In the Line of Fire: Camps and Safe Havens

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Panelists:

Roberta Cohen
Co-Director, Brookings Institution Project on Internal Displacement; Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights; Co-Author, Masses In Flight: The Global Crisis of Internal Displacement (with Francis Deng)

Steve Gonah
UNHCR Protection and Repatriation Officer, Africa; MALD Candidate, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University; Member, 1997-98 EPIIC Program Committee

Herb Howe
Professor, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University; Author, Pax Africana: How Can African States Defend Themselves?

Karen Jacobsen
Professor of Political Science, Regis College; Lecturer, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy

Dino Kritsiotis
Human Rights Fellow, Harvard Law School; International Lawyer, Zimbabwe

Moderators:
Jeffrey Treichel and Enola Williams
EPIIC Colloquium

Interlocutor:
Jennifer Leaning, M.D.
Senior Research Fellow and Director, Complex Emergencies Center, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies; Editor, Medicine & Global Survival

Refugees and internally displaced peoples (IDPs) today are facing more dangers and security threats than they ever have before. For nearly fifty years, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has had a mandate to protect refugees, and for nearly fifty years the UNHCR has repeatedly been challenged to fulfill its mandate. The difficulties that the UNHCR has had raise some questions: What is the U.N. Security Council willing to do to protect refugees? Should the UNHCR mandate apply to the protection of IDPs? What precisely is necessary to ensure the security of refugees/IDPs? Three emergencies since 1991 illustrate the U.N.'s most recent responses to these and other questions. They shed light on where this debate has been and where it is going. They are the conflicts in Northern Iraq, Central Africa, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The first area that brought these issues to light was Iraq in 1991. After the close of the Gulf War, the Kurdish minority in Northern Iraq revolted against Saddam Hussein with the encouragement of the West. The revolt was short-lived however, and it seemed that the horror of the 1988 Anfal massacres of Iraqi Kurds would begin again. This time, however, the international community did not entirely ignore the Kurds' plight. A U.S. led force created a "safe haven" for the Kurds in Northern Iraq, sending in the supplies, troops and equipment necessary to block off an area of Northern Iraq and set up camps. The operation was at first considered a success, and the idea of the safe haven was hailed as at least a partial solution to some internal displacement/refugee situations. However, seven years later it is a different story. The Kurds are again in danger, not only from Hussein but also from cross border reprisals by the Turkish government seeking to quell Kurdish agitation. Many have come to question the actual safety of the safe havens and the effectiveness of their use.

The concept of the safe haven was again challenged by events in Bosnia two years later. In May of 1993, the U.N. Security Council declared six Bosnian cities, all Muslim enclaves, including Sarajevo, Srebrenica, Tuzla, Gorazde, Bihac, and Zepa to be "safe havens". The declaration was intended to stop the slaughter of civilians in the war, but by most measures it was a complete failure. The following winter the Bosnian Serbs had still not withdrawn from Sarajevo. In fact, they launched one of their most brutal attacks into the supposed "safe haven". An artillery strike upon a crowded market killed some seventy people and injured over two hundred. A year later, in the summer of 1995, Bosnian Serb forces completely overran two of the supposed safe havens. In Srebrenica, 60,000 civilians, many of whom had come to the city because of the promise of safety, were trapped by an attacking Serb army. Two weeks later, Zepa met a similar fate.

Most recently, the need for refugee security has been expressed by the tragedies that have occurred deep in Central Africa. Within the space of a few days in 1994, over one million refugees fled from Rwanda into what is now Congo (Zaire). The refugees were mostly Hutus. They were fleeing an advancing Tutsi rebel army which was eager to avenge the genocide that the Hutus had inflicted upon the Tutsis. The largest concentration of the refugees centered around the city of Goma. The refugee situation in Goma became very complex very quickly. Hutu rebels among the refugees turned the camps into armed staging areas for their forays back into Rwanda. The now Tutsi government of Rwanda sought to stop the violent incursions from the refugee camps and to prosecute those Hutus they considered responsible for the genocide. Cross border attacks became frequent, and the camps were practically becoming war zones. The only security the camps possessed, beyond the limited capabilities of the UNHCR staff, was provided by an ineffective Zairian military. U.S. and French military involvement was limited, and most operations were phased out as the humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) moved in.

In 1996 the situation changed entirely when a revolutionary force began gaining speed in Eastern Zaire. This force led by Laurent Kabila, the present leader of Congo, was assisted in its infancy by the Tutsi army of Rwanda. One of the first places the combined rebel forces attacked was the area of refugee camps near Goma. As a result, the occupants of these refugee camps, over one million people, were scattered through Central Africa. Many hundreds of thousands went back into Rwanda; many headed West, deeper into Zaire along with the retreating Zairian army; many are entirely unaccounted for. There was little or no resistance on behalf of UNHCR or the international community. The camps were emptied and closed, while UNHCR and most of the NGOs evacuated their personnel. The UNHCR had promised protection and assistance to the Rwandan refugees; in the end it could give neither.

These three tragedies reflect the changing nature of conflicts, from international to civil, and they have consequently changed the way the international community approaches security in humanitarian aid situations. They not only illustrate a need for change, but they bring up an array of problems not mentioned above. For example, there is now a need for personal security for aid workers. Humanitarians, once safe in their endeavors, are now threatened with injury to life and limb by loosely organized militias. Also, never seen before, is the consideration of the use of private armies to provide camp security.

The questions raised above need a response. How can we ensure that the world does not have another Srebrenica, another Goma, another broken promise?