIGRATION 21 the feudal belief that individuals had a natural affini ty for the place to which they naturally belonged. It was a rig ht to return to a particular place and not a state in which one held membership. It was a recipe unacceptable not only to the Israelis but to many others who would view it as a source of instability and further conflict rather than a mode of resolving the plight of refugees. UNHCR became focused on repatriation when feasible and safe, rather than on asserting the rights of the refugees. In the interim, refugees were kept in camps or resettled in countries that would take them. My argument will be that it was not only political difficulties that stood in the way of UNHCR assuming the role of the champion of the right to return. UNHCR had never been programmed to assume that role as one of its possibilities. There are probably a number of other examples of possible roles we could conceive for the UNHCR. I present just one other example in addition to facilitating population exchanges or becoming the legal standard bearer for the right to return. Refugees are very often the by-product and sometimes the intended result of the political machinations of political leaders wielding power without regard to the rights of its citizens or the responsibilities that politicians owe them. Recently, with the rise of the human rights movement led by Amnesty International since the seventies and joined by organizations such as Africa Watch, and in general with the mushrooming of the international lawyering movement in many other areas such as human health and the environment, domestic courts have been used to pursue justice. Instead of emphasizing root causes, the effort has been put into doing something about impunity. This has led to the creation of international courts to try the perpetrators of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and of genocide in Rwanda. Most recently, this international effort led to the attempt to have Augusto Pinochet extradicted from Britain to be tried in Spain for crimes against humanity. It is logically possible (to repeat, I am not dealing with empirical or historical possibilities) to conceive of the UNHCR using its legal mandate to protect refugees by ending the impuni ty of those who are ultimately responsible for the production of those refugees. It is imaginatively possible to conceive of the legal mandate g iven to UNHCR being used to pursue remedies in the courts on behalf of refugees against those who could be held responsible for their current status. As far as I know, it has never been tried. But g iven the precedents in other fields, it is a possibility. I argue that it is a possibili ty that was never explored because it was not one of the possibilities programmed into UNHCR when it was created. 22 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW THE PROGRAMMING OF THE UNHCR Programming does not start after we are born but in the circumstances which g ive rise to that birth and the conditions present when the infant organization is still in the womb. Further, when it born, the organization may have a different identi ty and metamorphose into what became the UNHCR. Let us back up a bit, not to the mass population exchanges endorsed by the international communi ty before and even immediately after W\XTII. The central issue of refugees concerns people who do not have membership in a state that ensures their protection. “What is to be done with those who did not belong to any state? In the twenties, those who wanted to leave, or rather those that states wanted to encourage them to leave, could be given a Nansen passport so they could seek resettlement in countries that looked for new citizens and dreamed of forging totally new nations out of a polyglot of relocated individuals. This was suitable for individuals, particularly when states were looking for migrants in the 1 920s. But what happened when masses of refugees were fleeing who had no home state at a time when migrants were unwelcome? In the 1930s, under the pressure of the Depression and the rise of xenophobia, immigration countries closed their doors. In the context of the thirties, a new solution emerged to the problem of refugees. Instead of population transfers to create ethnically homogeneous populations, refugees were to be dealt with as individuals, to be repatriated if possible, and to be resettled under very restricted conditions if repatriation was not possible. This solution was not a product of human rights ideals with the onset of the Cold War. The principles emerged even before the onset of that half century of frozen belligerence. They were a by-product of a very different dialectic between the West and the East, this time between the Jews and the Orient rather than between Hellas and the Orient. Two competing nationalisms were in conflict in the Middle East. That conflict was caught up in international power politics. The central issue was the right of Jews to immigrate to Palestine, a right that became a desperate need with the rise of the Nazis and then the horrific plight of the remnant of Jewish refugees after World War II. Palestine at the time was not a separate state with sovereign control over who could enter as members. Palestine came into existence as a political entity separate from the Turkish Empire, as a territory placed under the political jurisdiction of the United Kingdom. The League of Nations had assigned the mandate over Palestine to Britain. The League of Nations confirmed the promise of the British Balfour Declaration for “the establishment in Palestine of a Nation- FROM REFUGEES TO FORCED MIGRATION 23 al Home for the Jewish people. ” That promise was qualified: “Nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civic and religious rights [note: not political rights] of the existing non-Jewish communities, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” The indigenous population was not given the basic right of members of a state, the right to determine who and how many others could become members of its community. Quite aside from various legal bases for their claims, the Arabs had a political claim based on a fundamental imperative. The issue was not simply two nationalisms in conflict, but two principles as well. One principle was that each nation in the world had the right to self-expression in a specific territory and the protection of a state to guarantee and secure the collective wellbeing of that nationality. The second principle was the rig ht of an indigenous population to self-determination in the territory in which it lived. The primary princip le on which the League of Nations was founded was the right of nations to self-expression in a territory. Self-determination, though an important princip le for the League of Nations, was subsidiary to the principle of national self-expression. Further, both were subject to the reality of state power. The League of Nations was not set up to destroy or challenge the p ower of existing states on the princip les of extranational self-expression or self-determination. These princip les were only app licable in areas where a vacuum in state authori ty had been created as a result of the dissolution of empires following World War I. The Arabs in Palestine had risen in violent protest in the 1 920s to defend their convictions. They fought Britain in a full-scale revolt in 1937 after Jewish immigration from Europe in the early 1 930s had increased the Jewish p ercentage of the population to over one third and just when the politics of immigration shifted to the issue of refugees. Jews were not simply suffering in Europe from a heritage of persecution which periodically manifested itself in pogroms. Hitler had come to power in Germany in 1933. By 1937, it was clear that the anti-semitism of the Nazis was now dictating government policy. Jews, who had suffered g overnment-instigated discrimination, were now being persecuted. Jews in flig ht from persecution were becoming refugees in desperate need of a safe haven. The Arabs, driven by their opposition to Jewish nationalism, opposed the use of Palestine as a sanctuary for Jewish refugees. In fact, the riots of 1936, which became a full-scale revolt in 1937, were in part motivated by the fear that the plig ht of the Jewish refugees in Europe and the reluctance of other countries to take in those refugees would inevitably result in the Jewish minori ty becoming a majority. 24 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW Britain set up the Peel Commission in 1936 to examine the conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine and the political future of Palestine. Was the Jewish homeland to develop as an independent state, a part of a federal state, or within a binational territorial state? Was the Arab nation, which still constituted the majority, to be given control over the territory given their absolute denial of any national rights whatsoever to the Jews? In the Report of July of 1937, the Peel Commission attributed the underlying cause of the Arab revolt to the desire of the Arabs for national independence and their hatred and fear of the establishment of a National Jewish Home. They recommended freezing immigration at 12,000 per year for five years. The Peel Commission also recommended partition. For the Arabs, resolving the conflict by partition was anathema. They escalated the rebellion and claimed that the Mandate was invalid. The Peel Commission, however, went further. It advised that “the most strenuous effort should be made to obtain an agreement for the exchange of land and population.” This echoed Churchill’s early characterization that the implementation of Zionism presumed a policy of population transfer. As the Peel Report stated, in the last resort, “the exchange would be made compulsory. ” The precedent cited was the Convention of Lausanne (1923), which provided, on paper, international legal sanction for the compulsory exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey. The Peel Commission was not the first or only body to consider an exchange of populations as part of the solution to the Palestine dilemma. Chaim Weizmann and the British Colonial Secretary discussed an exchange of populations. Weizmann, in reply to a question from the Royal Commission on January 12, 1937, implied that the country would not be able to assimilate the 400,000 Jews already present. Ben Gurion, after tremendous agonizing over the issue, concluded, “We must uproot from our hearts the assumption that the thing is not possible. It can be done ... we must prepare ourselves to carry out the transfer provision (Ben Gurion, J uly 12, 1937; 2BG, vol. IV, p. 299, quoted in Ben Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs, New York, 1980:182).” The Labour Party Executive of Britain in 1944 recommended that “the Arabs be encouraged to move out as the Jews move in (National Executive Committee of the Labour Party, 1944). Ex-President Hoover conceived an even more grandiose scheme in 1945 — sending Palestinian Arabs to Iraq for resettlement on a huge irrigation scheme. In February of 1947, when Roosevelt met Weizmann for the first time, he “tried out his idea about moving the Arabs out ” (Grose, 1983:138-139). Roosevelt FROM REFUGEES TO FORCED MIGRATION 25 independently came to the same conclusion as Hoover: “An ambitious plan was taking shape in his mind, a plan calling for the transfer of the entire Arab population of Palestine to a weaker Arab land” (Grose, 1983). American dollars with a dollop of British pounds and French francs would pay the development and resettlement costs. As already stated, the ideology of internationally sanctioned population exchanges was the prevailing solution to refugees between World War I and even after World War II. For Jews, population transfer was not just a hypothetical possibility, but a reality. The Jews of Germany were being forced out of Germany, and there was nowhere for them to go. The Jews in the rest of Europe were threatened in a rising tide of anti-semitism. The problem was no longer the right to immigration and the realization of a national rebirth. The problem became the plight of Jewish refugees. The problem would become the very survival of the Jewish people. The Jews were desperate. The British denied the Jews a haven from Nazi atrocities they so desperately needed at the time, though Britain did not endorse the principle of self-determination of the majority. In 1938, the Evian Conference was ostensibly called by Roosevelt to deal with the Jews of Germany who were attempting to flee but could not find countries that would receive them. In a public relations exercise, the rhetoric at the end of the conference stated that states had an obligation to those who lacked membership in a state that would provide protection. States accepted an obligation, unfortunately only in words, to provide a haven for refugees. But those meaningless words would be translated into meaningful principles after the war. Those concerned with virtue might hope that the World War that followed, and the death of 6 million Jews through the Holocaust, would make a difference to both the Arab and the British positions. Only 100,000 debilitated skeletons of European Jews were left in the camps at war ’ s end. The determination of the Arabs, and their ally, Britain, was revealed in their combined fight to resist transferring the international responsibility for the remnants of European Jewry to Palestine. To the roughly 100,000 Jews left in the Nazi concentration camps at war’s end would soon be added another 100,000—150,000 Jews fleeing different parts of Eastern Europe that were under or about to come under Soviet control. What was to be done with these refugees? For the Jewish refugees with Zionist convinctions, who believed Zion was the only place where they would be both safe and fulfilled, Palestine was the obvious destination. Practically speaking, Palestine was also the only option as well for most Jewish refugees who were not ardent Zionists, 26 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW given the reluctance of Western countries, even after World War II, to resettle Jews. The only other option was repatriation to the countries from which the Jews had fled, an unacceptable option for the Jews. The Arabs, now assisted by the British, fought the pressure for entry of Jewish refugees from Europe into Palestine by two means in the international diplomatic arena. They fostered the idea of repatriation of the Jews and they tried to prevent Jewish resettlement in Palestine. The battle took place in the discussions in the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) over the draft constitution of the International Refugee Organization (IRO). The Arabs fought to make the objective of the IRO, in dealing with the Jews, repatriation and not resettlement. To prevent resettlement in Palestine, they tried to introduce conditions to resettlement, namely the consent of neighboring countries and of the indigenous population. They also wanted the IRO to have exclusive authority to settle European refugees, largely through repatriation. They suggested that all private organizations working for resettlement transfer their assets to the IRO for that purpose. In the IRO constitution, a distinction was made between refugees — pre or post- war victims of Nazi or fascist regimes or of racial, religious or political persecution — and displaced persons (DPs) who were displaced in the course of or after World War II. As far as the DPs were concerned, the IRO was “to encourage and assist in every possible way the early return to their countries of origin” (Annex 1, para. 1(b), Draft Constitution of the IRO, Al 127). If Jews were classified as DPs, that classification would direct the IRO to arrange for their repatriation. If Jews were classified as refugees, then Palestine was the obvious place for them to be resettled, given the terms of the Mandate and the limitation of other options. As the earlier Report of the High Commissioner for Refugees submitted to the Twenty-First Ordinary Session of the League of Nations Assembly had noted, “Palestine alone has made a contribution of any size ” in reference to large-scale or group settlement of Jews. The Arab countries, led by Egypt, attempted to set repatriation as the goal of the IRO for all persons, whether refugees or DPs. Mr. Kamel, the delegate of Egypt, proposed amending paragraph 2 of the Preamble of the Draft Constitution of IRO to require serious reasons to justify resettlement. Though defeated, on November 19, 1946, Kamel tried again unsuccessfully by proposing the deletion of the phrase “ concerning displaced persons ” from Annex I section lB. Passing the amendment would have meant repatriation was advisable for both refugees and displaced persons (Robinson, p. 15). FROM REFUGEES TO FORCED MIGRATION 27 These attempts to dry up the source of Jewish immigration to Palestine were not restricted to the Arab countries. The United Kingdom played a leading role. The British delegate, supported by the Lebanese delegate, opposed the provision (Annex 1, Part 1, Section H, para. 3) (which passed) defining German and Austrian residents of Jewish origin as ‘ refugees.’ The opposition argued on what could be said to be very high moral principle — the ostensible high ground that this was merely a backhanded attempt to clear Europe of its Jews— in other words to accomplish Hitler’ s goal of making the German-speaking parts of Europe “Judenrein” (A/C.3/61; A/C.3/68:5, 9). Though the British acknowledged the difficulty Jews would have in living in places where they had been so persecuted, they admitted their real motives when they declared their “fear that the new provision might well involve the new IRO in schemes for Jewish immigration into Palestine, a matter which is being separately dealt with by bodies specially concerned with that problem” (E/REF/87, May 30, 1946). The main Arab effort, however, was not focused on repatriation but on the attempts to prevent resettlement of Jews in Palestine by placing specific conditions on resettlement. Dr. Malik of Lebanon attempted to qualify where the IRO could resettle refugees. He proposed that refugees could not be resettled where they “will create political difficulties in the countries of resettlement or in neighboring countries” or “without the consent of the peoples of the countries of reception and without full consultation with the States members of the United Nations most directly concerned” (E186:6). These and many other efforts were defeated. It was clear that all these legal maneuvers were aimed specifically at stopping Jewish migration to Palestine. An attempt was made to give the IRO exclusive jurisdiction over the DPs and refugees by transferring the assets of the Jewish Agency and the JOINT (the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) to the IRO. All these proposals failed. The clearest indication of support for the Jewish refugees going to Palestine emerged in the Committee on Finances of the IRO which, in its 1947 budget, provided for the use of German reparation funds to resettle 100,000 Jewish refugees, with the funds to be transferred to the JOINT and the Jewish Agency. The Arabs, backed by the British, were defeated in the attempt to make repatriation the exclusive function of the IRO or to include Jews in those slated for repatriation. Even when repatriation was argued on the highest morals grounds of equality, nondiscrimination and the opposition to a Europe free of Jews, the Arabs and British were unable to succeed in target- 28 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW ing the Jews for repatriation. When the major efforts focused on resettlement, they were unable to hedge the resettlement plans with conditions that would exclude Palestine as a target area for resettlement of the remnants of European Jews. The Jews, who had no votes in the UN, won every single moral and legal battle in the issue of resettling Jews in Palestine. But this had no effect on actually allowing the Jewish entry into Palestine. Britain was in charge of Palestine. Britain controlled the gates of entry. Whatever sympathy existed for the Jews, Britain stubbornly clung to its commitments of the White Paper restricting Jewish entry into Palestine. Power, not law, and certainly not moral principles, seemed to be the determinant of the fate of the remnant of European Jewry. Further, though the series of decisions on repatriation and resettlement were clear and unequivocal, the Arabs and their British ally continued to interpret the IRO constitution in such a way as to restrict the access of the Jews to Palestine. Out of the impasse of power and principle, out of the conflict of competing viewpoints, emerged the principles that governed the IRO and which set the foundation for the UNHCR. The following guiding principles emerged from the discussion of the refugee problem as a whole and from the decisions adopted by the United Nations with respect to the IRO. 1. Genuine refugees and displaced persons constitute a problem which is international in scope and character (see first paragraph of preamble to the Constitution of the IRO). 2. Refugees and displaced persons should return to their countries of origin (see second and third paragraphs of preamble and article 2, paragraph Ia). 3. Only in cases where refugees cannot be repatriated should steps be taken to resettle them elsewhere than in their countries of origin (see article 2, paragraph Ib). 4. In the performance of its functions, the IRO should act in accordance with the purposes and the principles of the United Nations, in particular as regards the resettlement of refugees and displaced persons in countries able and willing to receive them (see article 2, paragraph I). 5. In addition, the IRO should carry out the functions set forth in its Constitution in such a way as to avoid disturbing friendly relations between nations (see Annex I to the Constitution, paragraph Ig). 6. The IRO should exercise special care in resettling refugees or displaced persons either in countries contiguous to their respective countries of origin, or in non-self-governing territories and should also give due weight to any evidence of genuine apprehension and concern felt in regard to such plans, FROM REFUGEES TO FORCED MIGRATION 29 in the former case by the country of origin of the persons involved, in the latter case by the indigenous population of the non-self-governing territory in question (see Annex I, paragraph Ig). Note the following distinctions: 1. Genuine refugees versus displaced persons as products of war; 2. Priority given to repatriation; 3. Resettlement was to be targeted at countries able and willing to receive refugees; 4. In such activities, nothing should be done to upset friendly states. A new foundation had been laid very different than the previous practice of population transfers and exchanges. Yet as far as the Jews (or the Arabs) were concerned, population exchanges and transfers were the order of the day. In fact, that was the original intent of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). The goal was to foster economic development in order to resettle the displaced Palestinian population and, thus, effect a population transfer. UNRWA was created to carry forth a new version of population transfer based on economic incentives rather than coerced movements. It had continued to exist for almost the same period as UNHCR, as a shadow reminder of a different ideology for dealing with refugees. As far as Britain and the Arabs were concerned, the wishes of the refugees themselves counted for nothing. The rulings of international bodies counted for little more. Law and moral claims seemed to be mere backdrops. ‘When the law and moral issues conflicted with political, military and material interests, a rhetoric of higher moral principles might be used — equality, universality — but the law was construed to support the positions already adopted. Further, there would be no recourse to morali ty or law to resolve the dispute, particularly when the series of rulings on the IRO constitutional disputes about refugees had been so clear. In other words, just as the Nansen passports served to enable states to get rid of people whom they did not want, so the charter of the IRO enabled Europe to solve its postwar refugee problem. By distinguishing between DPs slated for repatriation and refugees slated for resettlement in contiguous countries — countries willing to receive them and non-self-governing states — a match was made between different types of refugees, different solutions and matching opportunities to effect those solutions. And it was all done within the confines of the power politics of the time. 30 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW However, in the process the template of IRO and thus of the UNHCR was set. Refugees had to be distinguished based upon persecution from others forced to migrate for other reasons. For those others, repatriation was the preferred solution. Internationally sanctioned population exchanges were not endorsed. Refugees suffering persecution would not be forced to return. On the other hand, their resettlement would only be undertaken either in countries willing to receive them or in non-self-governing territories. All such policies were to be carried out in such a way that ‘friendly ’ states would not get upset. Would anyone deny that these have not been the operating parameters of UNHCR? CONCLUSION This was the template on which the UNHCR was founded. UNHCR operates within the constraints of power politics. The repatriation, settlement or resettlement solutions are all restorative. UNHCR has never been vested with a true preventative mandate. Sometimes one, sometimes another restorative strategy is tried, depending on time and circumstances. The template would not have enabled the UNHCR to become a legal crusader either to punish those who could possibly be held responsible for producing refugees or to insist on rights to membership of the refugees, whether in their home states or any others in which they might settle. Given the past of internationally sanctioned population exchanges to which the UNHCR was ostensibly morally opposed, one could not imagine the UNHCR being vested with such a responsibility. In my view, the current effort to place the mandate of the UNHCR within a paradigm of human security is merely the effort to recognize the full range of its activities and encompass them within a coherent frame, one that acknowledges the realpolitic within which UNHCR operates. However, the possibili ty of UNHCR becoming a crusader for membership rights of refugees or for pursuing the victimizers of the refugees through the courts seems remote. So is the role of UNHCR facilitating population exchanges even when that solution may be the only realistic answer to the problem of the refugees under the circumstances. REFERENCES Adelman, H. 1994 “Refugees: The Right of Return. ” In Group Rights. Ed. J. Baker. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Pp. 164—185. Baldwin, D. 1997 “The Concept of Security, ” Review of International Studies, 23:5—26. FROM REFUGEES TO FORCED MIGRATION 31 Black, R. and K. Koser, eds. 1999 The End of the Refugee Cycle? Refugee Repatriation and Reconstruction. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Buzan, B., 0. Waever and de Wilde 1998 Security: A New Framework for Analysis. Boulder: Lynne Rienner. Canefe, N. 1998 “Sovereign Utopias: Civilisation Boundaries of Greek and Turkish Nationhood (1821—1923).” Ph.D. dissertation. York University. March. Chimni, B. S. 1998 “The Global Refugee Problem in the 21st Century and the Emerging Security Paradigm: A Disturbing Trend. ” In Legal Visions of the 21st Century. Ed. A. Anghie and Sturgess. The Hague: Kiuwer Law International. Crisp, J. 1999 “A State of Insecurity: The Political Economy of Violence in Refugee-Populated Areas of Kenya. ” Working Paper No. 16, “New Issues in Refugee Research. ” Goodwin-Gill, G. 1999 “Refugee Identity and Protection ’ s Fading Prospect. In Refugee Rights and Reality. Ed. F. Nicholson and P. Twomey. Cambridge: Cambridge Universi ty Press. Pp. 220—552. Grose, P. 1983 Israel in the Mind ofAmerica. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1983 Hammerstad, A. 2000 “Whose Security? UNHCR Refugee Protection and State Securi ty after the Cold War.” Unpublished paper presented at the International Studies Association, Los Angeles, March. Krause, K. and M. Williams 1997 Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases. London: UCL Press. Landau, J. 1981 1985 Pan-Turkism in Turkey: A Study of Irredentism. London: C. Hurst. Lavenex, S. 2000 “Migration and the EU’s New Eastern Border: Between Realism and Liberalism,” Journal of European Public Policy. LeDoux, J. 1999 “The Power of Emotions.” In States of Mind: New Discoveries about How Our Brains Make Us Who We Are. Ed. R. Conlan. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Lischer, S. K. nd. “Militarized Refugee Populations: Humanitarian Challenges in the Former Yugoslavia.” http://web.mit.edu/cis/www/migration/milit.htm Loescher, G. and J. Scanlan 1986 Calculated Kindness: Refugees andAmerica’s Half -Open Door. New York: Free Press. Miskel, J. “Migrant Smuggling from the Security Perspective.” Unpublished. National Executive Committee of the Labor Party 1944 “International Post-War Settlement Report. ” Labor Party Conference Report. December. 32 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW Ogata, S. 1999 Statement, UNHCR, to the Third Committee of the General Assembly of the United Nations, November 12. 1992 Statement, UNHCR, to the Third Committee of the General Assembly of the United Nations, November 10. Roberts, A. 1998 “More Refugees, Less Asylum: A Regime in Transformation,” Journal of Refugee Studies, 11 (4):375—395. Shabtai, T. 1985 Ben Gurion and the Palestine Arabs. From Peace to War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. United Nations 1999 “Internally Displaced Persons.” Report of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General. E/CN.411999179, January 25. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 1999 “The Securi ty and Civilian and Humanitarian Character of Refugee Camps and Settlements.” UNHCR EXCOM Report. January 14. 1998 “The Humanitarian Debate: Context and Contents,” Refugee Survey Quarterly, 7:1. Weiss, T. G. 1999 “Princi ples, Politics, and International Affairs,” Ethics th ~ International Affairs, 13:1—22. The UNHCR and World Politics: State Interests vs. Institutional Autonomy Gil Loescher University of Notre Dame This article situates the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) within the context of world politics. States remain the predominant actors in the international political system. But this does not mean that international organizations like the UNHCR are completely without power or influence. Tracing the evolution of the agency over the past half century, this article argues that while the UNHCR has been constrained by states, the notion that it is a passive mechanism with no independent agenda of its own is not borne out by the empirical evidence of the past 50 years. Rather UNHCR policy and practice have been driven both by state interests and by the office acting independently or evolving in ways not expected nor necessarily sanctioned by states. For most of the past 50 years, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has been at the core of assisting refugees. In the past decade, the international environment in which the office operates has changed dramatically, as has the work it carries out. UNHCR has assisted not only traditional refugees but also a broad category of “ persons of concern” which includes internally displaced persons, returnees and other victims of conflicts. It has also found itself operating in new circumstances, particularly in the midst of violent conflict. Consequently, it has operated alongside UN peacekeepers and other military forces. These changes illustrate the enhanced roles that both refugee crises and the UNHCR play in contemporary world politics. There is tendency on the part of both policymakers and analysts to regard the current refugee situation and the role that UNHCR plays as unique and without parallel in its 50 year history. This is unfortunate because, although some of the dilemmas and opportunities that UNHCR faces today are historically new, many are timeless and have been confronted before. However, surprisingly little systematic research has been done into the past policy responses of UNHCR to international political and refugee crises. Because of a preoccupation with more recent refugee crises, much of the history of © 2001 by the Center for Migration Studies of New York. All rights reserved. 0198-9183/00/3501.0133 IMR Volume 35 Number 1 (Spring 2001): 33—56 33 34 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW UNHCR, both its successes and failures, have been largely forgotten or ignored. As a result, the agency lacks a close history of its past operations and evolution and is always reinventing the wheel. There is a need for strong institutional memory and for more analyses of past crises. Most international relations literature on refugees adopts a statist perspective, which is still the dominant paradigm in international relations (see Barnett and Finnemore, 1999). This perspective claims that UNHCR, like all international organizations, is just a mechanism through which states act; it is not an autonomous actor, it is just a structure to do states’ bidding. One can find considerable support for this argument. UNHCR is totally dependent on donor states for funding operations and on host governments for permission to initiate operations on their soil. Thus, according to this view, UNHCR is in no position to challenge the policies of its funders and host governments and merely acts as an instrument of states. But this may be too simplistic a view. While UNHCR is constrained by states, the notion that it is a passive mechanism with no independent agenda of its own is not borne out by the empirical evidence of the past five decades. For example, it seems clear that the autonomy and authority of UNHCR has grown over the years and the office has become a purposive actor in its own right with independent interests and capabilities. This was especially the case in the formative phase of the organization, but it is also the case that UNHCR has not solely been an instrument of state interests in the more recent period. Rather, it is more correct to say that UNHCR policy and practice have been driven both by state interests and by the Office acting independently or evolving in ways not expected nor necessarily sanctioned by states (see Loescher, forthcoming). This article highlights a few key periods of UNHCR history and development and then concludes with a few comments about some of the future challenges facing the UNHCR. THE FORMATIVE PHASE OF UNHCR When the UNHCR was established in December 1950, Europe was the principal area of refugee concern as the Cold War intensified and new refugee flows moved from East to West. The Euro-centric orientation of the UNHCR reflected the international political environment but it also reflected the foreign policy priorities of the United States and the other major Western governments. The United States’ preoccupation with reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts in Europe after World War II, and with the rapidly THE UNHCR AND WORLD POLITICS 35 developing Cold War, critically affected the lens through which Washington viewed both its own refugee policy and the UNHCR (Loescher and Scanlan, 1986). U.S. policymakers considered refugee issues within the same policy framework as national security and even formally defined refugees as only those fleeing communism. U.S. generosi ty of asylum towards refugees from Eastern Europe was in part motivated by a desire to “roll back” or at least contain Communism by encouraging East European citizens to escape their homelands. Refugees became instruments of the Cold War, representing instruments of power and sources of espionage and information that were counted in the balance between East and West. 1 Refugees also became important symbols in the ideological rivalry of the Cold War. “Escapees” who crossed over to the West “ voted with their feet” and represented a significant political and ideological asset for the West. This, in turn, contributed to the determination of Communist regimes to impose severe barriers on exit. The UNHCR was created by Western governments in such a way that it would neither pose a threat to their sovereignty nor impose new financial obligations on them. States gave UNHCR a mandate to provide legal protection to refugees but no funds to carry out this function (Salomon, 1991). Most significantly, states did not want UNHCR to be an operational agency. At the height of the Cold War, refugee policy was simply considered too important by American leaders to permit the United Nations to control. To U.S. policymakers, the most important aspects of American refugee policy were maintaining international attention devoted to refugees from communist countries, encouraging emigration from the Eastern bloc, and minimizing international appeals for assistance funds to refugees (Loescher, 1989). To this end, the United States sought to limit severely the functional scope and independence of UNHCR and instead created its own American-led refugee organizations which were generously funded and whose mandates directly overlapped with UNHCR’s mandate. The denial of American financial and diplomatic support directly affected the organization’s abili ty to define an independent role for itself. No international organization had such an unpromising beginning. Nevertheless, despite the opposition of Western governments, the UNHCR began to exercise power autonomously in ways unintended by ‘The political and ideological importance of refugee policy to larger U.S. foreign policy interests is underscored repeatedly in U.S. National Security Council, CIA and State Department policy papers of the period; see, e.g. Psychological Strategy Board, Policy Guidance No. D-1 8a, 195 1:5. 36 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW states at UNHCR’s creation. The first High Commissioner, Gerrit van Heuven Goedhart, enlarged the scope of his office by obtaining the capaci ty to independently raise funds and by assuming material assistance responsibilities. With a grant from the Ford Foundation, the UNHCR involved itself for the first time in providing assistance to promote the integration of refugees in Western European asylum countries. This funding also enabled UNHCR to take the lead role in responding to a refugee crisis in West Berlin in early 1953, thereby demonstrating its usefulness to the major powers and raising the Office’s international profile. These early successes legitimized the need for UNHCR material assistance to refugees and directly led to the establishment of a UNHCR program for permanent solutions and emergency assistance. This paved the way for the UN to designate the UNHCR as the “lead agency ” to direct the international emergency operation for Hungarian refugees in 1956 despite initial American opposition. The Hungarian operation also demonstrated the important diplomatic role that the High Commissioner could play in events at the center of world politics. In the midst of the first major Cold War refugee crisis, the UNHCR played an essential mediating role between East and West, involving the repatriation of nearly 10 percent of the Hungarian refugees back to Hungary — an operation that was extremely controversial and was initially opposed by Western governments. 2 This broke the almost complete isolation of the Office from the socialist countries. Thus, largely on its own initiatives, UNHCR grew from a strictly nonoperational agency with no authori ty to appeal for funds to an institution with a long-range program emphasizing not only protection but, increasingly, material assistance. This remarkable transition supports the view that international organizations, such as UNHCR, frequently exhibit a relative amount of autonomy and independence and that states are not the only important actors in international relations. During the 1950s, the UNHCR also took initial steps to lay the groundwork for an expansion of its activities to the developing world. This new approach was the “ good offices” formula which involved the UN General Assembly granting UNHCR the authori ty to raise funds or to initiate assistance programs for operations outside its usual mandate. It was applied in the first instance to raise funds for Chinese refugees in Hong Kong in the mid 1950s. 2The High Commissioner’ s policy was outlined for the first time at the UNREF Executive Committee meeting on January 31, 1957. THE UNHCR AND WORLD POLITICS 37 Even more significant to the UNHCR’s expansion into the developing world was the office’s response to the Algerian refugee crisis (for background to UNHCR’s role in the Algerian refugee crisis, see Ruthstrom-Ruin, 1993). In May 1957, Tunisia requested material assistance from the UNHCR for the 85,000 Algerian refugees who had fled across the border during the previous two and a half years. This was the first occasion in which UNHCR emergency assistance was requested in the Third World; thus it marked an important step in the development both of the political conditions under which the UNHCR had to act and of the functions it was permitted to perform. However, the decision to offer assistance for Algerian refugees was politically difficult and engendered an intense debate within the UNHCR about its future role in the developing world (Interview with Bernard Alexander, UNHCR ’s chief of cabinet at the time and who opposed Lindt’s position and subsequently resigned, Oxford, 1986). The second High Commissioner, Auguste Lindt, felt that the Tunisian request presented an opportunity for the UNHCR to use the new international support and goodwill that the office had earned in its response to the Hungarian refugee emergency to confirm its position as the leading international refugee agency and as the only international organization able to adapt to new emergencies wherever they arose. Moreover, the UNHCR’s decision to intervene in the Hungarian refugee emergency on the basis that all the Hungarians prima facie fell under the UNHCR mandate, and that it was impossible in a mass exodus to screen each asylum seeker individually, had established a precedent for action which was difficult for the UNHCR to ignore in the Algerian case. Lindt feared that the UNHCR would be accused of discriminatory treatment if it neglected the Algerians and he did not want to be perceived as the “High Commissioner for European refugees only ” (“Interview with Auguste Lindt,” UNHCR Oral History Project). He felt that the UNHCR mandate as defined in its Statute was worldwide and that his office had responsibili ty for dealing “with completely different people and not only refugees from communism” (“Interview with Auguste Lindt,” UNHCR Oral History Project). He was concerned that to refuse assistance to Tunisia would estrange the organization from a growing bloc of developing nations and would weaken the more favorable attitude that the Soviet bloc had recently adopted towards the agency. The decision to aid Algerian refugees was not easy, however, and UNHCR had to overcome strong government opposition. The French government denied the authori ty of the UNHCR to give assistance in this case, 38 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW claiming that Algeria was an integral part of the state of France and that the eventual solution could only be the return to Algeria of the people who had taken refuge in Tunisia and Morocco. France also feared UNHCR involvement would internationalize the crisis, and major Western governments were unwilling to oppose the French. Only through persistent and courageous diplomacy on the part of the High Commissioner was French resistance to UNHCR involvement overcome. Indeed, it was one of Lindt’s most noteworthy diplomatic accomplishments and is another example of UNHCR acting in ways counter to powerful state interests at the time. In the view of many developing states, the UNHCR’s action on behalf of Algerians signified a turning point in the office’s geographical scope and function. The Algerian operation was a bridgehead leading to a period of both global and institutional growth for the UNHCR. These initiatives laid the groundwork for UNHCR expansion into the developing world in the 1 960s. In his final address to his Executive Committee in 1960, Lindt noted that the UNHCR had to remain flexible and elastic in responding to new refugee situations. Little did he realize the momentous challenges that would confront UNHCR, particularly in Africa. THE COLD WAR, THE THIRD WORLD AND UNHCR. 1960s THROUGH THE 1980s During the 1960s and 1970s, the Cold War extended beyond Europe into parts of the Third World. Violent decolonization, as well as post-independence civil strife and warfare in Africa, generated vast numbers of refugees and underscored the strategic importance of conflicts outside of Europe (for background, see Zolberg, Suhrke and Aguayo, 1989). Both the East and West vied for influence in Africa and Asia and, at the same time, tried to minimize the possibilities of their ideological and strategic opponents gaining political advantage in these regions. Throughout the Third World, the United States and USSR competed to build up local allies and, through economic aid, political support and weapons deliveries, constructed a range of client regimes which included not only governments but also liberation movements (Loescher, 1992). The United States perceived refugee problems in developing countries as sources of instability which the Soviet Union could exploit for its own advantage in extending hegemony in the Third World. In the face of an escalating Cold War struggle, Western governments came to perceive assistance to refugees as a central part of their foreign policy towards newly independent THE UNHCR AND WORLD POLITICS 39 states, thus using foreign aid as one of the principal tools in this East-West struggle for influence. During this period, governments made little distinction between military aid, development assistance and refugee relief aid. More importantly, because the UNHCR was a donor-dependent organization, possessing no communist member states and being dominated by the West, there was little risk of multilateral refugee aid being used in ways unacceptable to the principal donor governments. Thus, Western governments were willing politically and financially to support UNHCR’s operational expansion into the developing world because international action on the refugee issue was also now viewed as a way to deal with potential sources of instability in the Third World. At the same time, the infusion of newly independent African and Asian member states in the United Nations made it possible to pass UN “ good offices” resolutions which authorized the UNHCR to assist a broad category of people displaced by conflict outside of Europe. The two High Commissioners during this period, Felix Schnyder and Sadruddin Aga Khan, were both politically astute and anticipated the major political transformations in the international system, namely decolonization and the emergence of newly independent states in Africa and Asia and the mass exoduses of refugees in the developing world. Both High Commissioners realized that the traditional concepts and legal definitions that the office had used in Europe would not apply in the less developed countries and took steps to expand the office ’ s global reach. Schnyder made clear from the very start that he foresaw a shift in the UNHCR away from programs involving European refugees to a focus on assistance to refugees in the develop ing world and that he would rely on the authority of the “ good offices ” resolutions to respond to new refugee emergencies and to undertake new tasks. Later, he initiated steps that would lead to the adoption of the 1967 protocol to the Refugee Convention which deleted the geographic and time limitation of the 1951 Convention. From its expansion into Africa in the 1 960s, the UNHCR, under Sadruddin Aga Khan, rapidly evolved into a trul y g lobal organization during the next decade. Refugee emergencies emerged on all continents, multiplied and took on numerical proportions hitherto unknown to UNHCR. Faced with mass exoduses from East Pakistan, Uganda and Indochina, with hig hly politicized refugee crises in Chile and Argentina, and with the repatriation and reintegration of refugees and internally di s p laced persons in Southern Sudan, UNHCR embarked on new assistance programs in a number of refugee and “ refugee-like ” situations around the world. Sadruddin, an expan- 40 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW sionist High Commissioner, was determined to make the UNHCR the most important international humanitarian organization, and he largely accomplished this objective. Under his leadership, there occurred further enlargement of refugee law and the “ good offices ” doctrine, making the UNHCR the coordinator of international assistance to refugees and victims of “ man-made ” disasters and opening up assistance channels for the internally di s p laced. The UNHCR’ s assumption of the role of “focal point, ” which was first used in the 1971 Bangladeshi crisis and later in South Sudan and Cyprus, became an acceptable international arrangement to coordinate the activities of the UN in a major humanitarian emergency, when the technical and material needs would exceed the mandate of any one agency. This would be the first of many refugee crises in which UNHCR would be called upon by the Secretary-General to act as the UN lead agency for the coordination of international humanitarian assistance. In the process, UNHCR developed an enormous agenda and became an indispensable and autonomous actor in many of the major political developments in Africa, Asia and Latin America. During most of the 1960s and 1970s, UNHCR experienced few of the kinds of asylum problems in the industrialized states that would confront the office in later decades. Most governments acknowledged that UNHCR’s protection division enjoyed unrivaled specialized knowledge and expertise concerning refugee and asylum law and deferred to the office ’ s authority on asylum policy. With the notable exception of the United States, the UNHCR played an active role in the refugee determination procedures of many industrialized states and exerted a considerable influence over government decisions. Hence, UNHCR’ s autonomy was enhanced, and most governments in Western Europe demonstrated a generally liberal attitude towards asylum seekers. THE NEW COLD WAR, PROXY CONFLICTS, AND THE UNHCR The intensification of the Cold War during the late 1 970s and the 1 980s shifted further the structure of the bipolar conflict. As rivalry between the United States and the USSR caused both powers to support local clients across the world, internal conflicts over social order became globalized and extremely violent (Zolberg, Suhrke and Aguayo, 1989). As a result, proxy conflicts in Indochina, Af ghanistan, Central America, the Horn of Africa and Southern Africa became protracted and debilitating affairs. These conflicts perpetuated endemic violence which, in turn, generated large outpourings of refugees. Some of these refugees were resettled in other regions or continents, THE UNHCR AND WORLD POLITICS 41 but most remained in neighboring countries where they continued to actively participate in the conflicts by providing labor, military recruits and political legitimacy to the guerrilla resistance movements. These “ refugee warrior” communities served as important instruments and proxies both in the interventionist policies of the external powers and in the regional power struggles. These refugee crises presented complex challenges to UNHCR as the office found itself responding to massive refugee crises on three different continents simultaneously. The UNHCR, under Sadruddin ’s successor, Poul Hartling, also found it difficult to maintain an impartial and humanitarian approach to its work. Virtually all of its funding came from Western governments who had a geopolitical interest in supporting UNHCR camps which housed anti-communist “refugee warriors.” In a situation similar to the 1 990s, states used UNHCR and humanitarian assistance as an excuse for political inaction in resolving long-standing regional conflicts. This cost UNHCR the relative autonomy it had developed during the Sadruddin era. The UNHCR’s protracted care and maintenance programs caused annual UNHCR expenditures to explode from approximately $76 million in 1975 to more than $500 million in 1980. The UNHCR became increasingly operational, running more and more programs by itself and offering a much greater variety of services for refugees. As a consequence, the annual budget of the UNHCR doubled each year from 1978 to 1980. Conditions in countries of origin rarely permitted repatriation, either because of conflict or because the refugee-sending state discouraged the return of exiles. In addition, as the “ second” Cold War froze political relations between Moscow and Washington, the international community failed to devise comprehensive or long-term political solutions or provide any alternatives to prolonged camp existence. At the same time, a growing number of Third World refugees appeared on the doorsteps of Western countries to seek asylum. Unlike in earlier periods, these “jet age ” refugees were no longer confined to their region of origin and now traveled directly to Western countries by air transport. The asylum crisis in the industrialized world further raised the overall financial cost of the global refugee problem for the donor state community ~ The asylum crisis put Western governments into direct conflict with the UNHCR, which struggled but ultimately lost the fight to maintain the right of asylum for newly arriving refugees and other claimants. In the mid-1980s, Jean-Pierre Hocke, the sixth High Commissioner, sought to break out of this deadlock and to make the office more relevant to 42 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW the contemporary refugee problem. In his view, the traditional means and approaches of the office no longer worked. Rather, he advocated a new strategy that required UNHCR to deal not only with asylum countries, as the office was traditionally inclined to do, but also with countries of origin and with the “root causes” of refugee exoduses. In particular, the High Commissioner identified repatriation as “ the only realistic alternative to indefinite subsistence on chari ty ” (Hocke, 1989). This analysis of the refugee crisis and the UNHCR’s role presaged many of the policies and practices that the office would try to put into effect in the post-Cold War period of the 1990s. However, Hocke ’ s ideas were clearly too far ahead of the times. Throughout most of the 1 980s, Cold War politics continued to paralyze diplomatic initiatives to break the deadlock of regional conflicts in most of Africa, Asia and Central America, and hence most refugees were destined to remain trapped in camps for most of the decade. THE POST-COLD WAR ERA AND UNHCR The 1 990s ushered in a new era in which humanitarian issues played a historically unprecedented role in international politics (Roberts, 1996). Refugee movements assumed a new degree of political importance in the discourse about global and regional securi ty and were the subject of increasing discussion in political and military fora such as the UN Securi ty Council, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and regional organizations. In many international political and securi ty crises, refugees were viewed as posing threats to international securi ty and thus providing a basis for action under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter. In northern Iraq, Somalia, former Yugoslavia and Haiti, international intervention was authorized in response to refugee flows. Moreover, forced displacements were also at the center of crises in the Great Lakes region, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Albania, Kosovo, and East Timor. In most of these cases, the UN, or regional or national forces acting with UN authorization, attempted to tackle crises leading to mass displacement by directly intervening in intrastate conflicts. ‘While the new security importance of refugee movements, combined with greatly increased global media coverage, forced the international community to focus more urgently on refugee issues, the United States and the world’s other most powerful states have been reluctant in recent years to deploy troops in ongoing conflicts, particularly in Africa where their strategic interests are limited. At the same time, governments feel compelled to respond to refugee disasters, especially those covered extensively by the media, THE UNHCR AND WORLD POLITICS 43 and therefore are likely to task the UNHCR and other international agencies to provide relief aid. The provision of humanitarian assistance is financially and politically a relatively low risk option for governments because it satisfies the demands of both the media and public opinion for some kind of action to alleviate human suffering. But it is also used by governments as an excuse for refusing to take more decisive forms of political and military intervention (Shawcross, 2000). As a result of these shifts in attitudes towards intervention, fundamental changes have also occurred in the international refugee regime, especially the way in which the UNHCR operates (UNHCR, 1995). During the Cold War, in-country cross-border assistance and protection was taboo for UN agencies because this involved violation of sovereignty. In the post-Cold War period, by contrast, the UNHCR tackled refugee-producing situations at or near their source. This major change in the handling of refugee issues included an increased focus on preventive action, even in countries at war, to reduce the likelihood of massive refugee flows across borders. Frequently, the UNHCR was also requested to take part in comprehensive and integrated UN peacekeeping or peacemaking operations which involved political and military actors of the UN. In response, the UNHCR extended its services to a much wider range of people who were in need of assistance, including returnees, internally displaced people, war-affected populations, the victims of mass expulsions, and unsuccessful asylum seekers as well as refugees (UNHCR, 1997). For example, “ war affected populations,” that is, people who had not been uprooted but needed humanitarian assistance and protection, comprised a substantial proportion of the UNHCR’s beneficiary population during the height of the 1990s Bosnian conflict (Weiss and Pasic, 1997). As a result, the numbers of displaced people and war affected populations receiving UNHCR assistance increased dramatically. The number of people of concern to UNHCR increased from 15 million in 1990 to a peak of 26 million in 1996. Of this total, refugees constituted only about 50 percent of UNHCR’s beneficiaries. Consequently, the UNHCR has in many senses expanded from a refugee organization into a more broadly-based humanitarian agency. The high priori ty given to humanitarian operations and the increasing recognition of a link between refugees and international security also meant that UNHCR played an increasingly important role in international political negotiations. During the 1990s, Sadako Ogata, the High Commissioner, regularly briefed the UN Securi ty Council on humanitarian situations and frequently drew their attention to the political and strategic significance of 44 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATIoN REVIEW refugee and other forced movements of people. In the Balkans crises, the High Commissioner chaired the Humanitarian Issues Working Group of the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia and regularly met international peace negotiators, government leaders, and leaders of the warring factions. For a High Commissioner, Ogata had unusual access to prime ministers, presidents and their foreign ministers. The refugee and IDPs emergencies of the 1 990s placed emphasis upon humanitarian action, primarily on assistance — the delivery of food, shelter and medicine — to refugees and war-affected populations. Successes and failures of humanitarian action were judged primarily in terms of technical standards of aid delivery and in fulfilling the material needs of refugees and threatened populations. The central importance of human rights protection of displaced and threatened populations was frequently neglected. While UNHCR and other humanitarian organizations were able to deliver large quantities of humanitarian supplies under extremely difficult conditions, they were much less successful in protecting civilians from human rights abuses, expulsions, and “ethnic cleansing” (Rieff, 1995; Ignatieff, 1997). High-level relief efforts in Iraqi Kurdistan, Bosnia, Rwanda, Democratic Congo and Kosovo underlined dramatically the detachment of assistance and protection and the inadequacy of providing protection in traditional humanitarian relief programs (Frohardt, Paul and Minear, 1999). In each of these operations, the international community was largely reactive to events and failed to address the direct links between violence, human rights abuses and humanitarian emergencies. The UNHCR and other humanitarian actors also found themselves working in highly militarized and politicized situations such as was found in the Great Lakes after the Rwandan genocide (Gourevitch, 1998; see also Boutroue, 1998; Prunier, 1997; Martin, 1998). Critics maintained that UNHCR exacerbated the situation in the Great Lakes by providing assistance to Hutu militants in the camps, thereby contributing to greater humanitarian crises in the long run (Amnesty International, 1995; Millwood, 1996). Because UNHCR, the local government and the international communi ty failed to ensure the civilian character of Hutu refugee camps, they rapidly became the rear base for the army of the defeated Rwandan genocidaires. The refugees were treated as political hostages by these forces, and the camps became the launching pad for attacks against the new government in Kigali. The militarization of refugee camps is not a new phenomenon. When combatants are present in refugee camps, these settlements are viewed by THE UNHCR AND WORLD POLITICS 45 antagonistic forces as sources of assistance and protection to their enemies and therefore as legitimate military targets. The presence of “ refugee warriors” in camps also undermines civilian and international authority and can lead to camps falling under the control of military forces. In addition, camps contain undefended resources, such as food, vehicles and relief supplies, and people who can constitute new soldiers or can be taken as hostages. Relief supplies provided by humanitarian organizations can feed war economies, thus helping to sustain and prolong war. UNHCR involvement with militarized refugee camps has a long history. During the 1 970s, the camps for South African refugees in Mozambique and Tanzania, for Zimbabwean refugees in Mozambique and Zambia, and for Namibian refugees in Angola were all controlled by their respective liberation movements and were consequently subject to raids by the South African and Rhodesian armed forces. During the 1 980s, “ refugee warriors” used refugee camps in Pakistan, along the Thai-Cambodian border, in Central America, and in the Horn of Africa to provide themselves with food and medicines, to forcibly recruit new soldiers, and, in some instances, to tax refugee workers to purchase arms. As in eastern Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) since mid-1994, armed militias also prevented refugees from returning home, in effect keeping them hostage to their struggles. In almost every refugee crisis in recent years, camps have been subject to some sort of military pressure, ranging from bombardment by the Turkish air force of Kurdish camps in northern Iraq, forced military recruitment and the movement of militias between Sierra Leone and Liberia, raids by rebel forces of Sudanese camps in northern Uganda, and pressured recruitment by the Kosovo Liberation Army of refugees out of camps in Albania and Macedonia. Despite greater attention to this issue by UNHCR in recent years, few active steps have been taken to prevent the militarization of refugee camps in the future. The main focus of the international humanitarian response to refugee crises continues to be material assistance at the expense of the human rights protection of refugees. Increasing humanitarian action to respond to refugee crises has coincided with a weakening of traditional protection and asylum mechanisms in most states. More and more governments are becoming less enthusiastic about receiving refugees and asylum seekers, especially when the newcomers are of a markedly different cultural or racial background. In the face of growing numbers of illegal migrants and abuse of asylum procedures during the past decade, Western governments have enacted severe controls on immigration which reduce the scope of appeals from decisions on 46 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW refugee eligibili ty and erect barriers to those seeking refuge from war and persecution as well as those looking for jobs and new homes. The closure of borders to prevent unwanted refugee influxes is now much more widespread than it was during the Cold War. For example, prevention of mass refugee flows from the former Yugoslavia during 1991—1995 was an explicit strategy of Western European countries in their approach to that conflict. Thus, in the twenty-first century, refugees have become a symbol of system overload, instead of a symbol of what was always best in the Western liberal tradition. It is also significant that the trend towards excluding asylum seekers has spread to governments in the South as well as the North. For developing countries, the numbers alone present material burdens that can threaten governmental authority. Alarmed by the economic, environmental, social and security costs of hosting mass influxes of refugees, a number of governments across the world have taken steps to exclude asylum seekers from their territory and to ensure the rapid — and in some cases involuntary — repatriation of refugees. Diminishing donor government support for long-term refugee assistance, coupled with declining levels of official development assistance and the imposition of structural adjustment programs on many poorer and less stable states, has reinforced this attitude and contributed to the hostili ty towards refugees. FUTURE POLICY CHALLENGES FACING UNHCR During the past decade, the simple humanitarianism of granting asylum to refugees has given way to a complicated pattern of action containing many elements of uncertainty and insecurity. A radically transformed UNHCR aimed at preventing conditions that generate refugee flows and ensuring refugee return has also emerged in recent years. Some of these changes are not wholly satisfactory nor are they always positive. This article has identified specific occasions in the past where UNHCR sometimes acted as a powerful actor who had independent effects on world politics. But critics have also pointed out that the UNHCR can operate in ways that have undesirable effects. One frequent source of criticism involves UNHCR’s recent emphasis on repatriation as the office’s principal solution. Before the late 1980s, repatriation was actively discouraged by UNHCR’s Western donors as most of world’s refugees originated from communist countries. When repatriation did occur, the timing of UNHCR’s involvement in voluntary repatriation programs was determined largely by the refugees themselves. To a large extent, THE UNHCR AND WORLD POLITICS 47 refugees themselves decided when to return and under what conditions. With the ending of the Cold War, repatriation was increasingly perceived as the only effective solution to refugee problems. As the superpowers withdrew from long-standing regional conflicts, the numbers of refugees returning home increased dramatically. By this time, too, governments everywhere were also becoming more restrictionist and were putting pressure on UNHCR to return refugees to their home countries as quickly as possible. However, UNHCR was not influenced only by powerful donor states but also by new thinking about repatriation within UNHCR. To respond to the new international political climate of the early 1 990s, UNHCR began to emphasize the role that repatriation and reintegration could play in international security. Thus, repatriation became a central part of UNHCR’s new global strategy, making it more likely that repatriation would be promoted under less than the strict conditions of voluntary repatriation. The office developed terminology and concepts like “safe return” which stipulated that conditions in the home country did not have to improve substantially but only appreciably so that there could be a “ safe” return. In the UNHCR’s eyes, it was far better for most refugees to return home at the earliest opportuni ty to benefit from the UNHCR’s programs than to remain in refugee camps that could offer them no future. For the UNHCR, this was a dramatic shift from its traditional position that repatriation had to be a strictly voluntary decision by refugees to return to a place that in their view no longer presented a threat to their safety. Rather, it would now be the UNHCR who would make the assessment as to whether conditions were safe enough for refugees to return. Moreover, there was a growing view that refugee safety did not necessarily outweigh the securi ty interests of states or broader peace building and conflict resolution goals. Thus, repatriation came to be perceived as part of the office ’ s emphasis in the early 1990s on preventive protection and encouraging the responsibili ty of countries of origin to their own citizens. As a number of commentators have pointed out, the forced return of the Burmese Muslim minority, the Rohingya, to Myanmar in the mid 1990s is a stark example of this new policy preference for repatriation (see Barnett, 2000; Abrar, 1995; U.S. Committee for Refugees, 1995; Asia Watch, 1996). In Myanmar, repeated human rights abuses and forced labor imposed upon the Rohingya by the Burmese military led to mass refugee outflows in 1978 and again in 1991—92 to Bangladesh. Bangladesh initially welcomed the Rohingya, but within a few months of both influxes, the government reached agreements with the Myanmar government for the mass return of the 48 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW refugees. In both periods, UNHCR assisted in the repatriation of the Rohingya to Myanmar. In the most recent period, some 230,000 Rohingya repatriated between mid-1992 and late 1997. UNHCR also made efforts to improve the prospects of the return of the Rohingya by providing assistance and a monitoring presence in Rakhine state inside Myanmar. The circumstances of the most recent repatriation have been controversial, however, and both Bangladesh and UNHCR have been criticized for the lack of mechanisms to ensure either the voluntary nature of repatriation or the safety of refugees after their return home. There were reports of Bangladesh officials using threats, intimidation, physical abuse, and withholding food rations to coerce refugees the “ repatriate voluntarily. ” Given these circumstances, most Rohingya had little choice but to return. Despite this, UNHCR maintained that the repatriation was voluntary. UNHCR was also criticized for not informing the Rohingya adequately about their right to refuse repatriation and for denying them complete and accurate information about the human rights situation in their places of origin. UNHCR also appeared to accept the position of Myanmar that most of the Muslims of Rakhine state were not entitled to citizenship, thereby laying the foundations for the prospect of further expulsions in the future. New arrivals continue to enter Bangladesh, but the government has denied UNHCR and international NGOs access to them, fearing that providing the refugees assistance would encourage many more Rohingya to enter Bangladesh. Because the UNHCR focused almost entirely on repatriation during the past decade, it virtually ignored other possible solutions, often to the detriment of refugees. A range of traditional solutions — local integration projects, educational programs, income-generating, the promotion of refugee participation — all disappeared from the office ’ s range of possible options for long-staying refugee populations during the past decade. Instead, believing that return provided the only humane solution to refugee problems, the UNHCR essentially ran long-term programs in an emergency mode which were damaging to the long-term welfare of refugees stuck in protracted camp situations. A good example is the more than 90,000 Nepali-speaking Bhutanese refugees (the Lhotsampas) who have been entrapped in makeshift camps in the Jhapa and Morang districts of eastern Nepal since 1991 (the author visited these camps in early 1998 and interviewed UNHCR officials and refugees). These refugees fled discriminatory citizenship policies, human rights violations, and forcible expulsion by the Bhutanese government. These camps are assisted by UNHCR and NGOs. Despite a strong desire to return THE UNHCR AND WORLD POLITICS 49 home, the Lhotsampas have been obliged to spend practically an entire decade without access to educational or income-generating opportunities. In lengthy and protracted negotiations, Nepal wants all Lhotsampas to repatriate, but Bhutan refuses to acknowledge many of the refugees as citizens, saying they left the country willingly and have no right to return. Consequently, the Lhotsampas have spent the last ten years in idle and unproductive exile and have become more frustrated with each unsuccessful round of repatriation negotiations. For those refugees who have spent years, even decades, warehoused in remote and forgotten camps, such as the Bhutanese in Nepal or long-staying refugees in camps in Tanzania or other refugee groups, the time seems appropriate to promote wage-earning opportunities and self-sufficiency for these groups so that they can become productive and contribute to their host societies until such time that refugees are willing or can return home. The often expressed concern that refugees do not return home unless they are encouraged or coerced to do so is misplaced. Refugees usually return when they consider it is safe to do so, when other interests are met, or when they are encouraged by their political leaders to do so (Stein and Cuny, 1992). Moreover, the UNHCR is frequently not in the best position to determine when it is best or most appropriate for repatriation to take place and often has little influence over the course of events. In Kosovo, for example, the UNHCR was powerless to prevent people from returning to their homes because the Kosovar Albanians had made the determination that the situation was safe enough for them to repatriate. Another source of criticism concerns whether UNHCR’s expansion into a full-fledged operational agency has affected its core mandate to provide international protection to refugees. Critics maintain that the transformation of UNHCR into a more general humanitarian emergency organization has compromised its capacity and willingness to provide protection and has put the agency at the mercy of a much broader set of political and strategic calculations (Goodwin-Gill, 1999). Because UNHCR needs to raise more and more voluntary funds for its operations, obtain access to increasingly volatile internal situations, win the confidence of competing actors, and promote compromise solutions, the agency is not well placed to stand up for protection principles regarding refugees. To fully promote protection would threaten funding, access to conflict situations, and the abili ty to be operational. There has been much debate, particularly outside of UNHCR, about whether and how the UNHCR should be modified to ensure that it remains relevant for another 50 years. The UNHCR will be at the core of refugee pro- 50 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW tection, but the question remains whether it should play that role as a refocused, slimmed down agency focusing on what many argue to be its core mandate — protection — or whether it should act as the international humanitarian czar, directing a wide array of humanitarian actions and actors with the realization that assistance to and protection of refugees, internally displaced persons, returnees, and victims of war and persecution cannot be separated conceptually and operationally. If, as likely, UNHCR continues to develop as the preeminent humanitarian assistance agency, the office will need to seriously consider developing the short-term capaci ty to respond to massive refugee movements in an emergency situation such as occurred with Kosovar Albanians into neighboring Albania and Macedonia in 1999. Mass outflows of a million or more refugees — from Iraq, Rwanda and Kosovo — have occurred every few years during the past decade and are likely to be a continuing feature of the international system in the immediate years ahead. As the lead UN humanitarian agency, the UNHCR needs to be better prepared to manage refugee crises of this size in future highly charged political environments. While there has been much debate among external researchers about these issues, there has not been enough debate and discussion within UNHCR. UNHCR’s culture does not lend itself to the kind of self-examination that is necessary for future change in the agency. The office is extremely defensive and does not easily accept outside criticism, thereby impeding its abili ty to admit to, and learn from, mistakes. UNHCR feels that it is in a competitive environment with other agencies for funds and media attention. Therefore, it feels the need to preserve the institution by protecting public confidence in the agency and, more importantly, by safeguarding the confidence of donor governments in UNHCR. Hence, UNHCR discourages open discussion about its failures or the negative consequences of some of the office’s actions and policies. When confronted with criticism, UNHCR frequently rationalizes its actions and eschews blame by claiming that it is an operational and humanitarian agency delivering food and supplies in extremely complex and difficult situations to refugees and war victims. It often places itself above criticism and normal measures of accountability. In its effort to justify its existence to donors, the office emphasizes the good it does and is quick to thwart any accusation of failure. As a consequence, institutional change is not an easy task for UNHCR. The office also lacks a strong self-identi ty and is confused about the role it plays in the international system. At times, UNHCR acts like an independent actor, almost like the International Committee of the Red Cross THE UNHCR AND WORLD POLITICS 51 (ICRC), with little connection to the other parts of the UN system. In fact, because the UNHCR is the lead refugee agency within the UN system and often works alongside UN peacekeeping units and other enforcement agencies, it cannot function as a neutral humanitarian actor like ICRC. Yet, at times, UNHCR still adheres to the principle of neutrali ty and noninterference. Pretending to be something other than part of the United Nations creates a great deal of conceptual confusion and makes interagency coordination a difficult, if not impossible, task. Finally, the problem of internal displacement and the plight of waraffected populations will acquire increasing humanitarian and strategic importance for the international communi ty in the years ahead. Given the continuing intrastate violence in many parts of the world, coupled with the growing readiness of states in both North and South to avert or obstruct mass refugee outflows from such situations by closing their doors to asylum seekers and insisting on the early repatriation of refugee populations, the number of people forcibly displaced and trapped within their own country can be expected to increase. Consequently, civilians fleeing conflict are much more likely to remain within their own country than to cross the border as refugees. Global estimates of the numbers fleeing their homes but remaining within their own countries ranged from 20 to 30 million in 2000, substantially more than the 12 million refugees in that year. Moreover, despite the new degree of caution that exists concerning humanitarian intervention, there is growing recognition among both governments and the public that the domestic affairs of states can also be a subject of legitimate international concern (Dowty and Loescher, 1999). Thus, in addition to the problem of refugees, more attention will have to be given to the question of how to provide in-country protection and assistance to internally displaced persons (IDPs). One of the major gaps in the international response system for the internally displaced is a lack of predictable response. No UN agency can be counted upon to respond automatically when there is a crisis involving massive internal displacement. Agencies choose the situations in which they will become involved in the light of their mandates, resources and interests. The selectivi ty and conditionali ty of the response often result in limited and inconsistent coverage for the internally displaced, leaving large numbers with little or no protection and assistance. The 1999 Kosovo emergency was a case in point. UNHCR and other international agencies were heavily involved in assisting refugees who fled the country ~ whereas practically no international attention was directed to the victims of ethnic cleansing and the internally displaced with- 52 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW in the country during the NATO bombing campaign because it was unsafe for international agencies to be present (for a critique of UNHCR’s operation in Kosovo, including its neglect of IDPs, see United Kingdom, 1999; see also UNHCR, 2000; Minear, van Baarda, Sommers, 2000). In the absence of a single organization within the UN system for the internally displaced, reliance has been placed on a system-wide approach, coordinated in theory by the Department of Humanitarian Affairs from 1991 to 1998 and by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) since 1998. This collaborative approach has often been constrained by delays, duplication of effort and programs, neglect of protection issues, and insufficient support for reintegration and post-conflict development efforts. Resident coordinators who have been assigned to coordinate assistance to internally displaced populations frequently have had no operational capacity, little experience in dealing with the internally displaced, and minimal understanding of protection concerns. In his program for reform of the UN in July 1997, the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, recognized the challenge of providing protection, assistance and reintegration, and development support for the internally displaced and cited this area as an example of a humanitarian issue that falls between the gaps of existing mandates of the different agencies (United Nations, 1997). UN Resolution 1998/50 (UN Doc. E/CN/1998/50, 1998) encouraged the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Emergency Relief Coordinator, OCHA, United Nations Development Program, UNICEF, the World Food Program, the World Health Organization, the International Organization for Migration, ICRC and others to develop “frameworks of cooperation ” to promote protection, assistance and development for internally displaced persons by appointing focal points within their organizations for these matters. With international attention focusing increasingly on IDPs, international agencies have begun to offer more assistance, some protection, and reintegration and development aid to IDPs. Despite these activities, it is still the case that there exists only a weak and incoherent arrangement at the international level for internally displaced, especially at the field level. During 2000, Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, highlighted the glaring need for an international body, specifically the UNHCR, to be responsible for the internally displaced. It is argued that because the needs of refugees and IDPs are similar and because UNHCR has both operational capacity and long experience in assisting forcibly displaced populations, the office should assume global responsibili ty for IDPs. Howev- THE UNHCR AND WORLD POLITICS 53 er, to date UNHCR has resisted such an overt expansion of its mandate, arguing that the magnitude of the problem of internal displacement dwarfs the capaci ty and resources of any one existing agency. Rather, it has indicated that UNHCR is willing to play an expanded role when the links between refugees and IDPs are strong and when serious protection problems require UNHCR’s expertise. CONCLUSION It has not been possible here to present a comprehensive account of UNHCR and world politics (for a more comprehensive account, see Loescher, forthcoming). Such a task would be way beyond what could be addressed in a short article. Rather, what I have tried to show by selective examples is both the influence that the international political environment has had on the development of UNHCR during the past fifty years as well as the extent to which the Office, in turn, has had in shaping the international political environment to serve both refugee and state interests. I have also tried to highlight some of the principal challenges regarding forced migration confronting the UNHCR and the international communi ty in the future. One of the key conclusions is that current trends do not paint a particularly positive picture for refugee protection in the years ahead. States are either increasingly unwilling or increasingly unable to offer protection to those who are forcibly displaced, whether within their countries or across borders. The current refugee regime has a number of important gaps in institutional mandates, with the result that entire groups of forced migrants, like internally displaced persons, are neglected and left unprotected and often unassisted. The overall response of the international communi ty remains compartmentalized with political, development, security and humanitarian issues mostly being discussed in different fora, each with their own institutional arrangements and independent policy approaches. There exist little or no strategic integration of approaches and little effective coordination in the field. Moreover, there is a serious disjuncture between expectations of UNHCR and international refugee and human rights agencies to work in this new global environment and the institutional capacity of these organizations to respond to massive human rights abuses and refugee flows. The absence of an autonomous resource base for UNHCR and the limited mandates and competencies of international humanitarian agencies will continue to limit the international communi ty in its response to future refugee crises just as they have done for the past 50 years. 54 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW A key challenge for all international organizations in future years will be to maintain a core mission and identi ty in the face of rapid changes in international relations. UNHCR will continue to be faced with increasing opportunities and pressures to become engaged in in-country protection and assistance programs involving developmental and peace-building objectives that could risk compromising the office’s core refugee protection mandate. While the UNHCR must uphold core principles and instruments, the office must, at the same time, be innovative and imaginative in order to be effective in responding to a rapidly changing international environment. To achieve this balance will be a daunting challenge for the UNHCR. REFERENCES Abrar, C. 1995 “Repatriation of the Rohingya Refugees. ” Regional Consultation on Refugee and Migratory Movements. Colombo. September. Amnesty International 1995 Rwanda: Arming the Perpetrators of the Genocide. London: Amnesty International. Asia Watch 1996 Burma: The Rohingya Muslims: Ending a Cycle of Exodus? New York: Asia Watch. Barnett, M. 2000 “UNHCR and Involuntary Repatriation: Environmental Developments, the Repatriation Culture, and the Rohingya Refugees. ” ISA Paper. March. Barnett, M. and M. Finnemore 1999 “The Politics, Power, and Pathologies of International Organizations,” International Organization, 53(4):699—732. Autumn. Boutroue, J. 1998 “Missed Opportunities: The Role of the International Community in the Return of the Rwanda Refugees from Eastern Zaire.” Working Paper No. 1. Cambridge, MA: MIT. Dowty, A. and G. Loescher 1999 “Changing Norms in International Responses to Domestic Disorder. ” In Globalization and Global Governance. Ed. R. Vayrynen. New York: Rowman and Littlefield. Pp. 199—222. Frohardt, M., D. Paul and L. Minear 1999 “Protecting Human Rights: The Challenge of Humanitarian Organizations. ” Occasional Paper No. 35. Providence: Watson Institute for International Studies. Goodwin-Gill, G. 1999 “Refugee Identi ty and Protection ’ s Fading Prospect. ” In Refugee Rights and Reality. Ed. E Nicholson and P. Twomey. Cambridge: Cambridge Universi ty Press. Pp. 220—252. Gourevitch, P. 1998 We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux. THE UNHCR AND WORLD POLITICS 55 Hocke, J. P. 1989 “Beyond Humanitarianism: The Need for Political Will to Resolve Today ’ s Refugee Problem.” In Refugees and International Relations. Ed. G. Loescher and L. Monahan. Oxford: Oxford Universi ty Press. Pp. 37—48. 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Millwood, D., ed. 1996 The International Response to Conflict and Genocide: Lessons from the Rwanda Experience. Vols. 1—4. Odensee: Steering Committee of the Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda. Minear, L., T Van Baarda and M. Sommers 2000 “NATO and Humanitarian Action in the Kosovo Crisis. ” Occasional Paper No. 36. Providence: Watson Institute. Prunier, G. 1997 “The Great Lakes Crisis,” Current History, 96:193—199. Psychological Strategy Board 1951 “Psychological Operations Plan for Soviet Orbit Escapees, Phase A. ” Policy Guidance No. D-18a. David D. Lloyd Collection, Box 3, File: Immigration memo No. 4, Harry S. Truman Library. December 20. P. 5. Rieff, D. 1995 Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West. New York: Simon and Schuster. Roberts, A. 1996 Humanitarian Action in War. Adelphi Paper 305. London: International Institute of Strategic Studies. Ruthstrom-Ruin, C. 1993 Beyond Europe. Lund University Press. 56 INTERNATIONAL MIGi ~ ATIoN REVIEW Salomon, K. 1991 Refugees in the Cold War: Toward a New International Refugee Regime in the Early Postwar Era. Lund Universi ty Press. Shawcross, W. 2000 Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict. New York: Simon and Schuster. Stein, B. and E Cuny 1992 “Repatriation under Conflict,” World Refugees Survey 1991. Washington, DC: U.S. Committee for Refugees. Pp. 15—21. United Nations 1997 Secretary General’s Report to the General Assembly (A/51/950, para. 186). July. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 2000 The Kosovo Refugee Crisis. Evaluation and Policy Research Unit. Geneva: EPA/2000/00 1. February. 2000 State of the World’s Refugees: F ~ fiy Years of Humanitarian Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1997 The State of the World’ s Refugees: A Humanitarian Agenda. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1995 The State of the World’s Refugees: In Search of Solutions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. U.S. Committee for Refugees 1995 The Return of Rohingya Refugees to Burma: Voluntary Repatriation or Refoulement? Washington, DC: U.S. Committee for Refugees. Weiss, T. and A. Pasic 1997 “Reinventing UNHCR: Enterprising Humanitarians in the Former Yugoslavia, 199 1—1995, ” Global Governance, 3(1):41—58. January-April. Zolberg, A., A. Suhrke and S. Aguayo 1989 Escape from Violence: Conflict and the Refugee Crisis in the Developing World. New York: Oxford University Press. Fifty Years of Refugee Studies: From Theory to Policy Richard Black University of Sussex This article reviews the growth of the field of refugee studies, focusing on its links with, and impact on, refugee policy. The last fifty years, and especially the last two decades, have witnessed both a dramatic increase in academic work on refugees and significant institutional development in the field. It is argued that these institutions have developed strong links with policymakers, although this has often failed to translate into significant policy impacts. Areas in which future policy-orientated work might be developed are considered. The field of ‘refugee studies’ has grown dramatically over the latter part of the twentieth century, in parallel with the significance of the phenomenon of forced migration itself. As the number of refugees and forced migrants in the world soared into the tens of millions, the study of its causes and consequences has acquired an institutional base in specialist research centers, academic journals and international research organizations. The situation of refugees has attracted research effort at pre- and post-doctoral levels, with funding both from policy organizations and the major research councils and foundations. What Zetter (1988) described as a research agenda based around a ‘label’ has arguably come of age as a legitimate, interdisciplinary field of enquiry. As refugee policies have been studied, ‘lessons’ have been ‘learned.’ Meanwhile, theoretical reflection has enriched both the field itself and many of the disciplines from which researchers of refugee issues have come. Yet reflecting on the emergence of the field of ‘ refugee studies’ remains a complex task. First, unlike the history of an organization such as UNHCR, it is not easy to put a starting date on a field of academic enquiry. That research effort in refugee studies has grown, especially in the last fifteen to twenty years is undeniable. Yet there is also a richness in earlier work on refugees that pre-dates the emergence of ‘ refugee studies’ institutions. This includes voluminous studies of the refugee camps left after the displacements of the two World Wars (Kulischer, 1948; Proudfoot, 1957; Chandler, 1959; Kee, 1961), as well as work on the interwar International Refugee Organization (Holborn, 1956) and its post-war successor, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (Holborn et al., 1973). In addition, there is a © 2001 by the Center for Migration Studies of New York. All rights reserved. 0198-9 183/00/3501.0 133 IMR Volume 35 Number 1 (Spring 2001): 57—78 57 58 INTERNATIONAL MIGI ~~ rIoN REVIEW wide-ranging literature within a number of academic disciplines that does not explicitly identify itself as within ‘ refugee studies,’ but which still deals substantively with refugees as its subject. In part, this reflects terminological debates about who is, and who is not, a refugee — and hence what is, and what is not, refugee studies. It also reflects the fact that the totality of research in refugee studies still remains, in many respects, less than the sum of its parts. Bearing in mind these constraints, this article aims to consider some aspects of the state of refugee research after 50 years of the Refugee Convention, specifically the relationship of this research to evolving refugee policy. It will chart the rise of the field of refugee studies, focusing in particular on its definition, institutional context, and impact on policy. Naturally, this represents a partial view of the emergence of the field, since an academic discipline can and should seek justification and legitimacy well beyond the provision of an evidence base for public policy. Indeed, the dependence of refugee studies on policy definitions and concerns might be seen to be one of its principal weaknesses (Malkii, 1995). Nonetheless, such an assessment is of value, especially given the perceived importance of the problems of displacement and refugees within the world today and the claims of both academics and policymakers to be able to respond to these problems. THE EMERCENCE OFA FIELD Despite its status as an academic field of study, the development of refugee studies has always been intimately connected with policy developments. The first international organization specifically orientated towards the study of refugees — the Association for the Study of the World Refugee Problem, established in Liechtenstein in 1950 — followed closely on the heels of the establishment of UNHCR itself, but even earlier work also took its cue largely from the policy field. For example, in a 1939 special issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science on refugees, nearly half of the 22 articles were devoted to exploring “ possible ways out ” of the “ refugee problem. ” These ranged from analyses of the actions of the League of Nations itself (Holborn, 1939) to consideration of the potential economic benefits a more liberal refugee policy might bring to the United States (Grattan, 1939; Ostrolenk, 1939). In turn, as new and expanding interest in refugee issues emerged after the exodus from Vietnam in the late 1 970s, a special issue of International Migration Review similarly devoted much space to analysis of, and recommendations for, policy, although it is interesting to note that concern had by then shifted to more problematic aspects of the refugee experience, such as “ psychological adaptation and dysfunction” (Cohon, 1981) or difficulties of linguistic (Klein- FwFY YEARS OF REFUGEE STUDIES 59 mann and Daniel, 1981) or occupational (Finnan, 1981) adjustment. Neither volume provides much in the way of theoretical reflection, although the latter does include one article that has become a reference point for subsequent attempts at theory building (Kunz, 1981). An annotated bibliography of some 100 articles on refugee problems in the 1939 volume (Brown, 1939) also reflects a strong bias towards practical issues, with sections on the “absorptive capaci ty of land and colonization,”“ the professional refugee ” (i.e., refugee professionals, such as doctors, scientists, etc.), the League of Nations and ‘ private and governmental organizations.’ The bibliography included in the 1981 volume (Stein, 1981) reveals a similar level of preoccupation with policy concerns, even if, with over 800 entries, it proved impossible to categorize and annotate this burgeoning field. In turn, this difficulty reflects a second major facet of the development of the field — its dramatic growth. By 2001, such a bibliography would be an almost impossible task, with UNHCR’s ‘Refworld’ database listing nearly 2,000 records on refugees, human rights and related literature in just the last three years. Already by the late 1 980s, the publication of general bibliographies on refugee studies had been superseded by more specialist bibliographies, for example on refugee mental health (Williams, 1987; Petersen et al., 1989), refugees in the United Kingdom (Joly, 1988), or Southeast Asian refugees, with the latter focused both on particular groups (Marston, 1987; Smith, 1988; Hammond and Hendricks, 1988) and receiving countries (Mignot, 1988; Indra, 1988). By the 1 990s, specialized bibliographies had emerged on IDPs (REFLIT, 1995; Norwegian Refugee Council, 2000), international refugee law (Mason, 1996), Roma refugees (OSI, 1998), refugee women (Chowdhury, 1995) and even combinations of the above (Benjamin and Fancy, 1998; Mason, 1999). In many respects, the 1981 volume of International Mz ~ ration Review represents a starting point, rather than a milestone, for refugee studies as we know it today. In their introduction, Stein and Tomasi (1981:6) called for “ a comprehensive, historical, interdisciplinary and comparative perspective which focuses on the consistencies and patterns in the refugee experience.” Since that time, the explosion in scholarly output on refugees has seen the establishment of a number of centers around the world working specifically on refugee issues (see Table 1), as well as over 250 centers working on related issues. 1 Many of 1 Over 250 entries are recorded on UNHCR’s ‘Reflink’ database, which the organization intriguingly describes as going ‘beyond traditional refugee studies to include projects in the domain of human rights, refugee and asylum policy, security and conflict resolution, migration and demography, development and environment, emergency relief, psycho-social and community services.’ See http://www.unhcr.ch/refworld/refworld/refpub/reflink.htm 60 INTERNATIONAL MIGRM ~ ION REVIEW these now offer short courses, as well as mainstream academic courses and programs at both undergraduate and postgraduate level within the field of refugee studies. At one of a number of recent conferences providing a retrospective on this research, Barbara Harrell-Bond, founder of probably the most important of these centers, at Oxford University, described the Oxford Refugee Studies Program (RSP) as “an expanding network of individuals around the world” who had “collaborated in developing this new multi-disciplinary field of academic pursuit” (Harrell-Bond, 1998). RSP’s role, and that of major donors such as the Ford Foundation, has been crucial in developing the field, with the latter TABLE 1 SIGNIFICANT DATES IN ‘ REFUGEE STUDIES ’ Date of Organizations! establishment Academic centers Journals 1950 Association for the Study of the World Refugee Problem 1958 United States Committee for Refugees 1963 AWR Bulletin (AWR) 1980 Refugee Reports (USCR) 1981 Refugee Documentation Project, York Refugees (UNHCR) University, Canada (since 1988: Refugee Review (University of Minnesota) Centre for Refugee Studies) 1982 Refugee Policy Group, Washington DC Refugee Abstracts (UNHCR: since 1994: 1983 Refugee Studies Programme, Refugee Survey Quarterly) University of Oxford, UK (since 2000: Refugee Studies Centre) 1985 Refugee Studies Programme, Juba World Refugee Survey (USCR) University, Sudan (now defunct) 1988 Journal of Refugee Studies (OUP!RSP) Refugee Participation Network (RSP: since 1998: Forced Migration Review) World Refugee Report (US Bureau for Refugee Programs, Department of State) 1989 International Journal of Refugee Law (OUP) 1992 Moi Universi ty (Kenya) Centre for Refugee Studies 1993 Makerere Universi ty (Uganda) Human Rights and Peace Centre 1995 Palestine Diaspora and Refugee Center (Jerusalem); Universi ty of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) Centre for Study of Forced Migration; International Association for the Study of Forced Migration 1999 UNESCO/UNITWIN Network on Forced Migration links refugee studies centres at Oxford, An-Najah National Universi ty (Palestinian Authority), Yarmouk Universi ty (Jordan), Hassan II Universi t y (Morocco), and University of Western Cape (South Africa) FIFTY YEARS OF REFUGEE STUDIES 61 providing funds both for some of the earliest interventions of UNHCR (Holborn et aL, 1973:352) and for some of the most important academic work that critically reflects on such giving (see Zolberg et al., 1989). One of the most important contributions of RSP to the field has been its role in the establishment of a major interdisciplinary journal, the Journal of Refugee Studies, which since its inception in 1988 has published over 250 scholarly articles on refugees by researchers from at least sixteen different disciplines. In turn, the Journal ofRefugee Studies has spawned an international association, the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration, which has sought to function as an independent communi ty of scholars and practitioners working on refugee issues (Koser, 1996). Although other journals have devoted increasing attention to refu gees — the International Migration Review, for example, has published some 27 articles on refugees in the last decade, compared to just seven in its first decade — the existence of such a specialist journal is of critical importance in providing a focus for scholarly output within the field. Yet throughout this growth in scholarly output, and the development of centers and programs specializing in the study of refugees, there has remained a close and fundamental interaction with policymakers. For example, the RSP set about establishing a research relationship with UN bodies such as the World Food Program (if not with UNHCR), conducting a series of studies on food aid to refugees, which led both directly and indirectly to a number of important publications in this field (Reynell, 1986; Keen, 1992). Similarly, the Center for Refugee Studies at York University, Canada, grew out of a concern with the resettlement of Vietnamese refugees; it has been recognized as a “Center of Excellence” by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Such policy-orientated research within Universi ty settings has implied a constant battle to maintain academic independence and intellectual rigor, while simultaneously producing research of relevance to policy concerns, which is capable of attracting funding from major government and private donors. It is important to remember that these institutional developments do not describe the totality of research that exists within the academic field of refugee studies. Many — perhaps most — researchers working on refugee issues have worked outside any institutional context that involves a specialization in refugee or even migration studies, while probably the majori ty of the scholarly literature on refugees remains in broadly disciplinary or policy studies journals, rather than in the more specialist journals noted above. For example, over the last decade, reviews of refugee studies have appeared in disciplinary journals in various social science disciplines, including geography (Black, 1991), sociology (Hem, 1993), and anthropology (Malkii, 1995), and these 62 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW TABLE 2 DISCIPLINARY BACKGROUNDS OF AUTHORS OF PAPERS PUBLISHED IN THE JOURNAL OF REFUGEE SiuDII ~ s Discipline Number of papers Political Science 26.2 Anthropology 22.5 Sociology 18 Psychology!mental health 14 Socio-legal studies 13.5 History 13.3 International Relations 10.5 Health Studies 10 Geography 10 Education 6 Gender studies 4 Economics 2 Philosophy 1 Linguistic Studies 1 Demography 1 Business Administration 1 Policy organizations 26 Interdisciplinary!discipline not specified 33 have not necessarily cross-referenced to provide an overview of the field. “While this diversity of sites for publication makes a review of the ‘ state of the art ’ of refugee studies somewhat problematic, it nevertheless indicates how the study of refugees has avoided ‘ ghettoization,’ instead forming part of and contributing to mainstream academic debate within both disciplinary and interdisciplinary scholarly journals. In the context of the dramatic increase in volume and strong policy links of refugee research, the following sections go on to flesh out three key areas in which this new field of study might be assessed. First, and despite the wealth of material noted above, it is worth questioning whether a distinctive field of study has actually been carved out at all — and indeed whether that should be an academic goal. ‘What is it that makes refugee studies distinct from migration studies, or indeed people studies? Has over 50 years of critical reflection, with nearly two decades of this going on at least partly within refugee studies institutions, succeeded in highlighting a separate field of enqui ry that can stand alone within the social sciences? I will consider in more detail the fora within which this academic endeavor has been carried out. To use Barry Stein and Lydio Tomasi’s language, if there have been at least “consistencies and patterns in the refugee experience,” to what extent has the analysis of this experience become comprehensive, historical, interdisciplinary or comparative? Or has this research remained isolated, ahistorical, and largely “buried in the files of refugee agencies” as Stein (1981:331) lamented? Finally, I will consider the impact of this research on policy itself. If there is a strong link between the development of FIFTY YEARS OF REFUGEE STUDIES 63 research effort in this field and the concerns of policymakers, one might expect this research at least to have had some influence in the policy field, even if it has not been generalized into broader academic discourse. However, here, too, the record is not as good as might be expected. Defining Refugee Studies as a Research Field From the outset, refugee studies has been dogged by terminological difficulties. As Zetter (1988) noted in an opening editorial for the Journal of Refugee Studies, the term ‘ refugee ’ is one that has found favor in popular discourse over the course of this century. Indicating uprootedness and exile, it often implies a dependence on humanitarian intervention and a rupture of ‘ normal’ social, economic and cultural relations. The refugee is commonly distinguished from the economic migrant, as someone who is forced to migrate, rather than somebody who has moved more or less voluntarily. As such, a refugee is a person with particular experiences and needs, for whom special measures of public policy are justified. When refugees are explicitly defined at all, the 1951 Geneva Convention definition (as amended by the New York Protocol of 1969) is most commonly used, whereby a refugee is someone who is outside their own country due to a “well founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” Yet, at best, the term simply reflects the designation of refugee enshrined in a particular Convention at a particular time, within a particular international political and economic context. As such, it could be argued to be devoid of any deeper academic meaning or explanatory power— it is what Andrew Sayer would call a “chaotic conception” (Sayer, 1982). Worse, by conveying academic respectability, the uncritical use of the term in scholarly literature can contribute to the perception of the naturalness of the category of refugees and of differential policies towards those who do and those who do not qualify for the label. The simple acceptance by social scientists of a legal definition might have some justification were this definition legally uncontested; yet as the burgeoning field of refugee law amply demonstrates, this is far from the case. In practice, the relatively uncritical use of a policy-based definition of refugees within academic writing has a long pedigree. For example, Simpson (1939), in a treatise on the refugee problem for the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, argued that: the essential quali ty of a refugee ... [is] ... that he has left his country of regular residence, of which he may or may not be a national, as a result of political events in that country which 64 INTERNATIONAL MIGI ~~ nON REVIEW render his continued residence impossible or intolerable, and has taken refuge in another country, or if already absent from his home, is unwilling or unable to return, without danger to life or liberty, or as a direct consequence of the political conditions existing there. In contrast, Simpson specifically rejected flood and earthquake victims, participants in purely temporary movements (such as Serbs and Belgians displaced during World War I) and stateless persons as refugees for the purposes of his enquiry because they were not offered protection by the League of Nations. More recent work on refugees has tended to adopt a rather broader interpretation of the term refugee than that defined by the actions of international organizations (see Ager, 1999). Yet, there is still far from a clear consensus on what the term — and more importantly the field of refugee studies — should or should not include and, indeed, criticism that the field as a whole has remained under-theorized (Hem, 1993). There is certainly some academic work that has argued for an extension of the refugee definition to include other types of forced migrants, thus potentially enlarging the field of refugee studies as well. However, this work often appears to have an agenda based much more in the extension of policy definitions than in any deeper academic attempt to understand in a more comprehensive way the situation or distinctiveness of refugees as opposed to other kinds of migrants. For example, there are various terms in use that describe forced migrants of one kind or another. Some have a specific meaning in national or international policy, including the term refugee itself as well as others such as asylum-seeker, humanitarian refugee (in certain countries) and stateless person. Others denote more generalized categories such as exiles, expellees, transferees, and even economic refugees, as some term those forced to migrate by poverty, underdevelopment or social exclusion (Richmond, 1993). Yet the definitions of these terms are often vague, shifting or overlapping, and little evidence is presented to show that they are sociologically significant in the sense of describing a set of characteristics that are innate or defining features of a theoretically distinct population group. Meanwhile, attempts to promote the use of other terms in academic literature seem to represent a struggle to ensure that these terms are also incorporated into concrete policy initiatives. Thus, the term internally-displaced person (IDP) has gained increasing attention as scholars have sought to highlight the similarities between forced migrants who have and have not been displaced across international frontiers (Davies, 1998; Lee, 1996). A recent landmark two-volume work by Deng and Cohen (1999) has put the most comprehensive case to date for consideration of IDPs alongside refugees as a marginalized, alienated and persecuted population. Yet this work is intimately tied to the FIFTY YEARS OF REFUGEE STUDIES 65 actions of specific parts of the UN — including a Representative of the Secretary-General on IDPs and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) — which have a particular interest in the development of international humanitarian policy on IDPs. In this sense, the recommendations of its authors can hardly be seen as those of impartial observers, while when the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Hoibrooke, takes a cue from such work to claim that “of course, there is no real difference between an ‘ official refugee ’ and an internally displaced person— especially to the victim,” we should not view this as a fully articulated theoretical position (Hoibrooke, 2000). The debate over IDPs represents the area in which perhaps most headway has been made in extending the boundaries of both refugee studies terminology and public policy on forced migration, but it is not unique. Since Lester Brown of the Woridwatch Institute first wrote about ecological refugees in the 1 970s (Brown, 1976), the notion of environmental refugees has periodically appeared as an issue demanding the attention of academic researchers and poiicymakers (Myers and Kent, 1995; Jacobson, 1988), with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) playing an important role in attempting to popularize the term (El Hinnawi, 1985). Similarly, the notion of developmentinduced displacement has received a fair amount of attention both in edited volumes (Cernea and McDowell, 2000; Drèze et al., 1997; Thukral, 1992; McDowell, 1996) and academic articles (Scudder, 1993; Parasuraman, 1995; Gany et al., 1993), with a significant contribution coming from within the World Bank. What all three categories have in common, though, is the development of academic literature based less on theoretical reflection about what constitutes a refugee, or a conceptually coherent field of study, and more on the documentation of empirical examples of displacement, often led by researchers based within poli cy organizations that are directly concerned with responding to (or even causing) particular types of displacement. It would be untrue to say that theoretical reflection, including consideration of terminology, is completely absent from the field of refugee studies, as contributions from authors such as Kunz (1981), Zolberg et al. (1989), Richmond (1988, 1993), Marx (1990) and others (Hem, 1993, for example) testify. Many of these authors offer typologies of different kinds of voluntary and involuntary migrations. However, there are problems with some of the new categories of forced migrant that have emerged in the literature, not least the term environmental refugee which has been the subject of stinging criticism from a number of authors (McGregor, 1993; Kibreab, 1997). Moreover, it may also be necessary to take more seriously the warning of Bascom (1998) 66 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW that there is no ‘theory of refugees ’ and accept that, as such, there is not going to be. As Malkii (1995:496) argues: The term refugee has analytical usefulness not as a label for a special, generalizable “kind” or “ type ” of person or situation, but only as a broad legal or descriptive rubric that includes within it a world of socio-economic statuses, personal histories, and psychological or spiritual situations. If this point is accepted, our goal should not be to highlight the distinctiveness of refugees, or any other differently defined group of forced migrants; rather, the search for theoretical grounding of refugee studies may be better achieved by situating studies of particular refugee (and other forced migrant) groups in the theories of cognate areas (and major disciplines). Such an approach would provide an opportunity to use the particular circumstances of refugee situations to illuminate these more general theories and thus participate in the development of social science, rather than leading refugee studies into an intellectual cul-de-sac. For example, emerging work on transnationalism and the development of transnational communities and social practices has been dominated by empirical examples that emphasize the experience of labor migrants (Glick-Schiller et al., 1992; Portes et al., 1999) or old diasporic groups (Cohen, 1997). Although there have been some examples of refugee groups being held up as transnational in their activities (Moberg, 1996; Landolt et at., 1999; Faist 1999), the theorization of transnationalism has largely ignored the specific experiences of refugees, even though they are far from exceptional in either quantitative or qualitative terms. Examining the notion of transnationalism in the light of refugee experiences, however, presents an opportunity to refine and expand its conceptualization (Shami, 1996; Al-Au et al., 2001). Focusing on the role played by refugees in transnational activities could help to dispel some of the more idealistic notions of transnationalism from below as a people-led process, which takes advantage of processes of globalization and ease of travel in the modern world (Smith and Guarnizo, 1998). In contrast, the mobilization of refugee communities for transnational activities can involve both opposition to and manipulation by states, and it almost by definition involves a group whose ease of physical travel is generally circumscribed in important ways. Refugee Studies or Refugee Policy Studies? In spite of the possibilities that emerge from more theoretical reflection built out of a concern with refugee studies, the fact that empirical evidence and FIFTY YEARS OF REFUGEE STUDIES 67 policy organizations have been crucial in expanding the limits of the field of refugee studies is not necessaril y a criticism of the field. Indeed, this problemcentered approach and openness to dialog with practitioners is in many respects a major strength of refugee studies, and the fact that IDPs at least are now receiving serious attention at the highest policy levels is an indication of how research can impact on policy. However, there do nonetheless appear to be a number of dangers in this relationship. At best, it may serve to marginalize refugee studies from mainstream social science as the field develops an agenda that is out of touch with the concerns of other social scientists and seen as lacking in theoretical perspective or grounding. More pessimistically, there is a risk of research being co-opted by organizations with particular political or bureaucratic interests. Such a risk is not purely hypothetical, as the growing literatures on IDPs, development-induced displacement and environmental refugees arguably provide examples of precisely such co-option. There is also a danger that the dominance of policy concerns in refugee research will lead to work that is not only undertheorized and orientated towards particular bureaucratic interests, but also fundamentally unsuited even to the task of influencing the policy world in which it is mainly situated. First, given the fact that a large amount of policy-orientated research is commissioned by, or written in close collaboration with , operational agencies that have specific and detailed requirements for knowledge, there is a tendency for such research to be highly geographically, temporally and organizationally limited. Such work is often unpublished — indeed unpublishable — precisely because geographical or historical context, and wider relevance, is not explicitly considered. However, this limits its usefulness not only to scholars, but also to organizations other than the commissioning agency and, indeed, even to that same agency after a few years or in a different country. Twenty years ago, the loss of such data and reports was a major concern to those establishing new programs and centers in refugee studies and also lamented in the academic literature (Stein, 1981). Now, the fruits of this concern are being seen: there is, for example, a large selection of such ‘ grey’ literature accessible at the Oxford Refugee Studies Center and now being made available in digital format over the internet, and other institutions have also taken care to establish documentation centers with similar objectives. Meanwhile, policy organizations themselves have started to take better care of documentary records and often release these to the public. For example, one of the more important evaluations of an emergency operation — the Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda — was published in full after an 68 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW extraordinary collaboration between a range of operational agencies and academic researchers, and despite serious misgivings on the part of some of the original donors (Steering Committee, 1996). More recently, UNHCR itself has sought to stand back from its practical day-to-day business, as High Commissioner Mrs. Ogata — not coincidentally a former academic herself — encouraged publication of the “State of the World’s Refugees,” a working paper series on “New Issues in Refugee Research,” and even internal UNHCR evaluations, through a Center for Documentation and Research and, since 1999, an Evaluation and Policy Analysis Unit. Yet, in some respects, the problem now is more a surfeit than a lack of available information. For example, attempts at information-sharing during the recent Kosovo crisis by the UNHCR-funded Humanitarian Crisis Information Center (HCIC) have led to approximately 100 documents being made available through the ReliefWeb internet site and still more on a specially-produced CD-Rom. Meanwhile, even in the apparently forgotten crisis of Liberia, significant reviews of policy experience were conducted by many agencies, including the European Union (APT-Consult, 1998), UNICEF (1995), WFP (2000) and the British Government (Outram, 1998). However, despite this effort, there is still a tendency for too much of this output to be repetitive, overlapping, hastily compiled, and biased towards a focus on the agency that funded each particular p iece of work. Moreover, the effort that has gone into the coordination and dissemination of such information in Kosovo still appears more the exception than the rule, with many operational agencies prepared to emasculate or suppress documents and reports that are even mildly critical. Impacts on Policy Even if there is an emerging consensus on the need for critical reflection within refugee assistance programs and information-sharing and proper documentation of the situation and experience of refugees and asylum-seekers on the part of policy organizations, the question remains as to whether such activity has had any real impact on policy. A pessimistic view of the academic value and wider applicabili ty of much of the policy research currently being produced should logically lead to the conclusion that the impact of this research has been minimal, and this is indeed a view that has been expressed. For example, with respect to refugee repatriation, Preston (1999:36) makes the point that “voluntary repatriations throughout the world have generated policy-orientated, operational and basic studies ” and that these have started FIFTY YFARS OF REFUGEE STUDIES 69 to become comprehensive. Yet, she goes on to suggest “the extent to which the structures within which the research is embedded allow the direct or indirect transfer of knowledge and resources which is necessary to alleviate disadvantage is likely to be limited” (p. 36). The capacity of organizations providing protection and assistance to refugee groups to respond to evidence-based poli cy is certainly a cause for serious concern. For example, emerging literature on the inadequacies of asylumdetermination procedures in Western Europe has had virtually no positive impact on European states’ policies, with the trend if anything going in the opposite direction (Schuster et al., 2000). Within this context, even specific proposals, relating to burden sharing (Noll, 1997) or the reformulation of refugee law (Hathaway, 1991 , 1997; Harvey, 1999) have received only cursory attention from policymakers, at least in Western European governments, although their differential impact around the world, and potential for misinterpretation, have drawn criticism from some southern scholars (Chimni, 1998). Meanwhile, the inadequacies of the international humanitarian response to the crisis in Kosovo in 1999 have also revealed a failure to learn from existing experience, as documented in academic literature, whether on the part of international organizations operating within the region (Suhrke et al., 2000) or on the part of governments of countries of asylum in Western Europe (Van-SeIm, 2000). Nonetheless, there are some areas in which academic researchers do appear to have made progress in seeing their insights and ideas adopted in public policymaking. For example, at the time when the refugee studies centers at Oxford and York were being set up in the early 1 980s, participatory and gender-sensitive approaches to research and public policy were in their infancy (Chambers, 1983; Young et al., 1981). However, they were firmly rejected by most agencies working with refugees as being too time consuming and unrealistic to be implemented in refugee emergency settings. Only a decade later, after considerable research and lobbying based on that research, such approaches have become fully accepted by UNHCR — at least in principle — such that the organization now has a people-orientated planning process, a full set of policies to engage with client groups and promote training in genderawareness and participation, and a clear contractual expectation that all its implementing partners will also comply with such principles (Anderson, 1994). Similar progress has been made in the area of environmental awareness, with a clear concern to learn not only from internal experiences but also from research in the broader social and environmental sciences (Black, 1998). 70 INTERNATiONAL MiGRATION REViEW It is difficult to demonstrate a causal link between research effort and such changes in policy, and it is relatively easy to denigrate the practice of gender and environmental awareness or public participation in policy on the ground as involving more rhetoric than substance. Nonetheless, these changes do represent a real advance in terms of the practice of many international organizations and at least some governments. They also raise questions as to how such positive — albeit limited — impacts of research on policy might be stimulated in the future. One could argue that, because participation has failed in refugee situations despite the good faith efforts of UNHCR to implement a policy that had worked elsewhere, the uniqueness of such situations means that participation cannot work for refugees. However, such a conclusion is not helpful. Rather, it would appear more appropriate to develop critical academic work on participation, with the cooperation of agencies working on the ground, which will help to find ways of making a participatory approach work in refugee situations. Indeed, such critical academic reflection on the practice of participatory approaches in emergencies could be used to improve participation elsewhere. There are a number of other areas in which such critical reflection would be helpful. For example, work on the negative impacts of forced geographical dispersal of refugees in the United Kingdom in the late 1 970s and 1 980s (Robinson and Hale, 1989; Robinson, 1993) helped to move U.K. poli cy away from dispersal for at least a decade. Yet an opportunity was missed to extend such work to other European countries, such as Germany and Sweden, where dispersal continued to be a cornerstone of policy towards refugees and asylumseekers; nor was this research fully mobilized in attempts to resist the new U.K. government poli c y of dispersal encapsulated in the National Asylum Support System (NASS) introduced in the 1999 Immigration and Asylum Act. Turning to the south, there are further areas in which research findings could be extended. One example involves work on the causes of excess morbidity and mortali ty in refugee and other emergency situations, which has led, among other things, to an acceptance of the need to prioritize vaccinations against measles (Porter et at., 1990), an acceptance of the need to ensure a range of micronutrients in diets based on rations (Keen, 1992); and an acceptance of the importance of entitlements to food, rather than food supply (Drèze and Sen, 1989). Yet new evidence on the negative impact on health of refugee camps themselves (as opposed to self-settlement of refugees) has not had the same impact (see Crisp and Jacobson, 1998), despite reports of high levels of excess mortality in camp settings like those in the Great Lakes (Paquet and Van Soest, 1994). FIFTY YEARS OF REFUGEE STUDIES 71 CONCLUSION In a relatively short article, it is not possible to cover the whole history of the evolution of thought in refugee studies, nor would attempting such a review serve a very useful purpose. Nonetheless, it is appropriate to reflect on past and current research in a field that is both expanding and vibrant. What sets this field apart is the way it has developed, not in a sterile or inward-looking academic environment, but in relation to a crucial area of policy that directly affects the lives of millions of people. This high level of policy relevance does not obviate the need for critical theoretical reflection, but it does create a separate set of criteria with which to consider the development of the discipline. This article has suggested that success in terms of setting out a field of study, ensuring open, critical enquiry, and disseminating its findings, has been mixed. Ensuring that all of the fruits of such policy-orientated research are actually translated into improved policy remains a formidable task. In thinking about the future, there are a variety of routes that such policy-relevant research could take and no clear maps to guide it. Although there is a danger that policy organizations will set too limited an agenda in terms of definitions, terminology, or the detailed issues to be investigated, it is clear that policy-relevant research cannot advance without the active involvement of such organizations. In this sense, open and genuinely independent academic reviews of particular policies or humanitarian operations can play an important role in advancing knowledge, especially when the collaborative effort of different agencies with a range of experiences and responsibilities is involved. This is an area in which an international professional association could play a role in stimulating research, or at least in agreeing benchmarks for research, in a manner similar to the way the Sphere project has generated standards for the provision of humanitarian relief itself (Sphere Project, 2000). It is also worth recognizing, however, that just as there could be greater academic involvement in the policy fi e ld , in terms of independent policy reviews, there could also be a greater willingness on the part of policymakers to engage with, and stimulate, more basic research and reflection. For example, commitments by operation agencies to train their staffs are usually limited to short courses, even though masters and even doctoral training might provide internal critical reflection on policy that would be highly beneficial to the organization concerned. 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Clinton on the order for a military campaign in Kosovo, 1999 For humanitarian organizations such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the recent evolution of military engagement in Complex Humanitarian Emergencies has been a mixed blessing. This article examines the protection-neutrality dilemma confronting UNCHR in the face of increased military humanitarian action. The conceptual framework presented here suggests that military forces may in fact act as an important “ norms entrepreneur, ” influencing how protection norms affect international responses to humanitarian emergencies. The linking of forced migration and security has generated a host of challenges for civil-military relations and raises a number of concerns for UNHCR regarding the legitimacy, ethics and operational viabili ty of military interventions in such crises. Since the end of the Cold War, the UNHCR and other humanitarian organizations have had to confront a rapid succession of “complex humanitarian emergencies ” (CHEs). According to the U.S. Committee for Refugees, “the number of people forced from their homes by violence and repression stood at more than 35 million at the end of 1999, compared to the fewer than 29 million uprooted people in 1990 ” (USCR, 2000:1). The United Nations currently tracks at least nineteen complex humanitarian emergencies, all of which have produced ‘war-affected populations.’ They tend to be international in nature even when the conflict itself is an internal one. Indeed, the extent of forced population flows tends to determine whether or not a civil conflict is considered a humanitarian crisis warranting intervention (Regan, 2000:23; Vayrynen, 1998). As Larry Minear (1997:1) has pointed out, “Post-Cold War crises are no longer simple affairs of single cause or single response.” By definition, they include a multiplicity of actors. Whether we refer to them as humanitarian emergencies, complex disasters, © 2001 by the Center for Migration Studies of New York. All rights reserved. 0198-9183/00/3501.0 133 IMR Volume 35 Number 1 ( Spring 2001): 79—116 79 80 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW humanitarian interventions, or peace support operations, CHEs virtually always require a combination of coordinated civilian and military responses. For humanitarian organizations such as the UNHCR, this evolution of military engagement in CHEs has been a mixed blessing. References to “military humanitarianism” or “humanitarian militarism ” reflect the international community ’ s ambivalence regarding the role of the military (Roberts, 1996; Ogata, 1998). It has enabled the UNHCR to exercise its mandate of protection and human security, but at a price. Neutrali ty and impartiality — traditionally cornerstones of international humanitarianism — have been significantly compromised by military interventions. Drawing on recent experiences in Bosnia, Kosovo and the African Great Lakes, a conceptual framework for the relationship between humanitarian organizations and the military is presented below. The military thus is a central player in shaping and implementing the international community ’s response to complex humanitarian emergencies. To understand fully the implications of military interventions for humanitarian organizations such as the UNHCR, one must consider how war-affected populations and military forces act as humanitarian agenda-setters, as well as the problem of civil-military relations and coordination in humanitarian emergencies. A cursory review of the operational, political-legal and ethical concerns that accompany the increased militarization of humanitarian interventions will further highlight their impact on UNHCR’s protection mandate. Under certain conditions, military intervention may be a prerequisite for long-term resolution of the root causes of complex humanitarian emergencies. But we also may have opened up a Pandora’s box by asking the military to respond to humanitarian emergencies traditionally handled largely by civilian relief organizations. Introducing military forces into CHEs may have unintended consequences for humanitarian organizations and the course of resolution of CHEs. THE PROTECTION-NEUTRALITY DIL EMMA As Gil Loescher has argued, “ military forces rarely, if ever, have a purely humanitarian agenda”(1994: 1). Humanitarian actions in CHEs in general are nonforcible and focused on the conditions on the ground within a conflict area (Teson, 1997:5; Woodhouse and Ramsbotham, 1999). Richard Haass, for example, has suggested the following definition: “[H] umanitarian operations involve the deployment of force to save lives without necessarily altering the political context” (1 994b:62) In reality, however, it is difficult to argue that the deployment of military forces of any kind into an ongoing conflict situation THE PROTECTION-NEUTRALITY DILEMMA IN HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCIES 81 will not affect the political context. Humanitarian actions in CHEs aim to protect and save human life, implying a need to create a stable environment. That could be as ‘neutral’ as the provision of emergency food aid or shelter or the deployment of border guards or as invasive as disarming combatants. Both are humanitarian “actions” but with very different implications for the local and regional political context, as well as for the form of sovereignty retained. Moreover, neutrality of relief depends on an equitable distribution of aid and resources which is difficult to achieve as the post-genocide intervention in Rwanda can attest. Here, UNHCR’s protection mandate favored refugee camps outside Rwanda but which were populated by members of the former Hutu government of Rwanda that had perpetrated the genocide (Moore, 1998:83). Others even argue that neutrality is in itself a political position for NGOs operating in CHEs (Bryans etal., 1999:12). On a scale of multilateral interventions ranging from peacekeeping to peace enforcement, military responses to CHEs tend to occupy a middle ground (Roberts, 1996). They clearly have a broader mandate than traditional peacekeeping operations and have dominated the UN peacekeeping agenda since 1989. In principle, humanitarian actions in CHEs stop short of peace enforcement, i.e., to “restore or maintain peace ” through coercion. (Boutros-Ghali, Agenda for Peace, 1991 :sect.42ff). Defacto, however, CHEs may necessitate coercive action in order to create the conditions for humanitarian relief: “...humanitarian action, in principle and by definition, is a response to basic human needs for protection and assistance” (Minear, 1997:2; Vayrynen, 1998). When combatants are mixed in with unarmed civilian populations, as has been the case in numerous recent CHEs, e.g., in the African Great Lakes and the Balkans, it is not only difficult but indeed counter-productive to exclude peaceenforcement activities from CHEs. However, it also seriously compromises the neutrality of UNHCR and other humanitarian actors relying on military action to deliver both relief and protection to war-affected populations. International military responses to CHEs lack clari ty regarding the underlying assumptions and prevailing norms of protection. The plurali ty o f actors and interests involved forces the question of what is actually being protected by international interventions. Sovereignty — however defined — appears to be subject to negotiation and contestation just as are individual rights (Mandel, 1996). Exactly who is to be protected and how remains central to the debate over humanitarian intervention and contributes to the increasingly prevalent perception of forcibly displaced populations as a securi ty concern (e.g., UN Security Council Debate, May 23, 1997). The debate 82 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW is further complicated by events such as the recent humanitarian action in Kosovo, which blurred the lines between peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance and peace enforcement to an unprecedented degree (Roberts, 1999). This debate seems embedded in a larger framework of international agendasetting processes and competing norms of protection outlined below. One reason for the international community’s increased but unequal military engagement for humanitarian purposes may be that the international system is undergoing a transition between two competing sets of norms of international protection. The norms of sovereignty and nonintervention essentially protect borders. Human rights norms, by contrast, aim to protect individuals. Historically, individual states sought to protect their relative positions vis-à-vis other states. A state or set of states relied on the ability to project power and to control the use of force both externally and internally in order to maintain or gain territory and the sancti ty of its borders. Individual human rights were more or less subordinate to the rights of nations to exist as sovereign states. More recently, however, the push has been toward “ positive” sovereignty, i.e., “sovereignty as responsibili ty and not just power ” (Kofi Annan, 1998:57). In responding to humanitarian emergencies, the international communi ty may be forced to violate one or the other internationally recognized principles of protection, opting either for sovereignty or individual human rights. The fact that internally displaced peoples (IDPs) are now ‘ of concern’ to the UNHCR shows how rigid Cold War notions have been relaxed (Huggins, 1995). Cases of intervention in Haiti and Iraq reflect a prevailing norm of national, i.e., population-derived sovereignty whereas international responses to Bosnia seem to be far more driven by concerns over state, i.e., territorially-derived, sovereignty (Barkin and Cronin, 1994). However, in periods of normative transition, the international community may try to accommodate both sets of principles, either sequentially or simultaneously, during a humanitarian crisis. Somalia, Kosovo, Rwanda and the crises in Zaire/Democratic Republic of Congo are examples of CHEs in which military interventions appeared guided by confused or shifting mandates of international protection (Natsios, 1997). The mixed results of military engagement in humanitarian emergencies to date and the reluctance of the international community to support enforcement actions financially and politically suggest that the consensus in favor of humanitarian intervention is not yet sufficiently rooted in the international community. Traditional principles of sovereignty and nonintervention continue to operate, even if they no longer hold absolute primacy. THE PROTECTION-NEUTRALITY DILEMMA IN HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCIES 83 Accordingly,“ ... states and armed opposition groups, as well as other less traditional actors, are challenging conventional notions of territorial sovereignty and insisting upon greater accountability”(Weiss, 1994:109-110). Although precedent-setting for humanitarian interventions, UNSCR 688, for example, explicitly reaffirms “the commitment ... to the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of Iraq ” (UN Security Council, April 5, 1991; cf, Woodward, 1995). It points to a fundamental ambivalence regarding the legitimacy and efficacy of the use of force. This is reflected in the UNHCR’ s own assessment of the context in which it has to operate: “While the old rules of the game have evidently changed, the international communi ty has found it extremely difficult to articulate a coherent set of principles and practices which are geared to contemporary circumstances ” (UNHCR , 1995:115). Until recently, international humanitarian relief organizations had few, if any, response mechanisms. Limiting itself largely to food and other material assistance, the UNHCR, for example, was able to maintain a posture of neutrali ty but increasingly unable to protect the lives of the forcibly displaced as well as humanitarian workers. Failures to protect displaced populations in the Balkans and Africa have forced UNHCR to take a more pro-active stance (Hyndman, 2000; Ogata, 1998:216.) It created a new Emergency Preparedness and Response Section (EPRS) within UNHCR in 1992 and frequently has assumed the role of lead agency in coordinating international responses to such emergencies with other agencies and the military. Ironically, in the very process of creating ‘humanitarian space,’ UNHCR may have “endangered the perceived impartiali ty and neutrali ty of humanitarian organizations .. ..“ (Cunliffe and Pugh, 2000:193). Under such circumstances, it is not clear whether UNHCR can maintain its independent, nonpolitical character (Cunliffe and Pugh, 2000:176). That is the question facing UNHCR today as it grapples with the protectionneutrality dilemma posed by increasing military involvement in CHEs. HUMANITARJANAGENDA-SETTERS IN THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY Complex humanitarian emergencies, in particular, engage a broad range of state and nonstate actors, military forces and civilians, citizens and forcibly displaced populations, within and across territorial boundaries (Slim, 1998). It therefore may be more useful to think of the “international community ” as a political or “imagined community ” rather than solely in terms of geostrategic territories or state alliances (Anderson, 1991). The capaci ty to respond is not merely a matter of material resources. Political will, derived from com- 84 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW mon interests and values, also guides policy choices regarding international protection. However, the international system in fact is not monolithic nor is its political will. Nation-states are important but only one of several agents in the international system. More importantly, the borders of an international communi ty are not fixed and static but rather constantly negotiated interests and value positions or norms. Norms do not simply regulate legal or political behavior, rather they prescribe a state of “ oughtness” for such behavior. That ideal state is rarely achieved and instead continually modified and shaped by a combination of other factors present in the international system. ’ The emergence of new actors or “ policy entrepreneurs” who champion a particular agenda, or a sudden shock to previously stable institutional structures, can create a new agenda or norms. By its very engagement in CHEs, the military has become one such “ entrepreneur,” gradually helping to establish a new equilibrium or policy consensus around the protection of the forcibly displaced and individual human rights, and creating an “ethic of intervention” (Hehir, 1995; Hoffman, 1995, 1996). Especially in regions at risk of destabilization and wider regional wars, states rely on a right of international intervention as a legitimate extension of customary law to retaliate against illegal behavior by one state towards another. “Soft” and “hard” interventions as an international response to population crises are much more common but not limited to the Post-Cold War period. 2 However, in the past, military interventions for humanitarian purposes were an anomaly. Unless territorial or geostrategic interests were threatened, the international communi ty rarely intervened. Today, by contrast, traditional reasons of territorial self-defense or realpolitik figure far less prominently than humanitarian principles but should not be discounted entirely (Lichfield, 1996; Natsios, 1997). Many of today ’s interventions may lead to inconsistencies and policy failures but eventually help to establish a new poli cy equilibrium on humantarian actions. This appears to be especially true in CHEs, where there often is no clear governing structure in place and interests of those involved can change ‘The process of norms contestation described here is not linear, but rather marked by “ punctuated equilibria ” (Baumgartner et al., 1993). Long periods of relative stability in the norms environment will be interrupted by spurts of rapid change and the rise of new norms to the top of the international agenda. The previously established equilibrium is upset and reestablished around a different set of norms. These in turn produce alternate policy outcomes through the interaction between the degree to which the norm is perceived as legitimate and the capacities of the institution structures underpinning the norm. 2Soft interventions typically refer to a range of preventive activities short of military action. Hard intervention is synonymous with military or armed intervention (see Dowty et al., 1996; UNHCR, 1997). THE PROTECTION-NEUTRALITY DILEMMA IN HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCIES 85 rapidly. Forcibly displaced populations further contribute to the fluidi ty of borders and interests and indeed actively shape the humanitarian intervention agenda. Forcibly Displaced Populations as a Security Concern The role of military action in humanitarian interventions derives much of its impetus from the link between forced migration and securi ty concerns. The physical securi ty of refugees and other war-affected people is not a new concern to UNHCR and other humanitarian organizations. Gil Loescher reminds us elsewhere in this volume that already during the 1970s and 1980s refugee camps in Angola and elsewhere faced militarization. But awareness of the problem has increased significantly in recent years as has the recognition that physical securi ty is a necessary precondition for humanitarian relief. By the end of 1999, there existed over 14 million refugees and at least 21 million internally di s p laced peop l e (USCR , 2000:6). They are not only tragic victims of violence, coercion and disasters but also challengers to traditional norms of sovereignty and definitions of security. History has shown that forcible population displacements are both cause and consequence of conflicts. UNHCR Sadako Ogata and others have frequently expressed the concern that military involvement in humanitarian operations could also “ ... expose refugees to a conflict, or even make them party to it , jeopardizing their security, ” whether in Kosovo or in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Africa News, 1998, 1999) These conflicts are intensely political and complicate international responses to humanitarian emergencies, frequently producing unintended consequences (Jett, 1999:142; Halvorsen, 1999). For example, the new Rwandan government felt seriously threatened by refugee camps established in eastern Zaire and Tanzania — their size and proximi ty to the Rwandan border and their political and military character, in the wake of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 (Burns et al., 1998). Together with increased arms flows accompanying the population movements, they destabilized the entire Great Lakes Region, leading to defacto power vacuums in Zaire/Democratic Republic of Congo and a bid by surrounding countries to assume control. Refugees and IDPs themselves may be a source of inter- and intrastate tension as they frequently become tools of foreign policy, warfare and military strategy (Loescher, 1993; Lischer, 2000). The very process of going into exile can politicize and radicalize. This is exacerbated when the forcibly displaced are armed. Contemporary conflicts have eradicated the hard distinctions between combatants and noncombatants. 86 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW UNHCR recognized quickly that its inability to separate criminals and armed elements from refugees contributed to the outbreak of the civil war in Zaire in late 1996 (UNCHR, 1998). Here was a clear instance where neutrali ty hindered UNHCR in fulfilling its protection mandate. Frequently, too, the forcibly di s p laced are enlisted in the pursuit of national security. In the case of the Kosovo crisis, for example, UNHCR and the international communi ty — particularly NATO member states — sought to keep refugees in the region at all costs (mostly for political reasons), thereb y p lacing neighboring countries such as Macedonia at even greater risk of destabilization (European Report, 1999). Ultimately, they affect not only the societies within given territorial borders but also regions as a whole, potentially aggravating regional tensions through spillover of conflicts across national boundaries (Brown, 1996). The link between forcibly displaced populations, especially refugees, and security is embedded in the perception of refugees as threats, real or potential, to national and international securi ty (Wedgwood, 1999:245 ff; Mandel, 1997). Even when unarmed, “ [a]rniving unannounced and uninvited, landing in large numbers on the borders ... [massive refugee flows] resembled an invading force.” (Suhrke, 1993:180). Especially in developing countries, massive displaced population flows are likely to upset the delicate balance of socioeconomic factors, including ethnici ty and religion, which contribute to development. Threat perceptions of refugees therefore are highly situational. And yet, it is not so much the “ real” as much as the perceived threat that influences policy responses most significantly (Mandel, 1997). This mismatch between reali ty and mission may account, at least in part, for the mixed and often unintended outcomes of humanitarian interventions and peacekeeping operations. The forcibly displaced also can have a beneficial impact on security. They provide leverage for increased international attention and assistance or in international negotiations. Indirectly, refugees also contribute positively to regional and national securi ty through increased transparency among states. Thanks to the media (the “CNN factor ” made infamous by the Gulf War and Somalia) and the internet, the plight of refugees attracts almost instantaneous international attention to regions, countries or population entities previously ignored. Increasingly, international monitoring and early warning mechanisms accompany actual or potential refugee and IDP flows, forcing much greater exchanges of information. The increased focus on forcibly displaced populations in contemporary applications of military force and security calculations reflects the degree to which refugee regimes and international security interests appear to have con- THE PROTECTION-NEUTRALITY DILEMMA IN HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCIES 87 verged. For example, UN Security Council Resolution 1265 recognized the increasing rok of peacekeeping forces for the protection of humanitarian relief and forcibly displaced civilians in armed conflict (UN/IRIN, 1999). And yet we must concur with Ernst Haas ’ observation that “ we are a long way from a consensus on the primacy of a right to intervene on behalf of refugees ...“ (in Weiss, 1993:81). In the case of the 1995/1996 Kurdish crisis in Iraq, Turkey primarily intervened to neutralize a potential threat to Turkish rity ~ Then Turkish Foreign Minister Tansu Ciller responded to international queries that “ we are not ready to cancel the security zone because we fear the influx of refugees and the PKK has stationed themselves right next to our borders”(Worsnip, 1996; see also Brown, 1996:227). Americans fearing Haitian refugees and Germans worried about an influx from the former Yugoslavia expressed similar fears. Interventions focused on forcibly displaced populations are on the rise but by no means clear-cut or definitive. They may be defensive, opportunistic or coercive in mission (Brown, 1996; Posen, 1996). Refugees and IDPs may ‘ compel’ a norm of military intervention. Intended mostly to contain or prevent refugee flows, military interventions tend to be “complicated affairs full of ambiguities and uncertainties” due at least in part to their conflict with the principles of sovereignty and a series of political, moral and operational dilemmas created by them (Kier, 1996:99; Campbell, 1995). For example, in the face of one of the largest flows of returning refugees, the “ Mugunga Exodus” of 1996 from refugee camps in Eastern Zaire to Rwanda, the international community created an intense debate over the need to intervene militarily to protect the people, but at the same time became virtually paralyzed (Goldman and Wrong, 1996b). Conflicting interests resonate through virtually every recent debate on the subject of humanitarian action among members of the United Nations Security Council or General Assembly. Developing countries, in particular, appear concerned with extrapolating a right to intervention from the humanitarian imperative (Doyle, 1991). Therefore, despite an increased propensity to intervene militarily since the end of the Cold War, it is not at all clear whether or not the international community is adequately prepared to respond effectively to crises involving large-scale forced displacements of populations within and across borders. The nature of international military engagement also has changed. More often than not, the international communi ty ’s military forces now face a situation where traditional rules of engagement in war no longer hold; where they must deal with war-affected civilian — albeit not always unarmed — pop- 88 INTERNATiONAL MiG1 ~ ATioN REVIEW ulations rather than well-organized armies (Gasteyger, 2000; NagI, et at., 2000). The Military as Humanitarian Agenda-Setter In this framework of greater linkages between population displacement and security, the military may function both as recipient and carrier of international protection norms. When the international communi ty is confronted with a humanitarian crisis, its decision to respond is a function of a combination of the norms held by the communi ty as a whole and its capaci ty (and will) to respond. Because the international communi ty is in a period of normative transition, military forces often have been used to support both norms of international protection. For example, in the case of Bosnia, military troops were originally deployed to uphold the sovereignty of newly established states, but in the face of ethnic cleansing they found themselves primarily there to protect human life. In Kosovo, on the other hand, the military initially was engaged in explicit humanitarian action in defense of human life but stopped just short of full violation of the sovereignty norm (Roberts, 1999). Instead, the international communi ty de facto upheld the rights of states rather than those of individuals. Over time, as the military is increasingly deployed in support of humanitarian goals, it develops its own perceptions of the normative context in which it operates. It also reinforces (or weakens) extant norms through its effectiveness in humanitarian actions. After the Gulf War — generally considered a success— the international communi ty embarked on a flurry of humanitarian actions favoring the norm of international protection of human rights and individuals; the perceived failures in Somalia led to a retrenchment and resurgence of norms protecting the right to nonintervention. By 1993, in the wake of limited effectiveness of civil-military operations in humanitarian emergencies, the international community had retreated from an interventionist stance. Only after failing to act to prevent the Rwandan genocide, in spite of numerous pleas from nongovernmental and military officers, was the international community again prepared to expand the international mandate to protect human life even at the expense of the sovereignty norm. It did so not only because of the moral imperative but also because the military was able to provide the necessary logistic support and technical know-how to act. In a sense, the international communi ty intervenes militarily because it can. Capacities and skills alone are not sufficient for intervention on behalf of international protection norms. The lack of early responses to crises throughout the African Great Lakes region as well in Sierra Leone suggest that unless THE PROTECTION-NEUTRALITY DILEMMA IN HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCIES 89 there are “norms entrepreneurs”/agenda-setters willing to champion international protection, the international community will not engage readily in humanitarian emergencies. In the case of Bosnia, Rwanda and Kosovo, the military actively promoted an ostensibly humanitarian action agenda (see UN, 1999; Minear et at., 2000). The military thus is instrumental in determining not only whether or not the international community intervenes at all, but also whether it does so on behalf of the norm of sovereignty or of individual human rights of the war-affected. Traditionally, the military has only focused on the norm of Westphalian sovereignty, protecting or abrogating it for national strategic interests. As interstate conflicts diminish, however, the military faces a severe mismatch between its strategy and organizational capabilities and the missions it was likely to perform. With every engagement in a complex humanitarian emergency, it has sought to adjust and modify its own mission, force structure, and training to meet the demands of human rights protection norms. It has done so often more readily than UNHCR. CHEs tend to motivate either a perceived need for rescue of a population whose human rights have been violated within their own country or an imperative to protect people and the integrity of nation-states from the ravages of war. At least five assumptions underlie humanitarian actions (Williams, 1998; Natsios, 1997; Roberts, 1996). First, they are assumed to be legally and multinationally sanctioned/authorized. Second, they presume a clear hierarchy of relations between civilian and military organizations charged with carrying out the mission. In general, military organizations are deemed subordinate to civilian groups and decisionmakers. Third, the use of military force ideally is a measure of last resort but may need to be deployed earlier to affect peaceful solutions. Fourth, as a consequence, humanitarian actions are always crisis-driven. Indeed, by definition, humanitarian emergencies suggest the absence of long-term developmental and conflict management strategies and are typ ically short-lived in duration. Fifth, this also means that military interventions in CHEs are far less politically sensitive than many traditional peacekeeping or peace-enforcement operations, which carry with them the prospect of long-term engagement in a given country or region. Humanitarian action by military forces covers a wide spectrum of activities. They range from monitoring/observer functions such as in Macedonia and more recently in Burundi to full-scale war operations in Kosovo, although they frequently fall short of actual military intervention in combat. Jan Eliasson (1998:205) has referred to this progression as a “ladder of action” the humanitarian communi ty tends to speak in terms of “ladder of options” 90 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW (Milner, 2000). The provision of logistic support tends to be the least controversial, and generally most effective, function performed by military forces. Under this rubric fall actions to secure access to populations in need; the delivery of humanitarian relief during armed conflicts, including supplies, maintenance of essential services and reconstruction of damaged buildings and roads. Military forces also provide evacuation support and training of civilian personnel working under conditions of armed conflicts. Much more controversial but also the least effectively implemented mandate of humanitarian action is that of physical protection. This entails the use of UN peacekeeping forces to protect relief workers from attacks by belligerents and the creation of humanitarian corridors. It also includes the establishment of safe zones for civilian refugees and internally displaced populations. More recently, the humanitarian organizations have advocated disarmament of combatants among displaced populations as well as de-mining areas of conflict as a necessary prerequisite for the protection of civilians (for a discussion of the problem of civilian protection in CHEs, see Harris et at., 1999). At the same time, military forces provide the more traditional peacekeeping functions. Examples include information and threat assessments drawing on military intelligence. They also fulfill liaison and legal support functions such as the enforcement of international humanitarian law and rules of engagement, the facilitation of contacts among adversaries on issues such as the resettlement of refugees, and in general to fill gaps in expertise of nonmilitary, humanitarian relief organizations. The newest and as yet least developed area of activi ty is the concept of trusteeship as applied in Bosnia and more recently in Kosovo. Here, armed forces assist in the provision of temporary governance structures, communications, and command and control functions in failed states. CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS IN CHEs UNHCR-military relations have experienced both successes and failures. In Cambodia and El Salvador, for example, civil-military relations were marked by a synergy not only with local needs but also integrated strategies by all international actors involved in refugee resettlement and peace building without compromising the ostensibly humanitarian mission (Regan, 2000). In Kosovo, by contrast, NATO’S humanitarian engagement “inserted competing priorities” and “blurred the line between military and humanitarian missions” to the point where UNHCR’s mission was largely side-lined by bilateral military and political objectives (UNHCR, 2000:ix; Minear et at., 2000:40; Duffield, 1997). In THE PROTECTION-NEUTRALITY DILEMMA IN HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCIES 91 part, this was due to UNHCR’s own reluctance to participate in joint contingency planning efforts with NATO, thereby effectively denying it access to important information regarding population displacement and leaving it unprepared to respond effectively to the sudden massive appearance of refugees and IDPs. In reviewing UNHCR-military relations in Bosnia in 1993/1994, the African Great Lakes in 1994-1996, and most recently in Kosovo in 1999, it becomes clear that humanitarian organizations as well as military forces view their cooperation with caution and ambivalence. For the UNHCR, the deteriorating securi ty situation and its growing inability to adequately protect waraffected populations as well as its own relief workers has made the collaboration a “ necessary evil” of sorts. For the military, the changing nature of conflict and war has forced it to recognize that it must be prepared to engage in missions other than war and that the traditional war-fighting posture may become a relic of the past. Both sides have had to confront a host of challenges along operational, legal and political, and ethical dimensions. A brief review of each of these areas of concerns shows that there are both positive and negative aspects to the UNHCR-military partnership. Operational Factors Operational factors are central to the debate over the role and impact of military interventions in humanitarian emergencies. The very chaotic nature of CHE s, often in remote, inaccessible terrain which blur the lines between civilian and combatant populations, has led to an uneasy partnership between civilian humanitarian workers and bilateral, multinational and even private securi ty forces. The most straightforward argument is that simply no other actor in the international communi ty has the capabilities and resources to respond to humanitarian emergencies as do military forces. Faced with an inherently predatory operational environment in which not only the forcibly displaced but also those sent to protect them are targets of violence, UNHCR has been hopelessly overwhelmed in terms of its ability to plan and deploy personnel and adequate resources (Byrans et at., 1999; Hannay, 1999; Slim, 1998). Military presence in Bosnia and Kosovo, and to a lesser degree in Haiti and Rwanda, provided UNHCR and other humanitarian organizations operating in the middle of armed conflict with much needed “ surge protection” (Minear et at., 2000), logistic and organizational support, and information gathering. In the area of physical protection, military engagement has been needed — albeit rarely effectively delivered — to separate out and disarm combatants 92 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW among the forcibly displaced (Ginifer, 1998; Biermann etat., 1999:188-189). The U.N. Secretary General recently identified arms control as an “ essential prerequisite for a successful peace-building process ....“ requiring a “ multidimensional approach involving demobilization,” law enforcement and measures to restrict arms flows (UNSG Report, 1999). The importance of these functions for the management of displaced populations is underlined by recent examples of protection failures in the African Great Lakes. For example, had the international community deployed multinational forces to disarm armed individuals deemed threatening to the government of Rwanda, rather than allowing Rwandan military troops to raid and empty out the camp by force, the December 1994 massacre at the Kibeho refugee camp in Rwanda might have been avoided (Furley, 1998). Moreover, as mentioned earlier, humanitarian relief workers themselves are increasingly at risk and rely on military forces for their protection. UNHCR High Commissioner Sadako Ogata at one time even advocated a rapid deployment force to be added to the range of humanitarian relief organizations responding to CHEs. Although this proposal has not received much favorable discussion, the United Nations has recognized the importance of ensuring the safe ty of humanitarian workers and civilians in armed conflicts (see Bloom, 1995; UN IRIN, 2000). Since often international military or police forces have been in short supply or delayed, UNHCR and analysts of the crises in Rwanda and Kosovo have recommended the use of private security forces to protect civilian workers and populations, but with serious reservations (Bryans et al., 1999) In general, however, only military forces have the necessary size, responsiveness and speed to be able to act quickly in complex emergencies (Natsios, 1997:108). Others have pointed out that the military offers more experience and is better organized than most other — nongovernmental — partners to the UNHCR (Pirotte et at., 1999; Williams, 1998). The fact that many of these crises are accompanied or precipitated by failing states also has meant that military forces have had to assume the state ’ s public security functions (Bellamy, 1997). Military humanitarian protection has operational ramifications that extend beyond the immediate protection needs of the war-affected and humanitarian workers. Reviews conducted by both the UN as well as nongovernmental experts suggest that an early and convincing use of force might have stopped or at least slowed down mass killings in Rwanda and Bosnia ~ Some have argued that armed intervention to set up safe havens for refugees and IDPs in some instances may be the only option to save human life (Ogata, 1 999b). In humanitarian emergencies, the international communi ty THE PROTECTION-NEUTRALITY DILEMMA IN HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCIES 93 often will not have a choice between diplomacy and use of force to end conflicts rapidly and may need to resort to military force in order to bring about a diplomatically brokered resolution (O’Hanlon, 1997). On the other hand, the military’ s abili ty to exercise this protection function is burdened by the legacy of past failures, whether in Vietnam or in Somalia. Excessive casual ty avoidance, artificially imposed exit strategies, and too narrowly construed mandates have hamstrung numerous humanitarian military actions. In Bosnia and Kosovo, for example, armed forces were forced to leave too soon to ensure the safe ty of the displaced populations left behind. As a consequence, as one critic of the Kosovo operation has pointed out, “ neither were people brought to safety, nor safe ty brought to the people ..“ (Hayden, 1997). The Safe Areas policy vividly demonstrates the protection-neutrality dilemma confronting both UNPROFOR and UNHCR in CHEs. The United Nations’ impartiali ty guideline made it impossible to contemplate a credible defense of the safe areas since this could have required a direct military engagement with the Serbs to be credible (Vayrynen, 2000:26). In eastern Zaire from 1994-1996, UNHCR pleaded repeatedly for international military protection of its camps around Goma and elsewhere which had become highly militarized. When the UN Securi ty Council failed to respond, UNHCR turned to Zairian Palace Guards to provide securi ty under supervision of international security experts from the Netherlands and other African countries. This arrangement proved inadequate, not the least because the Zairians had other political interests which ran counter to the UNHCR’s protection mandate (Burns et al., 1998; Halvorsen, 1999:307ff). A second key area of civil-military operations in CHEs is that of logistics and access. Military forces are best suited to quickly move large quantities of material and personnel. UNHCR has taken advantage of this capaci ty by devising so-called ‘service packages ’ that allow governments to provide expertise and equipment as needed, often in the form of military logistics support. The military has recognized that providing logistic support to UNHCR is perhaps its most important function in CHEs, particularly in the early, usually most intensive phase of an emergency (Connaughton, 1998; Nadler, 1999). After failures in Haiti and Somalia, where troops “were bewildered by the overlap between combat missions and peacekeeping, the U.S. Army established a peacekeeping institute and focused on training individual soldiers for missions other than war (NagI et at., 2000). Through each successive crisis, the militaries of many troopcontributing states have modified their training programs to give greater priori ty to logistics over combat. They also have been instrumental in mitigating serious logistic logjams from Rwanda to Kosovo. A big challenge for UNHCR 94 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW has been gaining physical and legal access to forcibly displaced populations. Here, too, the military — under the auspices of international peacekeeping forces— has contributed significantly to UNHCR’ s mission. That the military can provide the vehicles and reconnaissance necessary to track displaced populations in remote locations and difficult terrain such as the jungles of Eastern Zaire/DRC or the Balkan mountains is common knowledge. At the same time, civil-military logistic cooperation in CHEs is particularly complex. Coordinating effective civilian agency responses to CHEs alone already has proven to be a challenge, even with the recent innovation of the UN Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) and various coordinating bodies such as the Inter Agency Standing Committee (JASC). There are problems of communication, differences in organizational cultures, and mutual distrust (Lange, 1998:121; Harris et al., 1999; Williams, 1998). Relief efforts in Rwanda, for example, suffered from interagency disputes among UNHCR , UNAMIR Peacekeeping Forces and various other UN agencies and NGOs, as well as significant short-falls in necessary resources. Similar problems slowed the delivery of aid to refugees and displaced persons in Kosovo. Frequent breakdowns in communications between UNHCR and military operatives and ill-defined lines of command only complicate matters further. The military’s hierarchical organization and contingency planning is not readily compatible with UNHCR’s flatter, more diverse and decentralized structure and relief mandate (Williams, 1998; Natsios, 1997; Collins et al., 1997). Both parties, however, have been working to minimize such problems in the future, establishing civil-military operations centers (CMOC) in Bosnia, for example. With each round of operations, the military has sought to improve its capacities to respond to humanitarian emergencies and often has been the most vocal critic of short-falls in performance due to shortages in funding, training or equipment. Unfortunately, funds requested rarely are in line with the desired results. The U.S. allocation of only $125,000 in 1995 for Burundi with the goal of achieving an effective measure of “ notable progress toward development of an apolitical professional military with respect for human rights and proper civil-military roles in a democratic society ” is but one example of poorly conceived policies (Amnesty International, 1995). Information gathering and sharing presents UNCHR with a third critical area of operations where it needs to rely on military support to fulfill its mandate (but again at a price). Much of the criticism of UNHCR’s responses to the refugee crises in Eastern Zaire/DRC and Kosovo, respectively, has noted the importance of identifying the exact number of refugees to trigger a military intervention. In the DRC case, the international communi ty ultimately failed THE PROTECTION-NEUTRALITY DILEMMA IN HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCIES 95 to respond because exact numbers of forcibly displaced (estimated to be around 700,000) could not be verified sufficiently to determine the potential impact of a military intervention (Lippman, 1996). The problem of “ counting” refugees has haunted UNHCR for a long time. However, the experiences of the last decade of humanitarian actions have bolstered a case for using the military’s intelligence-gathering capabilities to monitor populations at risk and to identif ~ y critical infrastructure and villages (Hayes et at., 1997; Nadler, 1999; USIP, 2000). As mentioned earlier, information sharing also played a central role, good and bad, in the relationship between UNHCR and NATO during the Kosovo emergency. On the positive side, UNHCR was able to rely significantly on KFOR forces deployed in Macedonia to monitor the situation, allowing for adequate planning and last-minute adjustments of strategies. By contrast, in Albania NATO dominated the contingency planning process and left UNHCR with only two options — to link up with a political-military institution which was in fact a party to the conflict or to distance itself but lack sufficient intelligence and resources to address the subsequent refugee flows (Minear et at., 2000). Political and Legal Legitimacy Clearly, the effectiveness and feasibility of military responses to CHEs is subject to serious practical constraints. For example, multilateral peace support operations require a coalition of the willing subject to both international and domestic politics. As the control of operations is contested among various humanitarian UN agencies, NGOs and military officers, military effectiveness is compromised to an even greater extent. Despite the growing frequency of military humanitarian action, its political and legal legitimacy remains hotly contested. In many ways, the question of legitimacy lies at the core of the UNHCR-military relationship. It influences the effectiveness of civilian and military actors in CHEs as well as the general international tolerance for military humanitarian actions. Although there are clear legal and political reasons to support a military role in CHEs, it also is clear that there remain significant gaps or weaknesses which compromise humanitarian missions. A major point of contention is that of the formal legality of UNCHR-military interaction and intervention in CHEs. The UN Charter and various international conventions allow for intervention when international peace and securi ty is threatened, in response to gross violations of human rights or genocide, or when one state fails to meet its obligations within the international system. For example, the Genocide and Human Rights conventions, international refugee and humanitarian laws, the International Covenant on Civil and Polit- 96 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW ical Rights, and most recently the newly proposed Guiding Principles for Internally Displaced Peoples (IDPs), all provide legal justification for intervening in another state in order to protect individual life (for a discussion of the legal framework, see Teson, 1997; Harif, 1995; UNSG, 1999; UNOCHA, 1999a, 1999b). In addition, the UN Security Council has played a major role in advancing a doctrine of humanitarian intervention, as has the UNHCR. Since the resolutions authorizing the UNSCOM operation in Iraq, the Security Council has set precedent and increasingly widened the scope of military action (Roberts, 1996). Successive UN Resolutions have contributed to a body of international agreements in support of humanitarian military action. In addition, the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees, the 1967 OAU Convention, as well as Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights give the UNHCR the authority to protect those persecuted and to address securi ty issues when they become an impediment to fulfillment of the UNHCR mandate (Halvorsen, 1999; Teson, 1997). Yet there remain significant gaps in international law which are only beginning to be addressed, such as the rights of the internall y displaced populations and the safety of humanitarian personnel mentioned earlier. A particularly thorny issue are the special protection needs of children and the problem of child soldiers (see UNSC Resolution 1261, 1999). Significant inconsistencies in UN decisions and the apparent practice, if not intent, of a double standard, suggest a North-South divide within the United Nations on the question of military involvement (Sahnoun, 1996; Hyndman, 2000). The global South appears at least as ambivalent about military interventions as do the great powers fielding the resources. A major concern appears to be whether or not the new rules for UN humanitarian engagement would provide a blanket justification for intervention in Third World countries by the West. During debates in the UN General Assembly, an Indian delegate, for example, took issue with the assumption that a UN offer of humanitarian assistance conferred any right of humanitarian intervention (Stockton, 1996). Stanley Hoffman (1993:i) put the problem more succinctly, suggesting that “ as of today, a humanitarian crisis is a threat to peace and security only when the Security Council says so.” Concerns over the legitimacy of international military humanitarian interventions has made many a receiving country, e.g., Rwanda, at best wary and at worst outright resistant to international forces even when deployed to support UNHCR’s mission of protecting war-affected civilians. The most fundamental legal argument against humanitarian action is embodied in the very principles such actions violate — those of sovereignty and THE PROTECTION-NEUTRALITY DILEMMA IN HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCIES 97 nonintervention — as articulated in Article 2 of the United Nations Charter and in the 1951 Convention on Refugees. According to these international agreements, the primary responsibility for protection of citizens rests with governments, not with the international community as a whole. Military humanitarian action clearly undermines that responsibility, at least in theory. Yet in practice this argument is weakened by the very failure of states to carry out their obligations to their citizens. As we saw in eastern Zaire in 1995 and 1996 or in Somalia, the UNHCR in fact could not rely on the host state to meet its international obligations because of lack of capaci ty and political will. Ironically, although considered missions other than war, humanitarian military action is considered a legitimate extension of UNHCR’s protection mandate as long as it abides by the traditional principles of war of limitation, distinction and proportionali ty (UNHCR, 1995; Teson, 1997; Gaus, 1999). From a political perspective, one can argue that global realities leave no real choice but to produce a doctrine and training program that will allow armed forces to carry out the range of missions that today’s situations require. Multinational peacekeeping forces “ can open doors which might otherwise remain closed to efforts in peacemaking and peace-building” (UNDPKO, 1998:1), as a confidence- and trust-building mechanism for the host country and the waraffected populations. Once humanitarian action is perceived as necessary for peace and security, i.e., for traditional national interests, then there also is significantly greater potential for public support for humanitarian assistance. “Coercive inducement” may be a viable middle option when preventive peacekeeping has failed in order to avoid full-scale peace enforcement or outright war (Daniel et at., 1998) Finally, legal guaranties may be insufficient as existing humanitarian laws are not enforced and often disregarded. By introducing military force into the repertoire of responses to violations of humanitarian laws, they are more likely to be enforced. Multinational armed forces also have certain credibility and power of persuasion that derives from the ability to respond not only to traditional threats of war but also the muddier operational terrain of CHEs. Thus, for example, Stephen Solarz and Michael O’Hanlon, among others, warn that “a failure to risk casualties in missions of major humanitarian significance may raise questions around the world about the [U.S.] willingness to incur costs in defense of more traditional interests ” (1997; see also Kagan, 1997). A serious issue for the legitimacy and success of civil-military operations is the question of timing and mandates. All too often, poorly articulated and poorly timed mandates mean that military action becomes a substitute for political will. This has had detrimental implications for UNHCR and international mu- 98 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATIoN REVIEW itary forces and their governments, not to mention dire consequences for the war-affected populations. In Bosnia and Rwanda, for example, neither civilian nor military actors were able to protect civilians from rape, pillage and even murder (Gourevitch, 1998; Williams, 1993). The UN mandates underlying the military missions were simply too narrowly construed. In Eastern Zaire/DRC, UNHCR was hamstrung by overly narrow or legalistic interpretations of its protection mandate to exclude military engagement, and by conflicts with its neutrality mandate. Both UNHCR and the military also have had to struggle with confusing mandates as a consequence of their interaction in CHEs. Military commanders felt obligated to make trade-offs between combat-readiness and humanitarian relief, while UNHCR workers had to trade-off a certain amount of legitimacy, derived ostensibly from their impartiality, in exchange for greater operational effectiveness by cooperating closely with ‘dual use’ military missions, most recently in Kosovo (Burns et at., 1998; Smith, 1994). Military intervention often is too much, too late (e.g., Somalia), and the requirements of military planning combined with civilian constraints make it difficult to get the timing right. In the case of Rwanda, domestic political constraints and ill timing proved to be significant handicaps. Intervention in such cases “is no substitute for prevention” (Kuperman, 2000:117). Premature delegation of military responsibilities to regional organizations which may not be adequately equipped to carry out an operation according to international norms and standards, e.g. the Organization of African Unity (OAU), reduces the likelihood of success for humanitarian actions in CHEs. In addition, although Western and P-5 member countries have dominated most multilateral peacekeeping forces in the post Cold War era, forces contributed to humanitarian actions by other member countries often are poorly trained and illequipped (Hoffmann, 1995, 1996). Interventions in response to displaced population crises are difficult to control and actually can lead to greater regional instability, protracted conflicts, and more rather than fewer displaced peoples (Bryans, et at., 1999; Pomfret, 1997) As suggested earlier, unintended consequences are a particular challenge for humanitarian operations. The introduction of military troops into an already unstable environment may exacerbate existing conflicts. For example, UNHCR Commissioner Ogata herself admits that “there were occasions when UNPROFOR’s presence seemed to draw rather than to deter fire,” putting not only the forcibly displaced but also the lives of humanitarian staff sent to protect them at risk (Biermann et at., 1999:189). Similarly, foreign military units “ can also attract refugee populations” and increase displaced populations, for example in Mogadishu, Somalia, by at least 25 percent. (Natsios, 1996:53-54). There is THE PROTECTION-NEUTRALITY DILEMMA IN HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCIES 99 always the possibility that they will have an adverse impact on conflict resolution efforts by hardening positions among combatants with nothing left to lose. The risk is particularly high in the face of protracted communal or ethnic conflicts. The use of military force opens up a potential for abuse of power by military personnel, whether it is the abuse and rape of women and children, forced recruitment into military service, or intimidation of civilian populations. Finally, it is important to note that crisis responses exact significant trade-offs and costs in terms of long-term development and strategies to eradicate the root causes of CHEs. Increasing militarization of humanitarian aid compromise principles of humanity and proportionality (Ebersole, 1995) and may lead to an inappropriate “securitization” of political problems. John Prendergast and Cohn Scott, among others, have made the provocative but all too true observation that “humanitarian aid may unintentionally sustain conflict ... it can be misdirected as an instrument of war, providing the means [sic] of conflict. Second, it may contribute less overtly to ... the causes of insecurity and war” (Hayes et at., 1997:829) Ironically, it was the lack of adequate securi ty that made UNHCR an unwitting accomplice to militant Hutu rebels and armed combatants in its camps in eastern Zaire/DRC as they benefited from the steady stream of supplies and transportation. Under such conditions, one must also consider the ethical implications of military involvement in CHEs. Ethical Concerns Ethically justified humanitarian interventions derive their force from the moral authori ty against standing by idly while gross human rights violations take place. With the exception of Rwanda in 1994, the international community has advocated an activist stance against genocide and politicide even if rarely implemented. The notion of a collective responsibili ty towards its individual members — particularly in the absence of a functioning state — has entered into the culture and identity of the international community (Cusimano, 2000). The moral obligations or priorities that may necessitate war and military interventions resonate loudly in decisions to intervene in CHEs (Walzer, 1992). A corollary to this argument is that the legitimacy and sovereignty of states ultimately derives from the rights of individuals. To the degree that states violate human rights, they lose their sovereign rights, including the right to nonintervention (Walzer, 1995; Slater et at., 1986). The international regime protecting refugees and more recently internally displaced populations no doubt has contributed significantly to an increasingly prevalent norm of protecting the individual from belligerent state or nonstate actors (Loescher, 1994). 100 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW However, this ethical stance is somewhat problematic, particularly in the context of CHEs, when individual rights are not always readily discernable from larger group survival strategies (Hayes et at., 1997). There are some profound ethical reasons against humanitarian action. Even if one accepts the idea of a “ right to intervene,” whose right is it? The international communi ty opens itself up to accusations of double standards when it chooses to intervene selectively (Braekman, 2000; Whitman, 1997, Roberts, 1999). How does one justify action in Kosovo but inaction in Sierra Leone? Humanitarian actions also clearly undermine the right to self-determination, which the international community assumes to have been forfeited by human rights violations. A related “slippery slope ” problem is when humanitarian interventions turn into invasions or blur the lines between relief and political-military objectives, as in Kosovo. The assumption underlying UNHCR and military actions in CHEs is that they serve a humanitarian intent not always readily distinguishable from foreign policy goals (Slater et at., 1986). Thus it did not help that the multinational force (UNAMIR) followed on the heels of the French “Operation Turquoise” with highly suspect motives (Darnton, 1994; McGreal et at., 1994; Prunier, 1997). As the mandate of military forces in CHEs has steadily been broadened, the international community increasingly risks violating traditional humanitarian mandates of impartiality and neutrality and opens itself up to charges of humanitarian “militarism” (Ebersole, 1995). In the same vein, UNHCR’s effort to protect civilians in armed conflict can have unintended moral effects; for example, when the act of protecting refugees or IDPs through camps or safe havens may run directly counter to international efforts to stem the tide of ethnic cleansing (Kofi Annan, in Moore, 1998). For example, how are choices made about the particular individuals to be “selected” either for protection under UNHCR’s auspices or for separation as combatants by security forces. Similarly, faced with limited resources and personnel, UNHCR and multinational forces at times have given priority to self-defense over that of their target constituencies. While it obviously is not possible to protect all individuals all of the time, the international communi ty faces a considerable ethical dilemma in this regard. A related dilemma is that of denial of aid or action. For example, UNAMIR Commander Romeo Dallaire has claimed that UNHCR explicitly barred UNAMIR forces from assisting returning refugees in Rwanda in order to stem the flow of refugees south. ‘While presumably well-intentioned, this denial of assistance only made conditions worse. It is not surprising, therefore, that although the military is increasing- THE PROTECTION-NEUTRALITY DILEMMA IN HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCIES 101 ly willing to take an active role in responding to CHEs and UNHCR more readily recognizes the importance and need for military engagement, the partnership remains an uneasy one. CONCLUSION: THE PROTECTION-NEUTRALITY DILEMMA REVISITED As the international humanitarian community grapples with the overwhelming challenges posed by complex humanitarian emergencies, military and civilian attitudes toward military interventions are in a state of flux, complicated by competing norms of international protection. International humanitarian action is “ grounded in the principle that massive human rights deprivations do constitute a threat to international peace and securi ty either through transboundary refugee flows or spillage of international strife across borders” (Abiew, 1998:63). At the same time, increasingly coercive control and power associated with the concept of sovereignty are shared across a network of closely intertwined actors and institutions: both state and nonstate; international and national, civilian and military ~ The military, while in some countries still somewhat reluctant to intervene in nontraditional missions, has begun to transform its own planning and training agenda. It has led to a growing acceptance of the military as an integral part of the international communi ty ’s humanitarian responses (Johnsen, 1997, 1998; Pirnie et al., 1998; Record, 1998). However, the fact that the international community was unable to agree on the deployment of a military intervention force sufficient in strength to stop genocide in Rwanda in 1994 is indicative of the underlying struggle between two competing sets of protection norms. As then UN Undersecretary-General and Emergency Relief Coordinator Akashi aptly pointed out in a speech on May 23, 1997 : “When people are forcibly uprooted and pushed from their houses, and the aim of warfare is to inflict maximum pain, then ‘ protection ’ requirements are quite different to what was needed in more traditional humanitarian assistance operations. ” In developing appropriate responses to complex humanitarian emergencies, it is essential to clearly define who and what is to be secured. Do we protect forcibly di s p laced p o pulations from disease, death and persecution, or do we protect national boundaries from the spillover effects of refugee flows, and how? The answer is very much dependent on the prevailing norms of international protection to which one subscribes. As long as refugees/IDPs and violence are two sides of the same coin, it seems doubtful that we can do away entirely with the use of military force in 102 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW CHEs. Too frequently, however, decisions to use force are made under conditions of competing interests and a lack of communication between those who are concerned for the forcibly displaced and those who worry about the effect of refugees on their surroundings. One therefore should be aware of the slippery slope invoked by humanitarian interventions, no matter how noble the cause. Father Bryan Hehir (1995) reminds us that “ [m]ilitary power holds the ambiguous role in world politics of being simultaneously the decisive threat to life and order and the instrument of protecting both.” In CHEs, the lines sometimes are even more blurred than other circumstances if we consider the incidences where military forces have been used to return displaced populations to their point of origin by force— at the border between Thailand and Burma/Myanmar or in East Timor or at the Turkish-Iraqi border. It is understandable that UNHCR and other humanitarian organizations retain a certain degree of distance and caution in turning to the military for support, no matter how helpful and central the military has become to the humanitarian agenda. From the experiences in civil-military relations in CHEs garnered to date, one can offer several recommendations that might help to mitigate the protection-neutrality dilemma for humanitarian actors. First, appropriate timing and mandates for military interventions are crucial to limit unintended consequences. Military engagement is likely to be most effective in the most intensive phase of conflict — often at the beginning of a complex humanitarian emergency. At the same time, the use of military forces in humanitarian emergencies must be strictly circumscribed and “ the strategy and implements used ... tailored to fit the needs of the specific conflict” (Regan, 2000:106). Generally that means that it will be the option of last resort when all other nonforcible efforts have failed, but one should not wait until it is too late. Furthermore, humanitarian, peacekeeping, peaceenforcement and political mandates must be clearly defined and publicized to soldiers or police, humanitarian relief workers, and most importantly to the refugees and IDPs themselves. It might be useful to modify somewhat the “ladder of options ” approach which UNHCR has for some time now advocated. This approach is based on a sequential process of escalation from soft to medium and ultimately ‘hard’ intervention tactics. However, UNHCR’s protection mandate may, in fact, benefit from a simultaneous application of a variety of mechanisms, especially international policing rather than full-blown military deployments. In this regard, it now is possible to build on UNSC Resolution 1296 and to explore THE PROTECTION-NEUTRALITY DILEMMA IN HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCIES 103 variations of the concept of Humanitarian Support Officers initially recommended at least a decade ago (see Weiss, 1990; Nagl et at., 2000). Security forces would work hand in hand with UNHCR from the beginning in order to prevent the militarization of refugee camps, for example. Thinking about the “ladder of options ” in lateral rather than hierarchical terms would also enable emergency response teams to link their efforts to the long-term development and peace-building efforts that must follow if complex humanitarian emergencies are to be prevented in the future. Secondly, a related issue is that of integrated planning strategies between civilian and military humanitarian actors. Military engagement for humanitarian purposes requires the same degree of strategy and often compellence as traditional uses of force (Posen, 1996:79). For the military this would mean according greater priority to logistics and intelligence units than combat troops from training to deployment. The international community and especially the national governments providing the forces must ensure that adequate resources and personnel are allocated for CHEs. As has been noted elsewhere, under-resourced missions may cause more damage than do good. For the humanitarian agencies such as UNHCR, it means walking a tightrope between the need to be effective and the normative desire for impartiality. Providing assistance in CHEs may require taking sides, at least nominally, if the aim is to manage and ultimately settle the conflicts. On the other hand, as the experiences of the massacre at the Kibeho Refugee Camp in Rwanda in December 1994 or the reluctance of Rwandan refugees from eastern Zaire/DRC to return in 1996 have shown, war-affected populations are unlikely to respond to a intervention force perceived to be biased (Regan, 2000:113). Thirdly, effective military humanitarian action and relations with UNHCR objectives require a broad base of political stakeholders and a consistent set of ethical and legal criteria under which military humanitarian engagement takes place. That is not to say that such criteria should be applied blindly, but rather that they should set a standard by which the specific conditions on the ground can be assessed and addressed. Especially in thinking about refugees and violence, it is useful to consider the underlying historical and cultural pressures. Finnemore stresses that “ violence is a fundamentally different mechanism of change than cognition .... Often there are choices to be made even within the constraints imposed by force, but outcomes imposed externally through violence are not captured by a cognitive theoretical framework” (Finnemore, 1 996c:43). The international community has initiated 104 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW several efforts to develop international standards for humanitarian action, such as the Mohonk Criteria by the UN Taskforce on Ethical and Legal Issues in Humanitarian Assistance or the UN Guiding Principles on Peacekeeping Operations and Internally Displaced People, respectively. But it is not clear that all parties to international responses to CHEs have taken a stake in the outcomes. There clearly is a North-South gap on the question of legitimacy of military interventions. It also is troubling that military humanitarian measures more often than not mask a lack of political will and commitment to the protection of war-affected populations. UNHCR might address this by incorporating the interests or concerns of national powers and military commanders from the outset, whether through the Executive Committee mechanism or the UN interagency process. By the same token, UNHCR and military planners need to take into account local perspectives and needs, especially when there is no viable “host” state to assume the responsibility for the people on the ground. 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Reprinted in Journal of Humanitarian Assistance (http:Ilwww-jha. cam.ac. uk) World Press Review 1994 “France’ s Troops in Rwanda, ” World Press Review, 41 (8):6. 116 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW Worsnip, P. 1996 “Turkey, U.S. Agree to Curb Saddam Role in N. Iraq, ” Reuters World Service, Sei ber23. The Need for Military Intervention in Humanitarian Emergencies Documentation Note Lieutenant General John M. Sanderson (Ret’d) I have been a keen student of international intervention since long before my command of the United Nations forces in Cambodia. My military career has spanned much of the Cold War years and has taken me to places like Malaysia during the period of confrontation over its formation, Vietnam, Europe at the height of the strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction, and most of Southeast Asia. I was an instructor at the British Army Staff College at the time of the establishment of UNIFIL — the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon — a serious aberration in the determinedly passive international peacekeeping approach to that time. The earlier intervention in the Congo in the 1960s seemed to have warned the UN off anything forceful in disrupted states, leaving it to former colonial powers to extract themselves from their former areas of engagement with as much saving grace as they could muster. Many of them did not do this very well. Nevertheless, the Lebanon activity stimulated an increase in peacekeeping training for future commanders, and I was responsible for upgrading for the British Army that part of the Staff College curriculum dealing with peacekeeping within a semester devoted to counter-insurgency operations. Counter-insurgency operations was an interesting place to caste this emerging area of military engagement in 1978. I suspect that it happened more by accident than good p lanning, but with the post Cold War blending of military peace operations and complex humanitarian emergencies a quarter of a century on, it now seems to have been the right place for it to be. This background held me in good stead when, in 1991, after the signing of the Paris Peace Agreements, I was to become a major player in the first major post Cold War complex and non-linear United Nations missions involving the military ~ As a prelude to this, I had visited the refugee camps on the Thai-Cambodian border in 1990 and had my first contact with UNHCR as an organization. The fact that a military faction dominated each of the major camps along the border was illuminating and also heartrending. Most of the people in the camps, where their presence was most often accidental, were caught up in an endless cycle of violence and despair. Those camps dominated by the Khmer © 2001 by the Center for Migration Studies of New York. All rights reserved. 0198-9183/00/3501.0133 IMR Volume 35 Number 1 (Spring 2001): 117—123 117 118 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW Rouge, in particular, had a pervasive atmosphere of terror and darkness which did not augur well at that time for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. The idea of the United Nations as a Transition Authority that emerged at the Paris Peace Conference in 1989 struck me at the time as a stroke of genius. Later I came to realize that it was only possible to reach an agreement on this mantle for the UN because of the role played by Prince Sihanouk as the accepted custodian of Cambodian sovereignty. Accepted, that is, by all factions, who anticipated that they would be able to manipulate him to gain outcomes better than those that confronted them if they did not sign the agreement. Sihanouk could not be controlled by anyone, including the United Nations, but his presence was nevertheless key to whatever success the United Nations Transition Authority in Cambodia had. I would like to begin my discussion of Carola Weil’s paper on the need for military intervention in humanitarian emergencies with a quotation from the early part of the book of Samuel in the Hebrew Scriptures, where the Israelites insist on replacing their judges, or priesthood, with a king. I’m going to quote from the King James Version of the Bible, because this translation captures the gravi ty of the decision more than most modern versions. This translation was made at the time of deep philosophical concern in Europe after the Black Plague, the Reformation, the Thirty Years War and the Treaty of Westphalia, which is generally regarded as the beginning of the modern era of state sovereignty based international relations. Most importantly, it was made before the Revolution of 1688 began the Westminster system of government and put the King in a new relationship with the people. Back in Samuel’s time, the Israelites had a tribal structure and were led by a priesthood that prophesied and judged in the name of God. They had trouble with the surrounding peoples, particularly the Philistines, but eventually prospered under Samuel’s leadership. Samuel’s sons however, left something to be desired in their behavior, “ turning aside after lucre, and taking bribes, and perverted judgement. ” So the elders addressed this problem to Samuel: “ [b]ehold thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all nations. But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the Lord. And the Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but, they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them. According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt even unto this day, wherewith they have forsaken me, and served other gods, so do they unto thee. Now therefore hearken unto their voice: howbeit yet protest solemnly unto them, and show them the THE NEED FOR MILITARY INTERVENTION IN HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCIES 119 manner of the king that shall reign over them. And Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people that asked of him a king. And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen: and some may run before his chariots. And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots. And he will take your daughters to be confectioneries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers. And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. And he will take a tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers and his servants. And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take a tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants. And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the Lord will not hear you in that day. Despite the quaintness of the language, the message is both explicit and timeless. Obviously the elders found Samuel’s response to be a bit self serving when they said, “nay; but we will have a king over us; that we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles. ” So Samuel, after consulting the Lord, agreed to find them a king. If you cannot be the leader, at least it is good if you can have a large say in selecting who it should be. Not for the last time a king was selected because he showed all the signs of being compliant. Samuel was in a position to make things very difficult for the annointed Saul. In the Israel of the time, Saul needed all the help he could get in order to get started, but once he had a bit of success he started to do his own thing. “It is good to be king ” as Mel Brooks says over and over again in his epic movie, The History of the World. When the Israelites asked for a king who would judge them, it is fairly safe to say that they meant someone who could make and execute the law, much as Bernard Kouchner and Sergio de Mello have been mandated to do in Kosovo and East Timor today. The point here is that the problem of governance is age-old, and the conflict between those who want to do the right thing, those who pursue tribal power and those who pursue personal power and lucre continues, even in UN mandated mission areas. Individual rights get caught up in this struggle and are fundamental to it. The struggle over the nature of the sovereign, which has dogged human society since time immemorial, cannot be ignored because it is so fundamental to the way we cope with change and our environment. As it was at the time of Samuel and Saul, one of the biggest issues of our times is ‘ who decides who is right and who is wrong?’ More to the point is the question of whether those who make 120 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW such decisions are prepared to or can do anything to ensure that those who are judged as wrong are brought to justice. With respect to these two questions, human beings might not have changed much, but the world has. It is a much smaller place for one thing, and everything that happens has some impact on each and every one of us. We do have many problems with the ecology, for example, with large parts of the “ spaceship ” we are traveling on becoming uninhabitable. There is not much chance of fixing these problems while there is conflict in one place after another and the world’s population grows at the rate it has been. Added to this problem is the fact that so much of our resources and talents are consumed in market-oriented economics. It seems that ethnic cleansing would be much more prevalent if it were not for the fact that we have put in place some international mechanisms to moderate this tendency, but one has the sense that these mechanisms are designed to keep the problems at arm ’ s length rather than to solve them. There is clear evidence that the spaceship is going faster and faster, as are the events on its surface. The mechanisms we have for addressing these problems seem no longer adequate to deal with them, which is why we have a debate about new roles for the military and their relationship with the civilian humanitarian agencies at the international level. What sort of militaries we are discussing seems to be an important issue requiring definition in this debate. One of the successes of the Westphalian system of sovereign states was to both legitimize and control the militaries within state structures. There are now many militaries where this control and definition are either loose or loosening. When you think about it, what are the militaries of the developed countries, which only have a lawful existence as an instrument of state sovereignty, doing at the international level anyway. Their entire being is tied to the laws of the sovereign state and, in theory, any military that breaks these bounds is unlawful. If they kill someone in that person ’ s own country without the declaration of a state of war, is that lawful? There is broad agreement that they must have the right of self-defense, but the issues are always marginal, and the dynamics once the killing starts are always vastly different than those that apply in the places where the rights and wrongs of doing so are debated. The saying that one man’s terrorist is another man ’s patriot has always complicated matters as you get away from state sovereignty and into other people ’s conflicts. This is the issue that has been central to my military experience from junior commander to international force commander. It is a key issue for all military operations in support of humanitarian activities. THE NEED FOR MILITARY INTERVENTION IN HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCIES 121 Karl von Clauswitz, who has had bad press, in my opinion, in Weil’s paper and in many others, in defining the chaotic nature of conflict, concluded that absolute war was the only thing that made sense. If you did not intend to destroy the enemy in battle, then your confusion could only bring about your own defeat, with all the waste of national gene pool that implied. Of course, he was unable to foresee the consequences of weapons of mass destruction and the necessi ty of the thing he could not conceive — limited war. THE TWO SOVEREIGNTIES Carola Weil does a wonderfully good job of bringing all the associated issues out in her paper. ‘What is slightly disconcerting to me in reading it, however, is the opening suggestion that the military is a somewhat reluctant p layer in the emerging humanitarian role. If there was any reluctance in Australia to engage in such efforts, it would more likely come from the political level. As an Army officer, I had never experienced this within my own organization. I can only assume that this is an American military view, which may come about as a result of America carrying so much of the burden of the Cold War confrontation and the necessary belief that the proper role of military organizations is the Clauswitzian one, to fight real wars. I suspect that this is why the U.S. Army has divided its doctrine into “War ” and “Operations Other Than War,” grouping everything that has been done since 1945 into the latter catego ry and most things that they have prepared for into the former. It does not take much analysis to realize that absolute wars are a thing of the past. Everything is limited by the existence of weapons of mass destruction, and to pursue absolute outcomes is to court one ’s own destruction. Fighting while negotiating is the norm, and both nations and disaffected groups seek to exploit whatever means they can to gain leverage in this process. Using refugees as tools to further these objectives is now the norm. They are, or should be, looked at as a security concern. Lest it be thought of as simply the tool of despots, you would find some support for the view that during the 1 980s Cambodian and Afghan refugees in Thailand and Pakistan, respectively, were ruthlessly exploited by the West to oppose Soviet-sponsored military machines in their countries of origin. Hutu refugees in Zaire seemed to have been prepared by some Europeans for the same role in Rwanda, eventually destabilizing the Congo and the entire Great Lakes region. The point here is that there will always be some sort of military machine associated with refugees. Very rarely will they be completely divorced from the insurgency that generates the military response. The influence of the Timorese militia in the refugee camps of West Timor is a case in point. 122 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW The problem then becomes one of supporting the humanitarian action without taking sides and becoming engaged in the associated political struggle as a consequence. As Somalia proved, this is not possible but, as Kosovo is now proving, the alternative is fraught with complexities that challenge international norms. Apart from the responsibilities for the establishment and enforcement of law and order that goes with this, the judgment that this is purely for humanitarian reasons and not strategic advantage is often highly contestable. To suggest, for example, that the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia was done for humanitarian reasons only indicates the success of the Soviet assisted propaganda campaign that supported this clearly strategic and traditional intervention. A key issue that I have found interesting and illuminating is that of the nonlinear nature of the normative shift in the international system. If I might draw a parallel from the past, it is interesting that the concept of state sovereignty emerged out of the chaos of the Thirty-Years ’ War, which itself emerged out of the normative shift of the Reformation. It is arguable, but very likely, that we are in or moving into a chaotic global situation at the present time, and the responses to disrupted states will have to be nonlinear in the same way. This time the responses will have to be pre-emptive; otherwise there is a high probability that the ensuing conflict could impact on us all in very serious ways. Both recent Secretaries General of the United Nations have pleaded the case for preemptive military intervention in the internal affairs of disrupted states — Boutros Ghali seeking national commitments to high readiness responses and Kofi Annan most recently arguing the two sovereignties case for the right of regional alliances to intervene in those states which commit or allow gross breaches of individual rights within their boundaries. When one recognizes that the sancti ty of state sovereignty is the foundation of the United Nations, to have its principal appointed officer plea for intervention is a profound shift in itself. But is it any wonder? The reali ty is that between them, these two Secretaries General have presided over the most turbulent time in the organization’s history. Since 1989, membership of the UN has grown at a rapid pace as the former communist bloc has broken up while, at the same time, ethnic cleansing has accompanied the struggle for peoples to gain recognition of their sovereign status. The frequency of Securi ty Council sanctioned interventions has grown at an exponential rate. These factors, together with the fact that many states formed out of the former colonial empires have proved to be marginal or nonviable anyway, has contributed to the destabilization of the international order. THE NEED FOR MILITARY INTERVENTION IN HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCIES 123 When the hard-edged reali ty of market oriented globalization is overlayed on this turbulence, the very nature of the UN as the construct of liberal nation states is itself contradicted by the emerging dynamics of global affairs. The position of the two Secretaries General is one of desperation as the organization weathers increasing criticism of its inability to save people from massive displacement and gross crimes against humanity. Indeed, as Michael Ignatieff argues in The New York Times editorial page of May 15, 2000, the UN, by its pretense of effectivenes, can be accused of contributing to the deteriorating circumstances in many ports of the world. He argues for enforcement with “ combat capable warriors under robust rules of engagement, with armor, ammunition and intelligence capability and a single line of command to a national government or regional alliance. ” We used to call this war. At least, this is what we called it in Korea and Vietnam when a regional alliance assumed this role. And war is a deadly business for which the sacrifices have to be borne by all elements of the societies involved. There is really no scope for amateurism in this environment. People dressed up in military uniforms and wearing blue helmets might be satisfactory for observation and interposition responsibilities, but when you get down to the serious business of killing or being killed, it has to be thoroughly professional and discriminating, otherwise everyone loses credibility. This is what is happening to the UN right now. CONCLUSION In coming to this conclusion, I would not wish to be seen to be suggesting that military involvement in complex humanitarian emergencies should not occur. Indeed, it is my belief that they must be involved. My problem with Weil’s paper and others that deal with this subject is that they are too technical and use a language that obfuscates the real nature of the dynamics of violence that we are talking about when we consider enforcing our will on another group of human beings. We must never make the mistake of calling this something other than it is. Otherwise we will not come to terms with the fact that it is really nonlinear and difficult to predict, and the outcomes may not be exactly as we would like. In fact, the differing aspirations and expectations of civilian and military participants in these processes is likely to be the cause of much conflict and disharmony, which will create the appearance of disunity and erode the moral authori ty of all involved organizations. We will have to learn to be satisfied with the fact that the dynamics that emerge will be better, even if the outcomes are hard to market within our own structures. They also might not quite fit in with the political aspirations of those who make the decisions and the commitment, of course, and there is the rub. Why is Humanitarian Action Often a Substitute for a Lack of Political Will? Documentation Note Flora MacDonald Ottawa, Ont., Canada This question faces us frequently and no more so than now in Sierra Leone, Congo and Kosovo — perhaps tomorrow in Zimbabwe — and all against the backdrop of Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and, of course, Rwanda. The question strikes at the very heart of our need for the United Nations and perhaps points to its greatest failures. It can evoke many more questions, which may even question the legitimacy of the question itselfl But before we probe too deeply into the question of why the substitution, we would do well to ask if humanitarian action is indeed a substitute for the lack of political will? What do we really mean by political will? Is political will being used as a code word for overt military intervention? Do we not prefer the image of ‘Blue Helmets’ off-loading food supplies, treating sick and starving people, playing with children and rebuilding schools, to one of UN soldiers in deadly combat leading to dead and wounded on both sides? How long would the UN, or the contributing countries, tolerate the loss of their young people to a rebel force in a land most of these soldiers had never heard of, for reasons that would escape the understanding of many of their fathers and mothers? I ask these questions because all too often we overlook, or fail to comprehend, the complexity that characterizes political will, the reasons for the lack of it, how best to mobilize it, who and what influences it, and what p01-icy decisions it, in turn, can influence. Too often the failure to understand these aspects of political will and take them into consideration can lead to unforeseen and unplanned-for consequences, often with disastrous results. It is relatively easy to quantify and describe political contributions, political parties, political campaigns— but political will? The Oxford English Dictionary describes ‘will’ as “ the mental faculty by which a person decides upon and controls his or her own actions and those of others.” Political will must be seen in the collective sense— the will of the people. And the public generally falls into two groupings: the political elite and the politica’ masses. © 2001 by the Center for Migration Studies of New York. AJI rights reserved. 0198-9183/00/3501.01332 124 IMR Volume 35 Number 1 ( Spring 2001): 124—129 HUMANITARIAN ACTION 125 The political masses, in their daily struggle to maintain their well-being, generally show little or no interest in foreign conflicts unless and until they are touched personally; the political elite, on the other hand, are primarily concerned with the impact of issues on the voting public — in a manner that can reflect the effectiveness of what governments do. In that grouping, one finds a great deal of political will, often directed towards putting a good face on government actions or, in the case of the opposition, trying to counter and attack the accomplishments of those in power. Generally, the political elites will act as blocs, although exceptional individuals can stimulate the formulation of political will on both the masses and the elites simply by their personal actions and statements. For example, two individuals who have had and who continue to wield enormous influence on political will are Jesse Helms and Nelson Mandela. There is one major influence on the development of political will which we must not overlook. I refer, of course, to the media with all its power and potential. No complex humanitarian emergency is complete these days without the presence of hordes of journalists, photographers, and television crews. It often seems that the more lurid the picture, the more harrowing the scene, the greater coverage it will be accorded. In the 60-second sound-bite exposure that current television reporting accommodates, there is little effort or time to supply in-depth analysis, background or balance. In recent years, critical reporting of abuses of refugee determination systems has helped create the impression that all refugee applications are bogus, leading to widespread hostility towards refugees by populations of receiving countries. In addition, the overwhelming magnitude of the global refugee problem as portrayed on television coverage of millions of displaced persons is just too great for most people to contemplate, with the result that many people either adopt a negative attitude towards the refugee issue or simply blank it out of their minds. For the most part, the majority of the mass population accepts, uncritically, whatever they view or read — because it is there on their screens, it must be true. The 10 percent of the population comprising the political elite is, however, concerned about too facile reporting and erroneous conclusions. They question whether the media can be trusted to give an accurate and complete picture of a given situation. Doubting that this is possible, they find other means to gather information and analyze what is taking place. There is little or no capacity at the mass level to provide informed consent (or opposition) to the decisions of policymakers. The political elite, how- 126 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW ever — those whose interests lie in informed debate and dialogue — have a responsibility to hold conferences, debate issues, analyze decisions and, most importantly, make public their informed views of the action they consider necessary in complex humanitarian emergencies. These people are the real movers and shakers of political will, because if they fail to do so, no one else will. So how do we equate ‘ Political Will’ and ‘Humanitarian Action’? I will break my comments down into three components: FIRS7 POLITICAL WILL AND NATIONAL INTERESTS Political will is an expression of national will — particularly in democratic countries. National will is that quality which enables a nation to bring its resources and capabilities effectively to bear for a perceived national purpose or goal and requires: 1. National cohesion (cultural unity, feeling of belonging); 2. Perceived relevance of goals to national interests; and 3. Strong national leadership, whether by a group or an individual. (From Ray Cline ‘World Power Assessment’). National Interests are a product of a nation’s goals and values and, for virtually all countries, are: 1. Defense of the homeland; 2. Economic well-being; 3. Favorable world order; and 4. Promotion of values. Any situation for which a nation must consider its response must be assessed in terms of the level of interest that situation is perceived to have to the specific interests of the nation, whether it is: vital (directly affecting the survival or security of the nation’s homeland); major (e.g, affecting economic wellbeing); or peripheral (e.g., individual commercial activities). For example, in the United States the national security interests are clearly stated in the document “A National Security Strategy for a New Century ” published in May of 1997. It reads thus: Vital interests are “those of broad, overriding importance to the survival, safety and vitality of our nation. We will do whatever it takes to defend these interests, including — when necessary — using our military might unilaterally and decisively. ” Important interests are “those which do not affect national survival, but they do affect our national well-being, and the character of the world in HUMANITARIAN ACTION 127 which we live. In such cases we will use our resources to advance these interests insofar as the costs and risks are commensurate with the interests at stake” (e.g., NATO operations in Bosnia). Humanitarian interests: “In the event of natural or man-made disasters, or gross violations of human rights, our nation may act because our values demand it. Moreover, in such cases, the force of our example bolsters support for our leadership in the world.” The national interests reflected in the national will of the United States are spelled out in that fashion. Canada’s foreign policy goals, I might add, reflect a similar categorization: • Promotion of prosperity and employment; • Protection of securi ty within a stable global framework; and • Projection of Canadian values and culture. In democratic societies, commitment of resources — and particularly putting either military or civilian lives at risk — is acceptable to their publics only if they can be convinced that it is in the nation’s interest to do so. In the United States, in particular, failure to invoke a ‘ vital interest’ at stake in a situation — and effectively prove it — means that no American lives would be put at risk. Politicians, diplomats and UN bureaucrats must therefore carefully assess situations to determine whose interests are at stake and what level of commitment can be reasonably expected. HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION Humanitarian intervention usually encompasses the delivery of food, treatment of sick or starving, reconstruction following disasters, but it could also include the use of military force to attempt to protect the civilian population. Although few if any nations lack the political will to contribute to ‘aid’ situations, the protection of populations from assault clearly moves the situation into a ‘military’ intervention. In these circumstances, naive assumptions instead of serious assessment and analysis of the situation, including what the political will of countries will permit — particularly those of the permanent members of the Security Council — can lead to disasters such as in Rwanda and, now, Sierra Leone. These clearly discredit the international communi ty in general and the United Nations as an institution in particular. At the simplest level of humanitarian response — provision of food, water and medical assistance — there are a multitude of nongovernmental organizations that have important resources to contribute. They may, however, lack 128 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW the transportation and other logistical support capabili ty necessary to be effective and therefore become dependent on military support. A relatively small number of nations are in a position to provide such support. I noticed, however, on a visit to Kosovo last autumn, a degree of cooperation and collaboration between the UN military forces and the larger nongovernmental organizations that had not been apparent in Bosnia, Rwanda or Somalia. The decision by the United Nations, and individual member states, to participate in these critical but essentially benign operations requires a very low level of political will and would seldom conflict with any nation’s interests. The need for such humanitarian action becomes a catalyst for quickly mobilizing political will. It is a very different matter when the question of military intervention is raised. MILITARY INTERVENTION Even assuming that a nation or a group of nations agree that some form of military intervention is necessary and justifiable to their populations, there are a number of factors which will affect or limit the character and size of such a force. The first of these is the capability required — the size and nature of the force. Normally some ‘ on the ground’ reconnaissance is necessary to identif ~ y appropriate landing spots, staging areas, sources of supplies, etc., as well as assessing the level of risk, the kinds of troops required, and the operational mandate that will be necessary for the force commander. ‘Peacekeeping ’ has come to mean a full spectrum of activities from benign ‘ truce monitoring’ to intervention in order to separate and impose conditions on warring factions. The next requirement is to assign responsibilities for capabilities to various nations and to get agreement and commitment to meet those needs. Then there is the time required to actually prepare the force — gather its various components, marshal its equipment, train the troops (including, and very importantly, cultural awareness), and undertake necessary inoculations (which may require up to three weeks to establish the necessary level of immunity). Getting a force to the area usually requires air and sea lift capabilities well beyond the capaci ty of contributing nations, invariably meaning that the United States, perhaps Russia, the United Kingdom and a few others, must agree to either be directly involved in sending their own forces, or at least agree to transport those of other nations to the area. This implies, of course, that doing so would serve their own ‘ national interests ’ and not put national resources or people at risk. HUMANITARIAN ACTION 129 Even in these three steps, there are places where the whole idea could break down, especially in the area of the mandate for the force and therefore its abili ty to protect itself. We have seen too many examples of well-intentioned but inadequately-assessed or too-quickly deployed forces with a mandate so limited that the force itself is not only ineffective, but also put at risk. There are few nations possessing the range of capabilities to provide the support necessary to combat the increasing sophistication of dissident armies, or even to have ‘ quick reaction’ forces capable of intervening to protect or remove their own nationals in a deteriorating situation. I have spoken at some length about the steps necessary to deploy a deterrence force capable of complementing the work of humanitarian agencies and protecting civilian populations, because a proper understanding of these steps is vital to the mobilization of political will. The United Nations’ staff, together with politicians and diplomats, must become trained in understanding the scope and needs of intervention forces. They must realize not only what it takes to have the political will necessary to back up humanitarian action, but they must also be aware of the implications of their decisions, in the broadest context. The alternative in conflict situations is to rely solely on humanitarian action to resolve the difficulties — something which is fraught with danger for all involved. Canada has attempted to assume some leadership in such training with the establishment of the Lester B. Pearson Canadian International Peacekeeping Centre, to teach the interdisciplinary nature of peacekeeping operations, within what we call the ‘new peacekeeping partnership ’. This recognizes the various roles of the military, UN personnel, diplomats, policymakers and politicians, NGOs, civilian police — even election monitors. CONCLUSION The question, “Why is humanitarian action often a substitute for a lack of political will” may not, therefore, be the central question. The real question is “How can the United Nations and its member countries mobilize political will to achieve the necessary level of intervention, from humanitarian response to deadly military force?” This requires a clear understanding of both domestic and international factors, the various interests involved, and the real capabilities necessary to alleviate a given situation. Taking the time and responsibility to do so is the real political will. Refugees: Challenges to Protection Guy S. Goodwin-Gill Oxford University By the end of the year 2000, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees will have been in existence for 50 years — which is probably some sort of record for an organization originally set up with just a three-year mandate. There were many reasons for so limiting the successor agency to the International Refugee Organization, but it is doubtful whether anyone seriously thought that refugee problems would be resolved so quickly, or indeed that UNHCR would develop into the highly operationaL visible and extensively funded entity that we see today. Fifty years of experience nevertheless suggests that it is high time for an audit, for an evaluation of strengths, weaknesses and achievements, and a little strategic thinking about the future. THE PROTECTION MANDATE The provision of international protection to refugees, considered as the responsibility of the international community, has a long and respectable history. It was the stated premise even of the first organizational arrangements to be constructed under the League of Nations, and continued at the center of later iterations. Like many constitutional terms, ‘ protection’ was never defined. Sometimes it was referred to as ‘legal’ protection, or ‘ political and legal’ protection, or, as in the UNHCR Statute, ‘international protection.’ The sense of protection was always clear, however. Refugees no longer enjoyed the normal relationship of citizen to State, were outside their country and effectively stateless; as such, they were to be assisted by the international community through its representative agency. If the refugees ’ problem was ‘ political,’ then the agency would deal with it at the political level, taking up their cause with the governments concerned. If the refugee ’ s problem was ‘legal,’ then it would promote an instrument to meet their needs, either by way of treaty or national legislation. Moreover, in the case of UNHCR, the ‘ primary directive ’ of international protection was linked to solutions — repatriation or integration in a new community — which the High Commissioner was to seek in cooperation with governments. © 2001 by the Center for Migration Studies of New York. All rights reserved. 0198-9183/00/3501.01332 130 IMR Volume 35 Number 1 (Spring 2001): 130—142 REFUGEES: CHALLENGES TO PROTECTION 131 In the Third Committee debates leading up to the adoption of the UNHCR Statute, several delegates suggested that the High Commissioner would adopt a quasi-diplomatic role and that this could equally be exercised by the High Commissioner’s representatives in countries having refugee populations. This, indeed, reflected experience of the interwar period, when the League ’ s institutions performed many of the tasks for refugees, such as certif ying their status, which would normally be undertaken by consular authorities. Nevertheless, the UNHCR Statute imposes little substantive limitation on how the protection function might evolve. Certainly, the High Commissioner’ s work is to be nonpolitical and humanitarian and to relate primarily to groups and categories of refugees (UNHCR Statute, paragraph 2). But the list of ‘ protection functions’ (UNHCR Statute, paragraph 8) is illustrative only, and the individual character of the refugee definition ensured that the High Commissioner retained a legal interest in both the recognition of refugee status and the protection of ‘ refugee rights.’ The supervisory role entrusted to the High Commissioner by States party to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (Article 35) has likewise provided a firm foundation to the role of the Office in refugee status determination procedures and in monitoring the application of crucial provisions, such as Article 2 (nondiscrimination), Article 31 (nonpenalization of illegal entry), and Article 33 (nonrefoulement). Like the Office of the High Commissioner, the 1951 Convention was a step in the evolution of refugee protection. By comparison with earlier instruments, it provided for a broader, if still restricted, refugee definition and for a comprehensive standard of treatment, particularly for the settled or lawfully staying refugee. But, as its title implies, it was not a comprehensive document; it did not deal with, and was not intended specifically to deal with, large-scale refugee movements, the question of asylum or admission to asylum, the details of international cooperation, or the promotion of solutions other than those related to the status of the individual as a refugee. Refugee law did not remain static, of course. UNHCR’s initial focus on refugee problems in Europe was soon joined by extraregional activity, initially for Chinese refugees in Hong Kong and Algerian refugees in Morocco and Tunisia. The liberation struggles in Africa exposed the limitations of a convention regime largely oriented around social and economic rights, while the time and 132 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW place restrictions of the refugee definition had to be abolished by the 1967 Protocol. State practice, new instruments, regional agreements and ‘ soft’ law, together confirmed the refugee as a category known to international law, strengthened and extended the principle of nonrefoulement, and institutionalized international cooperation in pursuit of protection and solutions. By the early 1 980s, although there were grey areas and areas of relative obligation, one could declare with confidence: • That the refugee in international law included both the individual having a well-founded fear of persecution and a range of others having valid reasons for not being required to return to their country of origin; • That nonrefoulement encompassed both nonexpulsion of those already within State territory as well as nonrejection at the frontier; • That international solidarity and cooperation were key fixtures in a regime directed towards protection and solutions; • That in the matter of protection, procedures for the determination of refugee status were crucial; • That refuge pending solution should be granted; • That refugees had human rights; and • That the protection of refugees was a universal principle. In short, the international community had developed, within the political context of the day, a regime premised upon a particularly strong conception of human worth, on the individual’s entitlement to respect for his or her digni ty and integrity as a human being. But as with many of the creations of international law and international relations, this was a dynamic regime replete with inherent, potentially creative and potentially destructive, tensions — many of which are especially apparent today. Did the system work? Did refugees find solutions? Were refugees granted protection? Up until 1980, the answer is a qualified “Yes,” due recognition being given to political and economic factors. Afrer 1980 and through the 1 990s, the answer is increasingly “No,” even if small achievements show what could or might be achieved. Despite their defects, procedures for the determination of refugee status were improved, and the expectation of due process runs deep. The concept of persecution is better understood as a result of the influential stream of human rights doctrine. The sense of obligation to protect, the opinio juris, has become clearer as States have acted against torture and human rights mechanisms have extended protection into sovereign areas of admission and expulsion. Nationality and statelessness also have become matters of significant REFUGEES: CHALLENGES TO PROTECTION 133 international concern, as States come into being or move out of authoritarian government into a larger society of nations. ‘Sovereign States’ are still key actors in flight and solution. As a sort of counterweight, UNHCR has a mandate to work for protection and solutions — nonrefoulement, asylum, resettlement and repatriation — on the territory of sovereign States, a substantial number of which have become party to a Convention regime which includes not only State obligations, but also individual rights. Still, the greater part of the international protection and assistance budget for refugees depends on voluntary contributions, and donors will have their interests. Though the protection of refugees is expected to be nonpolitical and humanitarian, the regime has weak spots, particularly in the threeway relationship characterized by mass movement, obligation and international solidarity. Looking at the broader picture, one can see that migration has emerged as a clearly predominating characteristic of the movements of peoples and as a limiting factor in the perceptions of States; trafficking, which was always there, now doubly prejudices the refugee; and ‘securi ty ’ is invoked as justification for ‘defensive’ measures. As Jeremy Harding put it in a seminal article in the London Review of Books on February 3, 2000, the refugee “is shuttled along a continuum of abuse,” and asylum seekers are seen as a threat to regional and national security. The human rights dimensions to the movements of people are increasingly downplayed, while governments and international organizations have failed effectively to manage and control themselves, to respond coherently to large movements or to deal with the changing character of causes, to make decisions, to set strategic goals, to determine tactical means. Today, in the year 2000, the obligations of States, freely assumed, are taken less seriously. The challenges to refugee protection extend beyond the field of obligations. In the complex interplay of texts, practice, multiple jurisprudence and different actors, it is just not possible to airbrush the inconvenient out of history. Turkey did close its border with Iraq, and for several years before that moment it had repeatedly explained in the UNHCR Executive Committee why it might do so. UNHCR did sign a refoulement agreement with Tanzania. Executive Committee conclusions are being revisited by States members, and the strengthening of international protection is not the goal. 134 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW THE CHALLENGES TO PROTECTION No single agency is responsible for all manifestations of displacement, any more than for every aspect of development, and the disadvantages of such a monopolistic approach are probably self-evident, tending to the corruption of purpose, the denial of accountability; and disregard of client needs. The challenges to protection engage not only UNHCR, set up specifically to provide international protection to refugees, but also States, regional organizations, other international agencies, nongovernmental organizations and, of course, the refugees and the displaced. UNHCR has a pre-eminent role and specific responsibilities, but it is also dependent on donor governments, on implementing partners within the United Nations and nongovernmental sectors, and on refugee advocates at home and abroad. In legal terms, and in the promotion of refugee law, UNHCR must find support in the UN membership, in the institutions of government, including national courts and tribunals, in refugee legal and support groups, and among the rights-protecting mechanisms established at universal and regional levels. At its most basic level, protection is challenged by the interests of others — of States, host communities, other refugees, and non-State entities. Those interests may reflect reasonable concerns — refugee rights, after all, are not always absolutes, and others are entitled to respect for their rights, too. Equally, however, those interests may cover another agenda, inimical to refugees and the international interest. The protection of refugees is thus an essay in interdependence and will be advanced most effectively once complementary roles are recognized, accepted and exploited. To this end, and in brief, the challenges to protection may be organized under the following five rubrics: Principle; Law; Organization; Solutions; and Leadership. The Challenges of Principle The protection of refugees is ultimately a matter of principle, reflecting the conviction of the international communi ty that certain values inhere in the individual human being and transcend the indices of citizenship or origins. That conviction finds practical expression in the creation of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and in agreement among States on the fundamentals of protection — recognition of the class of refugees; nonrefoulement; nondiscrimination; and treatment in accordance with basic human rights standards. In each case, the relevant protection principle derives its authority from both customary international law and treaty. REFUGEES: CHALLENGES TO PROTECTION 135 Other challenges of principle flow from the nature of the organization established to provide international protection. The High Commissioner, for example, is elected by the UN General Assembly, not appointed by the UN Secretary-General. This method of selection was deliberately chosen with a view to ensuring the necessary measure of stature and autonomy and in order to insulate the High Commissioner, so far as possible, from the politics — all too evident in 1950 — of the Secretariat. There is a reverse side to the coin of autonomy, however, which has received too little attention — accountability. Accountability is the duty to give an account of conduct in office for actions taken or declined within the area of mandate responsibility. In the first decades of UNHCR’s existence, that may have been satisfied by annual reporting to the General Assembly, but the evolution of the international system in the last ten years has created other expectations. Accountability still translates somewhat imperfectly into the UN, but successive evaluations — the Great Lakes, Rwanda, Kosovo — confirm that the activities of international organizations, even those specifically mandated to particular goals, can no longer be assumed to conform to organizational principle. The means to this end must therefore be found. For example, continuing to service the camps and settlements of eastern Zaire after 1994 inevitably contributed to the continuation of conflict. By unintentionally facilitating cross-border raids and provoking the devastating counterattacks of 1996, that assistance helped put refugee lives at risk, and refugees lives were duly lost. What might be excused in an organization with a mandate to feed, cannot be excused in an organization with a mandate to protect. Similarly, by stepping outside its mandate in 1991 and submitting itself to the authority of the UN Secretary-General in Bosnia and former Yugoslavia, UNHCR compromised its authority, its autonomy, and the express requirement of its Statute that its work shall be nonpolitical. Relief may have been delivered, and individual staff members, at great personal cost and risk, did bring a measure of protection to the few; but there is no evidence to suggest that the international protection of refugees was strengthened or enhanced. On the contrary, the individual’s right to leave in search of asylum was frequently obstructed, if unwittingly, by the policies of ‘preventive protection.’ No one doubts that the protection of refugees must take place in a political world, and no one should underestimate the pressures — moral, financial, circumstantial — on an essentially humanitarian organization when confront- 136 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW ed with human suffering on a massive scale. Decisions on matters of principle are never easy, but the least one can expect is that those principles should be known, and that rational justification be given for their disregard. The Challenges of the Law Since the time of the League of Nations, the law has played a key role in the protection of refugees. Important as they often are, relief and assistance are not the whole of the picture; nor are protection and assistance automatically divisible, though the ‘leverage’ said to attach to the provision of relief is often greatly exaggerated. A substantial part of protection is about treaties and laws and about finding ways to fill the gaps in an incomplete regime. Law also goes to the authori ty and effectiveness of UNHCR, with its unique legal capacity to take issue with the conduct of States and thereby also to influence the progressive development of international refugee law. From 1977-1995 or thereabouts, UNHCR made a significant contribution to raising legal standards. Each year it prepared papers on issues of concern for consideration by States in the Executive Committee’s Sub-Committee of the Whole on International Protection. Endorsement of the protection conclusions by the Executive Committee in plenary, though not a legislative function, nonetheless built up an important body of doctrine. The forum and the times have changed, however, and States seem no longer so willing to work towards standards for the common good. This is the present political reality ~ The challenge for law is to identify and comprehend the relevant areas of State concern, to come to terms with the problematic — whether it be Turkey ’s closing of the border in 1991, or UNHCR’s own refoulement agreement with Tanzania, or ‘ perverse’ interpretations of refugee criteria or the rules of State responsibility — and to work through the practice to rules more clearly compatible with the integrity and human worth of every refugee. Understandably, States seek to use legal tools to deal with or meet the demands placed on them by asylum seekers. The legal agenda for protection is therefore substantial, combining elements of an individual rights regime and, as recent events again confirm, of a collective security regime as well. International law is a dynamic institution and must evolve to meet the needs of the day. A detailed plan of action for legal analysis and promotion might include all or some of the following: • Practical systems for determining refugee status/entitlement to protection REFUGEES: CHALLENGES TO PROTECTION 137 in situations of large-scale movement; • Elaborating the criteria for effective and expeditious decisionmaking, particularly given the advantages of timely decisions; • The protection uses of country of origin information; • Good practice in dealing with evidence of international crimes, whether as testimony of others’ acts or of the claimant’s own background; • Conceptualizing refugee protection to protection against torture and integrating the alternatives; • Conceptualizing refugee protection as it relates to protection against torture and integrating the alternatives; • Promoting the decriminalization of asylum seekers; • Developing the refugee definition, the better to provide protection for those fearing persecution because of ethnic origin, religion or gender; • Relating flight from conflict to persecution and the objectives of international protection and developing the intersection between international human rights law, international refugee law and international humanitarian law. Within the regime of individual rights, the international community and States individually will continue to face the question of who is in need of protection. The 1951 Convention/1967 Protocol present a point of departure, and considerable potential remains in the notion of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. But States have increasingly, if often reluctantly, recognized that the individual with a well-founded fear of persecution does not exhaust the category of refugee. Conflict, generalized violence and massive violations of human rights, often encouraged for political ends, still produce refugee flows to which protection responses are required. Human rights law provides the basis for standards, but still the exceptional or emergency nature of many movements often inhibits the application and observance of rules. Despite decades of experience, few States have yet managed to marry compliance with international obligations to national procedures for protection. The determination of refugee status continues to play its part in the management of claims, and the following general principles will each require elaboration and translation into national systems: • The principle of compliance with the 1951 Convention/i 967 Protocol, including the refugee definition, nonrefoulement, and cooperation with UNHCR; 138 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW • The principle that procedures should be regulated by law; • The principle that every application should be considered individually, objectively and impartially, by qualified and informed personnel; • The principle that refugee status determination involves a ‘shared responsibili ty ’ between decisionmaker and applicant, who should have an adequate opportunity to present his or her case; • The principle of due process, including the opportuni ty to apply for refugee status/asylum at the border and the right to an interpreter, to legal advice, to access to UNHCR, and to a personal interview; • The principle of written, reasoned decisions; • The principle of appeal or independent review of negative decisions; • The principle of entitlement to remain pending decision; • The principle of recognition of status where the criteria are satisfied, and of recognized refugees’ presumptive entitlement to residence. Exceptions to these principles will require justification. For example, in situations of mass influx, other priorities may prevail and different considerations enter the picture; the emphasis on individual procedural rights may be replaced by a group or categories approach, provided however that the fundamental principles of protection, such as nonrefoulement, are maintained. A groups or categories approach may also introduce other rights-based concerns, such as the standard of treatment to be accorded to the group, within a social and political context in which fundamental human rights continue to be protected. A considerable body of experience and research exists on temporary protection, but yet needs to be consolidated into an authoritative statement of international practice. Finally, there arises the perennial question of a new international convention, the better, it is said, to reflect the changing nature of refugee movements and the preference now of States for temporary solutions pending inevitable return. Experience with the draft convention on territorial asylum in i 977 provides a lesson in caution, and refugee advocates will need to take careful soundings in relation to what is realistically attainable. Greater attention must also be paid to migration pure and simple, a phenomenon still lacking all but very basic international regulation. The Challenges of Organization The exponential growth in organizations dealing with refugees, both in overall numbers and unit size, has brought the challenges of strategic management into a picture where clari ty of mandate and purpose has frequently yielded to REFUGEES: CHALLENGES TO PROTECTION 139 the demands of emergency relief. The effectiveness of international organizations nevertheless requires a clear understanding of mandate objectives, while responsibilities to particular goals also limit the field of operations. For an organization such as UNHCR, the ineluctable consequence is an internal ordering of functions such that the principles of international protection are integrated into policy and operations planning, both from the ground up and at the point of decision. This has not been the case for some time, and the consequences have often been disastrous. Refugee crises are not generally predictable as to timing, size, needs, or duration. The general suddenness of their eruption means that a protection and assistance service must be fielded, almost at a moment ’s notice, and that recruitment, training and procurement requirements must be met, while maintaining an efficient and professional service in relation both to staff and donors. Strange to relate, but in 50 years the institutional problems of growth and contraction in the face of refugee displacements have never been effectively solved. Recent crises, and the burden of maintaining large-scale international organizations, invite urgent attention to the strengthening of local resources, following the model of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. UNHCR and others engaged in providing protection and assistance could identify potential or even actual refugee receiving countries, negotiate employment relief, and train local people in communications, computer applications, office administration, logistics, relief delivery and distribution, as well as in the culture of protection and solutions. Such a cadre would be retrained at intervals, with skills regularly upgraded and continuous recruiting to fill gaps and meet evolving needs. It may never be called on; there may never be a refugee influx, but if there is, then the first and second lines of response are in place, the necessity for expatriate solutions is reduced, and a substantial range of competencies has been transferred into the local economy. The challenges of organization are not only internal. Within the United Nations system, the mutual recognition of others’ generally complementary mandates is also required, as is acceptance of the responsibilities of cooperation. The ‘lead agency’ role may need to be declined, precisely because the politics of resolution sully organizational first principles and compromise autonomy. Conflicts of interest will also need to be resisted, for example, by reliance on third party input to country of origin assessments, both in refugee determination and the promotion of repatriation. Structures alone are not enough to ensure either that goals will be achieved or that policies will be premised on primary directives. A culture of 140 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW protection is required and, given the level of institutional changes over the past years, more than structural alteration may be called for. The many issues one might mention include training, strengthening support units such as those responsible for providing practical information and advice to those engaged in protection work, and fact-finding through outreach to nongovernmental organizations and others with appropriate knowledge and experience. The legal challenges mentioned above require not only fuller integration of rule and principle into strategic thinking, but also that the state of the law and its development be fully and effectively evaluated in an appropriate forum, before it is relied on in the throes of an emergency. The Challenges of Solutions The international community’s ‘traditional’ approach to solutions to the problems of refugees is the direct consequence of the basic constitutional structure of the United Nations, premised on the principles of sovereignty, sovereign equality, and the reserved domain of domestic jurisdiction. This is why international refugee law and international organization responsibilities are essentially reactive, triggered first and foremost by the juridically relevant fact of cross-border movement. Not surprisingly, this is increasingly a matter for concern whenever action seems necessary and possible to avoid the crisis of displacement. More is expected now than that conflict be averted. Social justice must be delivered, and Rwanda, Somalia and Kosovo are no longer acceptable areas of inaction (which is not to say that timely action will always follow). The challenge for the international community is to find ways by which the appropriate universal and regional mechanisms can be advised in advance of emergent crises and enabled, if not to pre-empt crisis through forceful means then at least to initiate conflict mediation and dispute settlement processes. A considerable investment is therefore still required in democratization and development but, like political solutions generally, this is primarily outside the mandate to provide international protection to refugees. The Security Council has included actual or potential large-scale refugee movements in a number of recent resolutions on threats to international peace and security. So far as this may galvanize the communi ty of nations to take the necessary political action to find solutions, it also has inherent dangers for refugees and the displaced, as events in Kosovo and in the aftermath of the bombing have tragically shown. The protection of refugees was no less sary even in a political context designed to prevent the necessi ty for flight. REFUGEES: CHALLENGES TO PROTECTION 141 A further danger to the safety and well-being of refugees also emerges whenever one particular solution is accorded undue priority. The 1 990s were predicted to be the decade of repatriation, but not every refugee problem can be solved in this way or by ‘ return in safety. ’ As a matter of principle, the international community ought not to consign refugees indefinitely to the limbo of settlements or other temporary arrangements, and other possibilities need continuous review. In the last decade, the resettlement of refugees in third countries has been significantly downplayed, apparently at UNHCR’s suggestion. The loss of this ‘ traditional’ solution has been at great cost to the principle of international solidarity, not to mention the lost opportunities for countless refugees to rebuild their lives and contribute to the development of new host communities. The Challenges of Leadership For 50 years, and continuing the practice of the League of Nations, the international community has looked to its High Commissioner for Refugees for leadership in the resolution of the problems of refugees. Since i 95 i, the Office has had a solid legal base, and over the years States have recognized the authori ty of the High Commissioner, even when they have disagreed with particular policies or positions. In many respects, the Office is unique, combining a special relationship to the United Nations with a trust on behalf of the refugees of the world. UNHCR may not be the final court of appeal, but in practice it is commonly the last resort. That there are weaknesses in the regime of international protection is clear. One of the most critical, from UNHCR’s perspective certainly, is the agency ’ s financial dependency on the voluntary contributions of States. Funding alternatives, such as a replenishment model, will certainly need to be explored in the years ahead. Secondly, there are limitations in the ‘sanctions’ available to the High Commissioner when faced with a recalcitrant State. If other influential States refuse support, for whatever reason, then hard choices result. In such a situation, one League of Nations High Commissioner resigned; the history of the last ten years confirms that equivalent situations are just as likely to recur, but the sanction is not one that can often be repeated. The idea of the international protection of refugees serves a community of principle. It engages multiple actors, and many of them may fail in their 142 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW duty. If the principle is to endure, however, then from time to time a stand on principle will have to be made. REFERENCES Favez, J. C. 1999 The Red Cross and the Holocaust. Translated by J. and B. Fletcher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goodwin-Gill, G. S. 1999 “Refugee Identity and Protection ’ s Fading Prospect. ” In Refugee Rz ~ hts and Realities: Evolving International Concepts and Regimes. Ed. F. Nicholson and P. Twomey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 220—249. Harding, J. 2000 The Uninvited. Migrant Journeys to the Rich World. London: Profile Books. Also, “The Uninvited, ” London Review of Books, 22(3):3. February. Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda 1996 “The International Response to Conflict and Genocide: Lessons from the Rwanda Experience.” Four volumes. Copenhagen: Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda. March. Lautze, S., B. Jones and M. Duffield 1998 “Strategic Humanitarian Co-ordination in the Great Lakes Region, 1996—1997: An Independent Assessment. ” New York: United Nations, Policy, Information and Advocacy Division, Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs. March. Suhrke, A., M. Barutciski, P. Sandison and R. Garlock 1996 “The Kosovo Refugee Crisis: An Independent Evaluation of UNHCR’ s Emergency Preparedness and Response. ” Geneva: UNHCR, Evaluation and Policy Analysis Unit. February. Funding Dilemmas in Refuge e Assistance: Political Interests and Institutional Reforms in UNHCR Raimo Vayrynen University of Notre Dame The refugee problem has been studied from numerous humanitarian, legal and political points of view. As a result, we have obtained a reasonably good picture of the opportunities and limits faced by the international action to assist and protect refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs), and other population groups in distress. New research needs continue to rise, of course, but the expanding international community of refugee scholars in most cases has been able to respond to them. There seems to be, however, a major gap in the scholarship on the refugee issues, viz., the funding of international actions to assist those forced to flee and displaced by physical violence and political repression. This work is, of course, mainly the responsibility of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). One of the few exceptions to this research gap is a major project carried out at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University on the multilateral assistance for post-conflict recovery (Forman and Patrick 2000; see also Patrick, 2000). Another exception is the report prepared by the Independent Commission on Population and Quality of Life under the presidency of Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo, the former Prime Minister of Portugal. This report considered a variety of multilateral opportunities to fund global needs. The proposals ranged from the Tobin tax on foreign exchange transactions through surcharges on international mail and civil aviation to the organization of international lotteries. The basic aim of the report was to generate debate and action on new international funding mechanisms and assess their feasibility and acceptability. The Commission did not try, however, to specify the purposes for which the potential new funds should be used (Najman and d’Orville, 1995). Despite these partial exceptions, there is a genuine need to know more about the sources, conditions, and consequences of funds raised for the refugee assistance and protection. There is a reason to pursue such work despite of several obstacles. Among them is the fact that the field of refugee assistance is complex and fragmented. Therefore, necessary information is not easy to come by and arguments are difficult to substantiate. © 2001 by the Center for Migration Studies of New York. All rights reserved. 0198-9 183/00/3501 .0 133 IMR Volume 35 Number 1 (Spring 2001): 143—167 143 144 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW THE PROBLEM OF COORDINATION One major feature of the multilateral humanitarian assistance is the multiplicity of actors involved. On the donor side there are global and regional intergovernmental agencies, national governments of different sizes and shapes, and a plethora of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that are important conduits of assistance to the field. In fact, NGOs have become an integral part of the refugee regime and a deep mutual dependence has developed between them and UNHCR (Zetter, 1999:60—67). However, there is little systematic information and analysis on the full extent of the NGO operations in humanitarian crises; much of the information tends to be anecdotal and the ensuing analysis normative. In reality; the actions of these multiple agencies are seldom effectively coordinated and they may even undermine each other. This situation is likely to continue as the establishment of more centralized structures of governance in humanitarian relief looks unlikely. One should note, though, that in early 1999 UNHCR, UNDP, and the World Bank started to improve their mutual cooperation and coordination of projects and thus bridge the gap between humanitarian assistance and long-term development. This so-called Brookings Institution process aims to promote practical cooperation in the field instead of setting up new big structures. Sierra Leone has become the first test case for this cooperation and other cases are expected to follow. This new effort at interagency cooperation in the funding and implementation of projects is, in part, a response to the donor demands for the elimination of overlapping activities and the coordination of the parallel work. Surely, the United Nations and its various agencies have a long history of efforts to coordinate humanitarian relief in the field. In the past, this task has been entrusted either to individual coordinators or collective lead agencies in which capacity UNHCR has often operated. The lead agency concept was most explicitly tested in the Yugoslavian crises of the early 1990s when UNHCR was designated as such an agency. In Rwanda, an integrated operations center, in which UNHCR played a major role, was set up (Kent, 1996). In Yugoslavia, the practical experience was that while UNHCR succeeded reasonably well in very difficult circumstances, it was also dragged to tasks and situations that clearly compromised its original mandate. In the absence of adequate diplomatic and military commitments by national governments FUNDING DILEMMAS IN REFUGEE ASSISTANCE 145 to restore peace, UNHCR had to fill the political void by humanitarian action. This action became, in an unfortunate way, often entangled in the military framework. This situation reflects the global tendency of civil wars to become more and more complex and difficult to manage; it is by no means unique to the former Yugoslavia. In civil wars, the traditional distinctions between refugees, IDPs, and other victims of war often collapse posing, as a result, new challenges to UNHCR and other humanitarian agencies (Pugh and Cunliffe, 1997; Weiss and Pasic, 1997; Shawcross, 2000:377—81). Nowhere has the blurring of the line between military and humanitarian operations been so clear as in Kosovo in 1999. In addition to military and political operations, NATO became active also in the provision of humanitarian relief, and many member governments showed unusual interest in the postwar relief and reconstruction there. It has been quite common to blame UNHCR for the failure to anticipate the scale of the refugee crisis which, as a result, worsened more than what would have been necessary. It is true that the agency did not see correctly the scale of the crisis and hence did not raise adequate funds, but the same blame can be directed at practically all governments. In fact, some Western powers urged UNHCR to prepare for the implementation of the Rambouillet Accord rather than war (Judah, 2000:228, 239—41). An external evaluation of UNHCR’s performance in the Kosovo crisis finds it only partly guil ty for neglect. The evaluation concludes, though, that the organization was not alert enough in anticipating the disaster. UNHCR also suffered from unclear lines of authori ty and communication. In the beginning of the crisis, there was a major failure in Duhel-Bllace (Blace) area to protect the refugees. However, in passing the judgement, it has to be kept in mind that UNHCR had a rather limited role in sheltering Kosovar refugees in Albania and Macedonia. In the entire crisis, the agency funded only 12 percent of the refugee population (UNHCR, 2000b; see also Helton, this issue). Obviously, the designation of lead agencies for humanitarian operations is only a limited solution as the historical experiences, organizational cultures, and institutional practices of various multilateral organizations are too different to permit immediate and effective cooperation. The humanitarian agencies obviously have a common interest in helping refugees, but this is not necessarily an equilibrium outcome for the agencies involved. In a sense, the problem of cooperation in refugee assistance can be characterized as the “dilemma of common interests” to be resolved in a “coordination game. ” To 146 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW be viable, such a solution usually requires the establishment of an effective common regime that specifies the rules of mutual behavior (Stein, 1990:39—44). The coordination game in humanitarian assistance is made difficult by the fact that it is close to impossible to steer relief actions and their funding from any single location. The lead agency can try to facilitate cooperation, but it cannot dictate the funding and implementation of relief projects. That is why a coordination regime with appropriate rules and institutions is needed. However, competing interests among the humanitarian agencies, perhaps especially about money, create obstacles to mutual cooperation. If the humanitarian organizations, both governmental and nongovernmental, are fi ghting for public and private money, it is unrealistic to expect that they could isolate the financial rivalry from the operations in the field. The problems of institutional location, efficiency, and coordination are illustrated by the mandate and affiliation of the Representative of the Secretary General (RSG) for the Internally Displaced Persons. This position is an important innovation as the number of IDPs has been growing and their interests have not been adequately represented in the international community ~ After having reviewed various alternatives, including UNHCR, Thomas Weiss (1999) concludes that the office of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) is the most appropriate location for the Representative. No doubt, the primary problem faced by those persecuted and dislocated in their own country concerns human rights, but in many respects they face the same problems as refugees do. In fact, the shifting numerical balance between border-crossing and internal refugees has forced UNHCR to expand the scope of its activities to intrastate crises and IDPs as well. This has, in turn, created new problems for the agency (Cohen and Deng, 1998). TRANSPARENCYAND COMPLEXITY Yet another problem of humanitarian relief agencies concerns the transparency of their actions in which regard there are considerable differences between them. The absence of adequate and reliable information about the capabilities, plans, and objectives of various agencies undermine their coordination efforts. In fact, recent research has in general stressed that information problems are pervasive in the establishment and operation of international regimes, including those set up to promote interagency cooperation (which have been studied much less, however, than typical intergovernmental regimes). FUNDING DILEMMAS IN REFUGEE ASSISTANCE 147 It is, every now and then, suggested that UNHCR is less transparent in disclosing its financial information than, for instance, UNDP and UNICEF. This may be due, among other things, to a rather strong centralization of power in the organization. The High Commissioner has a broad and independent mandate in comparison to the limited influence of the intergovernmental Executive Committee of UNHCR (although its formal influence was increased by the administrative reform in 1967). In reality, the Executive Committee seems to be quite an unwieldy body, with 54 governments as members. In addition, 24 governments and thirteen international organizations participate as observers. As suggested above, the difficulties of coordination and the limits on transparency seem to be related to the competition of both governmental and nongovernmental humanitarian agencies for public and private funding. The amount of money available globally for humanitarian relief is not obviously fixed, and it varies with the urgency of crises, but it is still limited. Several intergovernmental agencies and an increasing number of NGOs are competing for the public attention and sources of funds, often using increasingly sophisticated techniques of marketing and persuasion. The international competition for funds concerns, in particular, voluntary contributions by governments to international cooperation (McDermott, 2000:23). Such contributions are, of course, pivotal to the UNHCR budget. Humanitarian crises are frequent in number but singular in their nature. This means that they tend to occur simultaneously in several parts of the world. As a result, the sites of humanitarian crises are multiple and heterogeneous. The external political conditions of crises also differ from one case to another depending on which major powers are involved and how their mutual relations are constructed in that particular emergency. There are, of course, sets of principles, such as the “Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement” from 1998, and standard operating procedures that the relief agencies are expected to follow. Yet every humanitarian operation has to be planned, funded, and implemented separately in complex situations by multiple agencies. This makes it difficult to follow consistent policies and coordinate them between relevant agencies. In fact, the availability of funds, especially voluntary ones, depends on the political nature of the crisis as the prevailing international constellation tends to favor some emergencies over others. This effect is further amplified by the role of mass media in humanitarian crises. Contrary to the standard conception of the “CNN effect” galvanizing governments into action and 148 INTERNATIONAL MIGi ~~ TIoN REVIEW funding decisions in any crisis of consequence, it has been suggested that the media coverage of humanitarian disasters is very selective both in terms of their sites and phases. At least equally important as the preoccupation of media with some crises is their tendency to forget other, perhaps even more serious, emergencies. This “ sin of omission” by the media means that the extent and depth of real humanitarian needs are not necessarily the guiding criteria of publicity given to a crisis. One-sided media attention to a given crisis leads easily to the rush of aid agencies to the disaster zone in focus and short-term relief operations there (Jakobsen, 2000). As a result, simmering long-term crises and the post-violence phases of wars receive less media attention and, therefore, fewer funds from governments. Moreover, different national priorities and budgetary earmarkings may result in competition between individual projects for funding. Such competition may result in sensitive and difficult political situations in which UNHCR has to maneuver in raising and transferring resources. This raises the question on why some humanitarian crises earn more support than others; for instance, are there other factors than human needs that affect the allocation of relief. For instance, is there a correlation between the geopolitical interests of major donors and the distribution of funds. Another aspect of complexi ty on the ground is the increasing number of humanitarian NGOs participating in operations. The humanitarian space cannot be but transformed if over 200 NGOs rush to the crisis area as has happened, for instance, in Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo. Some of these organizations are no doubt badly needed to deliver aid; in fact, UNHCR and other multilateral agencies would often have had a hard time accomplishing their task without the experience and practical actions by NGOs. On the other hand, in Kosovo only 20 percent of the NGOs present had a contractual relationship with UNHCR, while the rest operated independently (UNHCR, 2000b). The spread of major crises has fueled the NGO activities both in terms of their quantity of action and the number of sites. For example, the Bosnian crisis stimulated the establishment of new NGOs for various purposes beyond the traditional relief work, such as conflict resolution, environment, and human rights. In the efforts to carry out their own tasks, UNHCR and other intergovernmental agencies have been facing a dual challenge. On the one hand, they have had to delegate activities by subcontracting the NGO services to carry out projects, while they have simultaneously also had to cen- FUNDING DILEMMAS IN REFUGEE ASSISTANCE 149 tralize somewhat the control and coordination of nongovernmental activities (Duffield, 1999:129—31, 136—37). In effect, limited resources and the short attention span of especially new and small NGOs, benefiting from the media focus on a particular crisis, may rather complicate than help the international relief effort. In addition to competing for limited funds, the lack of experience by small NGOs may even make them unwitting accomplices in the political and military conflict. They can face major difficulties and produce unwanted results in operating in the complex political field comprising the local government, warlords, and international forces (see Vayrynen, 1999; Maynard, 1999:146—56). THE BUDGET OF UNHCR The UN System There is no simple way of describing the structure of the UN budget as funds come from multiple sources and the funding patterns vary widely from one organization to another. Neither are the budget principles and processes of various UN agencies easily comparable and transparent. In the UN budgetary system, a complex set of bureaucratic and political interests has emerged, and it is not easy to control at all. As a result, the use of financial resources is not always efficient and may even be prone to corruption and fraud. UNHCR has not been saved from the criticism by the international media on the mismanagement of some of its funds (McDermott, 2000:48). The UN system is heavily dependent on voluntary contributions, and most of the money is spent outside the headquarters. For instance, in 1997 the total UN expenditure amounted to $18.2 billion, of which the headquarters and peacekeeping operations absorbed only $2.3 billion. Of the remaining $15.9 billion, voluntary contributions accounted for $5.4 billion, while the rest was, for a large part, derived from assessed national contributions to various UN activities. Both assessed and voluntary contributions increased swiftly in the first half of the 1 990s, mostly due to the expansion of peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, but they have declined since then (McDermott, 2000:4 1, 49, 67). The post-Cold War political honeymoon of the United Nations has been over for a long time. Leaving various political problems and chronic practices of nonpayment aside, it can be noted that the UN budget for several years has experienced no growth, and in some respects the budget funds have experienced an absolute decline. During the biennium 2000—2001, the total budget of the UN headquarters is expected to amount to about $2.5 billion, which involves no real 150 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW growth. In these same biennial estimates for the UN regular budget, about $45 million has been earmarked for the protection of and assistance to refugees. In addition, some $23 million goes to the Palestinian refugees and $20 million for other humanitarian assistance. These sums are, by any realistic standard, small, which underlines the fact that almost all refugee assistance is channeled through UNHCR (Mango, 1999). Main Issues in UNHCR Funding Thus, the activities by UNHCR are funded almost exclusively from voluntary national contributions. The UN contribution covers mostly administrative posts, but its subsidy accounts only for 2 percent of the entire UNHCR budget. The agency must, therefore, raise the remaining 98 percent of the funds. For this reason, the High Commissioner’s office is, in effect, a huge fundraising organization that must be constantly on the move to be able to finance its operations in the field. One can only speculate how much of the energies of the agency must be spent on raking in contributions that are needed to accomplish its proper tasks. For this reason, the High Commissioner, Sadako Ogata, referred in her farewell statement to the Executive Committee on October 2, 2000 to fund-raising as her major activity during the last ten years. The UNHCR Statute states that “the High Commissioner shall administer any funds, public or private, which he receives for assistance to refugees, and shall distribute them among the private and, as appropriate, public agencies which he deems best qualified to administer such assistance. ” Thus, originally, the High Commissioner was primarily supposed to be a foundation that would collect and redistribute funds to organizations, mostly private ones, working with the refugees in the field. The reluctance to empower UNHCR reflected, among other things, postwar concerns in Europe that too strong a refugee organization might infringe on national sovereignty. The current reali ty deviates significantly from the spirit of the Statute and its interpretation in early postwar years. Until the beginning of the year 2000, the UNHCR budget was divided into the General Programs and the Special Programs. Since then, these programs have been merged into a unified budget system. Funds for General Program have covered administrative and other infrastructure activities and basic projects for the protection, resettlement, and repatriation of refugees. On the other hand, Special Program have financed agency operations in major humanitarian emergencies and other urgent refugee crises and provided for specific types of interventions (Cunliffe, 1995:284—85). FUNDING DILEMMAS IN REFUGEE ASSISTANCE 151 The main difference between the General and Special Programs was that the former member governments provided unconditional, collective funding to UNHCR, while funds given to Special Programs were conditional and earmarked to special countries or activities. As discussed below in more detail, this budgetary structure has created major internal difficulties to UNHCR as it has significantly curtailed its freedom of decision. The budget structure has also soured relations with several member governments that have repeatedly expressed skepticism of its motives and ability to set priorities. In financial terms, UNHCR is a major agency in the UN system if compared, for instance, with the headquarters budget. Its level of funding has not been stable, however. In 1996, the High Commissioner budgeted for General Programs a total of $445 million and $811 million for Special Programs. In 1997, these figures were $453 million and $737 million, in 1998 $429 million and $568 million, and in 1999 $327 million and $585 million, respectively. The trend is declining; the total budget of UNHCR decreased from $1,256 million in 1996 to $921 million in 1999 (UNHCR,1999a, 2000c). The reasons for this downward trend seem to include the declining number of refugees in some regions since the mid-1990s and the tightening of the financial screw by the member governments. From that time on, they started to contribute less in total terms and earmarked funds more often for special projects than before. The humanitarian needs to which UNHCR is responding are, in most cases, unpredictable, but so are also the contributions it is receiving. Therefore, there is a constant risk that the resources available for the support of refugees may fall short of the needs of the affected populations or, at a minimum, that a risky hiatus develops between the escalation of the crisis and the delivery of humanitarian relief. This means that UNHCR has a hard time planning its activities, and it never can be sure whether the humanitarian obligations can be met. Therefore, there is a constant need to strengthen the agency ’ s emergency preparedness and response capacity. The reforms begun in 1992 have substantially improved that capacity, but a serious humanitarian crisis can, almost any day, prove them inadequate. The problem is not only quantitative, but also concerns the quality of assistance as limited and conditional resources create rigidities and force UNHCR to improvise the responses. This seems to have been the case in the Kosovo crisis in which the six leading EU donors provided emergency assistance for a total of $279 million, but less than $10 million of the money went to UNHCR, (UNHCR 2000b). In some refugee crises like Kosovo, special 152 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW bilateral relations between individual governments and refugee populations are a central factor, and a problem, in the distribution of funds. Because of the voluntary nature of the UNHCR funding, the actual performance in fund-raising may well fall short of the target. Thus, in 1998, the original budget for General Programs amounted to $429 million, but only $337 million was raised. For 2000, the potential funding gap was estimated in the middle of that year at $140 million. This means that diminishing funds have been carried over from one year to another. From 1998 a total of $136 million was carried over to 1999, but the carry-over to 2000 diminished to an insignificant $1.8 million. Thus, in the beginning of the budget year 1999 the total available for General Programs was sufficient to cover the needs of refugees for the first three months only (UNHCR, 2000c, 2000d). The inflow of donor money leaves something to be desired; for instance, by the middle of 1998 only about $300 million, or only about 30 percent of the total, had been transferred by the governments to the agency ’s coffers. In the same year, the Special Programs budget was $568 million, though the original target was $635 million, of which $550 million was finally raised (UNHCR,1999a). In addition to national governments and the UN regular budget, UNHCR receives private donations from a multitude of sources, including corporations, foundations, and NGOs. It comes as no surprise that most of the private funds are received from Europe, North America, and Japan. According to UNHCR, the private donations amounted in 1999 to a total of $31 million, which accounts for about 3 percent of the total budget. Private Italian donors were most generous group, providing some 44 percent of all private donations to UNHCR (it is worth noting that private Italian donors gave more than the Italian and French governments each). The next most generous private donors were in the United States (17% of the total) and Japan (14%). In the United States, most of the private funds came from USA for UNHCR and the UN Foundation (Ted Turner’s gift), while the William H. Gates Foundation and Microsoft contributed $ 1.2 million between themselves. The World Economic Forum in Davos gave a respectable $1.0 million. In fact, UNHCR’s effort to broaden its donor base made significant progress in 1999. Private donations amounted to $32.7 million, while they had been only $11.5 million in the previous year. Although the corporate donations increased in a major way in 1999, the national UNHCR associations, NGOs, and individual donors continue to be the main private sources FUNDING DILEMMAS IN REFUGEE ASSISTANCE 153 of funds; in 1 999, their share of all private donations was three fourths. The trebling of corporate donations in 1998—99 was largely due to the Kosovo crisis in which Western political interests were heavily involved. For instance, Microsoft provided computers and volunteers to develop a refugee registration system and challenged several other corporations (e.g., Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, and Cannon) also to contribute their equipment. The total value of corporate hardware, software, services, and supplies delivered to register Kosovar refugees was estimated at $3.5 million (UNHCR, 2000c). On May 5, 1999, UNHCR and Benetton published a two-page advertisement with a large blood stain on a white background to attract private funds for the Kosovar refugees. In Azerbaijan, UNHCR has received funds from international oil companies (Unocal and Elf) for the resettlement of refugees, mainly from Nagorno Karabakh. The new emphasis on the private-sector funding is also reflected in the job announcement for the Head of Service for Private Sector and Public Affairs Service at UNHCR. The job description refers to the task to “develop a Private Sector Fund Raising Strategy ... to diversify ... the donor base and to generate funds.” It also refers to the development of a “communication strategy targeted at business community.”(The Economist, May 13, 2000:10). Though the diversification of the funding sources makes much sense, the private funds cannot be imagined to provide any major and consistent flow of money for the activities of UNHCR (on the relations between the UN and multinational business in general, see Tesner, 2000). In 1999, the crises in Kosovo and East Timor captured international media attention and loosened the purse strings in an unprecedented way; as a result, both programs were fully funded before the end of the year. This success story has, however, its downside; many other crises, especially in Africa, remain unnoticed by public and private donors, and UNHCR has to struggle with inadequate resources to provide support and protection of refugees. The UN Secretary-General had a few harsh words to say on this issue in his address to the Executive Committee of UNHCR in early October 2000 (Annan, 2000): Too often, when donor governments decide which of your activities to fund, there is a flagrant political arrière-pensée. Your humanitarian work is used, or rather abused, as a substitute for political action to address the root causes of mass displacement. You have become a part of a ‘ containment strategy, ’ by which this world’s more fortunate and powerful countries seek to keep the problems of the poorer at arm ’ s length. How else can one explain the disparity between the relatively generous funding for relief efforts in countries close to the frontiers of the prosperous 154 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW world, and the much more parsimonious effort made for those who suffer in remote parts of the world such as Asia or Africa. One could hardly make a more clear-cut reference to the double standard that prevails in the present funding patterns of the refugee crises. The UNHCR Budget The majority of voluntary contributions to the UNHCR budget comes from a few donor countries. In 1994—98, close to three-fourths of all funds came from the ten leading donor governments. The following table details the share of these leading donors of all contributions, their distribution in 1994—98 between general and special programs, and the average absolute annual contribution during the same period. TABLE 1 FINANCIAl. CONTRIBUTIONS BY LEADING DONORS AND THEIR DISTRIBUTION BETWEEN PROGRAMS, 1994—98 ~ Share of the total General Special Annual average percent programs percent programs percent $ million United States 26 41 59 248 Japan 13 22 78 120 Sweden 7 57 43 65 Netherlands 6 52 48 55 Denmark 5 42 58 45 United Kingdom 5 47 53 44 Norway 4 47 53 41 Switzerland 2 45 55 20 Germany 2 31 69 18 Canada 2 61 39 18 Total (1994—97) 100 35 65 920 Note: aThese figures are calculated from information provided in http://www.unhcr.ch. The absolute financial burden of the international refugee regime is mostly shouldered by the United States and Japan on the one hand and small industrialized countries — especiall y the Nordic countries, the Netherlands, and Switzerland — on the other. In per capita terms, the most generous donors in 1998 were Norway and Denmark (about $8 per person each), followed by Sweden ($5.9), Switzerland ($2.6), the Netherlands ($2.6), and Finland ($2.4). Calculated in relative terms, the central position of the small industrial countries in supporting UNHCR is beyond any doubt. The United States pays to UNHCR little less than a dollar for each of its citizens. No wonder that the High Commissioner in her address to the Executive Committee in October 2000, stated “allow me to single out and warmly thank FUNDING DILEMMAS IN REFUGEE ASSISTANCE 155 the United States. Japan, the Nordic countries, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, which have been most consistent in their support. ” Obviously, she felt that these countries had been more responsive than some others with comparable economic resources. In countries like Norway, generous support for refugees is a part of the larger policy pattern. Norway is a leader in the provision of development assistance (and has recently added $130 million to it while campaigning for a seat in the UN Security Council). In addition to the Middle East, Norway has been actively involved in negotiations for peace in Guatemala, Columbia, and Sri Lanka (see Guarnieri, 2000). The funding pattern of UNHCR is consistent with the observation that the small industrialized countries of Europe are, in general, in the forefront to provide development and humanitarian assistance. Comparing their funding patterns with those of UNHCR, some interesting differences emerge, however. The United States has been much more inclined to support refugees than victims of humanitarian disasters in general. On the other hand, large member states of the European Union have preferred humanitarian victims to refugees , and their support of the refugee regime has declined rapidly in recent years. The U.S. focus on refugee support, instead of general-purpose humanitarian assistance, can possibly be explained by political and military interests connected with interstate rivalries and regional instabilities. This reflects the geopolitical rather than humanitarian foundations of the U.S. foreign policy. Japan has been somewhat reluctant to engage in humanitarian activities, but once it has done so, economic motives tend to have informed its choices. In the case of Nordic countries, the primacy of humanitarian motives has sometimes been questioned despite high levels of assistance. It has been suggested that trade and other economic considerations shape the humanitarian policies of “likeminded” countries as well (Schraeder, Hook and Taylor, 1998; Hveem, forthcoming). An interesting tendency in the larger picture of refugee assistance is that while the annual contributions of the United States and Japan (and Germany) have remained relatively constant during the period 1994—98, those by the small “like-minded” industrialized countries have been declining. An underlying question, to which I have no good answer, is whether the “likeminded” countries have become fed up with the free-riding of most major countries in the provision of refugee assistance. In fact, there seems to be a continuing, though mostly latent, struggle between the governments for burden-sharing of such assistance. At any rate, in 1994 the total contributions by the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Germany combined were $453 million, while in 1 56 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW 1 998 the total was $4 1 0 million (but $39 million of the total decline of $43 million was due to dwindling British contributions in 1997—98). In 1999, the total contribution ofthese four countries increased again to $479 million. On the other hand, the remaining seven major donors, all of which belong to the group of “ progressive” industrialized countries, contributed $275 million in 1994, but only $203 million in 1998, a 23 percent decline (though their contributions grew in 1999 to a total of $245 million). The pattern of financial burden-sharing seems to be changing, but it is probably too early to conclude that small industrialized countries are losing their interest in UNHCR. THE PROBLEM OF EARMARKING In UNHCR, problems have not concerned only the voluntary nature of funds, but also the tendency of the donors to earmark them. This means simply that conditions are imposed on the use of funds (which in the old budgetary structure meant their allocation through Special Programs). These conditions have usually required that monies should be used for particular country programs. Such earmarking tends to create inequities in the refugee regime as the main donors seem to favor crisis areas that are geographically close to them and/or politically more important due to the potential of crossborder instabili ty or competition for influence with other powers. It has been frequently pointed out that the African refugees routinely receive much less assistance per capita than, for instance, those in Southeastern Europe. A figure typ ically mentioned is that an African refugee in the Great Lakes region receives about one tenth of the financial support going to Kosovar refugees in Albania. Be that as it may, it is quite clear that the strong focus of UNHCR on the refugee problem of the former Yugoslavia has meant that resources have had to be switched there from other areas of conflict (Shawcross, 2000:60—61). In 1999—2000, this situation may have changed though, as donors targeted much of their funds directly to Kosovo to compensate for the destruction of NATO bombing and convinced themselves that it was a justified response to the refugee and humanitarian crises created by the Milosevic government. Another reason for the tendency of donors to opt for unilateral and bilateral funding policies is that they make it easier to exercise control over specific outcomes. This may also explain why governments are unwilling — with some exceptions such as the resettlement of the Vietnamese refugees after 1975 — to become involved in international schemes to share the financial burden of refugee flows and the responsibili ty to settle refugees according to FUNDING DILEMMAS IN REFUGEE ASSISTANCE 157 a quota system (Suhrke, 1998;: Zetter, 1999:70—72). Partly because of the fear of domestic political backlashes, national governments want to control the specifics of refugee and asylum policies, now seemingly more strictly than in the past. As a result of this, any coordination of refugee assistance has to rely on national decisions and the common efforts to fashion a consensus out of them. The allocation of national funds to UNHCR Special Programs at the expense of General Programs started to become more common in the early 1 990s. The trend in the distribution of funds between these programs is described in the following table. TABLE 2 THE ALLOCATION OF CONTRIBUTIONS BETWEEN GENERAL AND SPECIAL PROGRAMS, 1986—97, PERCENT ~ 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 General 61 69 68 64 65 36 33 26 3 1 34 36 4 2 Special 39 31 32 36 35 64 67 64 69 66 64 58 Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 $ million 422 428 483 506 583 1004 1082 1195 1056 996 969 656 Note:a Calculated from data provided in www.unhcr.ch. The table reveals two very clear facts; one is absolute, another distributive. In the wake of the end of the Cold War, the UNHCR budget shot up like a rocket. In fact, it almost doubled from 1990 to 1991. However, after having peaked in 1993, the budget began declining and did so quite drastically in 1997. Since then, the trend has been somewhat reversed, though, in 1999, the total income of UNHCR amounted to $912 million, much of that money going to Kosovo and East Timor. In that year, Special Programs received 64 percent of all funds. Thus, these programs continued to be a major element in the agency ’s budget. The absolute growth in resources in 1991 brought with it a profound change in the allocation of funds between general and special programs. All of a sudden, governments not only pumped money into UNHCR, but also started to earmark it for purposes of their own liking. This trend warrants a hypothesis: the erosion of the bipolar international structure and the escalation of local conflicts for most donor countries opened new opportunities of political action and made them more conscious of their own interests. Urgent human needs in areas of crisis — whether in Southeastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Central America, or many parts of Africa — called for the release of hundreds of millions of dollars to support refugees and other victims of emergencies. Yet, at the same time, humanitarian disasters opened 1 5 8 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW up new opportunities to conduct politics associated with the relief money. Most governments could not resist that temptation. The expansion of the refugee agenda from the traditional concern with cross-border movements to IDPs and other victims seems to have provided, especially in 1991—96, a new justification for the allocation of more funds for international humanitarian action. The increase in funds seems, in turn, to have ushered in new priorities in refugee assistance. In particular, the voluntary repatriation and reintegration of refugees has became a high-profile activity. In all, some 7 million people are estimated to have returned to their home countries in the 1 990s (though many of them did so without UNHCR’s help). Obviously, voluntary repatriation is in most cases a durable and, therefore, preferable solution which the High Commissioner cannot but promote (Zeager, 1998; Zetter, 1999:58—59). At the same time, it reflects the changing organizational agenda of UNHCR and the transformation of international conditions in which it operates. On the other hand, one has to recognize that the reasons for the increasing populari ty of repatriation are often political in nature. In the countries of asylum, political pressures emerge easily and propel the repatriation of refugees. This happened, for instance, in Germany for Bosnian refugees and in the Democratic Republic of Congo for Hutu refugees from Rwanda. In such situations, “voluntarism” becomes a rather relative term because refugees do not have any other alternative than to return. Thus, voluntary repatriation is a laudable goal, but it can also be used for reasons of political exigency (Koser and Black, 1999:4—6). At any rate, as the funds for the repatriation of refugees have come from the Special Programs, an increase in its political populari ty has apparently expanded these programs beyond feasible proportions (Bariagaber, 1999:608—609). The support to IDPs is another new and growing area of engagement for UNHCR, and for a good reason, as the number of forcibly displaced people has been increasing and their problems are in many ways similar those of refugees (Schmeidl, 1998). UNHCR has developed a specific position on IDPs, which it is already assisting in Chechnya, Colombia, and Tajikistan, and other places. The agency intends to expand its involvement in the support of IDPs also in other crisis areas on the basis of a UN mandate and the consent of the host state (UNHCR, 2000a). In some respects, UNHCR involvement in the support of IDPs resembles the founding principles of traditional peacekeeping: impartial and peaceful support on the basis of consent by the host government. FUNDING DILEMMAS IN REFUGEE ASSISTANCE 159 It is characteristic of the prevailing situation that the UNHCR position paper on the IDPs does not contain any information or estimate of the funds needed to support them. In general, it does not seem to be possible for an outsider to get reliable figures on how the UNHCR budget is divided between different functional categories, such as the protection and repatriation of refugees or support to the IDPs. The budget figures are, as a rule, broken down only by geographical regions. l Even then, it is not easy to get information on how the funds from the individual donors are divided between such regions. Even more difficult to come by is information on the distribution of funds between different functions, not to speak of conditions donors impose on their contributions. In UNHCR, the increasing share of funds allocated for the Special Programs correlated with the emphasis on the political earmarking. This was not, however, necessarily a major problem as long as fresh money kept flowing in and earmarking remained at the relatively general, programmatic level. In this context, the absence of serious operational problems has been admitted by UNHCR: “earmarkings at the program level without further limitations on the use of funds have to date not been the most difficult for UNHCR to accommodate” (UNHCR, 1 999b: 1). However, the situation gradually became worse as donors began earmarking funds below the program or even country level. For instance, they could single out support to a particular beneficiary group, a specific activity, or certain implementing partners. They may have also made funds usable only during a certain time period, stipulating that any unused money had to be returned to the donor. One cannot avoid the impression that several donors were abusing the dependence by UNHCR on voluntary funding for their own political purposes. Restrictions on the use of funds do not, however, reflect only the ill will or special interests of the donors, but they also convey among governments a certain lack of trust in UNHCR and its capacity to deliver assistance as expected. Donors feel that the agency has not always gotten its priorities right and its capaci ty to respond has not been commensurate with the resources that have been made available to it. The credibili ty g a p between the donor governments and UNHCR seems to be today as wide as ever. It con-‘According to the UNHCR home page (“Funding and Budget”), its most costly operations in 2000 are in Southeastern Europe ($213 million), the Great Lakes Region of Africa ($100 million), East and Horn of Africa ($91 million), and West and Central Africa ($69 million), while global operations need $49 million. For the sake of comparison one may mention that the budget of the UNHCR headquarters amounts this year to $76 million. 160 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW cerns, for instance, the capacity of the agency to prioritize its activities as a precondition of their effective implementation. For instance, it would be prudent to make a more clear-cut distinction between core activities, for which money always has to be found, other necessary activities with a lower order of priority, and various complementary activities. In any case, the share of the earmarked monies of total Special Program funds increased quickly, from 38 percent in 1996 to 60 percent in 1998. For 1999, UNHCR (2000c:330) states that “80 percent of total contributions were earmarked to some degree: the highest percentage in the agency ’ s history. ” The report further points out that in 1999, of “ the top 15 donors, only two governments gave more than 50 percent of their total contribution without any earmarking.” In 1998, among individual target countries, the share of earmarked funds was 77 percent in Bangladesh and Burma, 72 percent in the former Yugoslavia, and 67 percent in Rwanda (UNHCR, 1 999b). Small earmarked donations have produced special problems for UNHCR as they require more than their proportionate share of monitoring, enforcement, and detailed reporting of program activities. Such donations are seldom cost-effective, but a decision to turn them down is difficult as they may offend the donor government and leave someone without help. The situation seems to have become a bit better in 1999 as the more detailed reporting by UNHCR in its Global Report 1998 satisfied many donor governments to the extent that they ceased to demand tailor-made reports on their earmarked contributions. A major problem with the earmarked funds is that they do not cover the overhead expenses due to administration, planning, coordination, and research. These agency-related “ collective goods ” have been possible to provide only because some donors have been willing, as detailed in Table 1, to provide funds for the General Programs. In so doing they have made possible the “free-riding ” by those governments that have been attracted for their own reasons to Special Programs. The situation is made even more absurd by the fact that narrowly earmarked funds may be so small that other donors must pick up the tab for a major part of the activity chosen by the original contributor. The governments that are narrowly pursuing their own interests or ideas by extensively earmarking funds deserve to be criticized, but UNHCR itself is not entirely blameless either. It has admitted, for instance, that “currently, the acceptance of heavily earmarked contributions is used as a mechanism both for maximizing income and broadening the donor base” (UNHCR, 1999a:6). Still, the donor base of the organization has remained narrower FUNDING DILEMMAS IN REFUGEE ASSISTANCE 161 than that of almost any other UN agency. Moreover, toying with special interests even with the risk that programs lose their cost-effectiveness does not seem to be a viable way to broaden the funding base. In recent years, both General and Specific Programs have been underfunded as UNHCR has committed itself to activities for which no money has been pledged. The shortfall in General Programs increased from $36 million in 1996 to $92 million in 1998. The financial situation was particularly bad in the latter year when massive budget cuts had to be carried out in the agency. In the past, UNHCR has used carryovers from the previous year to finance programs in the beginning of the next year, but recently this source of money has also been drying up. How these and other problems can be handled in the new unified budget system remains to be seen. To put its funding on a more solid and predictable basis, UNHCR has set up a new single Operational Reserve that in 2000 amounts to $82 million. According to the ACABQ, the Reserve should contain a minimum of 10 percent of programmed activities. Money in the Reserve either can be allocated to other parts of the budget, used for operational activities such as assistance in emergency situations and the planning of repatriation, or used to deal with various unforeseen circumstances. In 2000, the largest amounts of funds from the Operational Reserve have been used for emergency assistance to the Angolan, Congolese, and Eritrean refugees and the IDPs in Southern Africa (UNHCR, 2000d:14—16). An ideal solution would be to establish an endowment from which UNHCR could fund especially its emergency activities to respond to sudden needs in the field. A related but even more ambitious and specific proposal has been made for the establishment of a Strategic Recovery Facility to pursue a holistic approach to post-conflict reconstruction. Such a Facili ty should comprise core UN agencies, regional organizations, major donor governments, and the NGO community. The tasks of the Facili ty would include the development of a common framework and information base, the mobilization of resources and the allocation of them based upon the urgency for start-up activities, and the encouragement of its partners to provide necessary long-term funding (Forman, Patrick and Salomons, 2000). The proposal does not envisage any special role for refugee assistance and UNHCR. THE BUD GET REFORM The method of UNHCR’s fundraising cannot but affect the nature of its operations and their humanitarian and political consequences. In effect, “ the 162 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW sources and extent of funding are major determinants of how a program is mobilized, how lives are saved and how refugees ’ livelihood strategies and needs are supported” (Zetter, 1999:58). UNHCR reports contain several stories about how the tightly earmarked funds cannot have been used in a meaningful way. For instance, a school could not be constructed in the village where it would have been needed because the funds had been assigned to the neighboring village (UNHCR, 1999b:5—6). On a more general level, the earmarking of funds affects the entire organization, its priorities, and its mode of operation. UNHCR’s traditional task has been to protect refugees through field presence. However, with the increasing popularity of repatriation and reintegration, the protection activities are facing prospects for reduced funding and field presence. An unstated assumption in the repatriation strategy has been that the safe ty of the refugees can be best enhanced in this way. This is not necessarily the case, though, and therefore a tension may arise between the emphasis on repatriation and the more traditional objectives of refugee protection and safety (Landgren, 1998:426—28). The main reason for the introduction of the new unified budget system was to increase the financial flexibility of UNHCR’s operations to better meet the needs of the refugee populations and other victims of war. In addition, the new system has been expected to enhance the clarity and transparency of the budget process (UNHCR, 1999c:8). If this becomes a genuine result of the reform, then the trust between the donor governments and the refugee organization can possibly be improved. There are also other ways to enhance trust; for instance, the Executive Committee and the donors could be consulted more closely in the preparation of the budget. Instead of compromising the agency ’s integrity, such a process of consultation could help to reduce the politicization of refugee assistance through earmarking. The unified budget system also makes an effort to establish new standards regarding how detailed the earmarking by donors can be. This measure intends to enhance the freedom of action by UNHCR and restore the integrity of its programmatic activities. The flexibili ty of operations would require that in the unified budget a larger share of budget resources should be unallocated than previously (UNHCR, 1999c:3). On the other hand, this could increase the suspicions of the donor governments and lead back to tensions that in the recent past have characterized their relations with the High Commissioner. The complexi ty of “ new wars” in the crisis areas have made the distinctions between refugees, internally displaced persons, and other war casual- FUNDING DILEMMAS IN REFUGEE ASSISTANCE 163 ties somewhat artificial. The ICRC has traditionally dealt with the entire spectrum ofvictims, while the UN agencies have been hampered in this regard by the lack of mutual coordination and the restrictions imposed on them by the principle of national sovereignty (Weiss, 1999). However, UNHCR , gradually and partially, has been able to overcome these limitations and, as a result, it has become more of an all-purpose humanitarian agency. For instance, in Tajikistan it operated as a lead agency before OSCE and UNDP took over this responsibili ty in 1995—96. It turned out that UNHCR , in cooperation with ICRC, had succeeded quite well. It was able to provide both protection and assistance, while OSCE and UNDP were capable of delivering only one of these services each. While it is exaggerated to characterize the UN response to the humanitarian crisis in Tajikistan as integrated, the combination of tasks that UNHCR was able to accomplish seemed to alleviate the humanitarian consequences of the crisis (McLean and Greene, 1998:326—35). CONCLUSION It is surprising that the funding of the refugee regime has received scant attention in research, even though it is a critical aspect of its performance. Both the donor preferences and the funding practices of UNHCR would deserve a much closer scrutiny. The gap in research on refugee assistance may be indicative of a larger problem in the study of international regimes. None of the major books on regimes contains any major discussion of their funding and its impact on the institutional form and performance. Oran Young, a pioneer in regime studies, leaves the funding issue entirely out of his recent book. He mentions resources only briefly when discussing their optimal use as an element of regime efficiency (Young, 1999:112). In the 1990s, UNHCR has faced several major challenges. It has had to respond to a larger number of crises than in any preceding decade. These crises also have become more complex and produced new types of victims in addition to cross-border refugees. As the war in Kosovo indicates, the humanitarian operations also have become “ contaminated” by military activities in a manner that was inconceivable before. To be able to respond to the humanitarian emergencies, UNHCR has had to take a lead role in coordinating multilateral efforts and, at the same time, to contract many of the tasks to an increasing number of NGOs. Many times the hands of UNHCR have been tied by financial limitations. In fact, its budget has been inadequate and the flow of money from 164 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW voluntary donors too unsteady for the lead role in a humanitarian operation. Therefore, in some cases, as in Kosovo, UNHCR has had to operate on the sidelines of the humanitarian crisis. Despite its limited and difficult role, it has been subjected to political criticism for various humanitarian failures, and occasionally for a reason. In a larger sense, the dilemma faced by UNHCR boils down to the contradiction between the expectation of it providing an effective international regime of refugee protection and the lack of predictable and robust commitments by the member states. This has made UNHCR an anomalous institution which has had to meet three major requirements simultaneously: longterm planning, rapid reaction capacity ~ and continuing fund-raising. With such demands some trade-offs are unavoidable. The dependence of UNHCR on short-term voluntary funding is a good breeding ground for the advocacy of national political interests. Sensing its vulnerability, the donor governments can easily persuade the High Commissioner to allocate funds for special countries or projects. A certain lack of trust by the donors in the ability of UNHCR to establish priorities has made them seek guarantees about the way funds are used. This has occurred mostly by donors earmarking funds to special programs that have been often difficult to fit in larger programmatic contexts. As a result, the quality of aid has suffered. The budgetary division between General and Special Programs until 1999 has further permitted these practices to flourish. In several cases, the earmarking of funds has led to almost absurd situations. To eliminate some of these problems, UNHCR introduced a new unified budget system beginning in 2000. It is hoped that the integration of General and Special Programs will lead to a more flexible and transparent budgetary system which will improve the performance of UNHCR and enhance the satisfaction of the donor governments. Yet, this reform does not address all underlying problems, in particular the predictability of funding that is-essential for the development of long-term plans for effective and timely responses. REFERENCES Annan, K. 2000 ‘United Nations Secretary-General Addresses Executive Committee of UNHCR. “UN Press Release, October 2. Bariagaber, A. 1999 “States, International Organisations and the Refugee: Reflections on the Complexity of Managing Refugee Crisis in the Horn of Africa, ” Journal of Modern African Studies, 37(4) :597—61 9. FUNDING DILEMMAS IN REFUGEE ASSISTANCE 165 Cohen, R. and F. M. Deng 1998 Masses in Flight: The Global Crisis oflnternalDisplacement. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Cunliffe, A. 1995 “The Refugee Crises: A Study of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, ” Political Studies, 43(2):278—290. Duffield, M. 1999 “Lunching with Killers: Aid , Security, and the Balkan Crisis. ” In Scramble for the Balkans, Nationalism, Globalism and the Politi cal Economy ofReconstruction. “Ed. C. Schierup. London: Macmillan. Pp. 118—146. Forman, S. and S. Patrick, eds. 2000 Good Intentions. Pledges ofAid for Postconflict Recovery. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Forman, S., S. Patrick and D. Salomons 2000 Recovering from Conflict: Strategy for an International Response. New York: New York University, Center on International Cooperation. Guarnieri, T 2000 “Norway Keeps Reaching Out to the World to Come to the Rescue,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 25. Hveem, H. Forthcoming “Donor Governments. ” In War and Destitution. The Prevention of Humanitarian Emergencies. Ed. W. Nafziger, and R. Vayrynen. London: Macmillan. Jakobsen, R V. 2000 “Focus on the CNN Effect Misses the Point: The Real Media Impact on Conflict Management is Invisible and Indirect,” Journal of Peace Research, 37(2): 131—143. Judah, T 2000 Kosovo. War and Revenge. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Kent, R. 1996 “The Integrated Operations Center in Rwanda Coping with Complexi ty. ” In After Rwanda: The Coordination of the United Nations Humanitarian Assistance. Ed. J. Whitman and D. Pocock. London: Macmillan. Pp. 63—85. Koser, K. and R. Black 1999 “The End of the Refugee Cycle. ” In The End of the Refugee Cycle? Refugee Repatriation and Reconstruction. Ed. R. Black and K. Koser. New York: Berghahn Books. Pp. 2—17. Landgren, K. 1998 “The Future of Refugee Protection: Four Challenges,” Journal of Refi ~ gee Studies, 11 ( 4):416—432. Mango, A. 1999 “Finance and Administration. ” In A GlobalAgenda. Issues Before the 54th GeneralAssembly of the United Nations. Ed. J. Tessitore and S. Woolfson. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Pp. 295—316. Maynard, K. 1999 Healing Communities in Conflict. International Assistance in Complex Emergencies. New York: Columbia University Press. McDermott, A. 2000 The New Politics of Financing the UN London: Macmillan. 166 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW McLean, J. and T. Greene 1998 “Turmoil in Tajikistan: Addressing the Crisis of Internal Displacement. ” In The Forsaken People. The Case Studies of the Internally Displaced. Ed. R. Cohen and E M. Deng. Brookings Institution Press. Pp. 313—358. Najman, D. and H. d’Orville 1995 Towards a New Multilateralism: Funding Global Priorities. Innovative Financing Mechanisms for Internationally Agreed Programs. New York: Independent Commission on Population and Quali ty of Life. Patrick, S. 2000 “The Check is in the Mail. Improving the Delivery and Coordination of Postconflict Assistance, ” Global Governance, 6(1):6 1—94. Pugh, M. and A. Cunliffe 1997 “The Lead Agency Concept in Humanitarian Assistance. The Case of the UNHCR, ” Security Dialogue, 28(1): 17—30. Schmeidl, S. 1998 “Comparative Trends in Forced Displacement: IDPs and Refugees. ” In Internally Displaced People. A Global Survey. Ed. J. Hampton. London: Earthscan. Pp. 24—33. Schraeder, P. J., S. W. Hook and B. Taylor, eds. 1998 “Clarifying the Foreign Aid Puzzle: A Comparison of American, Japanese, French, and Swedish Aid Flows, ” World Politics, 50(4):294—323. Shawcross, W. 2000 Deliver Us From Evil. Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict. New York & Simon & Schuster. Stein, A. A. 1990 Why Nations Cooperate. Circumstance and Choice in International Relations. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Universi ty Press. Suhrke, A. 1998 “Burden-sharing during Refugee Emergencies: The Logic of Collective versus National Action, ” Journal of Refugee Studies, 11(4):396—415. Tesner, S. with G. Kell 2000 The United Nations and Business. A Partnershz ~ Recovered. New York: St. Martin ’ s Press. UNHCR 2000 a “Internally Di s p laced Persons: The Role of the United Nations Hig h Commissioner for Refugees. ” New York, March 6. 2000b “The Kosovo Refugee Crisis. An Independent Evaluation of UNHCR’ s Emergency Preparedness and Response,” <www.unhcr.ch> 2000 c “Funding UNHCR’ s Programmes. ” In UNHCR Global Report 1999, UNHCR. Pp. 32—41. <www.unhcr.ch> 2000d”Funding Update. ” In UNHCR Mid-Year Report 2000, UNHCR. Pp. 12—21. <www.unhcr.ch> 1999 a “Consultations on the UNHCR’ s Budget Structure. Resourcing and Managing a Unified Budget. ” New York. January 13. FUNDING DILEMMAS IN REFUGEE ASSISTANCE 167 1999b “The Earmarking of Contributions and its Effect on UNHCR Operations. ” New York. February 8. 1999c “Resource Mobilization for the Unified Budget of UNHCR. ” New York. December 6. Vayrynen, R. 1999 “More Questions than Answers: Dilemmas of Humanitarian Action, ” Peace and Change, 24(2): 172—196. Weiss, T. 1999 “Whither International Efforts for Internally Displaced Persons?,” Journal of Peace Research, 36(3):363—373. Weiss, T. and A. Pasic 1997 “Reinventing UNHCR: Enterprising Humanitarians in the Former Yugoslavia, 1991—1995, ” Global Governance, 3(1):41—57. Young, 0. 1999 Governance in World Affairs. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Zeager, L. A. 1998 “Negotiations for Refugee Repatriation or Local Settlement: A Game-Theoretic Analysis,” International Studies Quarterly, 42(2):367—384. Zetter, R. 1999 “International Perspective on Refugee Assistance. ” In Refugees. Perspectives on the Experience of Forced Mz ~ ration. Ed. A. Ager. London: Pinter. Pp. 46—82. Mind the Gap! UNHCR , Humanitarian Assistance and the Development Process Jeffrey Crisp UNHCR This article provides a historical critique of the initiatives taken by UNHCR to link its refugee and returnee assistance programs with longer-term development efforts in low-income countries. Such initiatives include the integrated zonal development approach of the 1 960s; the refugee aid and development strategy of the 1970s and 1980s; the returnee aid and development strategy of the 1990s; and, most recently, the Brookings process. The article concludes that these initiatives have generally been flawed in their conceptualization and implementation and have consequently failed to meet their intended objectives. Anyone who has used London’ s underground railway system will be familiar with the warning to “ mind the gap ” which is broadcast across the platform when passengers are preparing to board or alight from a train. The same phrase provides an apposite title for a review of UNHCR’ s efforts to link humanitarian assistance with the development process in less prosperous regions of the world. The discourse on this issue has been dominated by references to the different gaps — institutional, financial and conceptual — that have obstructed the organization ’ s efforts in this domain over the past four decades. This article provides a review of those efforts, looking initially at UNHCR’ s involvement with the ‘ refugee aid and development ’ initiative of the 1 970s and 1 980 s, and subsequently at the organization ’ s ‘ returnee aid and development ’ activities in the 1 990s. The article concludes with some reflections on the ‘Brookings process, ’ UNHCR’ s most recent attempt to address the elusive relationshi p between humanitarian assistance and the development process. EARLYAPPR OACHES TO REFUGEE SETTLEMENT In the early years of the UNHCR, when the majority of the world’s refugees were to be found in the industrialized countries, refugees and development were perceived as two distinct issues, with relatively little bearing upon each other. The geographical limitation of the 1951 UN Convention relating to © 2001 by the Center for Migration Studies of New York. All rights reserved. 0198-9183/00/3501.01332 168 IMR Volume 35 Number 1 (Spring 2001): 168—19 1 UNHCR, HUMANiTARIAN ASSISTANCE AND THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS 169 the Status of Refugees, which restricted the refugee definition to people displaced as a result of events occurring in Europe, as well as the decision to exclude the Palestinian refugee population from the mandate of UNHCR, merely served to reinforce the notion that refugee questions were primarily a concern of the world’s more prosperous regions. At this time, moreover, the very concept of development was still in its infancy and did not even feature in the UN Charter. While development issues were soon to assume a more prominent place on the international agenda, the institutional arrangements of the United Nations and its member states served to separate those issues from the question of refugee assistance. The clear division of labor between the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the UN Development Program (established in 1966) was replicated in many donor states. Thus, in the United States, for example, refugee relief was entrusted to the State Department’s Bureau for Refugee Programs, while a separate entity, USAID , was given responsibility for development assistance. Notwithstanding these bureaucratic boundaries, the intimate nature of the relationship between displacement and development became increasingly clear in the late 1 960s, when UNHCR and its operational partners began, for the first time, to launch large-scale refugee relief programs in Africa and other low-income regions of the world. These programs generally conformed to a standard settlement model. As Barbara Harrell-Bond observed in Imposing Aid (1985:10), her seminal critique of refugee assistance programs: There are three stages to the settlement program. First, refugees are given relief aid and transported to camps, to inhabit houses built for them or which they are expected to build for themselves. During the second stage they are provided with land, tools and seeds, and primary education is organized. During this period refugees are expected to be motivated to work and get on their own feet quickly, by being told that there will be a gradual reduction in their food rations after the first harvest. In the third stage, aid is withdrawn, on the grounds that the refugees should by then be ‘ self-sufficient ’ and ‘integrated’ into the local community. With international expenditure on refugees steadily growing, it did not take long for the obvious question to be posed: why not use the assistance provided to settlements in poor countries as a basis for development activities that would bring long-term benefits to both the refugees and the local population? Thus by the mid-i 960s, international organizations and governments in Africa had begun to think in terms of an ‘integrated zonal development approach’ to refugee assistance which incorporated this principle. In practice, however, few efforts were made to implement this approach, and those which 170 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW were undertaken did not meet with great success. As a result, and in the words of Robert Gorman (i987: i4), “the zonal development concept languished in relative obscurity for over a decade” (for a more detailed account of the zonal development approach and its demise, see Kibreab, i 983). As the i 970s progressed and the global refugee population grew (from 2.4 million in i975 to 4.6 million at the end of the decade), the limitations of the international communi ty ’s established approach to refugee assistance and settlement began to attract renewed attention, particularly in Africa. Instead of becoming self-sufficient , many refugee camps and their inhabitants continued to rely upon international assistance. By the end of the i 970s, the states most directly concerned with the refugee problem in developing regions were beginning to consider the need for alternative models of assistance. Countries of asylum, many of them affected by the related ills of political instability, the global recession and economic mismanagement, stressed the need for ‘international burden sharing ’ so that they could cope with the adverse impact of refugees on their economy, environment and infrastructure. Donor states, many of whom were keen to limit their overseas aid expenditure, were becoming increasingly reluctant to devote their resources to open-ended ‘care and maintenance’ programs for refugees in low-income countries. The international communi ty’ s response to this situation, formulated in a series of meetings during the late i970s and early i980 s, became known as the ‘ refugee aid and development’ strategy. In contrast to the established model of refugee relief, this approach stipulated that assistance should be development-oriented from the outset and thereby enable beneficiaries to move quickly towards self-sufficiency. Rather than focusing specifically on refugee camps and communities, the new strategy also emphasized the need for a focus on refugee-populated areas. International assistance, it was agreed, should be used not to provide open-ended relief but to promote sustainable development. And both refugees and the local population should benefit from that process. Several different types of activi ty were envisaged under the refugee aid and development rubric. These included, for example, projects to provide agricultural, wage-earning and income-generating opportunities to both refugees and local people; initiatives to strengthen the physical and social infrastructure in areas where large numbers of refugees had settled; and new efforts to combat the environmental degradation damage resulting from the long-term presence of large-scale refugee populations. UNHCR, HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE AND THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS 171 The refugee aid and development approach was an ambitious one, not only in aims, but also in its envisaged scale. Thus, at the Second International Conference on Assistance to Refugees in Africa (‘ICARA II’), held in i984, i28 different refugee aid and development project proposals in Africa were presented to the donor community. The total amount requested for these projects amounted to some U.S. $362 million — an average of just under U.S. $3 million per project and almost as much as UNHCR’ s total global expenditure the previous year, which had amounted to $397 million. In intellectual, institutional and economic terms, the refugee aid and development approach appeared to make a great deal of sense. It met the concerns of both host and donor states. It promised to bring tangible benefits to refugees and local populations alike. It represented a far more cost-effective use of resources than the maintenance of extended refugee relief programs. It provided UNHCR with the opportuni ty to launch a high-profile international initiative. And it offered an opportunity to bridge the longstanding gap between those organizations concerned with refugee relief and those mandated to promote development. In a limited number of cases, such expectations were at least partially f ulfilled. During the early 1980s, for example, more than 3 million Afghan refugees crossed the frontier into Pakistan, imposing a heavy strain on the fragile economy, ecology and infrastructure of the country’ s border regions. In an attempt to mitigate such problems, to create a range of durable assets in refugee-hosting areas, and to alleviate the poverty of both the Afghans and their local hosts, the Income-Generating Project for Afghan Refugees (IGPAR) was established. Undertaken jointly by the Pakistani government, the World Bank and UNHCR , this U.S.$86 million program provided more than 21 million person-days of employment between 1984 and 1994, more than three quarters of which benefited the refugee population. At the same time, IGPAR allowed the completion of nearly 300 separate projects in three of Pakistan ’ s border provinces, mainly in areas such as reforestation, watershed management, irrigation, flood protection, road repair and construction. Throughout the program, emphasis was placed on providing training to the refugees, so that they could acquire the skills and experience needed to reconstruct their own country if and when repatriation became possible. At a global level, however, the refugee aid and development approach proved to be seriously flawed. As a UNHCR review concluded: 172 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW The efforts made to date in the area of refugee aid and development have had limited results, mainly due to a lack of funding. Paradoxically, the projects which have not been funded are mainly those in Africa, where large numbers of refugees are to be found in some of the least developed countries of the world, and where the presence of a large concentration of refugees in care and maintenance situations is regarded as an important impediment to development. (Stevens, 1991) The very limited achievements of the refugee aid and development approach can be ascribed in large part to the essentially ambiguous nature of its objectives. As Barry Stein (i994) asked in a paper prepared for UNHCR, was its purpose to promote the settlement and eventual integration of refugee populations in countries of asylum? Or was its aim to ameliorate the situation of refugees, the host communi ty and state, pending the day when those refugees returned to their country of origin? According to Stein, the latter objective took precedence in the eyes of most asylum countries. Their principal interest in the refugee aid and development approach was to promote the principle of international burden sharing and to be compensated more generously for the costs they were incurring by admitting refugees to their territory. Host governments were generally much less interested in allowing those refugees to attain the full range of social, economic and legal rights enjoyed by citizens of their country, as the solution of local integration demands. By way of contrast, the donor communi ty was much more interested in finding lasting solutions to refugee problems than they were in the principle of burden sharing or the notion of compensation. Their aim, in simple terms, was to reduce the number of refugees on the international communi ty ’s books. They certainly did not want to invest very large sums of money in refugee camps and settlements which were going to remain dependent on external assistance for an indefinite period of time. Nor did they want to pour resources into settlement areas if the refugees concerned were going to leave their country of asylum and return to their country of origin. Thus, the donors felt that the refugee aid and development concept was being used as a means of mobilizing additional development funding for some hard-pressed (and in many cases badly governed) states, instead of constituting a genuine effort to resolve refugee problems. This suspicion was reinforced by the somewhat grandiose scale of the projects which they were asked to finance and the limited capaci ty of the countries concerned to make effective use of such large resource allocations. To explain the death of the refugee aid and development concept, two additional factors have to be taken into account, one of them contingent and the other contextual. UNHCR, HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE AND THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS 173 The contingent factor is to be found in the drought, famine and population displacements which ravaged many African countries in i984 and i985 — events which came to light just weeks after the ICARA II conference was convened. At a time when UNHCR and its partners had expected to be focusing their efforts on development-related activities, they were obliged to turn their attention to large-scale emergency relief programs. The contextual factor is to be found in the international community’ s changing perception of refugee problems and the way in which they should be resolved. At the time when ICARA II and the refugee aid and development approach were being formulated, there was a common assumption among UNHCR, host and donor states that a large number of the world’s refugees would remain in their country of asylum for extended periods of time, and that a significant proportion of them would settle there indefinitely. By the time the African drought and famine had ended, however, this was no longer the case. Indeed, with the Cold War coming to an end, repatriation (normally but not necessarily on a voluntary basis) was increasingly perceived as the only effective solution to refugee situations. It was therefore not surprising that by the end of the decade UNHCR had turned its back on refugee aid and development and had started to turn its attention to another dimension of the displacement-development nexus: the reintegration of displaced populations who were returning to their countries and communities of origin. As a i 99 i UNHCR paper observed: “ returnee countries should be given emphasis at this time, in view of the recent world trends favoring the return of refugees ” (Stevens, i 99 i). The paper continues: Experience has shown that the rehabilitation of returnee areas which have been devastated by war could be a determining factor for the return of refugees. It is thus of interest to UNHCR, in its promotion of durable solutions, that rehabilitation and development of returnee areas be indeed undertaken, with UNHCR playing the catalytic role .... Donor governments are generally more enthusiastic to fund such projects as they are likely to lead to the most preferred durable solution — voluntary repatriation, thus putting an end to indefinite dependence on care and maintenance. “It is clear that in order to enable returnees to resume their economic lives,” the paper concludes, “ projects with immediate impact should be promoted, pending longer-term development efforts. ” UNHCR’ s efforts to implement this strategy are discussed in the following sections of this article. IMPLEMENTING RETURNEE AID AND DEVELOPMENT The role of UNHCR in the return and reintegration of refugees and displaced populations has changed significantly since the organization was estab- 174 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW lished in i 95 i . For the first 30 years of its existence, such issues played a relatively small part in the organization’ s activities, due in large part to the fact that most of the world’s refugees came from communist states. It was consequently considered both inconceivable and undesirable by the Western powers (UNHCR’s principal donors) that those refugees should choose to go back to their homes. This situation began to change somewhat in the i 960s and i 970s, when the focus of the global refugee problem began to shift from Europe to Africa, Asia and other developing regions. Even so, repatriation remained a relatively low-priori ty issue, as most of the states which admitted large numbers of refugees during this period were still willing to grant them asylum on an open-ended basis. When refugees did go back to their homes in significant numbers, as they did in the case of countries such as Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, it was generally in the context of successful anti-colonial struggles or after a fundamental change in the political situation in their homeland. In such circumstances, returnees were considered to be the responsibili ty of the authorities in the country of origin, supported as necessary by development agencies rather than a refugee organization such as UNHCR. These considerations led UNHCR to play a clearly circumscribed role in the repatriation and reintegration process. As far as protection was concerned, the agency ’ s primary function was to verify that refugees were returning to their own country on a voluntary basis and to encourage countries of origin to establish and respect amnesties for returning refugees. With regard to assistance, UNHCR regularly provided refugees with transport to their country of origin, as well as an individual or family-based repatriation assistance package, usually consisting of items such as foodstuffs, blankets, cooking equipment and tools. Occasionally, the organization helped to establish credit schemes, income-generating projects and short-term rehabilitation programs in the areas where returnees had settled. But in general, UNHCR did not become involved — nor was it encouraged to become involved by its major donors — in reintegration activities. This principle continued to hold sway until the beginning of the i 990s. In i 989, for example, when UNHCR helped some 45,000 refugees to return to Namibia, in the first of the large-scale repatriation programs that followed the end of the Cold War, the organization’s role was confined to the transportation and initial reception of the returnees. The following year, a UNHCR policy paper stated that the organization’s post- UNHCR, HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE AND THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS 175 repatriation protection and assistance activities “should not be envisaged as extending beyond three to six months ” (UNHCR, i 990). This very cautious approach to the issue of repatriation and reintegration was soon brought into question and was eventually discarded, as demonstrated by UNHCR’s expenditure patterns. While the available statistics are not totally reliable, it would appear that the proportion of UNHCR funding spent on repatriation-related activities increased from an average of just 2 percent of the organization’s total budget prior to i984 to some i4 percent in the period i990-i997. In i996, UNHCR allocated some $2i4 million to reintegration programs, almost twice as much as its expenditure in i 994. In terms of evaluation and policy formulation, this period also witnessed a sharp rise in the amount of attention which the organization gave to repatriation, reintegration and development issues (for a partial list of relevant policy documents produced during this period, see Macrae, i999: Bibliography; for evaluations of UNHCR reintegration programs, see the Evaluation and Policy Analysis Unit page on the UNHCR website, www.unhcr.ch). The rapid transformation of UNHCR’s repatriation and reintegration policy in the early i 990s resulted from a number of converging trends. First, the late and post Cold War period witnessed some fundamental changes in the international communi ty’ s perception of and response to the refugee problem. As a result (and in words that the author of this article has explained more fully elsewhere) UNHCR ceased to be an organization that was ‘ reactive,’‘ exile-oriented’ and ‘ refugee-specific ’ and became increasingly ‘ proactive, ’ ‘homeland-oriented’ and ‘holistic ’ in its orientation (UNHCR, i 995: i 9-55). As a result, UNHCR was transformed from a refugee organization into a more broadly-based humanitarian agency. Under the leadership of a new High Commissioner, Sadako Ogata, who was prepared to exercise her mandate in a liberal and even expansionist manner, reintegration activities in countries of origin were no longer out of bounds for the organization. Indeed, they became a central feature of UNHCR’ s new strategy of ‘ prevention, preparedness and solutions. ’ Second, these changes in the international refugee regime must be seen in the context of some broader trends in the international aid paradigm. As Joanna Macrae (i999) has explained in a paper commissioned by UNHCR, the aid establishment has been confronted with two serious problems since the beginning of the i 990s: diminished political and financial support from key donors in the aftermath of the Cold War and a mounting intellectual critique which suggested that aid, especially when it was provided in war-affect- 176 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW ed regions, could have the effect of provoking and perpetuating conflict, thereby doing as much harm as it did good. According to Macrae, these developments “ placed the aid establishment on the defensive and in need of establishing the rationale for international assistance. This has been done in part by claiming, or rather reasserting, that international assistance can play a role in the prevention and resolution of conflict. ” (p. 10). UNHCR’ s justification for its expanding role in the area of reintegration was certainly consistent with this analysis. In a i 992 report to her Executive Committee (UNHCR, i992a), for example, the High Commissioner observed that “ given the number of countries involved, the magnitude of the numbers returning and the fact that their successful reintegration is critical to any national reconciliation and reconstruction process, the issues are not simply humanitarian. International securi ty is at stake. ” A similar argument can be seen in a i998 paper on “UNHCR’s Role in the Prevention of Refugee-Producing Situations,” (UNHCR, i998a) which states “there is a growing consensus that UNHCR can contribute most effectively to the prevention of refugee-producing situations through its efforts to consolidate the durable solution of repatriation and reintegration in countries of origin, thereby reducing the risk that violence, armed conflict and population displacements will recur.” As demonstrated by another quotation from the same paper, UNHCR’s understanding of its role in the area of reintegration was by the late i 990s an increasingly ambitious one, light-years away from the highly restrictive perspective of the policy statement issued at the beginning of the decade: The notion of reintegration cannot be restricted to returning refugees. When a civil war or communal conflict comes to an end, many other groups of people (some of whom may not be of direct concern to UNHCR) are also confronted with the task of rebuilding their lives and communities: displaced and war-affected populations, demobilized soldiers and the victims of ethnic cleansing. The reintegration process must not only address the situation of these different groups, but must also promote peaceful and positive interactions between them, thereby contributing to the process of social and political reconciliation. Third, while UNHCR’s new interest and involvement in the task of reintegration can, to some extent, be interpreted in terms of geopolitical change and organizational expansion, it also derived from the changing number, situation and needs of the world’s returnees. With the Cold War over, the number of refugees returning to their country of origin and in need of reintegration assistance increased appreciably. Thus, at the beginning of i996, UNHCR announced that no fewer than 9 UNHCR, HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE AND THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS 177 million refugees had gone repatriated during the preceding five-year period — a substantial increase over the figure recorded for the years i985-i990, when around 1 .2 million refugees repatriated. And in the following twelve months, an additional 2 million refugees went back to their country of origin. The conditions under which these repatriations took place reinforced the need for UNHCR to go become actively involved in the reintegration, rehabilitation and development processes in countries of origin. There is, of course, a well-established international principle that refugee repatriation should take place on a “wholly voluntary basis” and in “conditions of safe ty and dignity. ” But as the i 990s proceeded, a growing number of refugees found themselves repatriating under some form of duress. And such duress was in many instances deliberate, exercised by host governments, host communities and other actors, with the specific intention of forcing refugees to go back to their homeland. In other situations, refugee returns were induced by a more general deterioration of conditions in the country of asylum, whether as a result of social and political violence, declining economic opportunities, or reductions in international assistance. In such situations, there was an evident need for an international presence to monitor the welfare of the returnees and to facilitate their reintegration into the social, economic and legal structures of their country of origin. Whether returning voluntarily or involuntarily, most of the refugees who repatriated during the i 990s arrived in countries which were characterized by high levels of physical, material and psychological insecurity: Afghanistan, Bosnia, Cambodia, El Salvador, Mozambique, Nicaragua and Rwanda, for example. These were all countries where villages had been razed to the ground; bridges blown up; field and roads mined; irrigation systems left to decay; and where schools and health centers had been left in ruins. They were also countries where brutal armed conflicts, widespread human rights violations and deliberate population displacements had left a terrible legacy of social division and political instability. While not the best-known or perhaps even the most extreme case, the repatriation of refugees from Somalia to Ethiopia in i 992 provides a good example of the problems which confronted refugees upon their return. According to a UNHCR (i995:i72-i73) report on that movement: Ethiopia was in a state of acute societal disorder. The past governance system had failed and considerable uncertainty, social strife and lawlessness continued. Severe and repeated drought was contributing to acute food scarcity for the general population. Continuing conflict was creating new displacements and hardships, as well as 178 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW hampering aid efforts. Developmental efforts in the returnee receiving areas were virtually non-existent. In addition to causing distress among the local population, such conditions obstructed opportunities for the successful reintegration of returnees. In the circumstances described above, the very modest amount of assistance which UNHCR traditionally provided to returnees — a package that has been dismissively but not altogether unfairly described as ‘a cooking pot and a handshake ’ — began to appear inadequate. Governments and organizations involved with refugee problems were concerned that refugees who returned to their own country might subsequently be unable to survive and would once again be in need of humanitarian relief. Additionally, it was feared that returnees might feel obliged to join the existing stream of rural-to-urban migrants, thereby compounding one of the most pressing socioeconomic problems confronting many less-developed countries. In a worst case scenario, it was felt, the sudden arrival of a large returnee population in a devastated and impoverished area might lead to a resumption of tension and conflict and renewed population displacements. A fourth and final consideration which had a determinant influence on UNHCR ’s evolving policy in the early 1 990s was its comparative advantage in the area of reintegration. In the war-torn states to which refugees were returning, central governments and local authorities were evidently not in a position to assume full responsibili ty for the welfare of returnees and others. International development and financial institutions were also poorly placed to respond to the immediate needs of people in returnee-populated areas, given the tendency of such organizations to work on the basis of longterm plans and programs, to function in close cooperation with central government ministries, as well as their propensi ty to invest in areas with economic potential, rather than the more distant and marginal border areas typically affected by refugee and returnee movements. UNHCR, by contrast, had a number of important assets at its disposal in terms of reintegrating returnees and rehabilitating the areas where they settled: a knowledge of the people concerned, derived from its protection and assistance efforts in countries of asylum; a strong field presence and logistical capacity; the abili ty to mobilize financial resources and to establish assistance programs in a speedy manner; its membership in the UN system; and an established working relationship with NGOs, many of which had considerable experience in both relief and development activities. It was in the context described above that UNHCR began to develop its new strategy of ‘ returnee aid and development’ — a strategy that was founded on five basic principles: UNHCR, HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE AND THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS 179 1 . UNHCR has a responsibili ty to assist with the reintegration of refugees, not simply to organize or facilitate their repatriation; 2. Reintegration assistance is most effective and equitable when provided on a community-wide basis, bringing benefits to the entire population of areas where returnees have settled; 3. Reintegration assistance should be provided in a way that discourages dependency and which contributes to the development of local competence and capacities; 4. The successful reintegration of returnees and other displaced people does not occur automatically, but is dependent upon the resumption of development activities in areas of origin; 5. To maximize the impact and sustainability of any reintegration efforts, a smooth interface must be established between the short-term assistance provided by UNHCR and the longer-term programs of the host government and international development agencies. The genius of the returnee aid and development strategy was that it promised to avoid the pitfalls which had undermined the notion of refugee aid and development. It was unambiguously intended to promote and consolidate the solution of voluntary repatriation. It promised to bring benefits to countries of origin, many of which had an economic and political interest in seeing the successful return and reintegration of their exiled citizens. It had something tangible to offer to the donor states, who were keen to promote the stabilization of war-torn societies and to witness a reduction in the number of refugees requiring international assistance. And while some countries of asylum had a vested interest in keeping refugees on their territory, the majority were only too eager to promote the speedy and lasting repatriation of such populations. While recognizing all of these advantages, UNHCR was not oblivious to the difficulties that might be encountered in the implementation of the returnee aid and development strategy. For example, a draft UNHCR policy paper (1992b), titled “Returnee Aid and Development: The Challenge Ahead,” identified two specific factors which threatened to obstruct the organization’s new attempt to link humanitarian assistance with the development process. First, the paper pointed to potential difficulties in the relationship between UNHCR and the development agencies, especially UNDP. Such agencies, it pointed out, had their own plans and priorities, usually developed in close cooperation with government. And those plans and priorities often 1 80 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW excluded the relatively small and remote returnee-populated areas that were UNHCR’s primary concern. At the same time, the paper noted the “divergence of institutional requirements, jargon and culture separating UNHCR and the development agencies.” “While UNHCR has traditionally looked at the immediate needs of individuals, families and groups,”it observed, development agencies “look at broader problems and policies. The clients, concerns and mechanisms are radically different.” On the basis of this analysis, the paper concluded that “ the expectation of UNHCR ‘handing over’ responsibility for returning refugees to UNDP is unrealistic.” Second, the UNHCR paper pointed to the funding problems that were likely to arise if the organization sought to link its short-term reintegration activities with longer-term development efforts. “Significant investments will be required to render returnee areas again or newly suitable for sustained habitation,”it pointed out. But “ generating additional funds for specific projects is not a strength of UNDP or some other agencies.” Consequently, “energetic fund-raising by all concerned parties will still be required.” REINTEGRATION IN PRACTICE By the time that UNHCR headquarters had produced its draft policy paper on returnee aid and development, the first steps had already been taken in the field to operationalize this new approach. The location for this experiment was Nicaragua, where 70,000 returnees had arrived, following the end of a decade-long civil war. The form which the experiment assumed was the introduction of ‘Quick Impact Projects’ or QIPs. According to an explanatory booklet produced at the time (Bonifacio and Lattimer, 1992), QIPs were “an attempt to step beyond UNHCR’s traditional assistance activities in countries of return” and constituted “a communitybased program with the goal of anchoring repatriation as a durable solution by maximizing returnees ’ chances of significant reintegration into their communities.” “In addition to having a direct and measurable impact on returnee communities,” the publication explained, “a central feature of the QIP concept was that they would also become a ‘bridge ’ to sustainable development efforts outside the scope of UNHCR’s mandate.” In more concrete terms, the QIP program in Nicaragua was a package of some 250 micro-projects, providing support to returnee-populated communities in areas such as health, education, training, infrastructure, transportation, crop production, livestock and income-generation. A typical QIP involved the rehabilitation of a school or health center, the purchase of a com- UNHCR, HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE AND THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS 181 munal rice thresher, the repair of a ferry or bridge, the installation of an irrigation system or the provision of seeds to a group of farmers. While there was nothing revolutionary about the QIP concept, the Nicaraguan initiative was packaged and marketed in a highly sophisticated manner, with an emphasis on four specific (and donor friendly) features of the program. First, QIPs were to be identified on the basis of widespread community participation and would be used as a means of encouraging returnees, the resident population, and former political adversaries to work closely together. Second, the projects would be small in scale and rapid to implement, making maximum use of local resources and requiring only a one-time allocation of resources. Third, the program placed special emphasis on gender equity, requiring all participating agencies and organizations to adhere to a contract intended to ensure the active participation of women and an equitable distribution of benefits between females and males. Finally, and in keeping with the ‘bridge to development’ notion, the QIP program was to be established on the basis of new institutional linkages established between UNHCR, UNDP, bilateral development agencies and government bodies at central and local level. So attractive were these principles, and so successful was the Nicaragua program in mobilizing funds (primarily from the United States) that QIPs soon made an appearance in almost every UNHCR repatriation program: Afghanistan, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Liberia, Mozambique, Myanmar, Somalia and Sri Lanka. While the basic principles devised in Nicaragua were not necessarily maintained or respected by these other programs, QIPs had become a standard UNHCR reintegration practice by the middle of the 1990s. While QIPs formed the core of UNHCR’s efforts to implement the returnee aid and development approach, it would be wrong to give the impression that they constitute the only activity undertaken by the organization in the area of reintegration. UNHCR has, for example, become substantially involved in the rehabilitation and construction of houses and shelter facilities, particularly in countries that have experienced ethnic cleansing. It has established a number of special gender-focused protection and assistance programs in countries of origin, such as the Women ’ s Initiatives established in Bosnia, Kosovo and Rwanda and the Children’s Initiative in Liberia. The organization has expanded its activities in the areas of protection monitoring, as well as legal and judicial capaci ty building. And it has started to adopt a more active and systematic approach to the issues of land tenure and property rights in returnee-populated areas. 1 82 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW What lessons can be learned from the efforts which UNHCR has made to implement the returnee aid and development approach? On the basis of studies undertaken by the author of this paper and other analysts, three genera! observations can be made. First, there is little doubt that UNHCR’S reintegration efforts have had some very positive consequences, especially in the immediate post-repatriation period. In brief, UNHCR’s reintegration programs have met with widespread appreciation from the beneficiary populations concerned. They have provided communities with urgently needed resources which government bodies and development agencies were unable to offer. They have helped to boost the morale, motivation and living standards of returnees, thereby encouraging them to rebuild their livelihoods in their areas of origin. They have helped to reconcile and reintegrate groups of people with different interests and political allegiances. And they have contributed to the revitalization of local economies by removing some of the constraints to production and exchange. In many cases, UNHCR’s reintegration activities have promoted and facilitated voluntary repatriation by providing refugees with an incentive to return and by opening up the roads and transport routes needed for them to go home. At the same time, they have had a positive impact in terms of protection and human rights by ensuring an international presence in returneepopulated areas and by mitigating some of the tensions which threaten to disrupt the reintegration and reconciliation processes. Second, and despite the positive achievements described above, UNHCR’s reintegration activities have encountered a number of persistent operational difficulties. QIPs, for example, have often been implemented on the basis of inadequate planning, data-collection and project identification processes, and in isolation from the efforts of national and international development actors. UNHCR has not always worked with the most appropriate or reliable implementing partners, and the technical standards of the projects it has financed have sometimes been inadequate. In general, the organization has had more success with infrastructural QIPs than with projects designed to enhance the productive capaci ty of beneficiary communities. The organization’s stated commitment to communi ty participation and gender equali ty also has been questioned, with critics within and outside of UNHCR suggesting that such principles are readily sacrificed in the haste to disburse funds and implement projects. Such difficulties have begged the question as to whether UNHCR is institutionally well equipped for the task of reintegration. As a number of UNHCR, HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE AND THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS 183 studies have pointed out, UNHCR staff frequently lack appropriate skills and experience in relation to community-based rehabilitation efforts. When refugees begin to return in large numbers to their country of origin, those staff members are often so preoccupied with the logistics of repatriation and reception that they are unable to focus on reintegration issues. Moreover, while UNHCR has undertaken and commissioned many evaluations of its reintegration programs, those reviews have tended to take place at a time when large numbers of projects have been implemented and when the organization appears to have had a very substantial impact. By failing to undertake follow-up reviews, when the organization has withdrawn from a returnee-populated area or scaled down its presence, UNHCR has been unable to assess the longer-term consequences of its interventions. As a result, an important opportunity for institutional learning has been missed. Third, the experience of the past decade has raised some deeper issues concerning the returnee aid and development approach, as well as the role of different actors in the reintegration process and the linkage between relief and development in war-torn societies. These are complex questions, which have spawned a very large (and largely unreadable because of its relentlessly abstract and technocratic nature) literature. The following discussion seeks to present only those issues which are of most direct concern to UNHCR and to present them in the most accessible manner possible. During the past few years, UNHCR’s apparent inabili ty to achieve its reintegration objectives has become a source of mounting concern, particularly at the highest levels of the organization. Those objectives are twofold: first, to act speedily in the aftermath of major repatriation movements, so as to meet the short-term reintegration needs of returnees and other members of the population; and second, to ensure that the reintegration activities initiated by UNHCR are sustainable in the longer-term, and thereby contribute to the processes of development and peacebuilding. In practice, UNHCR has found that it has the capacity to implement reintegration activities with considerable speed. But achieving the organization’s second objective has been a far more elusive task. Indeed, a recent seven-country evaluation concluded that UNHCR’s reintegration activities had generally not proven to be sustainable, nor had they acted as an effective bridge to rehabilitation and development (UNHCR, 1997). To provide some concrete examples of these difficulties, UNHCR, in some cases has, provided returnee-populated areas with significant numbers of boreholes and handpumps, only to find that these resources quickly fell 184 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW into disuse due to inadequate maintenance and shortages of spare parts. In other situations, the organization has financed the rehabilitation of schools and health centers, but those facilities have been unable to function effectively as a result of the government’ s inability to meet the recurrent costs of teachers, nurses, books and medication. Elsewhere, UNHCR has assisted returnees and others to resume and expand agricultural production, but the abili ty of the beneficiaries to produce a surplus has been seriously constrained by an absence of storage, transportation, marketing and banking facilities. Responding to such scenarios, UNHCR in certain instances — such as Rwanda — has sought to prolong its involvement in countries of origin, staying longer than the two or three year period normally scheduled for a reintegration program. But donor states have generally not welcomed or supported such initiatives, regarding them as an attempt on UNHCR’s part to extend its humanitarian mandate into the realm of development. The difficulties which UNHCR has encountered in its attempts to forge a bridge between humanitarian assistance and the development process to some extent are a result of the organizational and operational weaknesses identified in the preceding section of this article: weak planning and project design; the selection of implementing partners with poor technical standards; inadequate community consultation and participation. And UNHCR has generally been quick to acknowledge such failings. But it has also been at pains to point out that the frequently unsustainable nature of its reintegration activities derives more fundamentally from the two constraints that were identified in 1992, when the organization began to implement the returnee aid and development approach: the problem of institutional relationships, and the problem of funding. The following quotation from an internal paper (UNHCR, 1999b) neatly summarizes this argument. “In many situations,”it states, “the sustainability of UNHCR’s reintegration activities has been jeopardized by the fact that they have not been adequately linked to the longer-term reconstruction efforts of national and international development agencies. ” “Moreover,” the paper continues, “UNHCR’s reintegration programs have normally been undertaken in marginalized areas of poor and conflict-affected countries which are unable to attract significant development assistance.” It was on the basis of this analysis that UNHCR launched its latest initiative in the realm of reintegration and development: the ‘Brookings process.’ UNHCR, HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE AND THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS 185 BROOKJNGSAJ’ /D BEYOND The second half of the 1990s witnessed an upsurge of international interest in what have become known as ‘ post-conflict’ issues. This trend had a significant impact on UNHCR, which has effectively abandoned the notion of ‘ returnee aid and development,’ preferring instead to talk of ‘ post-conflict reintegration.’ The World Bank has also been affected by (and has contributed to) this upsurge of interest, and in 1997 it established its own Post-Conflict Unit. On the basis of their mutual interest in post-conflict issues, UNHCR and the World Bank have started to work more closely together, and in January 1999 they co-sponsored a roundtable at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, on ‘ the gap between humanitarian assistance and long-term development.’ In addition to the sponsoring organizations, the meeting was attended by representatives of other UN agencies, the IMF and OECD, a number of donor states, an NGO (Oxfam) and one ‘recipient’ country (Mozambique). In a joint paper (Ogata and Wolfensohn, 1999) presented to the meeting, the High Commissioner for Refugees and the President of the World Bank identified the obstacles to peace and development in war-torn societies and then went on to focus on two issues: “how can we better organize ourselves for a more fluid response to such complex situations, i.e., the institutional arrangements; and how can we improve the funding of mixed humanitarian-developmental interventions, i.e., the funding systems.” In conclusion, the paper stated: The challenge is to develop a more comprehensive approach that would address the specific needs of people in war-torn societies, thereby helping to reduce the recurrence of violence and displacement We believe that the starting point for a more integrated humanitarian-development response (with an international political-military dimension when necessary) is a more coherent, co-operative planning process that utilizes organizations’ particular strength in particular situations. This, in turn, could drive, and be driven by, more coherent funding arrangements. According to a report of the meeting (UNHCR, 1999a), all participants agreed that the institutional and funding gap identified by UNHCR and the World Bank was not new. “But in spite of years of discussions and attempts to tackle it through different approaches ... a practical solution was yet to be found.” Significantly, Western governments were reluctant to address the funding gap by establishing a new post-conflict trust fund, because such a proposal “would be difficult to promote under the prevailing political circumstances.” “Donors insisted that the priori ty from their viewpoint was to improve and rationalize the coordination of agencies implementing post-conflict assistance programs.” 1 86 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW A second meeting of the Brookings roundtable took place in July 1999 in Paris, the principal objective of which was to examine a discussion paper prepared by UNHCR and the World Bank (UNHCR, 1999c), in consultation with an ad hoc working group established by the initial gathering in Washington. In the technocratic language employed by the Brookings process, the proposal called for “ a global voluntary, loosely-knit tiered coalition for post-conflict stability” which “ aims to mobilize all those key players who share the Brookings ‘ spirit,’ the ‘ gap ’ concerns and who are determined and committed to work together towards addressing the gaps, including in situations with low donor interest.” “What is proposed,” the report of the meeting emphasized, “is not another coordinating mechanism, nor a global trust fund. It is an action and fieldoriented coalition formed on a voluntary basis and aimed at ensuring a more predictable coherent, flexible and timely response of the key players in a given post-conflict situation.” The first of these situations to be examined was Sierra Leone, which in February 2000 received a high-level mission from UNHCR, the World Bank and UNDP, intended “to explore and propose commonly agreed operational responses to strengthen the continuum between security, humanitarian assistance and early reconstruction and development” (World Bank, 2000). The Brookings process is still in its infancy, and any assessment of its achievements or potential would be premature at this stage. Even so, it should be noted that the process, and the principles on which it is based, have already come under critical scrutiny. The remaining pages of this article present three related critiques. A first critique (which is directed at the Brookings approach rather than the process per se) raises doubts about the ‘ post-conflict’ concept, believing that its application to countries such as Sierra Leone, which self-evidently have not attained any kind of stability, masks the true intentions of the world’s most prosperous countries (and, by implication, the international financial institutions). As the author of this article has written elsewhere (Crisp, 1998), “if donor states want to spend less on humanitarian relief; if they want to disengage from crisis-affected countries; if they want to suggest that the situation in those countries has ‘normalized;’ and if they want to impose the rigors of structural adjustment on the world’s poorest and most devastated countries, then what better way than to suggest that such states have entered a ‘ post-conflict’ phase?” David Moore, an academic who has contributed to UNHCR’s policy research activities, goes further in his criticism. Observing that it is becoming UNHCR, HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE AND THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS 187 “the key institution for the hegemonic spread of global capitalism,” Moore holds the World Bank responsible for creating the very conditions that have led to such high levels of conflict and human displacement in Africa. He also pours scorn on the potential achievements of the alliance envisaged by the Brookings process. Amidst the carnage of contemporary Africa, he writes, The notion of post-conflict ’ has emerged and taken flight within humanitarian and development discourse, as if by linguistic fiat a ‘sustainable ’ peace will ensue and the traditionally separate realms of western third world-aiding agencies can come together and reconstruct war-torn societies in their image. The humanitarian dispensers of ‘relief’ can, it seems, join with the long-term implementers of development ’ in the long march from conflict to peace, if only they can cooperate to work out the division of labor which has separated them in the past. (Moore, 2000) A second critique argues that in its efforts to contribute to the tasks of reintegration and post-conflict reconstruction, UNHCR has raised expectations that it cannot hope to fulfil and assumed responsibilities that more rightly belong to other actors. That is the clear conclusion of an unpublished paper on ‘repatriation, reintegration, development and the peace process,’ prepared by a senior UNHCR staff member during the preparations for the first Brookings meeting in January 1999. The paper argues that “it is doubtful whether UNHCR should be involved in something as complex and difficult as the long-term development process.” And it asks “whether the organization should not limit itself from the start to providing returnees with the assistance required to make the successful transition from asylum country to country of origin, ensure that the returnees are reintegrated into the national system of protection and leave their social and economic reintegration to relevant national actors and their international counterparts.” Challenging the assumption that UNHCR’s reintegration activities are needed to ‘ anchor ’ returnees in their country and community of ori gin, the author states that “ there is very little evidence to suggest that difficult economic circumstances lead to renewed flight. There is more evidence to the contrary, i.e., evidence that suggests military and political factors influence the decision to leave, rather than economic circumstances. ” And addressing military and political issues such as the demobilization of combatants or the establishment of representative forms of government, the paper argues, clearly lie beyond the competence and mandate of UNHCR. In its conclusion, which deserves to be quoted at length, the paper restates such arguments more boldly, challenging the basic assumptions of the reintegration strategy currently pursued by UNHCR. 1 88 INTERNATIONAL MIGi ~~ TIoN REVIEW While a number of practical suggestions can be made to improve UNHCR’s implementation of reintegration projects and its cooperation with development organizations in order to ‘bridge the gap, ’ the question should be raised as to what extent it can leave this task from the start to more experienced development agencies in conjunction with the national authorities and NGOs.... Sustainable development and long-term development impact are, if not outright alien to most UNHCR staff, concepts that do not figure very prominently in the vocabulary of UNHCR, and are not part of the implementation and achievementoriented operational culture of UNHCR. If the CEO of Ford Motor Co. would one day decide to get into the production and marketing of baby food, his shareholders and outside investors would seriously question the wisdom of the decision, and the market place would be quick to react.... To some extent the same argument can be made against UNHCR’s involvement in the development issue. This is not the area of UNHCR competence and it does not have any comparative advantage. That is not to say that UNHCR should not be concerned about the longterm welfare of returnees. It should. But it should concentrate its efforts on what it does best: providing protection and emergency assistance. It should resist the temptation to branch out into other fields, for which it has only limited expertise. Interestingly, the thrust of this conclusion has been echoed by members of UNHCR’s Executive Committee (UNHCR, 1998b), which in a September 1998 meeting on reintegration observed that “UNHCR’s specific contribution should be limited to the initial or ‘transition’ phase, which would reflect both the specific nature of its mandate and its experience in implementing short-term quick-impact projects.” A third (and more complex) critique of UNHCR’s latest attempts to link humanitarian assistance with the development process suggests that those efforts are based on a number of misunderstandings. This is the view articulated by Joanna Macrae (1999), whose analysis can be summarized in the following way. Rather than being in a ‘ post-conflict’ situation, most of the countries which have experienced large-scale repatriation movements in recent years are in the grip of chronic political emergencies. They are “ quasi-states,” whose governments are “deficient in the political will, institutional authori ty and organized power to protect human rights or provide socioeconomic welfare.” This has serious implications for any attempt to link ‘relief’ with ‘development.’ For while the former is normally provided on an unconditional basis and outside of governmental structures, the latter is channeled through the state and is conditional. In some countries, development aid will be withheld because of the state’s unacceptable behavior, or because the state has effectively disintegrated. And even if such aid is provided, it will be in the UNHCR, HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE AND THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS 189 context of extreme institutional weakness, financial scarci ty and political volatility. “Redressing these trends,” Macrae argues, “is neither easy nor quick. ” Establishing effective state structures and the institutional framework required for markets to function is likely to take “decades rather than years.” Ensuring that the economy in war-torn societies starts to function in support of the public good, rather than private and military gain, remains “a formidable policy challenge.” Demilitarization tends to be a protracted process, if it occurs at all, “and is thus slow to yield major changes in the allocation of resources to non-military actors.” And there is no guarantee that the phasing out of humanitarian assistance will be paralleled by a concomitant rise in development aid. “Many aid operations responding to chronic political emergencies have been experiencing sustained declines in their funding over recent years.” In such circumstances, Macrae’s analysis suggests, sustainable reintegration — and the sustainability of reintegration programs — must be regarded as elusive and very long-term objectives. Moreover, one should not assume that those objectives will be attained by means of UNHCR’s latest efforts to bridge the institutional and financial gaps in the administration of aid: From 1992 onwards there has been consistent recognition of the problem of identifying effective partners which will sustain UNHCR’s interventions. In particular, there has been disappointment with the performance of UNDP. This has driven UNHCR to seek alternative developmental partners, and in particular to solicit the support of the World Bank for the reintegration agenda. While clearly an important strategic alliance, the move to work more closely with the Bank implies that it does not share many of the structural features of UNDP which precluded the latter sustaining reintegration projects initiated by UNHCR. Arguably, however, all official development assistance agencies suffer from an inability to work effectively in quasistates. This structural problem derives both from the uncertain legitimacy of many governments in conflict-affected states, their weak public institutions and the absolute poverty of the formal economy. On the basis of this analysis, Macrae reaches a conclusion which is strikingly similar to that of the internal UNHCR paper cited earlier in this section. “Humanitarian agencies,” she says, “might do well to reassert their particular competence and mandate with regard to protection and human rights. Uncritical adoption of developmental and peace-building objectives risks compromising not only the technical quality of UNHCR’s work, but also its mandate for protection.” 190 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW CONCLUSION The issues of repatriation, reintegration and reconstruction have consumed a great deal of UNHCR’s time and attention during the past decade. Rightly so, given the number of refugees who have returned to their countries of origin and the difficult conditions which they have had to endure upon their arrival. Looking to the future, however, it might be asked whether the organization should not establish a renewed focus on the development dimensions of refugee situations in countries of asylum. For while it is true to say that large numbers of refugees have repatriated (both voluntarily and involuntarily) in recent years, it is equally true to say that many refugees have been obliged to remain in exile for long periods of time. Increasingly, they are obliged to spend those years without access to educational, income-generating or wageearning opportunities. While the political climate might not be propitious for such an initiative, it is now time to reconsider the wisdom of using scarce international resources to feed, shelter and generally ‘warehouse’ refugees who are deliberately prevented from establishing livelihoods and becoming self-sufficient. Notions such as ‘integrated zonal development ’ and ‘ refugee aid and development ’ may be forgotten or discredited. But the principle on which they are based — that refugees should enjoy productive lives and contribute to the development of the areas where they have settled — could usefully be revived. REFERENCES Bonifacio, A. and J. Lattimer 1992 “A Primer on Quick Impact Projects: A Formula for Consolidating Durable Solutions, ” Managua and Geneva: UNHCR. Crisp, J. 1998 “The ‘Post-Conflict’ Concept: Some Critical Observations. ” Geneva: UNHCR. Harrell-Bond, B. 1985 ImposingAid: Emergency Assistance to Refugees. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gorman, R. 1987 Coping with Africa ’s Refugee Burden: A Time for Solutions. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff and UNITAR. Kibreab, G. 1983 Reflections on the African Refugee Pro blem: A CriticalAnalysis of Some Basic Assumptions. Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies. Macrae, J. 1999 “Aiding Peace and War: UNHCR, Returnee Reintegration, and the Relief-Development Debate. ” New Issues in Refugee Research, Working Paper No. 14. Geneva: UNHCR. UNHCR, HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE AND THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS 191 Moore, D. 2000 “Leveling the Playing Fields and Embedding Illusions: ‘Post-Conflict’ Discourse and Neo-liberal ‘Development’ in War-torn Africa. ” Personal correspondence from the author. Subsequently published in Review ofAfrican Political Economy, 83 Ogata, S. and J. Wolfensohn 1999 “The Transition to Peace in War-torn Societies: Some Personal Observations. ” Geneva: UNHCR. Stein, B. 1994 “Returnee Aid and Development. ” Geneva: UNHCR. Stevens, Y. 1991 “Review of Efforts to Promote Refugee-related Development-type Projects. ” Geneva: UNHCR. UNHCR 1999a “Internal Information Note on the Roundtable on the Gap between Humanitarian Assistance and Long-term Development. ” Geneva: UNHCR. 1 999b “Conflict-affected Countries: Reintegration Assistance, Development Aid and the Peacebuilding Process. ” Geneva: UNHCR. 1 999c “ Relief to Development: Introduction. ” Geneva: UNHCR. 1 998a “UNHCR’s Role in the Prevention of Refugee-producing Situations. ” Geneva: UNHCR. 1 998b “Consultations on Reintegration.” Geneva: UNHCR. 1997 “ Review of UNHCR’s Phase-Out Strategies: Case Studies in Countries of Origin. ” Geneva: UNHCR. 1995 The State of the World’ s Refugees In Search of Solutions. Oxford: Oxford Universi ty Press. 1 992a “Brid ging the Gap between Returnee Aid and Development: A Challenge for the International Community. ” Geneva: UNHCR. 1992b “Returnee Aid and Development: The Challenge Ahead.” Geneva: UNHCR. 1990 “Voluntary Repatriation and Other Return Movements: The Role of UNHCR in the Country of Origin. ” Geneva: UNHCR. World Bank 2000 “Joint WBG/UNHCRIUNDP Memorandum on Mission to Sierra Leone and the Subregion. ” Washington, DC. February 1-7. Bureaucracy and the Quality of Mercy Arthur C. Helton’ Council on Foreign Relations As I made my way across the plaza to the entrance to United Nations headquarters, I threaded through hundreds ofvisitors and students who were lined up for tours. Summer had finally come to New York in early May 2000, and it was a modest relief to enter the air conditioned hall. I made my way through the headquarters labyrinth, needing only once to ask directions to find the basement room where a monthly meeting was scheduled between the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and representatives of InterAction, a consortium based in Washington, DC, of over 160 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). At the meeting, about 30 individuals were seated around a table. There were a series of reports, mainly by UN officials, on issues such as the Ericsson Corporation’s plan to provide telecommunications equipment for disaster responses, the status of the work of a high-level expert panel appointed by the Secretary-General to review UN peacekeeping operations, and the work of subcommittees of the UN’s Inter-Agency Standing Committee on issues of security and the humanitarian impacts of sanctions. For the most part, the meeting was a series of status reports by UN officials, followed almost invariably by questions from the NGO representatives present about how they might become involved in the activities in question. The measured pace of the meeting was broken, however, by a disturbing report on the current crisis in Sierra Leone — the “crisis du jour ” in the words of a senior OCHA official who was present. Over the past several days, fighters from the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) had reportedly killed four Kenyan peacekeepers. Several hundred more were “ missing” and presumed captive, including an entire Zambian battalion that had been ambushed in a convoy, and whose equipment had fallen into the hands of the rebel fighters. As of this writing, these captive peacekeepers have been released, and a contin-‘Arthur C. Helton, a lawyer, is Senior Fellow for Refugee Studies and Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is preparing a book from which the article is derived regarding refugee policy over the past decade, The Price oflndz)’ference, which will be published by Oxford University Press in 2002. The assistance in the preparation of this article of Eliana Jacobs, Research Associate at the Council on Foreign Relations, is gratefully acknowledged. The author also wishes to express appreciation for the support of the Open Society Institute and the Ford Foundation. © 2001 by the Center for Migration Studies of New York. All rights reserved. 0198-9183/00/3501.01332 192 IMR Volume 35 Number 1 (Spring 2001): 192—225 Bur ~~ Aucr ~ AcY AND THE QUALITY OF MERCY 193 gent of 233 besieged Indian peacekeepers and unarmed military observers have broken free (“UN Praises Sierra Leone Rescue,” Associated Press, July 18, 2000) . Also, four peacekeepers have been confirmed killed in action, all Nigerians, and eight are missing (three Zambians, four Kenyans and one Nigerian). In their reports, OCHA officials made it clear that this was a preconceived military attack by the RUF against the UN peacekeeping force. Plans were being formulated and implemented to “draw down” the UN and NGO personnel that had been deployed under the framework of a 1999 peace agreement. Approximately 8,000 peacekeepers of the 11,000 authorized by the Security Council had been deployed as of May 5. The situation was quite fluid, and the outcome of the conflict between the UN and the RUF at the time was uncertain. The coordination meeting had a particularly poignant moment. We were, after all, meeting in the headquarters of one of the combatants in Sierra Leone. The OCHA officials who were briefing us were clearly consumed by their concerns for the UN troops and civilian workers embroiled in the conflict. After the report on the military situation, a young representative from Medecins sans Frontiéres took the floor to report that her agency ’s country headquarters in Freetown had not been able to communicate with staff in rebel-held territory in central Sierra Leone. She asked whether the UN had decided to “block communications” in order to isolate the RUE The senior OCHA person present, clearly angered by the query, called it “a really sad question.” The answer, he said firmly, is “no.” Another NGO participant noted that his agency ’s staff, which had received assurances of free passage from the rebels, had taken pains to disassociate itself from the UN, which was clearly the “target ” of the RUF fighters. The UN seemed at this moment to be small and utterly alone, as the Securi ty Council dithered. The UN has become a combatant in Sierra Leone, as it has on occasion in other locales around the world. This circumstance can, of course, pose virtually insurmountable barriers to coordination, with at least some NGOs becoming concerned about the appearance and fact of loss of neutrality to the extent they are associated with one side in an internal fight such as that in Sierra Leone. This is not a theoretical or abstract consideration; it may ultimately be a matter of life or death for aid workers and their beneficiaries. I left this UN coordination exchange on that early summer day shortly before 1:00 p.m. when the headquarters plaza was relatively empty and before the predictable exodus of UN staff in search of lunch. A band of amateur musicians was tuning up, waiting for an audience on what promised to be a lazy 1 94 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW summer day. But as I made my way onto the street, I could not help but wonder what would become of those peacekeepers and humanitarian workers who were caught up in the latest spasm of violence in a faraway place in the service of broad international ideals for a just and humane world order. COORDINATION PROBLEMS AT THE INTERNATIONAL LEVEL Refugees and displaced persons need humanitarian assistance and are entitled to legal protection. The notion of international coordination arises particularly in circumstances where there is no adequate legal or institutional framework for policy formulation or implementation. Indeed, “coordination” is often nothing less than a substitute for a multilateral consensus and enabling structure. From William Shawcross’ The Quality of Mercy in 1984, which chronicled the dysfunctions of humanitarian aid activities in Cambodia, to the present, there have been many treatments of international humanitarian deployments that rue the lack of coordination. Senior United Nations officials sometimes refer to coordination as the “C word.” This is not particularly surprising given the amount of bureaucratic blood that has been spilled in UN reform efforts over the past decade. Nevertheless, the anxiety with which international agency heads still greet the term is revealing. Bureaucratic fights over money, personnel and programs are often masked by debates over “coordination.” Nor is there a common definition of the term in relation to its use in the humanitarian field, a circumstance that led one U.S. State Department official involved in humanitarian assistance to plea that perhaps “we should ban the word’s use for a decade.” Coordination can mean control over resources and programming — an anathema to many agency heads and NGOs — or merely sharing information and consultation, or something in between. Coordination problems in the refugee field have a long history, including the evolution of the fragmentary and overlapping sets of entities established to deal with displacement. This includes the squabbles that emerged after the International Refugee Organization, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration (predecessor to the International Organization for Migration) were established after World War II. However, given the chronic nature of the problem, this old stor y bears retelling in a variety of modern incarnations. Coordination questions permeate the work of the international humanitarian sector. There is coordination within the UN system; between the UN BUREAUCRACY AND THE QUALITY OF MERCY 195 system and other international entities, including the international financial institutions; between international organizations and governments and/or NGOs as well as local authorities and indigenous “civil society ” actors; between the humanitarians and military/political planners in “complex contingency operations ” (emergencies); between relief and development agencies; between poli cy planners and operational program managers; between headquarters and the field; between international entities that have universal mandates and those that have functional or regional mandates; between and among NGOs themselves, including relief agencies, human rights monitoring groups and local actors; and between and among donors and recipients of funding. This list is not, of course, exhaustive. But duplication of efforts is endemic in the humanitarian “new economy” that has emerged over the past decade, and gaps are more prevalent than structure in international humanitarian action. The imperative to “coordinate” is the result. Nevertheless, the formal framework for coordination of international humanitarian action has evolved significantly over the past decade. There are now more organizational links to promote communication, consultation and data exchange between and among humanitarians. Whether and how the activities associated with this near blizzard of information impact affected populations in the field is a different matter which merits continuous evaluation. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs In terms of the formal architecture of international coordination, the leading actor, at least nominally, is the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which is part of the United Nations Secretariat. Its mandate is to coordinate the provision of humanitarian assistance, particularly that of the UN system, in complex emergencies and natural disasters. In 1991, there was a growing recognition that the UN system needed stronger coordination mechanisms to deal with humanitarian crises, such as the situation in northern Iraq. The humanitarian challenges there were singular in terms of their size and complexity. Yet, in general, duplication of efforts by humanitarian agencies and unmet needs among affected populations remained rampant in that situation and continue to plague efforts around the world. There was much debate throughout the summer and fall of 1991 between developing and industrialized nations, focusing on balancing the right to humanitarian assistance to protect the basic human rights of individuals against respect for national sovereignty. The outcome was General Assembly Resolu- 196 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW tion 46/1 82, adopted by consensus, which sought to set out guiding principles for UN humanitarian assistance for victims of natural disasters and other emergencies (UN 1 99 1 :Annex I (3)). The resolution provided for the designation of a single senior official to coordinate humanitarian relief efforts. Under Resolution 46/1 82, it is no longer necessary that the affected country initiate a call for assistance. Noting that the“ sovereignty~ territorial integri ty and national unity of States must be fully respected,” the resolution states onl y that “humanitarian assistance should be provided with the consent of the affected country and in principle on the basis of an appeal by the affected country. ” The resolution underscores the importance of disaster prevention and preparedness and the need to deal with the root causes of disaster by addressing the needs of member nations for sustainable development. It reaffirms the UN’s “central and unique role to play in providing leadership and coordinating the efforts of the international community ” and delivering humanitarian assistance to affected countries, and it provides for the appointment of the Emergency Relief Coordinator (ERC) to undertake this responsibility. To support the ERG, the UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA) was established in 1992. The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), which has since become the primary forum for coordination between humanitarian agencies in the UN system, was also established at that time. The purpose of the IASC is to facilitate interagency decisionmaking in complex humanitarian emergencies. The IASC is also the forum in which program responsibilities are allocated in situations where there are gaps in mandates or lack of institutional capacities. The members of the IASC are: FAQ, OCHA (then DHA), UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF, UNHCR, WFP, and WHO. Standing invitees are: ICRC, ICVA, IFRC, InterAction, IOM, the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Internally Displaced Persons, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the World Bank (see appendix of abbreviations and acronyms). The next UN coordination milestone was the debate in 1997 over the UN Secretary-General’s proposals to reform the UN system. The challenges of emergencies in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Great Lakes region of Africa were in the minds then of many UN officials. To address these issues, the Secretary-General entertained a proposal to integrate the Department of Humanitarian Affairs into the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva. In effect, this would have made UNHCR the permanent lead agency to deal with humanitarian catastrophes. Indeed, this option BUREAUCRACY AND THE QUALITY OF MERCY 197 came quite close to being realized, with UNHCR being asked by the Secretary-General’s adviser to prepare a plan to implement the consolidation. Much internal wrangling attended the proposal, with several donor governments and agencies, notably the World Food Programme and UNICEF, expressing opposition. WPF Executive Director Catherine Bertini and UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy were outspoken in their opposition to this proposal. The Secretary-General ultimately decided that instead of creating an integrated institution, there would continue to be a separate Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs. In furtherance of this decision, the Department of Humanitarian Affairs was renamed the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). ‘While most functions were retained, certain operational activities in which DHA had become involved, such as demining, were transferred from OCHA to other entities within the UN system. There was high drama relating to the reform debates during this period at UN headquarters, with UN agency heads intensely lobbying governments and the Secretary-General with their respective views. But it is worth keeping in mind a field perspective. The reform outcome was in practice little more than a name change; the core missions remained the same. A UN staffer who was working in the field at the time confided recently that she was “oblivious” to the changes at DHA. The reorganization simply made no difference in her day-to-day work. Nevertheless, the reform debate revealed serious bureaucratic tensions in the UN system that continue today to influence the way humanitarian action is organized. By 1997, the UN’s operational agencies had grown wary of DHA’s mission creep, even though some of its ventures were designed to fill gaps in areas such as demining or demobilizing fi ghters. The office had become increasingly involved in field activities that competed with other agencies. The reform package which was finally adopted retained the policy development function in OCHA on issues such as the protection of internally displaced persons, although the criteria and procedures for developing authoritative policy were not explicitly addressed in the reorganization. As reconfigured, OCHA was to have three core functions: coordination of humanitarian emergency responses, policy development and coordination, and advocacy of humanitarian issues. This reconfiguration was not accompanied by budgetary management of the resources of other agencies. As currently configured, OCHA works in the field through UN resident coordinators who lead UN country teams. At the headquarters level, the head of OCHA has dual responsibilities as the Under-Secretary-General (USG) for 1 98 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW Humanitarian Affairs, and the Emergency Relief Coordinator who chairs the IASC. The IASC brings together the leading humanitarian entities, both within and outside the UN system. As USG, the head of OCHA is the principal advisor to the UN Secretary-General on humanitarian issues and the convenor of the Executive Committee for Humanitarian Affairs (ECHA) which provides a forum for the humanitarian components and the political and peacekeeping departments at the UN Secretariat. Also, principals and heads of specialized agencies participate in weekly meetings (including via video conferencing) of a Senior Management Group, which serves as a functional cabinet for the Secretary-General, addressing humanitarian issues in a comprehensive context. The ECHA is one of the four executive committees created in 1998 by the Secretary-General as a result of UN reform. ECHA meets on a monthly basis in New York, and its members are UNDP, UNICEF, UNHCR, WFP, UNHCHR, DPKO, UNRWA , the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children in Armed Conflicts, WHO and FAO (see appendix of abbreviations and acronyms). The Secretariat’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the Department of Political Affairs are also members of ECHA. This permits political and security perspectives to be integrated into the body ’s deliberations, perhaps the key (if not only) feature that distinguishes ECHA from IASC. OCHA has a headquarters presence in both New York and Geneva. The USG/ERC is located in New York. OCHA in Geneva is the focal point for support to the field and hosts the offices that deal with natural disasters. The 1998 UN reforms led the IASC to issue recommendations expressly addressing the coordination of humanitarian assistance. The recommendations draw a distinction between strategic and operational coordination. Strategic coordination is defined as the “overall direction of the humanitarian program ” (United Nations, 1999b:20). This includes setting the goals, allocating tasks and responsibilities, and ensuring that they are reflected in a strategic plan, in accordance with agency mandates. Also involved is the advocacy of humanitarian princi p les, negotiating access to the affected populations, mobilizing resources, monito