Preventive Action for Refugee Producing Situations

124 Chapter 3 Analytical Discussion 125
The dearth of roads and communication infrastructures in the Mosquitia,
which basically consists of one road and otherwise rivers, has created one
of the most difficult challenges for UNHCR to monitor and attempt to
prevent forced recruitment. Those Miskitos successfully blocked from
voluntary repatriation and unable to reach out to UNHC for assistance
have been in serious danger of being forcibly recruited Indian contra
groups. This problem started when the first refuge wanted to return after
the amnesty in 1983, and remains acute today.
UNHCR has worked on confidence-building measures among those
who wished simply to live in peace and work the land made available to
them through the government of Honduras for self-sufficiency projects;
but since UNHCR is perceived as an "enemy" of KISAN, refugees who
were cooperating with UNHCR in its assistance programs have tended
suffer consequences. The large numbers of women with small children
who were left behind in the refugee locations suggested that many male
and single females were taken for forced labor or even thrust into zones
of combat.
Concluding remarks
As a human rights worker put it, KISAN and its U.S. advisors cynically
relied on UNHCR and intended to instrumentalize the good offices of
UNHCR to take care of the refugees they created. Their manipulation of
international relief organizations was a shameful waste of precious and
limited international relief resources, as well as a misuse of UNHCR,
which was not designed to care for make-believe refugees - that is,
arbitrarily generated ones. Miskitos and other indigenous groups who
were pushed into Honduras at Easter 1986 had well-founded fears of
persecution by KISAN if they refused to let themselves become refugees.
These persons were more in danger where they were going than in the
country from which they supposedly fled: the danger came from the
guenillas who presumably were fighting for them. 285
It is not UNHCR's usual task to involve itself in the causes that make
people gravitate toward refugee camps. It might, however, have been
possible to provide U.N. and non-U.N. policymakers with a more com-
prehensive analysis of the motives and to offer recommendations on how to
confront the Spring 1986 influx. Of course, UNHCR is operating in
Honduras in a highly sensitive context. If the Office was unable or unwilling
to make a more systematic collection of information, concerning the
causes of the announced movement for early analysis and action, UNHCR
might have been able to indicate these problems in a general manner to
researchers from public interest organizations, such as Cultural Survival, or
experts on indigenous people, so as to establish the facts in an objective and
reliable manner. That way UNHCR would not be directly associated with
the investigation; in any event, it would not need to pass judgment on the
result of these findings or on those responsible for the acts committed.
UNHCR might have been in a good position to express its concern about
the impending situation, in the interest of the persons for whom it was
expected to provide protection from the authorities. If UNHCR had been
prepared to take preventive action, its resources of international
humanitarian assistance would not have been used to maintainigroups of
people who would probably not have received it under different circumstances.
Apart from sparing UNHCR's energies, it is likely that many of the
8,000 Nicaraguan Indians who entered UNHCR's refugee location
subsequent to the initial interviews would not have needed to cross the
border. A proof for this assumption is that approximately 8,000 of the "new
refugees" wanted to go back to Nicaragua after having barely arrived with
the Spring 1986 influx. 286 Many of them stated that they had not wanted to
come into Honduras, and decided to spontaneously return across the border.
Those who were impeded by KISAN or preferred to repatriate officially
under the auspices of UNHCR did so, which brought the figure for 1986
UNHCR assisted repatriations to 1,714. With better facilities in place, and
negotiations between the Nicaraguan, Honduran, and UNHCR authorities
successfully concluded in a tripartite agreement allowing for large-scale
repatriations, the UNHCR assisted repatriation figures for Miskitos and
Sumos jumped to 3,873 in 1987, and to 7,994 during the first nine months of
1988. 287
The High Commissioner himself and, if necessary, the UN Secretary-
General should have been kept better informed of the situation in a direct
and continuous manner. They might have wanted to arrange for more
War By Both Sides in Nicaragua In 1987," (Washington,D.C. November 1987),
p. 52
285 Interview with anonymous human rights worker, on the handfile of the
author, p.
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286 The New York Times, 18 April 1987.
287 UNHCR, "Comparative Repatriation Statistics in Central America and
Mexico," Jan.-Dec. 1987, Jan-Sept. 1987, Jan-Sept 1988, October 1988/AW.