Preventive Action for Refugee Producing Situations

204 Chapter 5
the doctrine itself has survived and gained ground through such concrete measures
as the establishment of ORCI.
It is not only the U.N. that has expanded its preventive work into the sovereign
territory of nations. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for
example, has achieved an unparalleled acceptance of its efforts on behalf of
civilians in internal armed conflicts. Those efforts have brought its workers even
into places (such as Chile's prisons) where the government would not permit any
outside access, even by the United Nations. 476 The actions of the ICRC, which have
won widespread political acceptance, are rooted in four legal sources: the four 1949
Geneva Conventions and their two 1977 Protocols Additional, the Statutes of the
Red Cross, the Statutes of the International Committee, and the resolutions of the
international conferences of the ICRC. 477 UNHCR is in a similar position. Despite
its limitations of its original mandate, over the years its scope has extended its
actions on behalf of nationals who are not necessarily refugees within a country.
This has become possible partly because governments have come to appreciate the
value of having UNHCR take over some of their burden of caring for their citizens,
thus sparing themselves a great deal of financial and administrative strain. For
example, UNHCR was called upon to assist nationals within Sudan in
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476 See Protocol II, relating to non-international armed conflicts, which was adopted by
consensus at the end of the Diplomatic Conference. In accordance with Article 1,
Protocol II is applicable in armed conflicts "which take place in the territory of a High
Contracting party between its armed forces and dissident armed forces or other
organized armed groups which, under responsible command, exercise such control over
a part of its territory as to enable them to carry out sustained and conceited military
operations and to implement this Protocol... An article of the Protocol prohibits t he
forcible displacement of civilian populations, unless the security of the civilians
concerned, or imperative military reasons, so demand. This provision is important and
should in future prevent the tragic wandering of entire populations." [emphasis added]
In: Francoise Bory, Origin and Development of International Humanitarian Law
(Geneva, 1982), pp. 35-37.
477 - Les Conventions humanitaires, c'est-a dire les quatre Conventions de Geneve du 12
aoflt 1949 relatives ä la protection des victimes des conflits armds et leurs deux
Protocoles additionnels du 8 juin 1977;
- les Statuts de la Croix-Rouge Internationale;
- les Statuts du CICR [Comite* International de la Croix-Rouge];
- les resolutions des Conferences internationales de la Croix-Rouge. See Claude
Wenger, "Lc Comit6 International de la Croix-Rouge et les re'fugie's," in The Refugee
Problem on a Universal, Regional and National Level, 10th session: September 1982
of the Institute of Public International Law and International Relations of Thessaloniki
1987, pp. 17,18.
Legal Justification 205
1971-72, without distinguishing between returning refugees and those who
had been internally displaced without crossing a border and becoming
"true" refugees. 478 Similarly, in Vietnam in 1974-75 the High
Commissioner started on his own initiative a program of agricultural and
small industrial projects for about 750,000 people displaced within the
country. The program, begun on the High Commissioner's personal initiative,
after only informing the Executive Committee obtaining its consent
ex post facto of the General Assembly subsequently. 47 '
We thus find that member states have ceased to see an irreconcilable
dichotomy between their own national interests and international cooperation.
They have also come to accept that international cooperation
inevitably involves international organizations in their domestic development
- an infringement on their national jurisdiction that they seem to
tolerate, if not welcome. 480 The cooperative efforts of international and
nongovernmental organizations, operating within or outside of an embattled
nation's borders, with or without the consent of the govemment(s)
concerned, helps both relieve the suffering of civilian bystanders and defuse
tensions that could generate an even more serious conflict
The current cross-border operation from Sudan to Eritrea (Ethiopia) may
be mentioned as a successful example of the new cooperative measures.
Here many nations, especially Western countries, have expanded their
efforts so as to operate substantially through nongovernmental
organizations, as well as through the traditional channels of national
authorities in Addis Ababa. Through the "intervention" of these
nongovernmental organizations, careful cross-border operations have been
set up to bring food to famine-stricken Ethiopians in rebel-occupied areas
without their having to cross into Sudan simply to obtain relief.
As a result of the lessons learned from the 1984-85 famine in Ethiopia,
during which, according to government estimates, one million persons
died, the early signals of an impending new famine in 1987 initiated
massive operations for bringing food to people instead of people to food.
Despite numerous obstacles, including both governmental, and rebelcaused
obstruction of efforts to bring food into droughtstricken areas of
Eritrea and Tigray to needy people trapped in the rebel-occupied
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478 UN GA res 2958 (XXVII), 12 December 1972: "Sudanese refugees coming
from abroad and other displaced persons."
479 UN GA res 31/35, 30 November 1975, in which the General Assembly
unanimously endorsed the EXCOM's view of 24 July 1974, which recognized
the need for humanitarian assistance to Vietnamese displaced within their
country.
480 Rajan.p. 206.