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Occasional Paper #18
HUMANITARIAN ACTION IN THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA:
THE U.N.’S ROLE, 1991-1993
Larry Minear (Team Leader), Jeffrey Clark,
Roberta Cohen, Dennis Gallagher,
Iain Guest, and Thomas G. Weiss
i

Occasional Papers is a series published by
The Thomas J. Watson Jr.
Institute for International Studies
Brown University, Box 1970
2 Stimson Avenue
Providence, RI 02912
Telephone: (401) 863-2809
Fax: (401) 863-1270
E-mail: IIS@Brownvm.Bitnet
Vartan Gregorian, Ph.D., Acting Director
Thomas G. Weiss, Ph.D., Associate Director
Frederick F. Fullerton, Assistant Editor
Gregory Kazarian, Computer Coordinator
Amy M. Langlais, Staff Assistant
Kristina Anulewicz, Staff Assistant
Statements of fact or opinion are solely those of the authors; their
publication does not imply endorsement by the Thomas J. Watson Jr.
Institute for International Studies.
Copyright © 1994 by the Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International
Studies. All rights reserved under International and Pan
American Convention. No part of this report may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any other means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any information storage
and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the
publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Occasional Papers,
Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies.
ii

CONTENTS
Foreword ..................................................................................... v
Executive Summary ................................................................. ix
Abbreviations ............................................................................ xi
Map of the Former Yugoslavia ............................................. xiii
Chapter 1: The Defining Realities .................................. 1
Chapter 2:
The Operational Landscape for
Humanitarian Action ................................. 11
Chapter 3: Ten Central Policy Challenges .................. 51
1. Defining the Humanitarian Task
2. Deciding among Priorities
3. Coming to Terms with Ethnic Cleansing
4. Carrying out Strategic Planning
5. Dealing with Belligerents who Defy
International Humanitarian Law
6. Determining the Appropriate Uses of
the Military
7. Protecting the Integrity of Humanitarian
Action
8. Orchestrating the Common Effort
9. Achieving Effective Use of Human
Resources
10. Assisting Civilians without Prolonging
the War
Chapter 4: Recommendations .................................... 127
Annexes: .................................................................................. 135
1. Persons Interviewed
2. Chronology of Major Events
3. About the Team
4. About the Humanitarianism and War
Project
iii

FOREWORD
In June 1993, Thorvald Stoltenberg, Special Representative
for the former Yugoslavia of the United Nations Secretary-
General, aptly described international efforts there as “the
most difficult mission in the history of the U.N.” The United
Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR), he said, was forging
“new policies for the United Nations and for the world which
can be of decisive importance in the years to come.”
Having participated in a multi-person review of the U.N.’s
role in that crisis, we can attest to the complexity of the
situation and the immense importance of the international
community’s efforts there. The humanitarian activities performed
were critically needed. But there are real questions
about the organization’s capacity to respond to the plight of
human beings in situations of post-Cold War instability and
about the growing tensions between its humanitarian and
political and military aspects.
The focus of this report is on the efforts of the United
Nations to provide humanitarian assistance and protection to
about four million civilians affected by the conflict in the
former Balkan state during the two-year period that began in
November 1991. The point of departure is the work of the
U.N.’s “lead agency” for this crisis, the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees.
This study looks beyond UNHCR, however, to the U.N.’s
other humanitarian and human rights organizations as well as
to the Security Council, the Secretary-General, and
UNPROFOR. It also takes into account the work of governments,
other intergovernmental organizations outside of the
U.N., nongovernmental organizations, and the International
Committee of the Red Cross.
The crisis in the former Yugoslavia is complex and raises
many questions. What is the appropriate role of military force
in support of humanitarian action? What is the relative priority
of emergency relief in relation to other essential tasks such
as defending fundamental human rights and promoting reconstruction?
Can an agency that delivers assistance to people
also affirm and protect their right to seek asylum? How
v

accountable is the United Nations for the humanitarian impact
of its activities? Are there sufficient international resources,
political will, and institutional capacities to respond to a crisis
as great as this one?
To analyze questions like these, we assembled a group of
six specialists with a variety of backgrounds and expertise
(Annex 3). We would like to single out the efforts of Larry
Minear who served as team leader and drafted the report. His
acuity and dedication were matched by his commitment to
produce the report quickly to enhance its utility. Also on the
team, in addition to the two of us, were Jeffrey Clark, Roberta
Cohen, and Iain Guest. The report also has benefited from the
insights and experience of two colleagues from the region:
Sanja Vukotic, a professor of history, and Zoran Ostric of the
Zagreb-based Center for Peace, Non-Violence, and Human
Rights. They joined us in October for two days of intensive
discussions in Zagreb.
This review also sought out the widest possible array of
persons directly involved in the crisis. The analysis is based on
about 300 interviews with more than 250 persons throughout
the former Yugoslavia and in Geneva, New York, and Washington.
Most interviews were off-the-record. Quotations of
individuals by name are used only with their permission.
While most quotations are from the interviews conducted,
some have been taken from speeches and other public statements.
Beyond the breadth of interviews conducted, additional
balance was provided by three visits to the region in March,
June, and September 1993. From Zagreb, the team made three
trips to Belgrade, two visits to Bihac in western Bosnia, two to
Split and the Dalmatian coast, one to Srebrenica in eastern
Bosnia, and one to Sarajevo and central Bosnia. The team did
not visit Slovenia, Montenegro, or Macedonia, but developments
in the region have been closely monitored throughout.
As might be expected in such a polarized context, the clash
of perspectives among those interviewed has been striking.
Some persons for whom humanitarian programs were intended
expressed disdain for them, others appreciation. One
practitioner described the U.N.’s humanitarian effort as “a
reasonably effective operation given the circumstances,” an-
vi

other as the “biggest public relations scam of all time.”
Taking into account the wide divergence of views, the
team sought to understand the complexities of the situation on
the ground and offer practical recommendations for the future.
By “future,” we mean both the next phase of actions in the
former Yugoslavia and responses to similar challenges elsewhere.
As former Yugoslav ambassador and journalist Cvijeto
Job wrote in the Fall 1993 issue of Foreign Policy: “The breakdown
of restraints following the end of the Cold War is not just
a Yugoslav problem. It is a global trend. And any disposition
on the part of the international community to ignore that trend
will yield only more disorder and bloodshed.”
This report benefits from earlier case studies of the Humanitarianism
and War Project, an initiative for which our
two institutions have served as cosponsors during the past
three years (see Annex 4). The Project has employed a similar
approach to review lessons in armed conflicts in the Horn of
Africa, the Persian Gulf, Cambodia, and Central America. The
interviews in the former Yugoslavia are part of more than a
thousand conversations the Project has held with practitioners
around the world.
In one such interview last June in Zagreb, a U.N. official
noted that “It’s very hard to run this humanitarian operation
according to a book that hasn’t been written.” The present case
study seeks to identify issues that should be addressed in the
U.N.’s humanitarian operations manual of the future and to
offer recommendations about how those issues might be approached.
This study would not have been possible without the
support of many institutions and individuals. We acknowledge
our gratitude to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner
for Refugees and the United Kingdom’s Office of Development
Assistance, whose grants underwrote a portion of the
costs. The remaining costs were met by general program funds
from the Refugee Policy Group and the Humanitarianism and
War Project. These two organizations and the Watson Institute
are profiled at the end of this report.
We also wish to express special thanks to the officials of
the United Nations, who cooperated fully in our endeavor,
sharing their views and facilitating access to difficult-to-reach
vii

areas within the former Yugoslavia. Jacques Cuénod, RPG
representative in Geneva, was instrumental in facilitating
communications with UNHCR and other organizations there.
The editorial skills of Fred Fullerton of the Watson Institute
and research and administrative assistance from Judy Ombura
of the Humanitarianism and War Project have strengthened
the final product. The assistance of Susan Costa of the Watson
Institute is also appreciated.
The issues reviewed range from specific to broad and from
immediate to prospective. The reader will encounter the difficulties
experienced by the U.N.’s humanitarian organizations
and will inquire, along with the authors, whether the world
organization would benefit from a new component entrusted
with the conduct of humanitarian activities in the context of
enforcement actions under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter.
The reader also will ask what lessons can be learned from the
day-to-day conduct of humanitarian efforts in the former
Yugoslavia and how these can guide future humanitarian
efforts there.
Concurring with Ambassador Stoltenberg about the pivotal
importance of the U.N.’s role in responding to the humanitarian
crisis in the former Yugoslavia, we are pleased to
make this report available to the international community.
During our concluding discussions in Zagreb, the latest in a
series of peace agreements failed to elicit agreement among all
the warring parties. This was but the most recent diplomatic
setback with wide-ranging humanitarian consequences. Disappointments
notwithstanding, we are convinced that the
lessons from the past should serve to guide the international
community in the former Yugoslavia whenever peace does
come, as it must, here and elsewhere.
Dennis Gallagher and Thomas G. Weiss
Zagreb, October 1, 1993
viii

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Any report on humanitarian action by the United Nations
in response to the crisis in the former Yugoslavia is an analysis
of a house divided against itself. Ours situates the U.N.’s
humanitarian activities within a context of half-measures and
abandonment of principle on the part of member governments
and the Security Council. Humanitarian efforts were substitutes
for effective decisions by governments and the international
community to end the warfare and unconscionable
violence.
U.N. humanitarian operations to meet life-or-death human
needs—mainly the delivery of food and medicine—
succeeded in reaching a substantial number of those in desperate
situations, keeping people alive and easing their suffering.
Food distribution to refugees and host families in Croatia,
Serbia, and Montenegro made a critical difference to hundreds
of thousands of people, as it also did in Sarajevo, Bihac, and
other Muslim enclaves. U.N. presence sometimes helped deter,
if not prevent, some abuses of human rights. Many individual
U.N. officials toiled with impressive energy, dedication,
and commitment, frequently in situations of great personal
peril. Yet these efforts remained inadequate in the face of
the immense catastrophe.
The United Nations was hampered by the lack of an
overall strategy that anticipated events. The movement of
relief commodities, primarily food, was given priority to the
detriment of other indispensable activities such as social services,
rehabilitation, and the protection of human rights, including
the right to seek asylum. UNHCR, designated “lead
agency” in recognition of its resources and expertise, did not
succeed in fully mobilizing other organizations, in part due to
confusion about the lead agency concept itself. The circumscribed
mandate given UNPROFOR by the Security Council
limited the capacity of troops to protect civilian populations
and support humanitarian operations. Indeed, concern for the
security of UNPROFOR and U.N. humanitarian personnel
blunted consideration of more forceful attempts to end the
bloodshed.
ix

The deteriorating social situation for hundreds of thousands
of civilians in Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro, aggravated
by U.N. policies, undermined the world organization’s
humanitarian credentials. The fact that the Security Council
found the political means to impose sanctions that wreaked
widespread havoc among civilians but lacked the determination
to give meaning to the concept of a war crimes tribunal
illuminated contradictions within the divided house.
This report finds no alternative to redoubling efforts to
assist and protect civilians exposed to the violence and carnage
of the conflicts and the ravages of winter. The current
tragedy would be compounded if the international community
were to judge from the continuing war that the humanitarian
resources committed to the former Yugoslavia should
be reduced or efforts there abandoned. At the same time, the
report urges accelerated steps to find a diplomatic solution to
the war itself.
In an effort to reduce contradictions in the United Nations,
the report urges debate regarding the creation of a new institutional
capacity within the organization to provide assistance
and protection where enforcement under Chapter VII of the
Charter results in economic sanctions or military intervention.
Functioning in such an environment is proving too treacherous
for most members of the U.N.’s existing humanitarian
system.
The report also recommends consolidating several human
rights innovations, implementing changes in policy and operations,
and improving accountability through the creation
of an independent monitoring entity.
x

ABBREVIATIONS
AICF
BBC
CIVPOL
CNN
CRS
CSCE
DART
DHA
DPA
DPKO
DRC
EC
ECHO
ECMM
ECTF
FRY
FYRM
IASC
IASU
ICFY
ICRC
ICVA
IFRC
IMC
IMG
IOCC
IOM
Action International Contre La Faim
British Broadcasting Corporation
Civilian Police (U.N.)
Cable News Network
Catholic Relief Services
Conference on Security and Cooperation
in Europe
Disaster Assistance Response Team (U.S.)
Department of Humanitarian Affairs
(U.N.)
Department of Political Affairs (U.N.)
Department of Peace-keeping Operations
(U.N.)
Danish Refugee Council
European Community
European Community
Humanitarian Office
European Community Monitoring
Mission
European Community Task Force
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia
and Montenegro)
Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
Inter-Agency Standing Committee (U.N.)
Inter-Agency Support Unit (U.N.)
International Conference on Former
Yugoslavia
International Committee of the Red Cross
International Council of Voluntary
Agencies
International Federation of Red Cross and
Red Crescent Societies
International Medical Corps
International Management Group
International Orthodox Christian Charities
International Organization for Migration
xi

IRC
LWF
MSF
NATO
NGO
ODA
ODPR
OFDA
RPG
U.K.
U.N.
UNDP
UNDRO
UNESCO
UNHCR
UNICEF
UNIDO
UNOSOM
UNPA
UNPROFOR
U.S.
USAID
USCR
WCC
WEU
WFP
WHO
International Rescue Committee
Lutheran World Federation
Médecins sans frontières
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Nongovernmental Organization
Overseas Development
Administration (U.K.)
Office of Displaced Persons and Refugees
Office of Foreign Disaster Relief (USAID)
Refugee Policy Group
United Kingdom
United Nations
United Nations Development Programme
United Nations Disaster Relief Office
United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization
United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees
United Nations International Children’s
Education Fund
United Nations Industrial
Development Organization
United Nations Operation in Somalia
United Nations Protected Area
United Nations Protection Force in the
Former Yugoslavia
United States
United States Agency for
International Development
United States Committee for Refugees
World Council of Churches
Western European Union
World Food Programme
World Health Organization
xii

MAP OF THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA
AUSTRIA
HUNGARY
ITALY
Ljubljana
SLOVENIA
Zagreb
Daruvar
Osijek
ROMANIA
Rijeka
Topusco
CROATIA
Erdui
VOJVODINA
Bihac
Banja Luka
Tuzla
BOSNIA-
Knin
HERZEGOVINA
Zenica
Sarajevo
Split Kiseljak Pale
Mostar
Belgrade
Srebrenica
Zepa
SERBIA
Garazde
Dubrovnik
UN Protected Areas (UNPAs)
United Nations
October 1993
The boundries and designations shown on this
map do not imply official endorsement or
acceptance by the United Nations
Medugorje
Metkovic
MONTENEGRO
Podgorica
ALBANIA
Pristina
KOSOVO
Skopje
Former Yugoslav
Republic of
MACEDONIA
GREECE
BULGARIA
xiii

xiv

CHAPTER 1:
THE DEFINING REALITIES
In one of the first interviews in this case study in March
1993, the executive of a major aid organization outside the
United Nations was asked to assess its response to the humanitarian
crisis in the former Yugoslavia. He demurred. “When
we ourselves have had so little success, it’s hard to be critical
of others,” he said. “It’s particularly hard to find fault with the
U.N.’s humanitarian organizations when their failure is more
a function of the lack of political support than of their own
decisions.”
This sense of caution amid complexity, permeating many
subsequent interviews, also characterizes this report. We have
sought to acknowledge the sizable constraints within which
humanitarian action—defined as the provision of urgently
needed assistance and the protection of fundamental human
rights—was carried out. It would be unrealistic to expect the
U.N.’s humanitarian organizations to function as well in the
midst of conflict as in less complex settings. Nevertheless, it is
essential that a careful review be made of their performance in
these more difficult circumstances.
We suggest that assessing the U.N.’s humanitarian work
is like judging an Olympic high dive. That is, an assessment
must take into account not only the form of the dive but also
its degree of difficulty. Performing adequately in the former
Yugoslavia may represent a greater accomplishment than
doing well in a more traditional setting where the platform is
lower, the attempted dive simpler, the pool deeper, the crosswinds
less gusty, and the audience less expectant.
There are four major reasons why humanitarian action in
the former Yugoslavia was of unusual difficulty. First, the
newness and unfamiliarity of the challenges posed by the crisis
were formidable. UNHCR had never before mounted such an
extensive program in a country of origin of refugees or, for that
matter, in an active war zone. Its traditional mandate focuses
on refugees crossing international borders into settings not
marked by armed conflict.
Other U.N. organizations were also on unfamiliar turf.
1

“We got our own hands dirty in the field,” wrote Sir Donald
Acheson, WHO’s first Special Representative in the region.
WHO (World Health Organization) was unaccustomed to
operational activities such as setting up health programs and
deploying staff in insecure sub-offices around the region.
The newness of the challenge was not limited to the
humanitarian actors. Few of UNPROFOR’s battalions had
provided protection for humanitarian operations in war zones
before. In the absence of a uniform approach, various national
contingents approached their task differently. Referring to his
assignment to rehabilitate Sarajevo’s infrastructure, the chief
engineer of UNPROFOR’s French contingent commented,
“This is the first time French engineers have done this.”
U.N. peacekeeping troops, drawn from many different
countries and without experience or training in humanitarian,
human rights, or refugee law, did not always exhibit the ability
or commitment to respond well to the needs that confronted
them. Novel circumstances pushed many organizations, humanitarian,
political, and military alike, beyond traditional
missions and standard operating procedures, and, in some
instances, beyond expertise and comparative advantage.
That the theater of operations was in Europe, paradoxically,
increased the difficulty. European nations also had their
own sets of relationships with countries in the region—and
their own special nervousness about large-scale movements
of peoples. Moreover, the organizations that responded to the
crisis had no experience in a country that previously had not
qualified for emergency or development assistance. Thus
there were no “former Yugoslavia” country desks and little
accumulated expertise in the aid community.
The operational theater was a short plane ride from European
capitals or less than a day’s drive for relief trucks and
therefore provided a keen sense of immediacy. Yet proximity
created problems of a special nature. Politicians and donors
had an easier time dropping in on Sarajevo or Zagreb for
hastily arranged photo opportunities, complicating the work
of humanitarian professionals. Planning and commitments
tended to be less urgent. With food and medicines so close at
hand, a relaxed mentality developed that was not evident for
crises in faraway Liberia or Sri Lanka. The warfare itself,
2

according to prevailing stereotypes, was expected to be less
barbaric and shorter-lived than in developing countries. The
former Yugoslavia was well-endowed in institutions, infrastructure,
and local talent, all of which could be pressed into
service, it was thought. Many of these assumptions proved illfounded.
Beyond the newness of the challenges, a second reason for
the extreme difficulty in this crisis was the complexity of the
issues. The conflict resisted easy categorization. Was this a war
of territorial aggression by Serbia against Croatia? Was it a war
by Serbia, working hand in glove with Bosnian Serbs, against
Bosnia and Herzegovina? Was it a civil war within Bosnia and
Herzegovina? Whether the conflict was international or internal
had a bearing on applicable international law and aid
organization mandates. Unlike internal strife, international
conflicts triggered a well-understood division of labor among
aid agencies. How much was the conflict an ethnic struggle?
Understanding the role of ethnicity—and the existence of
polyglot communities and multi-ethnic armed forces even
among the conflicts—might influence international strategies
in approaching the warring parties.
The complexity of the conflict also meant dealing with
more interlocutors. These included not only Serb authorities
in Serbia but also in the Serb Republic of Krajina; Croatian
authorities in Croatia and Croatian army and paramilitaries in
Bosnia and Herzegovina, and eventually the Croatian Republic
of Herzeg-Bosnia; the Bosnian government and Bosnian
Serb authorities in the self-declared Republic Serbska, and
even the splinter Muslim faction in the Autonomous Zone of
Western Bosnia (Bihac).
This confused political situation created even more chaotic
operational conditions on the ground. U.N. peacekeeping
troops in Bosnia and Herzegovina, for example, had to deal
not only with Serb political and military authorities in Belgrade,
Pale (the Bosnian Serb headquarters), and Sarajevo, but also
with Serb and Bosnian Serb officials in the field and at roadblocks.
Locally, military and especially paramilitary elements
called their own shots, regardless of what had been negotiated
with higher authorities. U.N. aid officials had similar problems,
more formidable still by virtue of their need to reach
3

civilian populations beyond areas in which UNPROFOR had
established its presence.
In these circumstances, providing assistance or protecting
human rights were not simple propositions. Each of the warring
parties established links between allowing humanitarian
access into beleaguered communities and extracting agreement
on certain political demands. For instance, Serbian women
in the village of Hadizci, with the encouragement of the
authorities, blocked one of the key routes into Sarajevo in an
effort to get their menfolk released by the Muslims. The
Muslims refused, insisting that the Serbs release captured
Muslims or account for their whereabouts. Humanitarian
agencies were placed in a quandary. Would they insist on their
right of humanitarian access at the risk of being barred, or
would they acquiesce in some of the extraneous demands of
the belligerents to open the door to needy civilians?
U.N. military maps prepared weekly throughout the war
tracked the changing frontlines. They also showed pockets
controlled by one side or another, and sometimes pockets
within pockets. In late 1993, the UNHCR protection officer in
Zenica told of the distress of civilians within the Croat pocket
of Vitez, a pocket within a Muslim-controlled area in Central
Bosnia. Within this pocket, however, was the town of Stare
Vitez, another pocket containing 1,000 Muslims. To complicate
the situation further, within the Stare Vitez pocket itself
were 23 Croats. It is hard to imagine a more difficult humanitarian
obstacle course.
Third, the attitudes of the warring parties made it more
difficult to implement effective policies and programs. Whatever
the roots of the conflicts, the war by 1992 had become a
struggle for territory, with ethnic populations regarded as an
obstacle to, or a means of, territorial control. Human displacement
was the overriding aim, not just an incidental consequence,
of the conflicts. That being the case, organizations
seriously committed to assist and protect civilian populations
positioned themselves squarely in the vortex of the violence.
Those who settled for an eddy did not feel the war’s full fury—
or reach those most directly affected by it.
Fundamental humanitarian principles are tested in every
major armed conflict, as earlier studies by the Humanitarian-
4

ism and War Project have demonstrated. The established
rights of civilian populations to humanitarian aid and of
impartial organizations to provide it are frequently thwarted
in ways that require ingenuity to open and maintain access.
Yet the blatant and routine disregard by belligerents for
humanitarian principles and the outright defiance of established
international norms became the hallmark of this particular
crisis. U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako
Ogata, her despair deepening steadily throughout 1993 as the
conflicts wore on and the suffering proliferated, by October
was saying, “Every day brings its new catalogue of shameless
and calculated violations of human rights, [of] humanitarian
law applicable to conflicts and [of] basic and universally
accepted humanitarian principles.”
One senior UNICEF veteran of civil strife in Africa commented
that the depth of the animosities and the inhumanity
of the belligerents’ tactics dwarfed any “tribalism” he had
witnessed in places such as the Sudan or Uganda, staggering
though the African violence had been. A UNHCR veteran of
travels throughout the region, frustrated at the continual
manipulation of humanitarian organizations by the protagonists,
noted sardonically, “You get the feeling that they’re
laughing at us and have no respect whatsoever for what we are
doing.”
How to deal with belligerents who flaunted international
humanitarian law and mores represented the preeminent
challenge for everyone. All humanitarian organizations, whatever
their philosophy and strategy, were seared by the conflict.
“We’ve all been debased by what we’ve seen here,”
lamented one senior UNPROFOR official. All humanitarian
actors faced routine violations of humanitarian law and norms.
None were satisfied with the results of their efforts.
The fourth factor contributing to the extreme difficulty
was the lack of effective international political efforts to deal with the
underlying causes of the suffering. The international community
responded to rising tensions within, and ultimately the dissolution
of, Yugoslavia with a series of ad hoc and ineffective
half-measures. These included efforts to resolve the crisis by
the former European Community (EC)—this report uses the
term European Community, although the EC became the
5

European Union on November 1, 1993—and the Conference
on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), by a succession
of Special Representatives of the U.N. Secretaries-General,
and by the Security Council itself. Neither the advent of
a new U.S. administration in January 1993 nor discussion later
that year of a major military role for NATO troops reflected a
heightened or sustained level of international resolve. The
Security Council authorized UNPROFOR to use “all measures
necessary” to deliver assistance but shrank from the application
of force.
Sensing weak international resolve early on, the
belligerents manipulated humanitarian organizations and interests.
They treated humanitarian programs and personnel
with abandon, exploiting the importance attached by international
public opinion to keeping such activities going at almost
any price. “People look at us as if to say, ‘We know you’re
feeding us to compensate for the fact that your governments
won’t act,’” observed Maria Bellacque-Bellar, Sarajevo-based
representative of the French NGO Action International Contre
La Faim (AICF). The prevailing sentiment seemed to be that,
as one columnist expressed it in November 1993, the world
was dealing with “an insoluble problem in which outsiders
could do no more than comfort the wounded and feed the
starving.”
The political impasse undermined major international
humanitarian initiatives. Efforts by UNPROFOR troops and
UNHCR officials to assist and protect civilians in Bosnia and
Herzegovina were ridiculed when the Security Council demanded
that besieged enclaves be treated as “safe areas.”
Encircling Serb forces did their best to assure that such enclaves
remained anything but safe, despite international political
rhetoric to the contrary.
“Helping people where they are” was widely viewed as a
euphemism employed by European countries to mask reluctance
to meet their accepted obligations to provide asylum.
The much-trumpeted creation of a human rights tribunal was
undercut by the failure to provide it and other bodies collecting
evidence with adequate financial and personnel resources.
The attention lavished on belligerent leaders, some of whom
might face indictment, and the speculation that eventual pros-
6

ecutions would be bargained away in return for their support
for a negotiated end to the war also denigrated the seriousness
of international insistence that justice be done.
A detailed review of political efforts to address the crisis
is beyond the scope of the immediate study, which focuses
primarily on humanitarian action. (For some of the major
political events during the years 1991 to 1993, see the chronology
in Annex 2.) However, there is ample evidence to support
the conclusion of Rosalyn Higgins in “The New United Nations
and Former Yugoslavia” (International Affairs, 69, 3 [1993],
p. 469): “We have chosen to respond to major unlawful violence,
not by stopping that violence, but by trying to provide
relief to the suffering. But our choice of policy allows the
suffering to continue.”
From the start, humanitarian activities had been a showcase
for governments, unable to forge agreement on a common
political or military strategy, to demonstrate concern for the
people of the region. While the High Commissioner for Refugees
and other senior officials repeatedly cautioned against
letting such activities become an all-purpose response to the
crisis, their pleas were not heeded. Early in 1993, one senior
official told us that “Humanitarian aspects have become the
centerpiece of the U.N.’s entire Yugoslavia operation. This
was not intended.”
During our first mission to the region in March 1993, the
terms humanitarian alibi and the humanitarian fig leaf were
gaining currency. At the time of our second mission in late
June, reduced contributions to the U.N.’s humanitarian efforts
caused apprehension that even the commitment of governments
to underwrite humanitarian action was waning. “It is
not simply that the U.N.’s humanitarian efforts have become
politicized,” François Fouinat, coordinator of the UNHCR
Task Force for the former Yugoslavia, concluded in October.
“It is rather that we’ve been transformed into the only manifestation
of international political will.”
Humanitarian organizations initially saw themselves buying
time for a political solution. As time passed, that solution
failed to materialize and the fighting took an ever widening
toll. In fact, diplomatic initiatives seemed implicated in an
intensification of the suffering. The Vance-Owen plan, even
7

with its concern for minority populations in the 10 multiethnic
areas to be established, arguably led to an increase in
ethnic cleansing as the parties sought to strengthen territorial
claims before signing any agreement. According to many who
witnessed the events at close hand, subsequent discussions
surrounding the Owen-Stoltenberg plan, which sanctioned
the tripartite division of Bosnia and Herzegovina along more
clear-cut ethnic lines, fueled the conflict further still.
As the situation worsened, the holding operation in which
humanitarian organizations had been engaged became less
and less tenable. “The failure of the international community
to reverse the logic of war,” said UNHCR Special Envoy
Nicholas Morris in mid-1993, “has meant the failure of humanitarian
operations predicated on the logic of war being
reversed.”
U.N. humanitarian organizations were caught in a no-win
situation. They were tarnished by association with Security
Council decisions that had failed to achieve their stated objectives.
They also were faulted for not having found a way of
extracting cooperation from the same belligerents who had
ignored the expressed wishes and established standards of the
international community.
The political debate had come full circle. In some quarters,
humanitarian organizations were blamed for the proliferation
of the suffering that they had been expected to address. Earlier
chastised for participating in ethnic cleansing by assisting
people to leave dangerous situations, they were later looked to
for assistance in whatever population movements might follow
an eventual peace agreement. Diplomats, politicians, and
peacekeeping officials, once critical of humanitarian organizations
for suspending operations in the face of insecurity and
abuse, themselves debated whether U.N. troops would have
to be withdrawn from the operational theater.
Many of those interviewed believe that more decisive
political or military action early on would have made a critical
difference to the credibility of all U.N. efforts. “We are in the
presence of totally savage operators,” said UNHCR’s Acting
Special Envoy Klaus von Helldorff in March 1993. “If there
were some sense of humanity among them, we would have no
difficulty in supplying people fully with what they need. Had
8

the international community intervened more decisively and
assertively early on, we might have needed much less humanitarian
relief.”
Opinion is more divided about whether the use of military
force later in the conflict—for example, in 1992 by UNPROFOR
to assist in the delivery of relief supplies or in 1993 by NATO
against the Serbs—would have been effective. That debate is
examined in Chapter 3, along with how aid activities may have
prolonged the war. In any event, the presence of the U.N.’s
humanitarian organizations, interacting with political and
military entities and dependent upon decisions outside their
control yet rarely consulted along the way, aggravated an
already difficult situation.
Four factors—the newness of the challenge, the complexity
of the issues, the attitudes of the warring parties themselves,
and the lack of effective international political support—contributed
to the extreme difficulty encountered by
humanitarian agencies in the former Yugoslavia. Together,
these difficulties represented the defining reality within which
practitioners and their organizations conducted their tasks.
Despite difficulties and complexities, the question at the end
of the day was simple. Was the civilian population of the wartorn
region better off as a result of U.N. efforts?
Our answer is “yes.” Humanitarian efforts throughout the
region provided relief to many, protection to some, resettlement
and asylum to a few. We concur with the observation by
the first Special Envoy of the High Commissioner for Refugees,
José-Maria Mendiluce, that “We have saved many hundreds
of thousands of lives by feeding people and by reducing
the level of horrors and atrocities.” In some areas such as Bihac
and Sarajevo, U.N. efforts made an essential difference. In
others, their contribution was more limited. In still others, the
plight of civilians in October 1993 was more precarious than at
any point during the conflict.
However, the United Nations was largely unsuccessful in
moderating the policies and practices of protagonists and in
deflecting the ravages of the conflicts. The fact remained, as
one NGO official pointed out, that more people had died from
shells than had succumbed to disease and hunger. Her comment
implied that more lives would have been saved had the
9

U.N. put as much effort into stopping the war as into distributing
food. Others pointed out that many civilians would have
been better off had they fled the area altogether rather than
believing that the U.N. would assist and protect them.
10

CHAPTER 2:
THE OPERATIONAL LANDSCAPE FOR HUMANITARIAN ACTION
We review in this chapter the United Nation’s humanitarian
response to the crisis in the former Yugoslavia from two
perspectives. First, we examine the kinds of humanitarian
activities carried out. Second, we present the institutional
framework within which those activities were mounted and
managed. We will evaluate these humanitarian activities in
the following chapter.
Humanitarian Activities
Humanitarian activities include both the provision of
emergency assistance and the protection of basic human
rights.
Assistance
U.N. figures in late 1993 placed the number of persons
killed or missing as a result of the conflicts in the former
Yugoslavia at 230,000, with another 60,000 seriously wounded.
Of prewar Yugoslavia’s total population of 22 million, an
estimated 4.2 million, or roughly one in five, had been displaced
by late 1993. While major displacement occurred early
in the conflicts, Figure 2.1 indicates that the largest single
upheaval occurred during the first six months of 1993. The
previous seven months represented the period of the second
largest displacement. Bosnia and Herzegovina contained the
largest number of those affected, with about 2,280,000 persons
displaced by mid-1993, followed by Croatia and Serbia.
The intended beneficiaries of U.N. assistance ranged well
beyond those displaced by the war. UNHCR, which normally
assists persons who have crossed an international frontier,
was in this instance requested by the U.N. Secretary-General
to help those still within their own countries. As the conflict in
Bosnia and Herzegovina worsened, the task expanded further
to include those threatened with displacement but not yet
displaced.
11

No. of displaced / refugees
200,000
400,000
600,000
800,000
Croatia
Slovenia
Serbia
B & H
Montenegro F.Y.R
Macedonia
*Includes both those
who fled as a result of
the war in Croatia and
those who fled the
conflict in Bosnia and
Herzogovina.
June 30, 1993*
December 31, 1992*
May 27, 1992*
December 31, 1991
2,280,000
Figure 2.1 Population Displacemtent in the Former Yugoslavia
12

Moreover, the beneficiary population expanded as, with
each passing month, the impact of the war on local populations
became more negative. As of early 1993, about eighty
percent of the refugees (380,000) and displaced persons
(361,000) in Croatia were provided shelter by host families.
The balance resided in hotels (80,000) and collective centers
(55,000). By April 1993 in Serbia and Montenegro, government
figures placed the numbers of those accommodated by host
families (“...relatives, friends, and anonymous humane
people...”) at 96.9 percent, or 572,000 persons. The remaining
3.1 percent, or 18,000 persons, were housed in collective centers
(“...old school buildings, children’s hostels, barracks, old
hotels, former military barracks, etc....”).
Accommodating the displaced largely with families rather
than in institutions made the newcomers more dependent on
the resources of their host families and more difficult to reach
with generalized assistance programs. As the war took an
increasing toll on the economies of the region, those families
became less able to meet the needs of their guests.
In Serbia, the worsening situation reflected not only the
war but also the imposition of international economic sanctions.
“The general economic collapse and the blockade of
commercial traffic,” explained the foreword to the U.N.’s
Consolidated Appeal for early 1994, “have created a situation
in which those who are not refugees or displaced are often in
as great a need as those internally or externally displaced.”
Included within the target population, along with refugees
and displaced persons, were “other affected persons” and
“social cases,” that is, the most needy among the local resident
population.
During the first six months of 1993, the target population
throughout the former Yugoslavia swelled to 4,259,000, including
837,000 refugees, 1,634,000 displaced persons, and
1,788,000 other affected persons. This was the first time a U.N.
appeal included social cases in Croatia (176,000) as well as in
Serbia and Montenegro (150,000). The figures were conservative.
Other estimates held that 90 percent of the resident
Serbian population, for example, was unable to meet basic
food needs. The situation deteriorated markedly with each
successive visit by the team in March, June, and September 1993.
13

How many persons were reached by U.N. humanitarian
assistance in any form at any time? Each new United Nations
appeal noted an increase in the number of intended beneficiaries
but did not indicate how many persons had been reached
during the previous period. In the food sector, for example—
which the U.N. considered its signature contribution and
where the best data is available—the estimated percentages of
those reached varied from area to area.
In Slovenia, where conflict did not impede distribution,
the World Food Programme (WFP) calculated that it had
supplied food to the total target population of about 60,000
registered refugees. In war-ridden Bosnia and Herzegovina,
where in September 1993 there were 2.28 million people in
need of food, WFP estimated that it met about 70 percent of
food needs. That figure was expected to decrease during the
latter months of the year, reflecting a target population increase
to 2.74 million people, winter rations expanded from
535 to 610 grams per day, and more obstacles to deliveries.
In enclaves within Bosnia and Herzegovina, the percentages
of needs met were lower still. During the first nine
months of the year, as illustrated in Figure 2.2, U.N. food aid
met 52.4 percent of the needs of the civilian population in
Zepa, 42.9 percent in Srebrenica, and 26.4 percent in Goradze.
The percentages would have increased if food air-dropped by
NATO operations—roughly 1,000, 2,000, and 3,000 tons to the
three enclaves during the same period—had been included.
Because of deteriorating security conditions, however, overland
food deliveries were expected to meet an even smaller
proportion of food needs in the final months of the year. The
percentages reached were inversely related to the numbers of
those in need, estimated in late 1993 at 10,000 in Zepa, 44,140
in Srebrenica, and 66,000 in Goradze.
The unusually low percentages of distribution in the enclaves
reflected how much the delivery of food was complicated
by the war. Fighting in eastern Bosnia between the
Bosnian army and Serbian forces throughout 1993 impeded
deliveries from the Dalmatian coast, Serbia, and outside the
region. The outbreak of fighting between the Bosnian army
and Croatian forces in central Bosnia in the spring of 1993 cut
the convoy routes from the coast, impeding food deliveries to
14

Thousands (metric tons)
0
2
4
6
8
10
Gorazde Srebrenica
Zepa
52.4%
of need
26.4 %
of need
42.9 %
of need
Distribution
Needs
Figure 2.2 Food Assistance Provided by the U.N. to “Safe Areas”
in Eastern Bosnia January 1993 to September 1993
15

the entire population of central Bosnia, from Zenica to Tuzla.
The war also complicated monitoring the end-uses and
end-users of the food. It is difficult to keep track of food in
every war, and in this set of conflicts the difficulty caused
endless controversy for the United Nations In December 1992,
UNHCR was accused by a USAID consultant of providing 23
percent of its food to the Serbian side—in effect, as a bribe to
ensure Serb cooperation with the aid operation. UNHCR
officials vigorously disputed the allegation, insisting that their
allocations were based on need. Of the 380,000 target beneficiaries
in Sarajevo, they pointed out, about 90,000, or 24
percent, were in Serbian-controlled parts of the capital, although
their needs may have been less extreme than those of
Sarajevo’s Muslims.
There was also controversy over the delivery of food to
Muslims in Sarajevo. Once the food arrived at a central warehouse,
the Bosnian government assumed responsibility for
distribution to the city communes, hospitals, and bakeries.
There were repeated reports that much of this food never
reached those in need, ending up instead on the black market.
One UNPROFOR official estimated that individual Sarajevans
were receiving less than 100 grams a day, a small fraction of the
target.
In the most thorough review to date of these and other
end-use controversies, WFP in November 1993 concluded:
...losses incurred while food aid is under the
control of the U.N. System (WFP, UNHCR,
UNPROFOR) are no more than standard handling
losses....Once the food reaches the municipalities
and communes the scope for distribution
to people other than the identified
displaced and war affected clearly increases.
Even at this level, which is largely out of sight
of the international community, the problem
is believed to be more one of distribution to
other segments of the population rather than
diversion to combatants.
How adequate and helpful was the food provided? The
16

issue was less one of quantity than of equity in distribution
and of the nutritional adequacy of the specific food items
provided. Sampling carried out in mid-1993 by UNHCR,
UNICEF, WHO, and two NGOs in four areas of Bosnia and
Herzegovina found no signs of protein-energy malnutrition in
the under-five population and no serious micro-nutrient deficiencies
among mothers and children. Yet weight losses since
the beginning of the war among adults were reported averaging
10 kilograms (22 pounds). The survey concluded that “if
humanitarian food aid had not been supplied, the nutritional
status of the population would have been seriously compromised.”
U.N. organizations engaged in other forms of emergency
assistance were equally certain that their efforts helped prevent
a more massive disaster, although overall beneficiary
data was skimpy. UNICEF estimated that its programs reached
1.5 million women and children throughout the region during
the crisis. This number included the estimated 70,000 children
in Sarajevo enrolled in its supplementary feeding programs
and 200,000 children in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
who had received relief supplies or other benefits in November
1992 during the “Week of Tranquillity.”
The World Health Organization estimated that about one
third of Sarajevo’s health sector needs had been met by supplies
it channeled, and that about half of the population in
Serbia, Montenegro, and eastern Bosnia had been assisted by
its drugs, social services, training, and other support. WHO
did not distinguish either between war victims and the displaced
or local populations. “All users of health services,”
WHO reported, “are legitimate beneficiaries of WHO’s aid.”
As with UNICEF, WHO’s efforts to strengthen government
infrastructure stood to benefit the entire population, particularly
in Bosnia, Serbia, and Montenegro where, WHO reported,
“the entire health care system has collapsed.”
Protection
If figures of those benefiting from U.N. assistance were
highly approximate, the numbers of those who received U.N.
protection were even more so. The difficulty of moving from
17

quantitative data to qualitative judgments was also more
pronounced. Moreover, in conflicts where persons protected
one moment easily fall into danger the next, it is difficult to
assess the protection they receive at any one time. Also of
critical importance is the issue of whether protection activities
suffered as a result of magnitude of material assistance.
The U.N.’s protection work proved to be among the most
controversial elements in its entire humanitarian operation,
largely because it embraced a new approach. Known as preventive
protection, this entailed protecting people who had
not yet left their homes in an effort to prevent ethnic cleansing.
This represented a radical departure for UNHCR, whose
traditional mandate had involved working with refugees once
they had left their countries of origin.
Compared to assistance activities, the protection effort
received fewer resources and represented only a small part of
the overall humanitarian effort. At the end of 1993, UNHCR
had about 25 officers with protection responsibilities in the
former Yugoslavia. Some of these were full-time officers,
others were field officers with some protection duties as well.
They were assisted in several locations by national staff.
Principal duties included protecting asylum seekers, halting
the expulsion of refugees, and monitoring the treatment of
minorities.
According to UNHCR’s Protection Report, its officers in
Croatia succeeded in regularizing the status of about 100,000
unofficial refugees or asylum seekers by providing papers,
following up their cases with the Croatian government, and
protesting when they did not receive refugee status and were
threatened with refoulement (forcible repatriation). By their
physical presence, protection officers also managed to stop
expulsions of refugees at seaports, bus terminals, and police
stations, and to secure readmission to Croatia of some expelled
refugees.
Beyond their traditional role in defending asylum seekers,
stateless persons, and refugees, UNHCR protection officers
also interceded in cases where minorities were subjected to
discrimination and threatened with expulsion. On occasion
they even took the authorities to court. In Osijek, UNHCRinitiated
legal action won citizenship rights for about 200 Serbs
18

and, in Zagreb, the return of confiscated Serb property. UNHCR
staff also organized seminars for civilian and military judges
and police.
Protection during a war is not only difficult but also
dangerous. Yet, as in any humanitarian crisis, it was the
physical presence of U.N. officials that provided the best
guarantee. The UNHCR protection officer in Zenica worked
closely with the British battalion based at Vitez. On September
10, there was a fight near the British base, after which Croat
soldiers came looking for Muslim villagers to trade as hostages
or to kill. The officer foiled the soldiers’ plans by asking
the British UNPROFOR commander to escort 30 Muslims out
of the village to Novi Travnik.
Working in the war zone of Central Bosnia, where fighting
between Muslims and Croats had claimed thousands of lives,
UNHCR officials were engaged in protection every day. On
one occasion, an official happened upon four Muslims who
had been taken off a Red Cross ambulance and were detained
in a cinema. On another, he accompanied a field officer of the
U.N. Centre for Human Rights to visit the embattled Muslim
enclave of Stare Vitez.
But for every uplifting success, there were many demoralizing
failures. A member of the Humanitarianism and War
Project team accompanied a UNHCR protection officer to the
small village of Rotilj, just outside the Croat-held stronghold
of Kiseljak in Central Bosnia. Much to the embarrassment of
UNPROFOR headquartered there, the Croats had gathered
together Muslims from surrounding villages and herded them
into Rotilj. The Croat commander said this was for their own
safety, but the UNHCR visit uncovered disturbing information.
Twenty-two Muslims were taken out each day and forced
to dig trenches at the Croat lines; several Muslim men had
disappeared; some of the Muslims were living in houses that
had been destroyed; and only the women were permitted out
to pick up food. There was little that the protection officer
could do beyond registering his concerns with the local authorities.
When Croatian authorities rounded up large numbers of
refugees without papers in 1992, UNHCR protection officers
as well as officials from the U.S. and German embassies were
19

denied access to the centers where they were detained. About
120-200 apparently were returned to Bosnia; an estimated 380
were released. In July 1992, 3,700 draft age men were refouled
from Croatia to Bosnia and Herzegovina despite UNHCR
efforts. There were also many cases in which UNHCR lacked
the necessary staff or information to address problems. It is
unknown how many asylum seekers from Bosnia failed to
enter Croatia due to lack of documentation or how many were
refouled because UNHCR officers were not present.
Reviews of local successes and failures need to take into
account the small number of UNHCR protection officers, the
security problems they faced, and the fact that they had never
before operated in a war zone where serious human rights
abuses occurred daily. Moreover, the strategy of preventive
protection required greater engagement and professionalism
than had been developed to date.
Human rights monitors from the U.N. Centre for Human
Rights, the secretariat of the U.N.’s human rights program,
also were engaged in the former Yugoslavia. They, too, worked
in a war zone for the very first time, the first monitors the
center had ever deployed. Three or four were sent to Zagreb,
not to take on individual cases or intercede with the authorities
but to collect information and documentation for the Special
Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights, Tadeusz
Mazowiecki. Their on-the-ground presence and occasional
trips to the field, however, had some deterrent value. They
also made inquiries in certain cases and alerted the Special
Rapporteur to situations needing intercession.
UNPROFOR Civilian Police (CIVPOL) also undertook
protection activities in the U.N. Protected Areas (UNPAs) in
Croatia. Numbering 542 in June 1993, their mandate was to
monitor local police forces to ensure that they carried out their
duties “without discrimination against persons of any nationality
or abusing anyone’s human rights.” Hundreds of human
rights abuse cases came their way. Often they worked together
with UNHCR protection officers, jointly interceding with
local authorities to prevent expulsions of refugees and asylum
seekers. According to CIVPOL officials, they achieved some
modest concessions. They did not, however, have the authority
to detain, arrest, or imprison people, to take anyone to
20

court, or to intercede with judicial authorities. CIVPOL also
helped trace missing persons in the UNPAs. Outside Croatia,
CIVPOL had a more limited mandate and fewer resources.
The mandate for UNPROFOR troops in Croatia also included
protection responsibilities. As elaborated later, troops
were charged with controlling access to the UNPAs, theoretically
ensuring that asylum seekers were not turned back. They
also were expected to assist in the repatriation of persons who
had fled or been expelled from the UNPAs and to transmit
information on human rights violations to U.N. headquarters.
In September 1993, UNPROFOR troops arrived at villages
in the Medak pocket of central Bosnia, where ruins were still
smoldering from an attack by Croatian army troops. Canadian
and French battalions compiled a detailed account of the
destruction, documenting the systematic burning of Serbian
property as part of a “comprehensive scorched earth policy.”
Eighteen bodies were found, including those of seven women.
The resulting Medak report was described by UNPROFOR as
signaling a new level of assertiveness on protection issues. It
was sent to the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on
Human Rights, who had recommended earlier an expanded
UNPROFOR protection mandate and presence to investigate
human rights violations.
In the following month, UNPROFOR investigated a massacre
of Muslims by Bosnian Croats at Stupni Do, issued
public statements on the incident, and prepared a report for
the U.N. war crimes tribunal. Over Bosnian Croat objections,
Swedish UNPROFOR troops insisted upon visiting Muslim
men held prisoner in two schools in Vares, Bosnia and publicized
their findings.
The most advanced formula for providing protection was
the four UNPAs in Croatia set up in January 1992 under the
Vance plan and the six Muslim enclaves designated as safe
areas by the U.N. Security Council in June 1993. In Bosnia,
U.N. safe havens were established in the cities of Sarajevo,
Tuzla, Zepa, Srebrenica, Goradze, and Bihac.
In theory, these two concepts broke new ground; in practice,
extremely limited protection was offered within them.
Fighting in the UNPAs stopped and there was some success in
preventing expulsions of minorities. But often ethnic cleans-
21

ing proceeded uninterrupted. In the case of the safe havens,
the Special Rapporteur recommended that their boundaries
be widened to make them economically viable and that an
adequate number of UNPROFOR troops be deployed to make
them truly secure.
Reinforcing their local activities, U.N. officials worked
with governments in the region to deter abuses against civilians.
They used data such as that described above to appeal to
governments in Zagreb, Belgrade, Sarajevo, and Pale to halt
inhumane practices. In the spring of 1993, UNHCR prevailed
on the Croatian government to restart registering Muslim
refugees, a process suspended in mid-1992. The initiative was
important to many who, lacking proper documentation, were
subject to refoulement to Bosnia. The Special Rapporteur also
interceded with governments in the region and in one case was
credited with having halted expulsions of refugees from Croatia
to Bosnia.
U.N. officials also enlisted the international media in
generating outrage at what was taking place. This spurred
governments and U.N. bodies to act and led to concessions
from governments in the region. The international outcry
following media exposure of detention camps in Bosnia, for
example, succeeded in persuading the local authorities to
allow the International Committee of the Red Cross entry and
to close most of the camps. Reports by the Special Rapporteur
of the Commission on Human Rights also sparked the action
of governments. For example, his recommendation regarding
the creation of safe havens in Bosnia was accepted.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees at the international
level and successive Special Envoys in the region were
emphatic in urging states to provide asylum to refugees from
the former Yugoslavia. “The right to seek and to enjoy asylum
and the corresponding duty of non-refoulement,” Sadako
Ogata said in a statement to the 49th Session of the U.N.
Commission on Human Rights in March 1993, “are the cornerstone
of international protection.”
The asylum record, however, was disappointing. As of
June 1993, Germany had accepted more than 300,000 persons
from the former Yugoslavia, but Britain had taken only 4,424
and France only 4,200. Some linked UNHCR’s policy of pre-
22

ventive protection in the former Yugoslavia to this result,
asserting that UNHCR responded more to the restrictive
sentiments of European governments than to the needs of the
region’s refugees.
To encourage governments to open their doors to refugees
in need of protection and relocation, UNHCR in 1992 endorsed
the concept of “temporary protected status.” It was
not, however, particularly vigorous in promoting this policy.
By the fall of 1993, 25 governments outside the former Yugoslavia
had offered a total of 27,710 places for temporary
protection or resettlement, mainly for former inmates of detention
centers and their dependents. These had become an
object of special concern as a result of widely publicized
concentration camp-like conditions.
By early October, however, only 12,987 former detainees
and their dependents (almost all of them Muslims) had left for
abroad. The limited numbers benefiting led to questions about
whether UNHCR had assigned sufficient staff and was processing
cases expeditiously. The sparse number of places
offered by governments (for example, the United States allocated
1,000) also led to questions about whether UNHCR was
pressing countries energetically enough to take in former
detainees and other victims of violence. The appropriateness
of discouraging resettlement for persons other than ex-detainees
was also an item of debate.
Measuring the effectiveness of protection activities is not
easy. Looking back, the first UNHCR Special Envoy, José-
Maria Mendiluce, concluded that “we have saved thousands
of people who were trapped,” whether by negotiating ceasefires,
assisting and protecting them where they were, or evacuating
them. Yet he and his successor, Nicholas Morris, emphasized
that mass violations of human rights continued, as the
Medak incident confirmed. Similarly, the Special Rapporteur,
who credited the U.N. with reducing violations, also noted,
“In spite of the high level of commitment of the United Nations
personnel—UNPROFOR and UNHCR—they are unable to
protect adequately the affected populations and in many
circumstances are helpless to prevent violations of human
rights.”
Isolating the role played by the U.N. in deterring abuse is
23

also difficult. Human Rights Watch, for example, challenged
the Secretary-General’s assessment that expulsions had ceased
in the UNPAs specifically because of UNPROFOR’s intense
patrolling and control at checkpoints. “Although mass expulsions
have decreased in frequency,” the NGO wrote, “this is
due largely to the fact that most of the area’s non-Serbian
population had already been expelled by the time UNPROFOR
was fully deployed.”
Even in cases where human rights abuses had been stopped
or reduced, it was difficult to determine the relative importance
of U.N. intercession. A positive connection was suggested
by the fact that most attacks were carried out on people
in areas without international presence.
Presence, however, often had limited value. All UNHCR
officials working in the Vitez area in late 1993, for example,
were instructed to travel in armored personnel carriers following
several attacks on United Nations officials. One of the most
blatant occurred in mid-August when Boris Zeravtic, a wellknown
local figure employed by UNHCR, was killed by a
Croat sniper while delivering food. Traveling inside armored
vehicles made it impossible for UNHCR protection officer
Steven Wolfson to exploit his main advantage. “The whole
point of protection is to be visible,” he observed. “However,
because I have to travel around in an armored personnel
carrier, nobody knows I’m there.”
Was the advocacy carried out by UNHCR compromised
by its companion and—in budgetary and operational terms—
higher responsibility for delivering relief aid? One sub-office
that faced this dilemma was in Pale, the de facto capital of
Bosnian Serb-held territory. Just before the team’s visit, UNHCR
received word that about 400 Muslims had been expelled from
the town of Bjieljina, one of the first towns overrun by the Serbs
in the spring of 1992. The senior UNHCR official protested to
the Serb authorities in Pale. He was well aware that his protest
could anger the Serbs, but he also pointed out that UNHCR aid
to the Serbs might have to be reviewed if ethnic cleansing was
happening under the agency’s nose. It was a subtle reminder
that aid could be used to advance the cause of human rights.
In other situations, however, criticisms of human rights
violations were muted for fear of jeopardizing aid access. “It
24

would compromise food deliveries if I made a démarche,”
said one UNHCR field officer in Bosnia who felt the need to
confront local authorities on the plight of minorities. Other
UNHCR officials expressed the fear that “an active human
rights policy would complicate our assistance role.”
The reality was that although complementary in theory,
protection and assistance activities often competed. Some
accordingly drew the conclusion that given the overriding
importance of UNHCR’s protection mandate, U.N. agencies
other than UNHCR should carry out emergency assistance
activities, or that Human Rights Centre monitors should take
on more protection functions. Senior UNPROFOR officials
acknowledged a similar tension between pressing the warring
parties to curtail human rights abuses and nurturing their
cooperation on other important matters, including a negotiated
end to the conflict.
In the final analysis, the record of the United Nations
demonstrated the lack of resources devoted to protection
responsibilities. Simply put, protection suffered from the relative
lack of priority it was accorded, particularly as contrasted
with assistance efforts. The small cadre of UNHCR officials in
the region working on protection duties, augmented by monitors
from the Centre for Human Rights and by assorted
UNPROFOR troops and civilian police, were simply overmatched
by the needs.
The Institutional Framework
Shifting from the activities to the participating institutions,
we begin with the centerpiece of the international humanitarian
response, the United Nations High Commission
for Refugees. We then widen the circle to the other humanitarian
organizations within the U.N. system and beyond. Finally,
we review the interface between the humanitarian entities and
the political and military actors within the United Nations and
elsewhere. Our purpose is to situate the major actors within
the operational landscape.
25

UNHCR as Lead Agency
UNHCR received its mandate as lead agency from the
Secretary-General in a letter dated October 25, 1991. On the
basis of its statute, expertise, and experience, UNHCR was
requested to assist displaced persons in Yugoslavia. UNHCR
at the time had a small office in Belgrade for routine refugee
business but no presence in Croatia or Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In fact, in the fall of 1991, as the chronology in Annex 2 notes,
the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia was still intact.
After a period of rapid turnover in leadership and of
lagging donor contributions, the crisis in the former Yugoslavia
provided UNHCR with an opportunity to demonstrate its
capabilities in a high-profile emergency. Its involvement gave
it new prominence as a major player in international humanitarian
crises. Its global budget rose from $883 million in 1991
to $1.127 billion in 1992. The extent of its preoccupation with
its Yugoslavia work led some officials, however, to question
the wisdom of having accepted the lead agency assignment.
The task placed the organization on new and unfamiliar
terrain, but UNHCR welcomed it. The initial challenge increased
in scale and complexity with the outbreak of fighting
in April 1992 in Bosnia and Herzegovina. As the situation in
the former Yugoslavia deteriorated, U.N. High Commissioner
for Refugees Mrs. Sadako Ogata wrote to the Human Rights
Commission, “our work has increasingly involved refugees
who have had to flee their own country.” By the end of 1992,
UNHCR was engaged in what her Special Envoy Mendiluce
called “the largest, most complex and risky operation...ever
undertaken by humanitarian organizations.”
What was understood by lead agency was unclear then and
remained so during the next two years. There was no standard
agreement spelling out the necessary duties. As UNHCR
interpreted them, they included “prime responsibility for
logistics/transport, food monitoring, domestic needs, shelter,
community services, health, emergency transition activities in
agriculture and income generation, protection/legal assistance,
and assistance to other agencies in sectors under their
responsibility.” UNHCR saw its task as assuring that the full
range of needs among the uprooted throughout the region
26

were met. While the High Commissioner turned early on to
WHO, UNICEF, and WFP to become operational partners in
the effort, UNHCR ended by assuming operational responsibilities
for many of these activities, as described below.
UNHCR soon comprised the largest civilian presence in
the former Yugoslavia. Its numbers grew from 19 in December
1991 to 80 in May, 125 in September, and 337 in December 1992.
There were 563 UNHCR international staff members on duty
in March 1993, including 217 international and 346 local staff
members but excluding 139 truck drivers in the UNHCR
transport fleet. About half of the 217 were regular UNHCR
staff—the balance had been provided from other organizations
and agencies. By mid-November, the ranks had swelled
to 678, comprised of 226 international and 452 local staff
members—a 35-fold increase in two years. More than 15
percent of UNHCR’s total staff were engaged in the Yugoslav
crisis.
The pressure took its toll. During a thirteen-month period
beginning in September 1992, UNHCR and other humanitarian
personnel were involved in 660 separate security incidents.
Nine UNHCR staff members or staff associated with
UNHCR’s operations were killed. The toll was even higher
among soldiers: 58 UNPROFOR soldiers were killed, half of
them in war-related incidents. Thirty-four journalists lost
their lives. There were also casualties and fatalities among
NGOs.
At a time when there were roughly 18 million recognized
refugees around the world, the former Yugoslavia became the
organization’s largest single assignment. In 1992, when
UNHCR requested $295.4 million in funds for Yugoslav operations,
the next largest program, Afghanistan repatriation,
was budgeted at $62 million. UNHCR’s exposure, however,
was more than financial. The widening war and the deepening
humanitarian cataclysm absorbed the time and energy of
many senior professionals. The High Commissioner began to
call herself “the desk officer for the former Yugoslavia.”
The first Special Envoy of the High Commissioner arrived
on the scene in late November 1991, he later recalled, on a onemonth
assignment with one assistant and a laptop computer.
In a matter of months, UNHCR had developed and assumed
27

primary responsibility for the wide range of programs already
described. UNHCR directed region-wide operations from the
Special Envoy’s office in Zagreb. Activities in the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia and in the eastern enclaves in Bosnia
and Herzegovina were managed through its Belgrade office.
UNHCR’s office in Split handled programs along Croatia’s
Dalmatian coast.
By October 1993, UNHCR had 13 offices in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, 11 in Croatia, including the UNPAs, and one
each in Slovenia, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and the Former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. It also operated out of the
capital cities of neighboring countries and along several of the
key borders. UNHCR managed a trucking fleet of more than
350 vehicles with a capacity of more than 4,000 metric tons and
a network of 11 warehouses. Its activities were anchored by a
special task force based at UNHCR headquarters in Geneva.
The Civilian Assistance and Protection Network
As lead agency, UNHCR found itself in the center of three
concentric circles of humanitarian actors. Within the first were
other major U.N. organizations that provided assistance (WFP,
UNICEF, WHO), worked with the political and peacekeeping
organs of the U.N. (DHA), or engaged in protection activities
(the U.N. Human Rights Commission and Centre). A second
concentric circle included governments, outside donors, intergovernmental
organizations such as the European Community,
the International Organization for Migration, and the
warring parties. NGOs and the ICRC made up a third circle.
The United Nations did not respond as a system but rather
as a series of separate and largely autonomous agencies. Each
had its own institutional dynamics, formulated its own priorities,
and moved according to a timetable of its own devising.
The World Food Programme arrived late on the scene,
reflecting the deep reluctance by senior officials at its headquarters
in Rome to engage in what they feared would become
a major detour from its primary task of assisting developing
countries. Acceding to pressure from its major donor governments,
WFP finally opened offices in Zagreb and Belgrade in
November 1992. By then, UNHCR already had managed food
28

aid for a year, and food supply, and distribution activities of
the European Community were also well established.
Once on the scene, WFP had difficulty ensuring a continuous
supply of international food commodities. Despite its
warnings to food donors, warehouses exhausted their stocks
in Zagreb and Metkovic (along the Adriatic) in April 1993 and
in Serbia and Montenegro in May. Purchases by UNHCR and
airdrops of food from outside the region picked up some of the
slack. In late 1993, WFP was again warning donors of another
approaching gap in the food pipeline in early 1994.
Despite occasional shortages, WFP generated during the
nine months beginning in November 1992 commitments of
more than 320,000 metric tons of food aid valued at $225.6
million. These resources had to be mobilized from scratch
specifically for the former Yugoslavia, since WFP was intent
on protecting its stand-by food and funds for emergency
activities in poorer countries. WFP brought to the overall relief
operation impressive skills in coordination, logistics, and
monitoring that were backed by sophisticated data-processing
capacity.
WHO and UNICEF were also conspicuous by their early
absence. Many of their functions were covered initially by
UNHCR; eventually they developed their own programs.
Opening an office in Zagreb in July 1992, WHO gradually
deployed staff and began operations throughout the region.
However, it did not become operational in Serbia until the
summer of 1993, when the needs of refugees and local populations
were already advanced.
WHO’s work was spearheaded by its Special Representative.
By the end of 1993, it had 69 staff members in the field.
Among the 24 expatriates were public health experts and
health system managers; the 45-person local staff was comprised
of doctors, administrators, program assistants, and
support personnel. It also provided 14 different health kits (for
example, for chronic diseases, transfusions, and tuberculosis),
some of them devised with the special needs of the region in
mind. For the two-year period beginning in November 1991,
contributions and pledges to WHO totaled a modest $23.6
million.
To UNICEF, with a tradition of assisting all parties in civil
29

wars, the terrain was more familiar. It opened program offices
in Zagreb and Belgrade in November 1991 and in Split and
Sarajevo in July 1992. In November 1992, UNICEF appointed
a Special Representative for the region, who set up shop in
Zagreb. During the following year, UNICEF opened suboffices
or programs in each of the former republics. Its initiatives
included the effort to gain access to the civilian population
of Dubrovnik in November 1991, the “Week of Tranquillity”
in November 1992, and arrangements enabling dozens of
hard-to-access municipalities in Bosnia and Herzegovina to
receive relief supplies directly from its warehouses in Croatia.
Unlike other U.N. organizations unfamiliar to people in the
region, UNICEF began as a known commodity. Since the
1940s, Yugoslav citizen committees had supported its work.
While UNICEF experienced a number of start-up problems,
its operations had become firmly established by late
1993. Yet the scale of its activities remained modest. Only $10.9
million had been pledged toward the 1993 target of $48.9
million by early October, although earlier contributions brought
the level of 1993 expenditures to about $25 million. Among
other factors contributing to its generally low-profile, UNICEF
listed its desire to be supportive of the U.N.’s lead agency, its
effort to build government capacity and infrastructure rather
than to distribute relief, and its preoccupation at the global
level with recent breakthroughs in the area of child survival
and children’s rights.
As time passed, other U.N. organizations began to swing
into action. In 1993, UNDP began social service activities in
Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro and in UNPA West. UNIDO
planned food, shelter, and income generation projects.
UNESCO began education efforts. Yet such activities were
modest, tentative, experimental, and localized. By late 1993,
the U.N. Volunteer Program had provided 34 short-term staff
to other organizations, primarily to UNHCR.
Relationships among the major bodies of the world organization
were illustrated by the task of mobilizing resources.
The first three appeals were issued jointly in 1991 and early
1992, with UNHCR taking the lead on behalf of the others. A
more comprehensive series of inter-agency consolidated appeals
began in the fall of 1992. Figure 2.3 shows the levels of
30

successive requests cumulative from December 1991; the response
to each individual appeal was not available.
Requests for resources were evaluated in the Inter-Agency
Standing Committee (IASC), a Geneva-based panel on which
the major U.N. agencies and other humanitarian players participated.
An Inter-Agency Support Unit (IASU), staffed by
DHA and other U.N. officials on loan, facilitated the appeals
process and tracked donor government pledges and U.N.
expenditures. The assessment missions on which later appeals
were based included the EC, the International Organization
for Migration, NGOs, the International Committee of the Red
Cross, the operational U.N. agencies, DHA, and the IASU.
UNHCR’s approach to its mandate led to ongoing tensions
with the Department of Humanitarian Affairs. DHA had
not yet been established in late 1991 when UNHCR received its
assignment. It was created in April 1992 by the Secretary-
General reflecting a decision in December 1991 by the General
Assembly to bring greater coordination to the U.N.’s response
to complex emergencies. In light of this mandate, DHA was
conspicuous by its relative absence from the world’s most
cataclysmic crisis of the day. Issues such as the role of DHA
vis-à-vis UNHCR, the limitations of the consolidated appeal
process, and the problems of donor response are discussed in
Chapter 3.
The Commission on Human Rights, the U.N.’s principal
human rights body, limited its involvement until August 1992,
when it convened its first special session on the situation in the
former Yugoslavia. A second special session was held in
November and December 1992. At the August session, the
Commission appointed a Special Rapporteur, Tadeusz
Mazowiecki, and authorized him to investigate the situation
and report on a regular basis. He also was charged with
compiling information on war crimes for use in possible trials
of violators.
The Special Rapporteur made at least five trips to the
region in 1992 and 1993 and sent expert teams or field staff
there on at least five other occasions. His reports focused on
human rights violations in Bosnia and Herzegovina because of
their magnitude and intensity. His late 1993 report, for example,
while “fully acknowledging the suffering of all peoples,”
31

* Joint Appeals (UNHCR, UNICEF, WHO)
** UN Inter–Agency Consolidated Appeals
Cumulative Income/Pledges for appeals to date total US$1,002,842,613
Dec. 3, 1991* Dec. 91 to June 92 $24.3 million 500,000
April 21, 1992* Dec. 91 to Dec 92 $37.5 million 650,000
May 19, 1992* Revision: Dec. 91 to Dec. 92 $174.4 million 1,000,000
Sept. 4, 1992** Dec. 91 to March 93 $561.7 million 2,780,000
Dec. 4, 1992** Revision: Dec. 91 to March 93 $642.5 million 3,055,000
March 9, 1993** Dec. 91 to Dec. 93 $1,335.3 million 3,820,000
Oct. 8, 1993** Dec. 91 to June 94 $1,675.0 million 4,259,000
Date of Appeal Period Covered Cumulative Number of
Amount in US$ Planned
Beneficiaries
Figure 2.3 U.N. Appeals for Humanitarian Assistance for U.N. Activities in the Former Yugoslavia 1991-1994
32

draws attention to “the appalling extent of persecution by
‘ethnic cleansing’ against those of Muslim ethnic origin.”
His reports also covered other regions of the former Yugoslavia,
documenting violations committed by all parties to the
conflict. One special report was issued on the rape and abuse
of women. The reports were widely considered to provide
objective and reliable information in an environment in which
such information is often distorted for political ends. The
reports were also a source of important recommendations for
enhancing protection, including the creation of security zones
in Bosnia, the deployment of on-site monitors, and the creation
of an expert commission to investigate war crimes. The reports
also made important links between human rights and humanitarian
assistance, demonstrating how denial of food and
other such aid constitute human rights violations.
The Centre for Human Rights, the arm of the U.N. Secretariat
that deals with human rights issues, approved a staff of
five to eight persons in Geneva to assist the Special Rapporteur
and dispatched three to four monitors in the field. The latter,
however, were not deployed until March 1993 because of
financial, administrative, and bureaucratic bottlenecks, and
because no precedent existed for doing so. Although the
Special Rapporteur requested that monitors be deployed in all
parts of the former Yugoslavia, they were found only in
Zagreb. An effort to deploy monitors in Belgrade was rejected
by the federal authorities there; efforts were underway in late
1993 to deploy monitors in Macedonia.
A Commission of Experts was set up under Security
Council Resolution 780 of October 6, 1992 to examine grave
breaches of international humanitarian law in the former
Yugoslavia and to report to the Secretary-General. Security
Council Resolution 808 of February 11, 1993 authorized the
creation of an international tribunal to prosecute persons
charged with serious violations of international humanitarian
law in the former Yugoslavia. In mid-September the General
Assembly elected eleven judges; a prosecutor was appointed
at the end of October.
This constellation of human rights activities were precedents
for the U.N. system. For the first time, the Human Rights
Commission held emergency sessions. The Special Rappor-
33

teur it appointed was given more authority than its other
rapporteurs, including the mandate to report to the General
Assembly and, for the first time in the Commission’s history,
to the Security Council, and was assigned staff. On-site monitors
were deployed by the Centre for the first time. Not since
Nuremberg has an investigative commission and international
tribunal been established to bring to justice those charged
with war crimes and crimes against humanity.
However, human rights innovations such as the monitors,
the commission of experts, and the tribunal did not receive
adequate resources and political support from the U.N. system
to function effectively and develop their full potential.
The number of monitors, for example, was too low, with none
deployed in Bosnia. They did not play a frontlines protection
role, leaving that important function to UNHCR.
Relationships between these human rights entities and
UNHCR were slow to develop but became more effective over
time. There were also tensions. In October 1992, a memorandum
of understanding was signed between the Centre and
UNHCR, which provided that UNHCR would share information
on human rights with the Centre. Such information had
not been made available earlier. At the request of the Human
Rights Commission and the Security Council, UNHCR also
shared information on war crimes with the Commission of
Experts, although it was reluctant to be publicly identified
with this latter Commission’s activities.
Moving to the next concentric circle, the European Community
was present early on in the crisis. The EC assumed the
task of resolving the Yugoslav crisis after Slovenia and Croatia
voted to secede in June 1991. Indeed, the break-up of Yugoslavia
was seen as a critical test of the Community’s ability to
speak and act with one voice on a crucial foreign policy issue
in the post-Cold War era.
In addition to trying to broker a peaceful settlement to the
rising tensions, the EC drew heavily on its food stocks to
provide large amounts of food aid. While the EC helped meet
serious food shortages, its provision of food aid—only to
Croatia and only to and through government authorities—
had serious political ramifications within Croatia and for
other areas of the former Yugoslavia. The effective utilization
34

and coordination of EC contributions was undercut by its
overriding interest in being seen as participating rather than in
working with other agencies toward common objectives.
The situation improved as humanitarian activities were
shifted from the European Community Task Force, a special
creation of the European Council to respond to the situation in
the former Yugoslavia, to the new European Community
Humanitarian Office (ECHO), a unit created by the European
Commission to manage the European Community’s humanitarian
programs in various crises.
As ECHO became more active in the programming and
monitoring of food aid, a division of labor was worked out that
included regular consultation and planning with WFP. WFP
managed food aid contributions from the EC for Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Slovenia, and
the UNPAs, while the EC provided food to the Croatian
government for refugees and displaced persons. In Serbia, the
EC used local Red Cross organizations to distribute about
500,000 food packages, each weighing 33 pounds, to refugee
families and hosts during the first several months of 1993. Its
direct contribution of roughly $314 million to the overall U.N.
relief effort made it the largest single donor.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM), an
intergovernmental organization based in Geneva, played an
expanding role during the two years under review. IOM
operated at first from an office in Zagreb opened in July 1992;
by the fall of 1993 it had a companion office in Belgrade and an
operational presence in Sarajevo. A total of 55 international
and local staff members were involved.
IOM’s initial activity in 1992 entailed arranging the processing
and transport to Switzerland of about a thousand
Muslim former detainees. By November 1993, it had facilitated
the travel of 15,053 refugees and displaced persons to
countries offering temporary or permanent asylum. It also
administered a program of family reunification for the relatives
of ex-detainees, more than 3,100 of whom had been
assisted in joining their kin. IOM’s Special Medical Program
helped evacuate scores of persons in need of specialized
medical attention from Sarajevo and Belgrade. IOM’s work in
the region received less attention than its highly visible trans-
35

port of third-country nationals back to their homes during the
Persian Gulf crisis. In the Balkans, more people were displaced,
but there were fewer places for them to go.
Donor governments contributed to humanitarian operations
in the former Yugoslavia through U.N. agencies, the EC,
and IOM. For the period through mid-September 1993,
UNHCR’s largest contributors were the EC ($219 million), the
U.S. ($94 million), the U.K. ($59 million), Germany ($53 million),
and Japan ($42 million). On a per capita basis, the
contributions of Sweden ($33 million), the Netherlands ($29
million), Norway ($25 million), and Switzerland ($13 million)
were particularly noteworthy. Included in these figures were
equivalent costs of loaned personnel, whose services were
essential in expanding the scale of UNHCR’s operations. The
Danish, Swedish, and British governments made major contributions
to UNHCR in trucks and teams of trained drivers.
Several donor governments also participated bilaterally,
either through their own emergency aid programs or through
contributions to NGOs. These included Action Humanitaire
Française, Cooperazione Italiana, Deutsche Humanitarische
Hilfe, the U.K. Overseas Development Administration, the
U.S. Agency for International Development, the State Committee
of Russian Federation for Civil Defense, the Swedish
Rescue Services Board, and the Swiss Disaster Relief.
By mid-November 1993, for example, AID and other U.S.
government entities had spent $435.8 million in assistance to
the region. The bulk of expenditures ($343.8 million) came
during the year beginning in October 1993, although the
projected expenditure rate for the following year was higher.
A Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) located in the
region monitored the situation and helped direct U.S. government
funds to NGOs, the ICRC, and U.N. agencies. Airdrops
into eastern Bosnia begun by the U.S. in February 1993 and
later joined by Germany and France, had provided by mid-
November more than 9,000 tons of food and medical supplies.
More than one third of U.S. government contributions were
channeled through the Defense Department, which, in addition
to transport service, provided almost two million Humanitarian
Daily Rations (HDRs).
Other bilateral government involvement was also impres-
36

sive, though more delimited. ODA provided truck drivers for
UNHCR and consultants to rehabilitate energy systems in
Zenica and Tuzla and to assess the needs of the Kosovo
hospital in Sarajevo. A number of governments, including
those of Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Norway,
and Sweden, provided shelter, either bilaterally or through
UNHCR. As of late 1993, the contributions of EC member
governments—bilaterally and through the EC and the U.N.—
totaled about $1 billion, or more than two-thirds of all international
aid. Generally speaking, however, the lack of security
and other daunting difficulties made for less bilateral government
activity than in other major humanitarian emergencies.
The belligerents were also prominent among political
actors undertaking humanitarian activities in the region. The
policies and practices of the Croatian and Serbian military
authorities turned their respective governments into villains
in the international public mind. However, both governments
were also major humanitarian actors. They functioned from
the start as the first line of humanitarian defense and later as
major elements in the delivery—and obstruction—of international
assistance.
Interviews with officials of the Croatian Office of Displaced
Persons and Refugees (ODPR) throughout the six
months of the team’s review conveyed a picture of good-faith
efforts by serious humanitarian professionals to meet the
needs of Croatia’s refugees and displaced persons. By the fall
of 1993, their numbers had grown to about 624,000 persons, to
which the latest U.N. appeal added another 176,000 “social
cases”—that is, local persons who, while not displaced, were
seriously affected by the war. Accommodating the displaced
persons within existing Croatian educational, health, and
social services systems created sizable financial and administrative
hardships.
Numerous incidents were documented of discriminatory
treatment by Croatian government authorities of individuals
and groups, especially of Serbian and Muslim origin. Yet
official government policy, said ODPR, was that all people
“have the same rights, irrespective of whether they are Bosnian,
Croatian, or Serbs, and are treated the same way by the
Croatian authorities.” That policy, however, was not always
37

followed locally. It became more difficult to implement in the
face of burgeoning refugee numbers, war-related hardships
on the local population, dwindling outside aid, and growing
nationalism that targeted both Serbs and Muslims.
Authorities in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia also
struggled to meet massive human needs. By late 1993, refugee
numbers stood at almost 500,000 for both Serbia and
Montenegro. (The figure of 444,000 refugees in Serbia was
down somewhat with the return of some to Bosnia and
Herzegovina). However, so-called social cases swelled the
ranks of those in desperate need throughout Serbia and
Montenegro to 647,000.
The involvement by Belgrade’s authorities in international
relief efforts is suggested by Figure 2.4. They were, of
course, directly involved in programs to assist people within
their own jurisdiction. In addition, more than half of the
international food assistance delivered to the Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia continued on to Bosnia (some of it to Bosnian
Serb populations there) and to the Former Yugoslav Republic
of Macedonia. Some of the commodities remaining in Serbia
and Montenegro went to Muslim refugees who had sought
shelter there.
Interviewed in Belgrade, senior government officials in
the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and in the government of
Serbia also enunciated a policy of non-discrimination. When it
came to government services, they told us, “all refugees,
irrespective of ethnic background, have received equal treatment.”
They noted, however, that “When you are getting
poorer and poorer, you have less and less to share with those
you are hosting. As everyone of us becomes more and more
hungry, it is harder and harder to cover the needs of our own
households and the refugees as well.” UN-imposed economic
sanctions and donor-imposed earmarks against assistance to
Serbia and Montenegro also undermined their efforts to assist
civilian populations. As in Croatia, numerous incidents were
documented concerning harassment of Muslim individuals
and communities and of those seeking to assist them.
Within Bosnia and Herzegovina, the picture was more
confused because of the roles of the multiple authorities—
humanitarian, political, and military. In Sarajevo, UNHCR
38

702,415
(58%)
Montenegro
51,924
(4%)
Bosnia and Herzegovina
444,041
(36%)
Serbia
20,000
(2%)
F.Y.R. Macedonia
Figure 2.4 Beneficiaries of U.N. Humanitarian Assistance reached through the
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia January 1992 to September 1993
39

had two principal contacts: the government agency that
handled all food distribution to the non-Serb areas of the city
(and was suspected by many of being deeply engaged in black
market activity), and the Ministry of Refugees and Displaced
Persons. Some NGOs charged that UNHCR was so concerned
to appear neutral that it virtually ignored the Minister, Amelia
Omersoftic. The Minister herself shrugged off any talk of
tension but alleged that UNHCR aid had weakened the selfreliance
of the city populace.
By reducing the authority of the central Bosnian government,
the war also increased the importance of the role of the
municipal authorities. It was the city council in Sarajevo that
refused to allow U.N. supplies to be distributed there in
February 1993 until the needs of the eastern enclaves were met.
In Zenica, where one third of the current population comprised
refugees or displaced persons, UNHCR’s interlocutor,
Mahmutcehajic Azim, deputy refugee commissioner of the
city government, was a powerful figure. When the residents of
one collective center arrived at his office, protesting that they
had not received food for three days, he allegedly posted
armed guards and warned that they could be sent to a “worse
place.” He angrily complained to UNHCR about the lack of
food, even though its convoys had been held up by the fighting
and the steel works (where food for refugees in Zenica was
cooked) had neither fuel nor electricity.
In the so-called Republic Serbska, U.N. officials dealt daily
with Bosnian Serb authorities in the capital of Pale. Permission
from the Ministry of Refugees and Displaced Persons was
required before any convoy could move within or through
Bosnian Serb-controlled territory. The U.N. also had to ensure
liaison with Serb authorities at the Sarajevo airport, who were
posted to assure that an agreed portion of relief supplies was
turned over to them for distribution.
The landscape of humanitarian actors involved a final
concentric circle made up of NGOs and the ICRC. Their ranks
swelled during the two years of the crisis. In the half-year
between February and September 1993 alone, the number
active in the region increased from 65 to 126.
Many NGOs such as the International Federation of Red
Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the International Rescue
40

Committee, the Lutheran World Federation, Médecins sans
frontières, and CARE were international. A large number,
however, were native to the region, some of them an outgrowth
of the war itself. These included groups such as the
Center for Grassroots Relief Work (Suncokret) and the Antiwar
Campaign of Croatia, a coalition of social movements
including environmental, human rights, religious, women’s,
and peace groups. Many NGOs were secular, a fair number
were Christian, and a few were Muslim. A tally in September
1993 placed the numbers at 91 international and 35 local
NGOs.
One private sector innovation of particular note was the
provision by the Open Society Fund, Inc., a foundation underwritten
by financier George Soros, of $50 million for humanitarian
activities in Bosnia and Herzegovina. About $35 million
was channeled through UNHCR to NGO projects. Another $4
million went to the ICRC, $10 million to Open Society foundations
in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia. Taken
together, these amounts may represent the largest single private
contribution to a major international humanitarian emergency.
Of the many NGOs active in the region, 22 were implementing
partners of UNHCR. Some also used funds from
national governments. Others relied exclusively on privately
generated resources. U.N. organizations other than UNHCR
also developed close working relationships with NGOs and
the ICRC. By the end of 1993, WFP met every two weeks in
Zagreb with NGOs programming food aid. WHO hosted
regular meetings in Zagreb and Belgrade with NGOs active in
the health sector. Weekly meetings chaired by the UNHCR in
Zagreb and Split included security briefings by UNPROFOR
as well as consultation on humanitarian activities.
The sheer number of private organizations was impressive,
but the location of their activities reflected prevailing
international perceptions of the war. German and Austrian
groups took special interest in Croatia, while organizations
with Orthodox constituencies focused on needs in Serbia. As
international concern for Muslim populations increased, many
groups sought to work specifically with Muslim refugees and
Muslim communities. That there were less than a dozen inter-
41

national NGOs resident in Serbia and fewer still whose programs
addressed the needs of Serbs confirmed for the Belgrade
authorities their perceptions of the prevailing politicization of
humanitarian action in the region.
NGO activities developed greater cohesiveness in the
former Yugoslavia than in many other major emergency operations.
That evolution reflected security constraints faced by
all NGO programs but also coordination efforts by the International
Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA). In Zagreb, Split,
and Geneva, ICVA served as a forum for regular meetings of
the entire NGO community. In Zagreb, it provided an umbrella
for working groups in major sectors such as food,
shelter, health, logistics, and social services. Attended by at
least a dozen agencies each, these groups fostered coordination
among NGOs as well as communication with U.N. agencies,
including UNHCR, which provided space and other inkind
support. Using a tailor-made electronic bulletin board,
ICVA also developed innovative interactive communication
among concerned agencies in the region and elsewhere.
In terms of scale of activity and numbers of personnel, the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was second
only to the UNHCR. As with UNHCR, the ICRC’s program for
the former Yugoslavia was its largest, representing in 1993
about half of its budget. By the fall, it had 202 international
delegates in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia, augmented by 790 local employees.
Its 29 offices were situated in each of the seven former republics,
served by a network of 24 warehouses and a fleet of almost
300 vehicles. The ICRC had about one hundred protection staff
members on the ground, far more than UNHCR.
ICRC activities included visiting persons detained by the
various warring parties, providing food, medical, and other
assistance to civilian populations, helping to assure potable
water, and facilitating contacts between separated family
members. In Bosnia and Herzegovina alone, the ICRC during
the first nine months of 1993 distributed 32,000 tons of relief
supplies to about 600,000 persons each month, supplied 215
medical facilities with medicines and surgical supplies, and
exchanged two million family messages. Some of its activities
were undertaken in partnership with national and local Red
42

Cross and Red Crescent societies. About one third of its
international staff was provided by national societies.
Given its worldwide mandate under the Geneva Conventions
and Protocols to assist and protect non-combatants in
situations of internal and international armed conflict, the
ICRC found the terrain and obstacles familiar. Nevertheless,
the Yugoslav experience proved one of the most trying in its
more than 125 years. Following the killing of one of its delegates
near Sarajevo in May 1992, it temporarily suspended
work. Returning in July, it encountered recurring obstruction
from all parties. Not given as a rule to public statements or
denunciations, the ICRC’s criticism of the belligerents was
more outspoken in this conflict than in others.
For philosophical and practical reasons, the ICRC in the
former Yugoslavia, as elsewhere, kept its distance from the
U.N.’s humanitarian, political, and military activities alike.
Preferring to pursue its assistance and protection work independently,
it carried out its own negotiations with local authorities.
It was unwilling to be associated with the use of
economic or military force, and it did not request protection
from UNPROFOR troops, although it did submit its shipments
to the Sanctions Committee for approval. Unlike many
of the NGOs that served as the U.N.’s partners, the ICRC made
little use of available United Nations air and ground transport.
Related Political and Military Actors
As lead agency, UNHCR was also the focal point for a
variety of relationships between the civilian humanitarian
network and several sets of political and military actors. These
actors included the U.N. Security Council and General Assembly,
the U.N. Secretary-General, UNPROFOR, the International
Conference on Former Yugoslavia (ICFY), CSCE, NATO,
and the Western European Union (WEU). The political and
military authorities of the belligerents were also factors. Some
of these actors carried out humanitarian activities themselves,
and all adopted important humanitarian policies.
Like UNHCR, the Security Council found itself largely
consumed by the Yugoslav crisis. Between September 25,
1991, when it imposed an embargo on deliveries of weapons
43

and military equipment to Yugoslavia, and August 24, 1993,
when it called for an immediate cease-fire throughout Bosnia
and Herzegovina and demanded respect for UNPROFOR and
UNHCR personnel, the Council approved more than forty
resolutions addressing the issues, most of them unanimously.
Many of its pronouncements were on political and military
matters, although in a large number of these, humanitarian
and human rights concerns were prominently mentioned.
Often, however, humanitarian and human rights concerns
were the subject of entire resolutions. “The worse the crisis has
become,” noted Adam Roberts, “the more have humanitarian
issues been featured in Security Council resolutions and in
other international statements.” (“Humanitarian War: Military
Intervention and Human Rights,” in International Affairs,
69, 3, [1993], 442.)
In addition to serving as a forum for charting the international
response to the crisis, the Security Council formulated
and gradually adapted the missions and terms of engagement
of the U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR). Three sets of U.N.
missions and troops were involved:
1. Croatia: UNPROFOR was established under Security
Council Resolution 743 of February 21, 1992 to implement the
Geneva Agreement of the previous November. That agreement
called for withdrawal of Yugoslav Peoples Army units
from Croatia, an unconditional cease-fire, and a number of
humanitarian measures, including the return of displaced
people to their homes. U.N. troops were stationed in four
UNPAs in the so-called Krajina region of Croatia, where Serbs
were either a majority or large minority. CIVPOL was to
oversee the maintenance of law and order in the UNPAs.
Subsequent resolutions in June expanded UNPROFOR’s mandate
to areas adjacent to the four UNPA sectors (the Pink
Zones) and in August gave it the additional task of controlling
access to the UNPAs at border points. In 1993, UNPROFOR
strength in Croatia totaled 14,389, divided among military
(13,340), police (530), and civilian (519) contingents.
2. Bosnia and Herzegovina: With the spreading of the war
beyond Croatia beginning in April 1992, the Security Council
expanded UNPROFOR’s mandate and strength. Resolution
758 of June 8, 1992 authorized U.N. troops in a phased deploy-
44

ment to establish security conditions permitting the reopening
of the Sarajevo airport and its use for humanitarian operations.
Having stepped up deployment in June, July, and early August,
the Security Council in Resolution 770 of August 13,
invoking enforcement powers under Chapter VII of the U.N.
Charter, called upon states to take “all measures necessary” to
facilitate deliveries of humanitarian assistance to Sarajevo and
throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, providing protection as
requested by UNHCR.
A month later, in Resolution 776 of September 14, 1992,
UNPROFOR was charged with supporting and protecting
UNHCR’s humanitarian relief deliveries and, if requested by
the ICRC, facilitating the protection of released detainees. In
Resolution 824 of May 6, 1993, the Security Council declared a
series of “safe areas” within which UNPROFOR would provide
protection to humanitarian activities. The complement
approved for Sarajevo in June included 1,000 troops, 60 military
observers, 40 CIVPOL, and other civilian and military
staff. In July, the Security Council increased the numbers to
1,600. In mid-1993, total UNPROFOR strength in Bosnia and
Herzegovina stood at about 9,200 personnel.
3. Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYRM): In an
effort to prevent the conflicts from spreading, the Security
Council in Resolution 795 of December 11, 1992 authorized the
Secretary-General to deploy UNPROFOR troops, military
observers, and civilian police monitors along the border between
the FYRM and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and
Albania. At the time, only very limited U.N. humanitarian
action was underway, and humanitarian support duties were
not mentioned in the UNPROFOR mandate. Its approved
strength was 700 troops, 35 military observers, and 26 CIVPOL.
In all three theaters, UNPROFOR press officers handled
media relations, accrediting and facilitating access for 5,000
members of the international press, who became a major
presence and influence on humanitarian issues in their own
right. Anticipated costs of UNPROFOR operations during
1993 were calculated in October at $1.02 billion, excluding the
costs of the peacekeeping effort in Bosnia and Herzegovina
borne by the troop-contributing countries from NATO.
UNPROFOR troops were absent from Serbia and
45

Montenegro because the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia refused
to consent to their deployment. Nor was UNPROFOR
able to deploy in Serb-held parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina,
the focal point of ethnic cleansing by the Serbs. A Canadian
battalion waited for months to gain access to the Banja Luka
area. UNPROFOR’s absence in Serb-controlled areas had serious
implications not only for perceptions of its political evenhandedness
but also for U.N. humanitarian action, given the
volume of assistance going to these areas and the widespread
human rights abuses directed against minorities there.
For each of the three areas where UNPROFOR was deployed
its mandates and configurations differed, but the U.N.
presence was called “UNPROFOR” throughout. The fact that
the UNPROFOR label encompassed political as well as military
functions and personnel also made for confusion. Its
strength in October 1993 totaled 25,612, including military,
police, and civilian personnel from three dozen contributing
nations. UNPROFOR troops in all three countries took their
orders from headquarters in Zagreb and answered to the
UNPROFOR Force Commander there. UNPROFOR police
and civilian personnel reported to UNPROFOR’s Head of
Civil Affairs.
Reflecting on UNPROFOR’s respective contribution to
the United Nations’ overall response to the Yugoslav crisis,
UNPROFOR’s Head of Civil Affairs Cedric Thornberry told
the team, “UNPROFOR has supported the U.N.’s humanitarian
agencies in their work. However, because of the circumstances
of the mission, UNPROFOR has itself increasingly
engaged in direct humanitarian support activities through all
its main elements: military, civilian, and police.” Other senior
UNPROFOR officials concurred in Thornberry’s judgment
that UNPROFOR’s humanitarian roles had represented “much
the most important feature of our work.”
However, that appraisal was seriously questioned by
some observers. The U.N.’s humanitarian organizations viewed
UNPROFOR’s contribution as more modest and doubted that
it had ever received much priority among UNPROFOR tasks.
The Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights
also had another view. He criticized UNPROFOR for becoming
involved in the violation of international humanitarian
46

law, a charge to be examined later.
In the final analysis, the contribution of the Security Council
to an effective humanitarian response by the United Nations
to the Yugoslav crisis should not be judged by the
number of resolutions passed or the number of personnel
deployed but rather by the impact of its decisions and coherence
of its involvement. Viewed from a humanitarian standpoint—and
there are other criteria by which its involvement
may also be judged—the Security Council had much difficulty
in defining its responsibilities, determining the advisability
and appropriate level of the military force, and accommodating
the views of U.N. and other humanitarian institutions in its
decision-making processes.
In addition to the Security Council, the offices of the
Secretary-General and the Departments of Political Affairs
and Peace-keeping were preoccupied by the crisis. (The General
Assembly passed a number of resolutions but was not a
major player.) Two Secretaries-General helped chart the U.N.’s
response. Before his departure from office at the end of 1991,
Javier Pérez de Cuéllar appointed a Personal Envoy, Cyrus
Vance, to explore the feasibility of deploying a U.N. peacekeeping
force in Yugoslavia.
Actual deployment of U.N. troops took place during the
term of Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. He was an
outspoken critic of European governments and the Security
Council itself for lavishing disproportionate attention on Yugoslavia
in 1992 when Somalia was experiencing extreme
starvation, a somewhat ironic criticism in light of subsequent
developments. He also chided the major powers for not including
the U.N. more fully in their deliberations about the
crisis in the former Yugoslavia.
Reports by the two Secretaries-General, formulated with
the help of secretariat departments, shaped Security Council
action. The Department of Peace-keeping Operations (DPK)
was the point of contact between UNPROFOR and the U.N.
secretariat, providing broad oversight of it and other U.N.
peacekeeping operations. The Department of Political Affairs
(DPA) provided secretariat services, and a link to the U.N., for
ICFY described below.
Working more closely with the U.N., the European Com-
47

munity played a major role in political and military efforts to
deal with the crisis. In response to the outbreak of fighting in
Croatia in mid-1991, the EC’s Conference on Yugoslavia,
chaired by Lord Carrington and with the support of the CSCE,
undertook a number of initiatives to restore peace. The initial
deployment of UNPROFOR, approved by the Security Council
on February 21, 1992, was viewed as the U.N.’s contribution
on the peacekeeping side in support of EC political efforts to
resolve the crisis.
At the London Conference of August 26-28, 1992, jointly
convened by the U.N. and the EC, participants agreed to broad
principles for a negotiated settlement. A steering committee
for the ongoing work of the ICFY was established, co-chaired
by the Secretary-General’s Personal Envoy Cyrus Vance and
by the EC’s mediator, David Owen, who had succeeded Lord
Carrington. The London Conference also established six working
groups, three chaired by the U.N. and three by the EC. Of
these, the Humanitarian Issues Working Group, chaired by
the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, became a forum
for ongoing consultations of objectives, strategies, and financing
for U.N. humanitarian programs.
The EC was also involved through the deployment of a
Monitoring Mission (ECMM). Established at the request of the
CSCE, the ECMM represented the first international peacekeeping
entity deployed in the crisis. Initially charged with
monitoring the withdrawal of the Yugoslav army from
Slovenia, which had been negotiated by the EC, ECMM responsibilities
expanded as the conflicts themselves spread,
first to Croatia and then to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Its tasks
included mediation of disputes, monitoring of cease-fires and
other agreements, and other monitoring and reporting. In
mid-1993, the ECMM was comprised of 150 unarmed monitors
and 230 support staff members contributed by the twelve
members of the EC and by five CSCE countries (Canada,
Czech, Poland, Slovakia, and Sweden). The ECMM gradually
developed a close working relationship with UNPROFOR and
U.N. humanitarian personnel.
NATO also was involved, both in airdrops and in ground
operations. The UNPROFOR operation in Bosnia and
Herzegovina was based in Kiseljak, near Sarajevo. Given the
48

high level of risk to troops as a result of the prevailing insecurity
and the possibility that activities could evolve into an
effort to enforce some form of Vance/Owen/Stoltenberg partition
plan, the UNPROFOR operation was basically a financial
and military subcontract by the U.N. to the Northern
Army Group of NATO.
Discussion of the response of international actors to the
crisis should not eclipse the roles of the belligerents, who were
also major political and military players. The decisions described
above by their civilian interlocutors with U.N. humanitarian
organizations were invariably circumscribed within
parameters laid down by political and military authorities. In
Croatia and Serbia, those authorities granted civilian ministries
considerable latitude. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the
relative independence that civilian authorities enjoyed earlier
diminished as military decisions placed increasing burdens
on civilian populations. In the so-called Republic Serbska,
senior military officials throughout much of the war were
deeply engaged in day-to-day decisions by civilian refugee
authorities, complicating the convoy approval process and
other humanitarian efforts.
From start to finish and from country to country, decisions
made by military officials had a direct and negative impact on
civilians. The continuing war and especially the targeting of
civilian populations had catastrophic consequences. The military
exacerbated suffering by insisting on reciprocity before
granting humanitarian access to people in need and before
allowing evacuation of the most vulnerable.
The lack of control of political leaders over military forces,
and of military leaders over paramilitary groups, proved
devastating for civilian populations. In addition to the prevailing
disregard for international humanitarian law and common
decency, humanitarian activities took place within a
context in which, in the words of a U.N. official, “nobody can
be held accountable.” From that standpoint, the center of the
radiating concentric circles in the crisis was not the humanitarian
agencies but the region’s political and military decisionmakers.
49

CHAPTER 3:
TEN CENTRAL POLICY CHALLENGES
Ten major policy challenges confronted the United Nations
in responding to the humanitarian crisis in the former
Yugoslavia. While all involved trade-offs typical of those that
occur in armed conflicts wherever they exist, many proved
more nettlesome in the former Yugoslavia than elsewhere.
Together, the ten represent the greatest collective challenge to
humanitarian action anywhere in the world.
The U.N. response to these ten challenges constitutes what
might be called its humanitarian terms of engagement in this
particular set of conflicts. The terms of engagement had a
direct impact on the effectiveness of its humanitarian activities.
1. Defining the Humanitarian Task
Experience in the former Yugoslavia showed how crucial
it is to identify clearly the humanitarian task. Failure to do so
undermined the credibility and effectiveness of the humanitarian
effort.
Who Should Receive Assistance
An accurate description and number of the intended
beneficiaries of humanitarian assistance was essential for establishing
the credibility of the aid with donors and recipients.
United Nations officials visited the city of Sarajevo in early
1992 and met with government officials and consulted available
demographic information. They estimated the city’s population
at 380,000. Since the Bosnian capital was a city under
siege, that figure became the target number of beneficiaries for
U.N. programs.
The figure of 380,000 remained the operative number
throughout, despite movement in and out of the city. While
some independent analysts placed the current population in
late 1993 at about 225,000, the original number stood at the
insistence of Serb and Muslim authorities. Faced with the
51

overriding priority of survival and a security situation that did
not allow for elaborate surveys, a new census or even a sample
seemed out of the question, U.N. officials said.
Updating the estimates, however difficult, would have
had more than theoretical importance. It would have helped
indicate, for example, whether enough—or too much—food
was being provided. In the case of Sarajevo, the presence of
fewer people might have meant too much food, with implications
for airlift priorities and leakage. The appearance of
donated food among Serbs in Bosnia across the border from
Montenegro led the European Community Humanitarian
Office to discover greatly inflated beneficiary lists within
Montenegro, which were then pared.
Demographic data also provided the basis for allocating
aid among various ethnic groups. United Nations officials
used the distribution plan that had been negotiated with the
warring parties as a device to counter extortion attempts at
roadblocks. They were able to refuse to divert relief supplies
to the Serbs by pointing to allocation arrangements to which
the Serbs themselves had agreed. Acknowledging that the
percentage given the Serbs may have been disproportionate,
in part because the Serbs were less hard hit than their Muslim
counterparts, U.N. officials also pointed out that without some
agreement, no supplies would have reached Muslims.
Establishing the target population entailed making other
tough political judgments. The United Nation’s October 1993
appeal illustrated two such choices. The September 1992 and
March 1993 appeals had included, in addition to refugees and
displaced persons, local population groups affected by the
war. As the war continued and its impacts spread, the ranks of
those in need also expanded. The October 1993 appeal noted
that “the general economic collapse and the blockade of commercial
traffic has created a situation in which those who are
not refugees or displaced are often in as great a need as those
internally or externally displaced.” The latest appeal accordingly
sought funds to help a population which, “though ten
percent higher, includes essentially the same categories of
beneficiaries” as the earlier two appeals.
The latest appeal also added a new category called “social
cases”—that is, “dependent individuals in institutions, the
52

homeless and lower-income pensioners.” It added 150,000
such cases to the beneficiary table for Serbia and Montenegro,
at the same time acknowledging that “it is unofficially estimated
that up to 50 percent of the 10.3 million residents...are
social cases.”
Like the choice of the ten percent figure, the additions
represented a compromise influenced heavily by political and
financial considerations. United Nations aid organizations
and governments in the region pressed for an inclusive approach,
both to accommodate need and to offset the U.N.’s
growing unpopularity. Other U.N. officials and donor governments
resisted widening the beneficiary universe, reflecting
resource constraints and reluctance to undermine the
economic sanctions.
“This document does not attempt to assess and respond to
the totality of needs throughout the former Yugoslavia,” the
latest appeal document noted in an important concession,
“but rather focuses upon these which are within the capacity
and competence of U.N. agencies and their partners to deliver
and implement.” Thus difficulties in establishing the extent of
the need for assistance gave the warring parties an opening to
question the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the data and
the allocations of resources based on it.
Determining the Nature of Humanitarian Action
In addition to establishing and updating the humanitarian
target, the United Nations faced choices about humanitarian
initiatives. The initial decision was clear: food was top priority.
During 1992 and 1993, food was the largest single element
in the relief program throughout the region, medicine the
second. Food distribution, observed Anthony Land, head of
UNHCR’s Sarajevo office, was the raison d’être behind the
entire U.N. presence. “The reason we’ve had 70 personnel
killed and 700 wounded is because we’re trying to get food in.”
With winter looming in 1992, emphasis broadened to
include other essential survival inputs, including fuel, clothing,
and shelter materials. A similar expansion took place as
winter approached in 1993. The priority for food was amplified
to include firewood, coal, gas, and other forms of energy.
53

Throughout the relief effort, however, food remained the
centerpiece.
But how were such priorities established and revised to
reflect changing needs? Seeking to take the views of host
government authorities into account, U.N. authorities placed
a premium on meeting the basic food needs of civilians. The
U.N. took pride in the “miracle of Sarajevo,” highlighting the
avoidance of starvation in the Bosnian capital since the outbreak
of war in April 1992. Given the obstacles to keeping the
city’s population alive, this was no small accomplishment.
During the first nine months of 1993, a total of 56,707 metric
tons of relief supplies reached the Bosnian capital, about
37,000 by truck and the rest by the airlift.
But there were other views. Some Bosnian authorities
found the U.N.’s emphasis on food, however helpful in the
short-term, riddled with longer term negative consequences.
“I wish the UNHCR had never come here,” commented the
Bosnian Minister for Refugees and Displaced Persons in September
1993. “They’ve done a lot of good, but they’ve made
people passive. People have forgotten how to work.” Others
noted the growing gap between the continuing U.N.’s attention
to food and other needs of the population, whether for
other forms of assistance or for more forceful international
action.
Even individuals who were more appreciative of the food
were still critical of the U.N. relief effort as a whole. “Food and
other relief items are of course a humanitarian need,” Musadik
Borogovac, a Bosnian journalist and former Sarajevo resident
said, “but humanitarianism goes much deeper than just keeping
people alive.” In his view, “the real humanitarian help that
the world could give us would be to lift the multiple blockades
of Sarajevo: the information and communications blockade,
the transport blockade, the parliament blockade.”
The U.N. was seen by some not only as the source of
Sarajevo’s daily bread but also as the enforcer of policies that
worked multiple hardships on its people. Reinstating the
humanity and decency of life in the capital would have required
a more multifaceted array of initiatives than transporting
food and medicine. Nor was the ambivalence only outside
the U.N. “It was very frustrating for me as a member of the
54

international community,” recalled UNHCR Special Envoy
José-Maria Mendiluce, “to have to say, ‘I can feed you...but I
can’t guarantee that the siege of Sarajevo will cease.’”
A similar clash of views characterized perceptions of the
U.N. relief effort in the eastern enclaves in Bosnia. Some views
stressed the U.N.’s feat of running a gauntlet of obstacles to
keep civilian populations alive through convoys and airdrops.
Others described the “safe havens” as UN-managed concentration
camps or ghettoes that had eroded people’s sense of
self-reliance and compromised their future.
Confronting Conflicting Understandings of the "Humanitarian"
At issue was the matter of what sort of humanitarian
action to undertake. Different actors such as the U.N. Security
Council, the warring parties, donor governments, humanitarian
organizations, and civilian populations themselves had
different views of what constituted “humanitarian” assistance.
Defining such assistance bedeviled the task of the
Sanctions Committee. Charged by the Security Council with
administering exemptions to the U.N.’s economic sanctions
for foodstuffs, medical supplies, and other essential humanitarian
items, representatives of governments that comprised
the Committee had the responsibility for reviewing all proposed
shipments by humanitarian (and commercial) organizations
to or through the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Given the thousands of requests, the process would have
been difficult at best. In the absence of a standard working
definition of humanitarian items, however, the review became
totally dysfunctional. “You cannot have a standard definition
of what is ‘humanitarian,’” explained staff members who gave
applications a preliminary screening. “It varies from country
to country.” Noting that the Security Council had imposed
sanctions on countries as diverse as Iraq, Haiti, and the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia, staff members expressed the view
that what was essential for life in the tropics—for example,
bananas—would constitute a luxury item in the Balkans. No
“one size fits all” approach to humanitarian necessities would
be possible.
In the absence of clear criteria and of an expeditious way
55

of proceeding, the review process resulted in routine delays of
several months. For example, UNHCR’s 1993 winter program
in Serbia called for “providing 70 percent of heating fuel needs
to institutions for the physically and mentally handicapped,
geriatric centers, and orphanages.” Yet in early December,
UNHCR reported that “there was no Sanctions Committee
clearance for that fuel to be imported by UNHCR.”
As a result of delays in the Sanctions Committee approval
process in New York, the credibility and effectiveness of the
U.N.’s own agencies was undermined. The agencies indicated
that they had not been consulted by the Security Council
before it imposed sanctions in May 1992 or before it tightened
them in April 1993. While the absence of transitional arrangements
in the spring of 1993 during the phase-over from one set
of controls to the other created the most havoc, serious problems
existed throughout the entire relief operation.
The committee approved imports of food and medicine,
but not ingredients for the processing of food or the manufacturing
of drugs. It also took a restrictive approach to medical
technology and spare parts. Donor government representatives
on the Sanctions Committee had diverse views of their
own. Washington took a particularly tough line, apparently
insisting in one reported instance that before a scanner for
detecting cancer in children could be imported into the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia, separate applications be submitted
to the committee for each component part.
Aid organizations took a generally inclusive approach to
the humanitarian task, seeking to provide not just food but
also seeds, not just clothing but also the means for manufacturing
clothes. Given the importance of Sarajevo’s newspapers to
life in the city under siege, UNHCR at one point responded to
a local priority by adding newsprint to the airlift. The Bosnian
Serbs were said to have barred its offloading on the grounds
that such an item was not “humanitarian.”
UNHCR was criticized in its winterization planning in
late 1993 for overemphasis on food and, as one interviewee
phrased it, for giving “shelter socks and mittens” higher
priority than fuel and electricity. As overland convoys of food
and fuel encountered increasing obstruction, the importance
of getting the region’s own resources of water, coal, and
56

electricity up and running was underscored. One UNPROFOR
engineer told the team that in central Bosnia, attention to
water, heating, and electrical systems represented “as vital a
contribution as food.” He viewed restoration of electricity and
water supplies as a “key to peace.” Another UNPROFOR
official noted that humanitarian aid was about not only “bandages
and bedding but also protecting people.” UNHCR was
widely viewed as approaching its humanitarian task too narrowly.
The belligerents took their own stabs at defining what
they considered “humanitarian.” In addition to refusing entry
of newsprint into Sarajevo, the Bosnian Serbs barred many
other items from the enclaves they did not consider humanitarian.
In late 1993, when humanitarian agencies were rushing
to put into place a range of essentials in advance of winter’s
onset, the Bosnian Serbs allowed only food and medicine,
routinely turning back other items such as wood, metal, and
plastic shelter material, water pumps, and sanitation equipment.
In central Bosnia in 1993, Bosnian Croat troops blocked
several pallets of mining filters and explosives needed in an
energy project managed by the British ODA on grounds that
they were not humanitarian, though their effects would have
brought far-reaching benefits to desperate civilian populations.
By year’s end, electrical production in central Bosnia
faced a total shutdown.
As for the views of those populations themselves, the
Sarajevan journalist quoted earlier expressed strong views on
the subject:
You cannot refuse to allow spare parts for
Sarajevo’s radio transmitter through the blockade
on the grounds that they are not ‘humanitarian’
and then, based on CNN and Sky
News, think that you are getting accurate
information about people’s priorities. The
world has kept some of us alive through its
humanitarian relief programs, but it has done
nothing to enable Bosnians to speak for themselves.
57

The illustrations and confusions dramatize the importance
of conceptual clarity about the nature of the humanitarian
enterprise. In a highly politicized setting in which various
parties sought to delimit or expand the prevailing definition of
what was considered humanitarian to suit their own purposes,
the concept itself became embroiled in the conflicts and
contributed to the prevailing animosity. A lack of clarity and
consistency within the U.N. system played into the often
intentional confusion and undercut the effectiveness of humanitarian
responses. While such confusion frequently attends
humanitarian activities in armed conflict settings, as
other studies in the Humanitarianism and War Project series
have demonstrated, the difficulties were more crippling here.
2. Deciding among Priorities
Once the humanitarian task had been defined, the U.N.
faced some hard choices about priorities. In fact, the problems
encountered in defining the humanitarian task also demonstrated
the challenge of establishing the priority of relief
relative to other important activities.
As an illustration of the difficulties encountered in striking
an appropriate balance within the U.N.’s relief program,
we review the social services made available to war-affected
civilian populations. As an illustration of the difficulties of
striking a balance between relief activities and other humanitarian
functions, we examine rehabilitation efforts. The challenge
of establishing a balance between humanitarian assistance
in all forms and protection of human rights is reviewed
in section 3.
Relief and Social Services
Displacement and disruption on the traumatic scale of the
former Yugoslavia generated a widespread need for social
services. Responsibility for providing these services rested
with UNHCR as lead agency, whose terms of reference included
prime responsibility for community services, including
support to war victims. Other agencies involved were
WHO, which was also to provide support to war victims, and
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UNICEF, charged with the survival and development needs of
women and children in such areas as nutrition, domestic
needs, health, and psycho-social rehabilitation.
UNHCR did not succeed in mounting major social service
activities or in energizing other aid organizations to do so. For
example, services in rape counseling, particularly necessary
given the use of mass rape as a strategy of war, were demonstrably
inadequate. UNHCR also failed to deal effectively with
the sizable population of orphans or with the surge of international
interest in assisting them. In each instance, UNHCR
responses were marked by lack of urgency and priority.
Disclosures of mass rapes of Muslim women in late 1992
unleashed a spate of investigators and counselors, many of
them insensitive to the reluctance of the victims, for personal
and cultural reasons, to tell their stories. It was not until
January 1993 that UNHCR sent a professional to the region to
review the matter, formulate guidelines, and lay the groundwork
for social service activities. Her contract, however, was
short-term, and when she left in May she was not replaced. As
of late 1993, guidelines on sexual violence were not yet finalized
and disseminated. UNHCR’s first senior social services
officer with region-wide responsibilities did not arrive on the
scene until August 1993; a junior officer had arrived in Bosnia
only two months earlier. A social services officer sent out in
1992 was assigned to higher priority food and logistics activities.
After two years, social services still represented a small
fraction of UNHCR’s total budget for the region: in Bosnia 4.3
percent, Croatia 4 percent, and Serbia 3 percent. Acknowledging
that these efforts could have been launched earlier and
more energetically, UNHCR officials continued to urge caution.
Conceding the need for more extensive activities, they
also stressed the dangers of proceeding in ways that revictimize
victims, a legitimate concern that some critics viewed as a
rationalization for inaction. Social services activities later included
visits to individuals and families, income generation
projects, day care centers, and the training of local people to
provide counseling. As of late 1993, however, some of these
activities remained in the pilot project stage.
In the area of psycho-social rehabilitation, WHO in 1993
59

initiated several activities and UNICEF organized training
seminars in recognizing and treating disturbances among
war-traumatized children. Many NGOs also were active in the
social services sector, some using funds provided by UNHCR,
which helped coordinate local groups working with women
refugees, funded a number of community programs run by
NGOs (including recreation and daycare activities), and underwrote
the costs of medical care and psychological teams.
The ICRC also was engaged in social service activities, working
through general and psychiatric health facilities.
The prevailing perception in late 1993 was that social
services were unduly limited in a setting that cried out for
more diverse activities than simply providing emergency
material aid. Especially among Muslim populations, disappointment
was compounded by anguish and anger at the
continuation of ethnic cleansing and rape. “I am not sure what
the U.N. can do or should do,” lamented Amra Cengic, Genocide
Documentation Officer of the Red Cross of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, who, like many professionals in the region, had
no contact with the U.N. before this crisis. “I only know that
well-meaning investigators, human rights and humanitarian
personnel keep arriving—and the rapes continue. A full year
after the first disclosures,” she commented in September 1993,
“the same practices are occurring.”
The plight of children orphaned by the war was widely
publicized by the international media, and Croatian government
officials were inundated with offers for building and
running orphanages and for adoptions and placements outside
the region. Local patterns and preferences, however,
called for settling such children with families closer at hand.
Here, too, UNHCR sought to develop guidelines to discourage
insensitive approaches and minimize the separation between
locally felt needs and outside interests. A firm hand was
needed because international understandings of humanitarian
priorities and strategies were not attuned to the views of
those directly affected. Yet U.N. agencies did not effectively
interpret the situation and channel international resources
accordingly.
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Relief and Beyond
Two issues emerged regarding the balance established
between relief and rehabilitation activities. First, did the U.N.
manage relief activities with an eye to rehabilitation wherever
and as soon as possible? Second, did the way in which emergency
relief activities were implemented lay the necessary
foundation for rehabilitation, reconstruction, and development?
If both questions seem theoretical, particularly given
the day-to-day struggle for survival in the former Yugoslavia,
the experience of the international community in recent armed
conflicts confirms the importance of looking beyond relief,
even during the emergency phase of activities. In neither
respect did the U.N. acquit itself particularly well.
While U.N. appeals sought to highlight rehabilitation and
development needs, the funds generated and the activities
supported concentrated largely on emergency material aid.
The March 1993 consolidated appeal for the balance of that
year sought to strike a balance among three components: relief
assistance to an expanding number of civilians in need; “a
broad range of support to the traumatized victims of rape,
torture and conflict;” and rehabilitation and development
activities. The subsequent October 1993 appeal, covering the
first six months of 1994, reiterated—amid a still proliferating
need for immediate relief assistance—the importance of taking
steps as soon as possible toward “durable rehabilitation.”
The rehabilitation funds sought by UNHCR and other U.N.
organizations and the activities mounted, however, were comparatively
modest.
The burden of striking a balance between life-and-death
emergency activities and rehabilitation concerns fell primarily
upon UNHCR as lead agency. Its responsibilities included
“emergency transition activities in agriculture and income
generation,” and in some areas it did make a solid contribution,
directly or indirectly. Interviewed in Zenica in late 1993
as the war raged, Philippos Papaphilippou, acting head of the
UNHCR office, noted several promising rehabilitation initiatives
with which UNHCR was associated. These included
income-generation projects carried out by the International
Rescue Committee such as shoe and clothing manufacturing
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and hiring trucks owned by local merchants to stimulate the
economy. However, UNHCR’s major preoccupation—in most
locations and on most days of most years—was with emergency
assistance and with overcoming the obstacles to its
delivery.
In every major crisis, humanitarian organizations feel a
tension between carrying out relief activities and mobilizing
local communities to help themselves. The crisis in the Balkans
was no exception. There was a steady undercurrent of selfcriticism
in UNHCR about being preoccupied with the logistics
of relief to the detriment of developing local infrastructure.
A number of staff spoke disparagingly about their sense
of working for an international trucking agency rather than for
an agency seized with tapping local interest in the challenge of
rehabilitation.
There were, however, examples of activities that supported
or enlisted local involvement. Some U.N. organizations
set up systems for loading relief consignments from their
main warehouses into trucks dispatched by community leaders
from rural areas. Distribution records for the last shipment
were a prerequisite for receiving the next installment. U.N.
food resources also made “a relatively small but important
and appreciated” contribution to the Goradze pocket in eastern
Bosnia, a USAID review discovered. Food assisting a
locally organized pack train of mules succeeded in sustaining
the community throughout the winter of 1992. The fact that
outside relief efforts encountered so many obstacles put a
premium on self-help efforts by local communities and individuals.
NGOs were more closely connected to grassroots efforts
than was the U.N. The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) also
supplied local communities that had arranged their own trucking
with food commodities from WFP, the EC, and USAID,
and other items purchased with its own funds. Responding to
requests from local committees such as one involving Orthodox,
Catholics, and Muslims in the community of Gracanica
near Tuzla, LWF found that locally owned and operated
trucks had greater success than larger and unfamiliar convoys
in threading their way back to besieged communities. LWF
and some other NGOs also sought out rehabilitation possibili-
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ties away from the areas of fighting, where UNHCR was
necessarily more involved.
By mid-1993, the United Nations was paying greater
attention to reconstruction possibilities and to engaging the
people of the region in the ongoing task. In July, UNICEF’s
Special Representative Thomas McDermott called for a shift in
the emphasis of U.N. agencies and the region’s governments
“from our current focus on immediate relief needs to a longer
term focus on the future of the region.” He urged “examination
of how rebuilding will take place, of how vulnerable
groups such as women and children will fare in the allocation
of future resources, and of where future finances may be
found.”
The task of addressing longer term needs, however, was
continually crowded out by the louder claims of those struggling
to survive. The latest appeal document was correct in
observing that without investments in rehabilitation in the
form of income generation, education, and community service
activities, “humanitarian agencies will be forced to operate in
an environment of greater social chaos and enmity.” That
chaos, however, undid much of the U.N.’s effort to establish a
better balance between relief and rehabilitation activities.
Despite individual successes, the rehabilitation agenda in
late 1993 was dwarfed by the continuation of the conflicts and
the burgeoning need for relief. After two years, United Nations
relief efforts had done little to lay the groundwork for
rehabilitation. While its organizations might have organized
themselves better to meet the challenge, broader political and
military forces over which they had little control also conspired
against their best efforts.
3. Coming to Terms with Ethnic Cleansing
Trying to assist those in need and to provide protection in
the former Yugoslavia presented humanitarian organizations
with an agonizing and largely unprecedented dilemma. U.N.
High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata in November
1992 framed it in succinct but chilling terms:
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In the context of a conflict which has as its
very objective displacement of people we find
ourselves confronted with a major dilemma.
To what extent do we persuade people to
remain where they are, when that could well
jeopardize their lives and liberties? On the
other hand, if we help them to move, do we
not become an accomplice to ‘ethnic cleansing’?
The issue was made more complex by the fact that, as she
also said, “humanitarian assistance is much more than relief
and logistics. It is essentially and above all about protection—
protection of victims of human rights and humanitarian violations.”
In other words, the ultimate test of humanitarian action
was not how energetically food, medicine, and shelter were
provided. It was rather how effectively people’s basic human
rights were protected. The two tasks were, of course, parallel
and interlocking.
The Context
UNHCR policy in the former Yugoslavia needs to be
situated in a historical context. In 1991 and 1992 as UNHCR
sought to establish how it would respond to increased incidents
of forced movement of minority populations, it found
itself in a dilemma.
Governments outside the region, including its major contributors,
were using every available opportunity to decry
ethnic cleansing and to distance themselves from policies that
appeared to encourage it. In addressing the situation in Bosnia
and Herzegovina, for example, General Assembly Resolution
46/24 of August 27, 1992 began its preambular paragraphs
with words such as “Alarmed,” “Expressing grave alarm,”
“Strongly condemning,” “Appalled,” and “Deeply concerned.”
This and other resolutions indicated that for the international
community, the prevention of ethnic cleansing was the overriding
challenge, which primarily meant keeping people in
their homes.
Yet UNHCR’s mandate and history centered around per-
64

sons forced to flee intolerable circumstances. Created in 1951,
UNHCR became custodian of the Refugee Convention of that
year and of a later 1967 Protocol. The organization’s two
primary functions were “the protection of refugees and the
seeking of durable solutions to their problems.”
Throughout its history, UNHCR’s focus had been on
persons who, for reasons of well-founded fear of persecution,
had crossed international borders. More recently, UNHCR
also had been called upon to assist persons displaced within
their own countries of origin. In the current crisis, its constituency
included refugees of all ethnic backgrounds who had fled
the former Yugoslavia across newly drawn borders as well as
persons in refugee-like situations displaced within those borders.
As it charted its course between international revulsion
against ethnic cleansing and the rights of persons to seek
asylum, UNHCR was caught in a vice. Governments that
traditionally had provided refugees with asylum conveyed
their unwillingness to play their accustomed roles, while
governments in the region were pressing for U.N. support of
their own special agendas. One aid official recalls a conversation
with a senior Croatian government representative during
a period of heavy Muslim refugee influx who wanted U.N.
help to remove from Croatia the entire Muslim refugee population.
UNHCR initially sought to discourage ethnic cleansing by
protecting and assisting people where they were. In a paper
for an international meeting in July 1992, UNHCR emphasized
the need “to prevent and contain displacement.” A
strategy of preventive protection was recommended, entailing
“such activities as monitoring of the treatment of ethnic
minority groups, mediation between parties, exposure of the
practice of forced relocation and other measures to improve
respect for human rights and humanitarian law.”
Meanwhile, an internal UNHCR Working Group was
reviewing challenges, in the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere,
to the traditional protection concept. Its report affirmed
asylum as a fundamental principle of refugee protection
and urged UNHCR to “continue to promote the right of all
refugees to seek and enjoy asylum, at least on a temporary
65

asis, and until a solution can be found.” At the same time, the
report recommended stepped-up activities where people were
vulnerable in the hope of reducing their need to flee. The
proposals evoked criticism that UNHCR, in its effort to
strengthen protection in order to prevent refugee flows, was
weakening the protection it had historically provided. The
evolution in policy also was seen as playing into the hands of
governments that wanted to shirk their international responsibilities
to asylum seekers.
The protection debate took place on the frontlines in the
former Yugoslavia as well in conference rooms in Geneva and
national capitals. UNHCR protection staff sensed a tension
between their traditional mandate of affirming people’s right
to seek asylum and a policy of encouraging them to remain in
their homes and communities. Even though the peril faced by
minorities seemed to justify their immediate evacuation, field
staff felt discouraged from doing so. “Our entire focus was to
observe, monitor, and report on protection issues,” recalled
one UNHCR protection officer who served in Banja Luka at
the height of Serb attacks on the city’s Muslims, “but not to
assist in helping people to leave.” That seems to have been a
reasonable interpretation of then-current policy.
The Evolution
Over time, UNHCR’s emphasis on protection changed. A
spokesperson in Zagreb in October 1993 spoke of an “evolution”
in agency thinking and approach. Moving away from
actions based on an abhorrence against complicity in ethnic
cleansing, UNHCR, he said, had become more open to helping
people move to safety.
“Evacuation is a last resort, in that it acquiesces in the very
displacement that preventive efforts aim to avoid,” observed
UNHCR’s State of the World’s Refugees 1993. “But in some
circumstances it is the only way to save lives. There is a very
fine line between refusing to facilitate ethnic cleansing and
failing to prevent needless deaths.”
“There comes a certain moment when you can’t continue
to ask philosophical questions,” recalled UNHCR Special
Envoy José-Maria Mendiluce in July 1993. “I prefer 30,000
66

evacuees to 30,000 bodies.” The inability of the international
community to stop the war or protect civilian populations
from the carnage played a role in UNHCR’s policy reassessment.
In most circumstances, explained senior officials, we
seek to bring safety to people. In this instance, we must bring
people to safety. “For us, the debate was finished early in June
1992,” added Mendiluce. “We decided to help people to survive”—that
is, by tipping the balance toward assisting in their
evacuation as necessary.
Subsequent developments and the recollections of
Mendiluce’s own colleagues indicated, however, that the debate
was anything but finished by mid-1992. Indeed, the
debate continued more than a year later, with little sign of
abating. In September 1993, a protection officer in central
Bosnia confirmed that before assisting in any evacuations, he
had to establish that an “acute, life-threatening situation”
existed. Even if it did, he noted, “We have to consider long and
hard before we decide to help move people.”
There were, of course, considerations other than participation
in ethnic cleansing that made concerns about the movement
of vulnerable populations legitimate. What would be the
situation into which they were moved? Could their needs be
more adequately met in their new locations, and for how
extended a period? “If you rally around besieged minorities
when they are initially under attack, they’re victims only
once,” commented U.N. Ambassador of Bosnia and
Herzegovina Mohamed Sacirbey to the team. “If you move
them out of harm’s way, you find yourself moving them again,
and again, and again.” Well-founded concern about limits to
the willingness of the international community to assist people
in refugee camps or to provide durable solutions for them
clearly figured in the U.N. policy of moving people only as the
last resort.
“Regarding UNHCR’s involvement with population movements,”
said Geneva-based Senior Protection Officer for former
Yugoslavia Wilbert van Hövell, the main criterion was
“whether the persons concerned are in an acute, life-threatening
situation.” That consideration is “weighed against various
local constraints and adverse consequences” by local UNHCR
staff. Practical factors are also taken into account, including
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“the linkage of the agreement of the parties concerned (necessary
for exit permissions, the crossing of frontlines, etc.) to
conditions severely hampering UNHCR’s operation and freedom
of action.” Local staff also have the authority to evacuate
the wounded and vulnerable “from militarily attacked and
besieged areas.”
The Result
How successful was UNHCR in striking the right balance
between assisting people in place and facilitating their departure?
Anthony Land, head of UNHCR’s Sarajevo office, expressed
the dilemma well. “It’s hard to find a balance between
saying that people have a right to stay in their homes, and
saving lives,” he observed. “If you step in too quickly, they
run; if you wait, they can die.” The situation illustrates the very
nature of a dilemma: the alternatives are equally unsatisfactory.
Difficulties acknowledged, there was in retrospect growing
consensus inside and out of UNHCR that its protection
policy should have been weighted from the start more clearly
toward facilitating people’s departure from life-threatening
circumstances. According to a UNHCR protection official,
experience demonstrated that “It is more important to help
people in need than to do nothing out of fear of being accused
of complicity in ethnic cleansing.” In the final analysis, while
the choices were agonizing, there was from a humanitarian
view no dilemma as such. That is, the imperative of protecting
people, bringing them to safety if necessary, should have been
overriding, even at the risk of participating in ethnic cleansing.
However odious, the alternative was worse.
This was the conclusion drawn by the Special Rapporteur
of the Commission on Human Rights in October 1992. “Safe
havens must be found for those whose lives are in acute
danger,” he observed. “The cleansing cannot override the
imperative of saving their lives. Priority must be given to the
protection of the right to life.”
UNHCR protection policy, complex in its own right, also
proved difficult to translate into guidance for field staff. To be
sure, the circumstances were unusual and overwhelming. In a
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war in which human displacement was the aim and not just a
consequence, explained one protection officer, “the application
of our traditional mandate is impossible and the protection
we are able to provide is minimal.” Yet even the policy
articulated above by van Hövell, which was conveyed in an
October 1993 letter to the team, allowed varying interpretations.
By contrast, the ICRC, seeking to implement its own
protection mandate in the same war zones, benefited from a
much clearer policy. That policy, explained senior officials in
Geneva, was to evacuate former detainees and other individuals
under death threat. Overall, the ICRC was less concerned
than UNHCR about being charged with complicity. As a
precaution against being used by authorities committed to
ethnic cleansing, ICRC action focused on individuals rather
than groups or communities. Even that focus required discerning
judgments about whether individual death threats
were credible. It also meant that the ICRC did not generally
evacuate groups of imperiled persons.
In stark contrast with 25 UNHCR protection officers, the
ICRC had more than one hundred expatriates (plus local
officers and support staff) engaged in visiting detainees, supervising
the release and transfer of prisoners, and tracing
missing persons. Backstopping their work was a team of a
dozen Geneva-based protection staff, on call for emergencies
and able to be dispatched at short notice.
In UNHCR’s case, a higher priority to protection activities
was needed. Additional resources and staff invested in these
activities would have equipped UNHCR better to answer the
criticism that, unwilling to help people to safety, it also had
been unable to protect them where they were. UNHCR protection
staff also needed safeguards against administering relief
programs and, in several instances, unloading grain bags. In
the absence of a critical mass of protection activities in the
field, a policy of preventive protection that provided little real
protection began to look like a policy of preventing flight,
more keyed to donor than to refugee interests.
Distinctions were also needed between helping people to
flee, helping people once they had fled, and helping people
who had moved into communities vacated by ethnic cleans-
69

ing. Whatever the difficulties with helping people flee, assisting
those who had fled could hardly be construed as encouraging
ethnic cleansing. As IOM Director-General James N.
Purcell, Jr. remarked in July 1992, “While all efforts have to be
made to stop ethnic cleansing, we cannot close our eyes in
front of the needs of those forced to flee.” At the same time, the
appropriateness of assisting civilians, once they had moved
into cleansed areas, required review. Doing so seemed to
accept ethnic cleansing, even granting the human needs of
populations shifted into newly available areas.
It is easy to be wise after the event and to criticize UNHCR
for having made questionable choices. The international community
deserves to be held accountable for not having prevented
genocide or bringing ethnic cleansing to an effective
halt. Moreover, given the reality that all humanitarian initiatives
have political ramifications, the UNHCR challenge was
to minimize the negative political consequences of its undertakings,
not to refrain from undertaking humanitarian action
altogether.
4. Carrying out Strategic Planning
A recurring policy challenge in major humanitarian initiatives
is strategic planning. Difficult in natural disasters, developing
and implementing a strategic plan is more difficult still
in complex emergencies. The unusual complexity and scale of
the crisis in the former Yugoslavia made strategic planning a
formidable task.
How well did the U.N. meet the challenge? “The U.N.
never had an overall plan or concept of what it was trying to
accomplish with humanitarian activities in the former Yugoslavia,”
said Fred Cuny, a veteran of many relief operations,
who had spent much of 1993 in Sarajevo spearheading efforts
by the International Rescue Committee and Soros Foundation
to rehabilitate energy and water systems. “The U.N. agencies
found themselves unprepared to operate in the midst of a war.
They lacked the experience, operational doctrines, standard
operating procedures, and legal framework to guide their
moves. As a result, the U.N.’s humanitarian organizations
reacted to events rather than shaping them.”
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Based on interviews and observation, the team identified
three major problems in strategic planning. The U.N.’s humanitarian
undertaking suffered from the absence of realistic
objectives, failed to cope adequately with unprecedented operational
challenges, and lacked an effective strategy for dealing
with the belligerents.
Identifying Realistic Objectives
One of the chief difficulties of the U.N.’s humanitarian
initiative in the former Yugoslavia was guiding its activities
according to realistic objectives.
As lead agency, UNHCR took a comprehensive approach
to the challenge, spelling out in July 1992 its key objectives.
These were respect for human rights and humanitarian law,
preventive protection, humanitarian access, special humanitarian
needs, temporary protection, material assistance, and
return and rehabilitation. Together, they formed the overall
concept of what it sought to accomplish in the region. UNHCR
also recommended creation of a mechanism, later represented
by the Humanitarian Issues Working Group of the International
Conference on the Former Yugoslavia, for monitoring
the situation and making course corrections as needed.
The major difficulty was that U.N. objectives were premised
largely on an end to the conflicts. As stated in the
foreword to the Consolidated Appeal for the first six months
of 1994:
The lasting solution to this humanitarian crisis
is peace and reconciliation. Humanitarian
aid is not a substitute for peace, but it can
mitigate the cruel effects of war. Until firm
steps are taken in the direction of peace, we
have no recourse but to continue all possible
efforts to save the lives of children, women
and men now placed at risk by the ongoing
conflict.
The Appeal itself, complete with 124 pages of narrative and
charts, was less a statement of objectives or an elaboration of
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strategy than a compilation of activities.
UNHCR and associated humanitarian agencies rightly
emphasized the urgent need for a negotiated settlement. Given
the circumstances, however, strategic planning for humanitarian
activities should have been premised on a worst-case
scenario.
Despite the widespread importance attached by the U.N.
to ending the conflicts, consultations between its humanitarian
institutions and international negotiators were surprisingly
minimal. While the High Commissioner chaired the
Humanitarian Issues Working Group of the International
Conference on Former Yugoslavia, the diplomats who cochaired
the conference did not, by all accounts, regularly
solicit input from their humanitarian counterparts on various
peace plans under consideration. Nor did they give much
thought to the implications of the various options for humanitarian
activities in the region.
The resulting schisms were damaging. There was no U.N.
system-wide approach to dealing with the belligerents, nor an
overall strategy with humanitarian and diplomatic components.
Thus, although a NATO role in enforcing the Owen-
Stoltenberg plan was actively discussed throughout the summer
and fall of 1993, it was not until late September that NATO
began formal consultations with the U.N.’s humanitarian
officials—or, for that matter, with UNPROFOR—about the
implications of NATO deployment for U.N. activities. Had the
peace plan for Bosnia been accepted, the absence of a joint
NATO/U.N. plan for its implementation and enforcement
could have been disastrous.
Objectives articulated in New York and Geneva looked
different from the region. U.N. policy sought to assist refugees
as close as possible to their country of origin and to facilitate
their repatriation as soon as possible. In actuality, many of
those in need of assistance were still located within their
country of origin. The extent of displacement and the continuing
conflict seriously limited the possibility of repatriation for
those who had crossed international borders.
With respect to the strategic planning of humanitarian
activities, most civilian populations were spared the worst of
the suffering predicted for the winter of 1992. While humani-
72

tarian organizations did their best to preposition relief supplies
to tide people over, the absence of more massive suffering
owed more to the mildness of the winter than to their
efforts. The lack of adequate preparation for winter seemed
less a function of the U.N.’s unfamiliarity with non-tropical
climates than of its preoccupation with the exigencies of dayto-day
relief operations.
In the winter of 1993, however, the lack of adequate
planning promised to be far more damaging and seemed more
inexcusable. As of October, the indicators were more ominous
than a year earlier. The population was starting with lower
body weights, smaller cash reserves, and fewer locally available
energy sources. While the previous winter’s experience
had led to some improvements—the use of interwoven plastic
sheeting, heavier tape and nails, and stoves that could double
as ovens—broad strategic questions, such as whether to emphasize
the provision of blankets and clothing or the restoration
of power grids were not addressed adequately at the start.
As early as June 1993, efforts were made to plan for winter,
although as some U.N. officials pointed out, June was hardly
“early,” given formidable constraints of access and logistics
and the unsatisfactory performance in 1992. Yet a consolidated
plan for winterization did not have the necessary approvals
in the field and headquarters until September, when
resources still needed to be mobilized. Adequate funding for
winterization never materialized. Funds available for such
programs in Zenica, for example, were reduced from $50
million to $35 million because of resource constraints.
The new International Management Group, created to
accelerate efforts to address shelter, energy, water, and sanitation
needs in Bosnia and Herzegovina in anticipation of the
coming winter, did not begin operations in Zagreb until September
20, 1993 and experienced further delays in locating
office space. In late September, with winter less than a month
away, a staff member made an initial fact-finding visit to
Srebrenica to investigate the possibility of erecting prefab
housing, still to be imported from northern Europe. It did not
issue its first report until October 26.
Insiders acknowledged a lack of the necessary attention to
devising concerted operational strategies. They defended them-
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selves by stating that from the start of U.N. operations to assist
refugees in Croatia in November 1991, they had faced an
unending series of day-to-day crises that had rendered longterm
or even medium-term planning all but impossible. When
extreme humanitarian circumstances forced organizations
continually to play catch-up, they asked, how could they be
expected to protect time and energy and chart their course in
a more anticipatory mode?
The Secretary-General’s Special-Representative Thorvald
Stoltenberg was correct in telling the International Conference
on former Yugoslavia in September 1993 that “Peace in Bosnia
and Herzegovina is essential for an effective humanitarian
operation.” He was also correct in predicting that “If the
fighting continues, if the commercial and military blockades
are maintained, and if humanitarian principles are not respected,
many of [its] people will face disaster this winter.”
It is impossible to avoid the conclusion, however, that
U.N. planning—predicated on the likelihood that the war
would continue, reinforced by capable expertise committed to
the process, and buttressed by donor resources provided in
timely and adequate fashion—could have significantly reduced
the likelihood of disaster. As it was, newspaper headlines
in late 1993—“U.N. predicts many deaths as ‘wicked
winter’ hits Bosnia”—bore an incriminating resemblance to
those of twelve months earlier.
Turning Plans into Operations
One of the major challenges to strategic planning in the
former Yugoslavia was that resources were never available at
levels adequate to meet urgent humanitarian needs. In fact,
donor governments were never approached with requests at
the necessary levels because of the perception that such figures
would not have been taken seriously. It was difficult to put
operational flesh on plans when the resources were inadequate
to cover the skeleton.
The first U.N. appeal, covering a seven-month period
through June 1992, requested $24.3 million for a beneficiary
population of 500,000 (see Figure 2.3on page 32). If these funds
had been available (and they were not), and if the entire
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eneficiary population had been reached (and it was not), the
amount available per person for all food, health, shelter, and
social services needs would have been about $7 per month,
including administrative overhead.
The six subsequent appeals followed the same general
pattern, with per capita requests edging upward. For the first
six months of 1994, the resources requested for a planned
beneficiary population of 800,000 in Croatia totaled $99.8
million: that is, about $125 per person, or $21 per month. In
Bosnia and Herzegovina, $270.3 million would be shared
among 2,740,000 beneficiaries for about $100 per person, or
$16 per month. For populations, particularly in eastern and
central Bosnia, who were largely or totally dependent upon
outside assistance for everyday essentials, these figures were
paltry.
United Nations officials were well aware of the facts. For
example, requesting $522.6 million for U.N. activities during
the first half of 1994, the latest Consolidated Appeal confirmed
that it “does not attempt to assess and respond to the totality
of needs throughout the former Yugoslavia, but rather focuses
upon those which are within the capacity and competence of
its agencies and their partners to deliver and implement.” The
caveat represents a major concession in what should have
been a comprehensive and inclusive approach. Rather than
describing existing needs, U.N. officials sought to keep their
requests “realistic.” Even then the funds requested, if received,
would have been hard-pressed to do the job described.
U.N. programs throughout the region were not funded
“on the cheap.” Significant resources were provided by donor
governments, (see Figure 2.3 on page 32), and were supplemented
by funds raised from other constituencies, including
NGOs. As with other major United Nations operations that
combine peacekeeping and humanitarian activities, however,
the lion’s share of the resources went to UNPROFOR. The
question remains whether, given limited resources, more could
have been accomplished had they been differently allocated.
Even without further analysis, it is clear from the Balkan
mathematics that the programs planned, like the assumptions
of the planning process itself, were unrealistic from the outset.
If the U.N.’s decision not to challenge donor governments
75

with the costs of a full-service program made sense—the
inadequate response of governments to requests suggests that
the United Nations may have been correct—then this was an
international crisis that outran the willingness of the international
community to respond. If so, the concession that some
problems are too great for the international community to
tackle would have wide-ranging implications for post-Cold
War humanitarian action.
A second constraint in turning plans into operations was
that the humanitarian terrain in the former Yugoslavia was
unfamiliar and the magnitude of demands unprecedented.
Skilled professionals were hard to find and difficult to equip
with the necessary policy guidance, hardware, radio connections,
and other essential support.
In November 1991, UNHCR dispatched two officials on a
one-month tour. Two years later the agency was operating a
command center in Zagreb with four floors and an annex and
staff in each of the states of the former Yugoslavia. In addition
to a telecommunications network linking its offices and vehicles,
UNHCR operated a trucking fleet and an aircraft. In
spite of this infrastructure, it was not simply another large
operation such as the U.N. had carried out after floods in
Bangladesh or the volcanic eruption in the Philippines. The
war created special demands.
United Nations agencies that had never sustained a major
operation for an extended period in a war zone were faced
with the need for “armor” for humanitarian vehicles and staff.
UNHCR brought in security consultants, many of them former
military officers, to assist in training staff for frontline duty
and advising senior program managers on day-to-day tactical
matters. The lead agency was heavily criticized by field staff
for inadequate training and for delays in the arrival of flakjackets
and armored vehicles. Sixteen months into the operation,
there was still a shortage of flak-jackets.
If problems of suiting up the lead agency for battle were
sizable, UNHCR’s junior partners were no less overwhelmed.
In its report from the region covering the July to August 1993
period, WHO described a troubling series of security incidents.
These included, in addition to the killing of a UNHCR
staff member in a targeted attack, the capture of a U.N. convoy
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with 113 persons, including two WHO doctors. Two other
WHO doctors had also come under fire and a local WHO staff
person was shot in the leg in an attempt to retrieve goods
stolen from a WHO vehicle. “The security situation has forced
WHO,” the report concluded, “to order two armored vehicles
for our offices in Tuzla and in Zenica.”
Security problems were only the tip of the iceberg. The
U.N.’s humanitarian agencies lacked the required policy guidance
for such a setting, and efforts to develop and refine
guidance in mid-stream through consultations and seminars
for field staff were continually overtaken by events. The difficulties
of making judgments on complex matters related to the
evacuation of vulnerable populations were noted in the previous
section. Taken together, the problems of turning plans into
effective operations were so serious that some participants
identified a single lesson to be learned: “UNHCR should never
get involved in a civil war again.”
To what extent does this review of strategic planning
confirm the judgment of Fred Cuny with which this section
began? In our judgment, the United Nations articulated clear
but, on balance, unrealistic objectives for its humanitarian
efforts in the former Yugoslavia. It failed to develop a strategy
for turning these objectives into a comprehensive set of mutually
reinforcing activities. Its humanitarian organizations
lacked the necessary experience and operational means for
functioning in extremely difficult circumstances. As a result,
U.N. posture throughout was reactive rather than proactive.
While some of the problems were beyond the power to
control, others were not. Reviewing the record, a UNHCR
official in Zagreb acknowledged, “In retrospect, everything
could have been done better and quicker.” At the end of the
day, the scale and complexity of the crisis exceeded the resourcefulness
of the United Nations and outran the levels of
resources committed, particularly by governments. One major
element in the challenge was the attitudes of the belligerents,
to which we now turn.
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5. Dealing with Belligerents who Defy
International Humanitarian Law
The crisis in the former Yugoslavia was characterized by
the belligerents’ blatant and routine disregard of internationally
recognized humanitarian principles. How to respond to
cavalier attitudes and practices represented a profound and
agonizing challenge for all involved.
Varying Approaches
Different responses emerged, reflecting various approaches
to humanitarian action. The differences were not in
the ultimate objective: all sought access to civilian populations
in situations in which the warring parties were not ready to
grant it. The differences were in the price agencies were
willing to pay for access and their success in maintaining such
access over time.
The International Committee of the Red Cross took what
might be called a principled approach. It was guided by its
seven humanitarian principles, which have shaped a body of
doctrine and procedures governing field operations in armed
conflicts around the world. The ICRC gave overriding priority
to winning the consent of the belligerents to its activities. In
doing so, it reinforced the importance it attached to the obligations
of the belligerents to grant access by a corresponding
willingness to suspend operations if the belligerents reneged
on their obligations.
In keeping with its traditional refusal to make fundamental
concessions as the price of gaining access, the ICRC stayed
with its principles in the former Yugoslavia, even in the
absence of early results. “We know your principles,” one
general told an ICRC delegate negotiating entry into besieged
areas in early 1993, “and we will make you change them.” “We
believe in our principles,” countered the delegate. “They’ve
been good for 125 years.”
Reflecting upon his own efforts to negotiate humanitarian
space in the Balkans and elsewhere, another ICRC delegate
commented, “The experience here has not made us change.
We still think that principles must remain the cornerstone of
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humanitarian access. A lot of time must be invested in negotiating
to preserve those principles from harm.”
Faced with the same challenge from the same warring
parties, other institutions—including many U.N. humanitarian
organizations, UNPROFOR, and some NGOs—were more
pragmatic. In negotiating humanitarian space, they ceded the
belligerents greater authority over their activities. They bargained
their way into difficult-to-access areas by agreeing to
provide majority populations with assistance sometimes disproportionate
to their actual needs. They acquiesced in what
they agreed were uncomfortable links. To be allowed to evacuate
minority civilians from an area controlled by one ethnic
group, they agreed in certain instances to do the same elsewhere
where the majority and minority were reversed.
Had they stood on humanitarian principle, the pragmatists
said, they would still be standing. “It would be naïve to
think, or to insist,” observed UNHCR’s State of the World’s
Refugees 1993, “that humanitarian assistance—alone of all the
elements involved in a conflict—can be entirely free from
calculations concerning ends and means.” The process of
calculation was suggested by Wilbert van Hövell in the earlier
discussion of ethnic cleansing. The main criterion in assisting
with population movements, he wrote, is “whether the persons
concerned are in an acute life threatening situation,” a
criterion, that had to be “weighed against various local constraints
and possible adverse consequences.”
Criticized for agreeing to an exchange of dead bodies in
return for access to Mostar in mid-1993, Cedric Thornberry,
UNPROFOR’s Head of Civil Affairs, commented, “If you
don’t make deals, you can’t even get in” to besieged areas and
therefore are in no position to provide help. “If you are in nonpolitical
humanitarian activities,” he added, “you have to be
very political to be successful.”
Pluses and Minuses
Each approach had liabilities and assets. The principled
route requires self-denial on the part of organizations that
insist on greater humanitarian space than may be available at
a particular time. Negotiation of acceptable terms of access can
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e a time-consuming process of months or even years, during
which humanitarian operations may have to be held in abeyance,
however excruciating the need. The discipline involved
in saying “no” is exceptionally difficult for organizations
whose very reason for being is thereby frustrated. Proponents
believe, however, that short-term pain is offset by longer term
gain.
While pragmatism allows for greater flexibility, it may
result in injecting political considerations into the conduct of
humanitarian operations. Pragmatism also may involve a lack
of consistency. Different U.N. organizations sized up the
trade-offs differently. Unlike the situation in Mostar involving
UNPROFOR, UNHCR in another set of circumstances refused
to accept an exchange of prisoners between Serbs and Muslims
as a precondition for access to civilians in Bosnian Serb-held
territory. On another occasion, when a UNHCR-organized
convoy was intercepted at a roadblock, one U.N. humanitarian
agency sought to negotiate independently the release of its
own trucks. A U.N. system-wide strategy for dealing with
such matters was lacking.
The more pragmatic approach also runs the risk of being
forced to make ever-greater concessions. The initial hole is
small when the screw is inserted, explained a U.N. official.
After a few turns of the screwdriver, however, the screw
begins to bite. UNHCR, which earlier had agreed to assist
Bosnian Serbs somewhat disproportionately to their actual
needs, was reported in late 1993 to be considering trading fuel
oil, much-needed by the Serbs, for greater access to Muslim
enclaves imperiled by approaching winter.
In any event, the Balkan scene proved to be one in which
agreements came—and went—more easily than elsewhere.
“You have to learn to function in a world without durable
commitments,” remarked an ICRC delegate. Both the principled
and the pragmatic would have agreed with the observation
by a UNHCR protection officer that “Nothing is without
its price here.” Accepting access under restrictive terms
had its drawbacks, as did refusing to accept such access.
Practitioners of both schools went public to apply pressure
on the belligerents and on occasion to condemn them. Not
given to public denunciations, the ICRC issued more of them
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here than in any previous conflict—and yet was still regularly
denied the levels of access and cooperation it sought. Senior
officials of UNHCR, whose criticism was relentless and outspoken,
even to the discomfort of other U.N. humanitarian
agencies and UNPROFOR itself, did not believe that its activities
or relationships were impaired as a result.
Differing views also emerged about when to apply the
ultimate sanction: suspending or terminating humanitarian
operations. Following the death of an ICRC delegate in an
attack on a Red Cross convoy carrying emergency medical
supplies to the Sarajevo hospital in May 1992, the ICRC suspended
its activities in eastern Bosnia, resuming them in July.
UNHCR, which helped fill the gap left by ICRC’s departure,
also suspended programs in eastern Bosnia in February 1993
to protest abuse by Serbs, Croats, and Muslim forces. It reinstated
activities three days later when its conditions were met.
U.N. aid convoys in Bosnia were again suspended following
the death of a Danish driver in October, and reinstated following
fresh promises by the belligerents in November.
While practitioners of both schools suspended operations,
the ICRC demonstrated a greater willingness to do so. U.N.
officials found the views of donor governments, particularly
the importance attached to maintaining humanitarian operations
in this crisis, a deterrent to suspending U.N. activities.
While the ICRC’s major contributors were also governments,
its traditions allowed it to strike a tougher balance between
humanitarian principle and continued humanitarian work.
How did the two schools approach the related matter of
withholding relief supplies as a means of extracting commitments
from the belligerents? The ICRC was opposed in principle;
the U.N. was opposed in practice. The fact that withholding
aid was a two-edged sword discouraged its frequent
exercise by either group. In negotiating with Bosnian Serb
authorities for access to the Muslim enclaves, U.N. officials
generally avoided threatening to withhold relief supplies. If
they did and Serbs remained intransigent, they either would
have had to suspend programs or cave in. Suspension would
penalize those most in need, helping the Serbs to achieve their
own objectives; retreating from a threat once made would undermine
their own authority and confirm their relative impotence.
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The difficulties encountered in the former Yugoslavia by
all humanitarian organizations led to soul-searching by both
the principled and the pragmatic. The ICRC, buffeted by
recent difficulties in the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, and
elsewhere, reviewed its own approach and redoubled its
efforts to encourage greater fidelity to international humanitarian
law. In August 1993, the Swiss government at the
ICRC’s urging convened an international conference for the
protection of war victims. International humanitarian law
was, ICRC President Cornelio Sommaruga told the meeting,
“the last bastion of human solidarity.”
Recent events also led the U.N. to rethink the terms of its
own engagement in situations of internal armed conflict.
While most scrutiny was directed toward a perceived overextension
of the U.N.’s peacekeeping and peacemaking activities,
U.N. humanitarian operations also began to come in for
review. The process, however, did not yet include a fundamental
examination by the world body of alternative means
for dealing with belligerents who flout humanitarian values.
It also did not examine the tensions created when member units
of the same organization conduct humanitarian programs sideby-side
with peacekeeping and peacemaking activities.
The Balance Sheet
As of late 1993, the jury was still out on whether one
approach was more successful than the other in the former
Yugoslavia. In a setting in which staff members of both schools
were hunkering down in the same quarters in the same towns,
the early evidence did not point decisively to the greater
success of one approach or the other. However, several elements
were already a matter of record.
First, the belligerents differentiated among organizations
and took the best deal they could get. In the area of assistance,
the parties sooner or later generally agreed to the conditions
stipulated by UNHCR, the basic supplier, for lifting the suspension
of food deliveries, although problems also recurred.
In the area of protection, the requests of UNHCR to visit
detention centers, unlike those of the ICRC, had few or no
conditions attached. As a result, ICRC feared that visits of-
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fered at a “lower price” would undermine the stricter criteria
it used to enhance protection and ensure the credibility of the
process. Those who made concessions could well undercut
those adhering to principle.
Second, pragmatic humanitarian organizations which
made some concessions during the first two years may have to
make more. Conversely, principled organizations that have
refused to make concessions may have continued trouble
sustaining access to those in need. Neither approach is assured
of success.
Finally, there appeared to be no direct correlation between
the amount of public criticism and the level of cooperation
elicited from the respective belligerents. While less outright
challenge might seem in theory to induce greater cooperation,
the fact that public criticism was seldom backed up in practice
by stronger measures may have made it more tolerable.
6. Determining the Appropriate Uses of the Military
The discussion in the previous section reviewed different
approaches to winning the consent of uncooperative
belligerents to humanitarian activities. What of moving beyond
the consentual and applying force to extract cooperation?
Did United Nations troops play a role in using force in
support of humanitarian operations? In a broader sense, what
were their contributions to the U.N.’s humanitarian response
to the crisis?
Visible and Invisible Contributions
Three positive contributions by military personnel to humanitarian
activities stand out. First, military officials made
their expertise available to those in charge of relief operations.
UNPROFOR personnel provided daily briefings in Zagreb to
the UNHCR Special Envoy and other United Nations personnel.
Regular sessions also were held to which aid organizations
outside the U.N. were invited. In Zagreb, Split, Sarajevo,
and Belgrade, these meetings took place at least weekly.
UNPROFOR maps of the ever-changing frontlines were distributed,
recent security incidents discussed, observations
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from U.N. Military Observers passed on, and questions about
the relative peril to humanitarian operations tackled.
Military expertise was also provided to UNHCR by governments
who lent personnel with special background and
training in matters such as security and logistics. The UNHCR
Special Envoy at one point had five specialists on his staff.
Current or retired army personnel played critical roles in
directing UNHCR convoy operations from Zagreb and
Belgrade. In one instance, a British army officer was assigned
to ODA, which in turn made his services available to UNHCR,
which provided him with the necessary administrative support.
Retired military personnel also signed direct contracts
with U.N. and other humanitarian organizations. As in other
post-Cold War theaters, the phasing down of the world’s
military establishment produced people willing to take on a
new breed of humanitarian challenges.
Second, UNPROFOR troops supported U.N. operations
when requested, usually accompanying UNHCR convoys on
a regularly scheduled basis into insecure areas, particularly in
eastern and central Bosnia. Sometimes troops preceded relief
vehicles, fanning out across a wide area to deter harassment.
When the likelihood of violence was greater, they provided
direct escort. These entourages generally traveled with armored
personnel carriers as the first and last vehicles and one
or more other military vehicles in the middle. During mid-
1993, UNPROFOR escorted about a thousand tons of relief
supplies a day. The amounts slipped by almost half toward
year’s end as violence made major overland supply routes into
central Bosnia more perilous.
Humanitarian officials praised UNPROFOR’s support.
According to one UNHCR logistician, such armed escorts
“faced down” violence. They also discouraged looting, pillaging,
and other harassment of aid operations, random or
planned. The troops also reduced tensions. One military officer
involved told the team, “The fact that we’re there creates
confidence among civilians.” UNPROFOR troops also rescued
aid workers—in one incident saving their lives by shooting
over the heads of their captors. Having military personnel
visible in the area, said one observer, was “a symbol of robustness.”
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Third, and perhaps the most visible of the military’s
contributions, was its “heavy lifting.” Military aircraft from
about twenty countries supplied the Sarajevo airport, itself
occupied by UNPROFOR troops. In the first sixteen months of
operation, thousands of relief flights came and went, supplying
43,030 tons of food and providing regular transport in and
out for relief personnel. With the 6,000th flight, the operation
on October 22, 1993 had outlasted the Berlin airlift following
World War II. UNPROFOR troops posted in the other “safe
areas” in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the U.N. Protected
Areas of Croatia also provided humanitarian support.
Engineering contributions by UNPROFOR troops were a
particularly dramatic example of an activity exceeding the
capacity of humanitarian organizations themselves. Dutch
and Belgian engineering battalions, which were often called
upon for road-grading and repairs as convoys took their toll,
were especially helpful. Troops also were used for minesweeping
and, on rare occasions, for the actual transport of
relief supplies.
U.N. troops were also engaged on occasion in direct
humanitarian activities such as operating feeding programs,
administering inoculations, and constructing shelters. One of
the most notable examples was the role of the French
UNPROFOR batallion in Sarajevo, which was involved in
food distribution to several besieged sections of the city. On
balance, however, the troops’ involvement in direct aid distribution
was probably less significant than described in
UNPROFOR speeches and promotional literature.
Limitations and Liabilities
In addition to dramatizing potential contributions by the
military in support of humanitarian undertakings, the experience
in the Balkans also highlighted limitations. Cooperation
with humanitarian operations was accompanied, as UNHCR’s
first Special Envoy put it, by “contradictions.”
In the first place, the mandate of the military to use force—
whether to protect civilian populations or to support humanitarian
operations—was narrowly circumscribed. As indicated
in the previous chapter, only in Bosnia and Herzegovina were
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UNPROFOR troops authorized to use “all measures necessary”
to assure relief deliveries and protect humanitarian
personnel. Actual force used there, however, was modest. On
paper, U.N. troops were more than a traditional peacekeeping
force. However, UNPROFOR’s rules of engagement (that is,
fire only in self defense) and need to rely on the consent of the
parties made them more like traditional U.N. peacekeepers
than a more assertive asset.
In this context, “protection” of convoys was a difficult
proposition. Troops were often unable to ward off harassment.
UNPROFOR as a rule did not challenge the belligerents
at roadblocks, the most frequent obstruction encountered by
aid practitioners, for fear of widening the vortex of violence.
National contingents such as the British, who assumed broader
humanitarian support roles and were more assertive in their
use of force, were nervous at the same time about stretching
their mandates. There was never a battle between U.N. soldiers
and any of the parties who routinely halted convoys.
Paired with these constraints on the part of the military
was the widespread reluctance by civilian humanitarians
about the direct application of force. “Any attempt to use force
has a whiplash effect throughout the entire operation,” explained
Neill Wright, UNHCR chief of operations for Bosnia
and Herzegovina in June 1993. Even successfully running a
particular roadblock, he speculated, would lead to tightening
up checkpoints across the entire area. “The minute you use
force, you make the entire operation untenable.”
“Day One success can turn into Day Two failure,” observed
Major Richard Barrons, Chief of Staff of British Forces
at their headquarters in Split—“unless you are prepared to
conduct a full-scale conventional war in support of humanitarian
objectives.” While some within the military might be
prepared to raise the stakes, he noted, doing so would require
“a completely different package of forces” than had been
deployed in the former Yugoslavia and a political will that was
lacking.
A more aggressive approach, however, was not without
proponents. UNPROFOR willingness to “punch its way
through” the first Serb challenge at the first Bosnian Serb
roadblock, they argued, would have established the credibil-
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ity and seriousness of the U.N.’s humanitarian agenda. A
more decisive response to obstructions might even have reduced
the level of relief required, they said, by making convoys
less vulnerable to extortion. However valid this view in
theory, governments in practice were unwilling to back up
Security Council rhetoric with more military clout.
UNPROFOR troops were often least available where and
when they were most needed. In accepting the refusal of the
Serbs to allow the stationing of UNPROFOR troops in the
areas they controlled, the U.N. essentially agreed to play the
game by Serb rules. As a result, when ethnic cleansing raged
in Banja Luka and the lives of humanitarian personnel were
also on the line, UNPROFOR troops were absent. Those who
viewed UNPROFOR’s restrictive rules of engagement as tying
one of its hands behind its back argued that acquiescing in Serb
objections to UNPROFOR presence rendered the other hand
useless as well.
Even in areas where United Nations troops were present
on the ground, the military tended to be cautious—generally
far more so than civilian humanitarians. The military, with a
clearer chain of command and elaborately codified procedures,
was less apt to take risks than their civilian counterparts,
who placed a premium on being present precisely
where the danger was greatest and local populations the most
exposed. In addition to the military’s own instincts against
sending troops into harm’s way, troop-providing governments
back home were reluctant to have their nationals exposed.
As a result, U.N. soldiers were often least available in
the most critical circumstances.
UNPROFOR troops also encountered difficulties that were
not appropriate for the use of armed force. Many of the
obstructions to humanitarian activities were not high-powered
weapons but agitated (and sometimes well choreographed)
women and children. They blocked passage of relief
to areas controlled by enemies who, they protested, had killed
or imprisoned their menfolk. In such circumstances, the military
was no better off than civilian humanitarians: that is,
“reduced” to negotiations or to waiting out the situation. More
forceful action would have raised the levels of local resistance
to U.N. presence and, at the international level, provoked
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serious questions of proportionality.
Problems of coordination within UNPROFOR and between
UNPROFOR and the humanitarian organizations reduced
the utility of U.N. troops for humanitarian support
roles. Within UNPROFOR, there was great unevenness in the
approaches of national battalions to their humanitarian protection
responsibilities and in their willingness to be assertive.
Until April 1993, individual contingents took orders from, and
reported to, their national capitals rather than UNPROFOR
headquarters in Zagreb. In March, there were doubts that the
British battalion would respond to orders from the French
UNPROFOR commander to rescue him from Srebrenica.
Command and control problems within UNPROFOR were
matched by rifts between UNPROFOR and the U.N.’s humanitarian
operations. For the first year and a half, there was
widespread confusion about the respective roles, authority,
and accountability of each. UNHCR, however, understandably
as lead agency responsible for the U.N.’s relief effort,
neither took orders from nor reported to UNPROFOR. It,
however, understandably insisted on a say in decisions related
to the use of U.N. troops for humanitarian support
functions.
In a public display of confusion, the High Commissioner
in February 1993 suspended relief operations in eastern Bosnia
to protect humanitarian operations from further compromise.
The UNPROFOR commander in the area decided to proceed
with convoys already arranged, only to be overruled by the
UNPROFOR Force Commander in Zagreb. The Secretary-
General asserted his command over the entire U.N. system. In
any event, the High Commissioner soon restarted operations
on her own authority.
Some of those involved believed that these problems
suggested the need for humanitarian and military operations
alike to function within a unified command structure. Such a
structure, it was felt, could resolve other shortcomings such as
the absence of parallel decision-making structures, co-located
field offices, and a common frequency for radio communications.
Other officials recommended the opposite: that U.N.
humanitarian activities be given greater operational autonomy.
“Given UNPROFOR’s size,” observed a UNHCR official, “we
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had to adapt to UNPROFOR rather than vice-versa.” All
agreed, however, on the need for a clearer division of labor
between the two.
There were questions about the respective numbers of
military and civilian personnel within the U.N. ranks. Did the
UNPROFOR configuration in June 1993 of 22,749 military
personnel and 1,879 civilians represent the most effective
arrangement? Since UNPROFOR troops in Bosnia were deployed
on a humanitarian support mission, would fewer
military and more civilian personnel have been preferable?
Some recommended that UNPROFOR’s 24,628 approved slots
include even more soldiers. Others favored reducing troop
strength and augmenting the ranks of human rights monitors
(3) and civilian police (617). Relief operations would have
benefited from “far fewer trigger pullers and far more engineers
and drivers,” said one UNHCR official, whose recommendation
was rejected by governments in their 1994 plans.
The Yugoslav experience demonstrated the limitations
not only of humanitarian action but also of force and political
will. The issue was dramatized by the initiative taken by
UNPROFOR General Philippe Moreillon in March 1993 to
gain access to Srebrenica at a time when relief convoys were
kept out of the enclave and desperate people were kept in.
Once in the town, he refused to leave until the first food
convoys in three months had been allowed to enter and to take
people out on their return trip. During the next six weeks,
about 9,000 people were evacuated by truck and helicopter.
How did Moreillon reach the town and bring Srebrenica
into the world’s living rooms? Not by punching his way
through, said one military officer, but by using “the only
offensive weapon that UNPROFOR has: public information.”
He chose to “nail his colors to the humanitarian mast.” While
his courageous visit led to immediate humanitarian gains, it
was soon followed by renewed Serb shelling, interruption of
the town’s water supply, and a clamp-down on the remaining
population.
Evolution over Time
When the team first visited the region in March 1993,
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painful military-humanitarian ruptures were being repaired
and improved working relationships forged. By June, cooperation
and communication had become more systematic and
productive. By September, major changes in command structure
and accountability were under discussion. By then, the
worsening conflict in central Bosnia and the continued precariousness
of the situation in Sarajevo had highlighted the
importance of the military’s contribution to the daily grunt
work and other humanitarian chores.
There were several ironies in the evolution, however. The
military proved more useful in supporting and advising humanitarian
operations than in securing physical access to
vulnerable populations or in carrying out assistance and protection
activities themselves. However, as the general security
situation worsened, aid activities by civilian agencies became
more restricted and the military more important.
As U.N. aid officials found it increasingly necessary to
withdraw staff from individual hot spots and began to contemplate
their own withdrawal from the Yugoslav theater,
UNPROFOR officials and some governments supplying troops
became more alarmed about the exposure of the military to
those same insecure conditions. Improved UNPROFOR command
and control arrangements and better coordination between
the U.N.’s military and humanitarian activities were
accompanied paradoxically by a growing sense of the
unsustainability of the United Nations’ overall presence.
There was also great irony in that however weak the
element of force used by UNPROFOR, the presence of U.N.
military and humanitarian personnel in Bosnia and
Herzegovina became a deterrent to the use of a more assertive
level of force by the Security Council or NATO. The ostensible
vulnerability of both military and humanitarian personnel to
Serb reprisal was invoked by governments, particularly the
British, French, and Canadian, to argue against the greater
application of force, a position that was changing again as this
volume was going to press.
The Soros Humanitarian Fund for Bosnia and Herzegovina
challenged that view in April 1993 in an open letter to President
Clinton. “We have become convinced that humanitarian
aid without adequate political and military action against the
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Serbian aggressors is not effective,” they wrote. They recommended
countering Serbian obstruction with “a credible deterrent”
to protect Muslim areas, including the use of aircraft
“to attack artillery units which are firing on those enclaves or
on humanitarian convoys.”
The experience in the former Yugoslavia shed more light
on the constructive roles of the military in certain areas such as
regular security advice and occasional convoy escort than it
did on the application of various levels of military force in
support of humanitarian operations in war zones. While the
terms of engagement in the former Yugoslavia were demonstrably
ineffective, the impacts on humanitarian operations of
additional force and more insistent military pressure are not
known.
Issues related to the application of military clout in support
of humanitarian objectives are connected to the broader
issue of the use of force in international relations. The limited
terms of reference of UNPROFOR troops in a setting where the
indiscriminate use of force by the belligerents made a mockery
of humane values struck many, reportedly including the warring
parties themselves, as self-defeating. UNPROFOR troops
were dubbed by detractors as “eunuchs at an orgy.”
In January 1993, following a Croatian army attack on a
Serb-controlled area in the Krajina, UNPROFOR troops stationed
in the area were criticized for not having intervened.
UNPROFOR’s chief of civil affairs Cedric Thornberry responded,
“We can’t go around and bang the table and say,
‘You do this or else we will blow you to blazes...’ That’s not the
goal of the United Nations and we don’t have the authority to
do it.” The U.N.’s approach, he said, is to work “the slow
way...building bridges between communities.”
While agreeing that the use of military force was characterized
by inflated rhetoric and deflated muscle, the team did
not agree on whether the application of greater force would
have resulted in more effective humanitarian programs. We
were in even less of a position to evaluate whether alternative
military strategy and tactics—“ring deployment” around strategic
areas, “take down” of the heavy artillery ringing Sarajevo
and air strikes against other Serb positions, serious enforcement
of the “no-fly zone,” and “over the top” insertion of
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NATO troops into the Bosnian interior—might have produced
more positive results.
We agreed, however, that as with the limited-force approach
actually used, each alternative would have had its own
set of ramifications on the operational landscape for humanitarian
activities. We also agreed that the choices actually made
regarding the appropriate role and level of force failed to “get
it right.”
7. Protecting the Integrity of Humanitarian Action
Threats to the integrity of humanitarian action in the
former Yugoslavia came not only from operating in war zones
amidst obstructions thrown up by the warring parties but also
from the U.N.’s own response. Two events illustrate the issue.
WHO Director-General Hiroshi Nakajima wrote the U.N.
Secretary-General on August 27, 1993 about the serious deterioration
in the health situation of “the entire population” in
Serbia and Montenegro. With winter approaching, medicines
and heating oil were in extremely short supply. Noting that
the sanctions regime imposed by the Security Council was
causing severe shortages of pharmaceuticals (the ingredients
of which the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia had offered to
purchase abroad), he suggested that the Sanctions Committee
“may wish to consider defreezing funds for purely medical
and humanitarian purposes.” He offered WHO’s services to
verify that raw materials imported for the production of
pharmaceuticals were used for those purposes. He received no
reply.
The Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human
Rights Tadeusz Mazowiecki noted in an October 1992 report
that because of the crush of 700,000 refugees and displaced
persons already in Croatia:
UNPROFOR, which controls much of the border
between Bosnia and Herzegovina and
Croatia, is being forced to limit their entry
into the...UNPAs. Many displaced Muslims
have been turned away at the border and
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some of those persons who have already
crossed it, including those of military age, are
being sent back both by UNPROFOR and the
Croatian authorities. It is extremely regrettable
that UNPROFOR has been forced to
violate the principle of non-refoulement.
These incidents suggest a United Nations security apparatus—Sanctions
Committee, UNPROFOR, and the Security
Council itself—hostile to the protection and assistance needs
of the war-torn region. In fact, concern for the well-being of
civilian populations played a newly prominent role in U.N.
affairs—not only in the Balkans but also in northern Iraq,
Somalia, and elsewhere. The difficulty was rather that the
political and military strategies adopted did not advance the
stated humanitarian goals.
We review the extent to which the integrity of the U.N.’s
humanitarian activities in the former Yugoslavia was compromised
by their association with the world body’s political and
military actions.
Association with the Political
In a series of resolutions, the Security Council imposed,
reaffirmed, and tightened economic sanctions against the
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro). In
forbidding all trade, Resolution 757 of May 30, 1992 authorized
the Sanctions Committee to allow the entry of foodstuffs,
medical supplies, and UNPROFOR-related goods and services.
Tightening the sanctions, Resolution 820 of April 17,
1993 reaffirmed the earlier exemption for medical supplies
and foodstuffs and added a category of “other essential humanitarian
supplies,” which, like the other exceptions, would
be approved as previously by the Sanctions Committee using
a case-by-case, no-objection procedure.
The economic sanctions, explained U.N. secretariat staff
to the team, “were intended to change the attitudes and
policies of the government or persons in authority, not to hurt
innocent people.” Yet they had three direct and three indirect
impacts on civilian populations and on those seeking to assist
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them.
The first and most direct was to delay aid activities. Every
item in every relief shipment used by the United Nations
agencies to assist refugees in Serbia and Montenegro—and to
reach the displaced in eastern Bosnia through the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia—was subject to review. At the time of
our first visit in March, the delays were already sizable. By
June, new procedures to implement the tighter controls had
created widespread confusion and brought most relief shipments
already in the pipeline to a halt. By October, the approval
process had been streamlined somewhat, but delays
still averaged two months.
The staff time and expense committed by the U.N.’s humanitarian
organizations to the clearance process could have
been used to mitigate suffering. UNICEF’s entire system was
affected, from administrative offices in New York and Geneva
through purchasing and warehousing staff in Copenhagen
and at the Hungarian-Serb border to program managers in
Belgrade, Zagreb, Split, and field staff deployed around the
region. In the spring of 1993, UNHCR paid financial penalties
of $30,000 a day in demurrage costs for a truck convoy stopped
by officials at the border between Austria and Hungary who
questioned the validity of its papers. The resulting obstruction
of about 4,000 tons of food bound for Sarajevo and the eastern
enclaves contributed to critical interruptions in the food pipeline.
Second, United Nations sanctions spread the suffering
experienced by refugees to local populations. In fact, the
damage may have outweighed U.N. humanitarian assistance.
In late 1993 when the U.N.’s target beneficiary population in
Serbia numbered 565,000 (not all of whom were being reached),
estimates indicated that between 50 and 90 percent of the
remaining population of 10 million was experiencing serious
sanctions-related hardship. As indicated, the health care system
in Serbia and Montenegro was a major casualty. Monitoring
the twin effects of sanctions—the functioning of aid organizations
was hamstrung, while the numbers of those needing
assistance burgeoned—WHO authorities in Belgrade commented
that “Sanctions make the life of humanitarian organizations
almost impossible.”
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In a letter sent in June 1993 to their respective Geneva
headquarters, the senior officials in Belgrade of WHO, UNHCR,
and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent
Societies (IFRC) noted their “ethical obligation” to call
attention to “the detrimental effect of the sanctions on the
health of the people and on the health care system of the
country where we work.” They explained that “While the
sanctions, in principle, do not cover medical supplies, in
practice they have contributed to breaking the health care
system....[A]ll health care institutions in all parts of the country
lack vital drugs, equipment and spare parts.”
In addition to its time-consuming, case-by-case review of
requests for commercial drug imports, the Sanctions Committee
refused to authorize imports of raw materials from which
a relatively advanced Serbian pharmaceutical industry could
manufacture drugs itself. Efforts by Serb health authorities to
arrange visits by outside technicians to repair blood testing
and transfusion equipment were unsuccessful, apparently
reflecting the perception abroad that travel to Belgrade would
undercut the embargo. Serb authorities then shipped the
equipment to Britain for repair; it was not returned, apparently
also for fear of violating the embargo. WHO reported
that as of June 1993, “4,000 hemodialysis patients live in a
continuous uncertainty.” By September, the Belgrade authorities
had raised the number to 5,000.
Third, assistance activities became much harder to administer.
The growing desperation of people ineligible for aid led
to a higher rate of tampering with beneficiary lists. Some aid
officials expressed the view that the growing unpopularity of
U.N. sanctions made efforts to subvert the aid program an act
of defiance. Some relief personnel saw a connection between
the embargo, humanitarian aid, and increased criminal activity.
Belgrade authorities linked the sanctions to “corruption,
smuggling, violence,” and other major “changes of ethical and
moral values.”
If the direct impacts of sanctions were wide-ranging, the
indirect repercussions were no less dramatic. First, sanctions
widened an implicit contradiction within humanitarian programs.
From the start, the U.N.’s focus had been on refugees,
more than half a million of whom fled from Bosnia and
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Herzegovina to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
As economic conditions worsened, local hospitality became
more difficult to sustain. The continuing war, along with
sanctions-related unemployment, inflation, and shortages of
essentials, contributed to nationwide distress. Total economic
losses brought about by the sanctions by late 1993 were, the
authorities claimed, “in excess of $20 billion,” returning the
economy to the levels of the 1960s.
Despite ever-widening distress, U.N. programs continued
to focus on those directly affected by the war, contributing
to what one aid official called the “growing perception among
the population that the humanitarian agencies are only concerned
with refugee groups.” The sanctions contributed to a
growing backlash against refugees. While the U.N. eventually
included “social cases” in its appeals, the expansion stopped
far short of actual need. “Without lifting or easing the sanctions
regime, there will be no solution to our humanitarian
problems,” concluded Dragomir Djokic, the Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia’s Ambassador to the United Nations. “Humanitarian
assistance alone can’t solve the needs of ten million
citizens and one million refugees.” The point was a serious
one, even though the authorities had their own political reasons
for making it.
Second, the embargo confirmed Serbian suspicions about
the United Nations. Why were there were no U.N. economic
sanctions against Croatia? How trustworthy were the world
organization’s humanitarian activities, managed from Zagreb
and underwritten by governments that forbade expenditures
in Serbia? The dearth of private relief groups working with
displaced Serbian populations called into question NGO humanitarian
credentials as well. Economic sanctions and humanitarian
assistance activities thus became mutually reinforcing
symbols of a suspected international anti-Serb animus.
The perception of being singled out for invidious treatment
touched a raw nerve, however paranoid. “This particular
example of genocide against the Serbs is one in a long
history,” charged Branko Brankovic, a senior official in the
Federal Ministry for Foreign Affairs in comments on sanctions.
Referring to the return of long-banished diseases due to
a lack of medicine, he asked, “What is that except the direct or
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indirect extermination of the whole population?” Sanctions
are “an inappropriate and unprecedented form of collective
punishment of a nation, inflicting grave and far-reaching
economic, demographic, health and social-developmental consequences
on my country,” wrote the Prime Minister to the
President of the U.N. Security Council in August 1993.
A third consequence was growing resistance to cooperating
with the United Nations. On the humanitarian side, the
authorities in Belgrade linked discussion of the needs of
refugees to those of the broader population. Cooperation with
U.N. efforts to reach eastern Bosnia through Serbia stood to be
affected. On the political side, the effects were less clear. There
was some evidence to suggest that the desire to have sanctions
lifted contributed to pressure by Belgrade on the Bosnian
Serbs to be more supportive toward peace negotiations in
1993. In this respect, the sanctions may have accomplished one
of their purposes. Without doubt, relaxation of sanctions had
by 1993 become an overriding foreign policy priority of the
regime.
The impacts of the sanctions had by late 1993 brought the
U.N. to an important fork in the road. Growing evidence
supported the conclusion of Judith Kumin, UNHCR’s Chief of
Mission in Belgrade, that “trying to implement a humanitarian
program in a sanctions environment represents a fundamental
contradiction.” Yet the choices were not easy. Should
sanctions be kept in place, creating additional civilian hardship
in the hope of putting more pressure on the Belgrade
authorities to support a negotiated end to the conflicts? Or
should they be eased or scrapped in view of the damage to
associated U.N. activities? At a minimum, a fresh look at the
interaction between political and humanitarian objectives was
required.
Association with the Military
Shifting the focus to Croatia, we scrutinize how much the
association with UNPROFOR compromised the integrity of
U.N. humanitarian activities in the UNPAs. The example with
which we began this discussion, linking UNPROFOR to the
refoulement of persons fleeing from Bosnia and Herzegovina,
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provides a point of entry.
In the UNPAs, United Nations troops and civilian police
were, in effect, the frontline response of the international
community to human rights and human needs. However,
their training in human rights protection and in international
humanitarian law was inadequate. Their familiarity and working
relationships with UNHCR were also limited. They did not
routinely act to prevent expulsions and ethnic cleansing, nor
did they insist that asylum seekers be allowed entry or help
repatriate those expelled.
UNHCR, which had limited direct presence within the
UNPAs, sought to ensure that refugees from Bosnia and
Herzegovina were able to flee into Croatia, crossing a border
controlled by UNPROFOR, and that once there they were
treated in accordance with international norms. However,
given insufficient UNHCR staff to allow posting at all entry
points, UNPROFOR’s presence was critical.
UNPROFOR claimed that the actions criticized by the
Special Rapporteur were undertaken to meet its agreement
with the Croatian authorities and maintain order in the UNPAs,
which movement in and out might threaten. However,
UNPROFOR actions were questionable to the point that a
recent review by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights
recommended that “Each component of the U.N. response
should have an explicit humanitarian mandate that includes a
requirement to consult and coordinate efforts in the humanitarian,
political, and military spheres.”
How serious was the damage to humanitarian interests
and programs from these and other UNPROFOR activities?
Croatian government officials were careful to distinguish
between the U.N.'s humanitarian and military faces. One
social service professional who had no previous dealings with
the U.N. balanced sharp criticisms of UNPROFOR with “a
very positive view” about UNHCR.
Many in Croatia, however, seemed to equate the U.N. and
UNPROFOR, both of which experienced growing unpopularity
throughout 1993. UNPROFOR was perceived as having
been too weak in dealing with Serbs in the Krajina—no heavy
arms were collected and few of those expelled were allowed to
return, two of the main objectives in its mandate—and in not
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insisting on a presence in Serb-held territories elsewhere.
At UNPROFOR headquarters in Zagreb in September
1993, demonstrators constructed a wall of bricks, each with the
name of a Croat killed or missing, allegedly on the U.N.’s
watch. This critical viewpoint was given credence by a report
from Human Rights Watch, which labeled the United Nations’
unwillingness to play a more active role in human rights
protection here and in other peacekeeping operations as “the
lost agenda.”
As in Serbia, worsening economic conditions in Croatia
created widespread social unrest. Muslim refugees—and international
and local groups seeking to assist them—came
under growing pressure. People viewed the U.N.’s aid effort
as highly partisan. They faulted the United Nations for giving
more help to Serbia and Montenegro than to Croatia and for
accepting as “real refugees” Bosnian Serbs who had crossed
into the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
For all of the anti-U.N. feeling, some people in Croatia still
preserved distinctions among the components of the United
Nations system. Some who favored UNPROFOR’s departure
at the earliest possible moment felt that UNHCR’s departure
would represent a serious loss.
Political discontent, and particularly the anger of displaced
Croatians who could not go home to villages in the
Krajina, kept UNPROFOR on a short leash. The Croatian
authorities extended its presence for three-month intervals
only. At the same time, UNPROFOR’s economic stimulus to a
floundering Croatian economy made it less likely that the
Zagreb authorities would follow through on their threats to
ask it to leave. Nevertheless, UNPROFOR officials saw themselves
living on borrowed time.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, United Nations humanitarian
activities were undercut by association with its military and
political side. “UNHCR, WHO, UNICEF, and WFP are the socalled
humanitarian response of the world to the Bosnian
crisis,” said Zlatko Hurtíc, Bosnia’s Coordinator for Humanitarian
Affairs, with evident sarcasm, “and it is not adequate.
We are not satisfied with these organizations, nor with the
U.N. itself.”
“In the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia,” observed U.N.
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ambassador Mohamed Sacirbey, “the humanitarian agenda
has been hijacked by those prepared to use humanitarian
ideals as a means of promoting inaction.” Acknowledging that
“The U.N. humanitarian organizations did their best in a
difficult situation,” Sacirbey nevertheless concluded that
“While they saved lives, the people rescued are relegated to a
miserable existence.” In the spring of 1993, the Bosnian Foreign
Minister requested the pullout of both United Nations
military and humanitarian personnel. His request was upstaged
by other developments in the region and not discussed
seriously.
Implications for Other Humanitarian Organizations
Association with the U.N.’s political and military entities
created problems not only for its humanitarian organizations,
but also for other humanitarian agencies. The impacts of the
sanctions were even more disruptive for NGOs than for the
U.N.’s own humanitarian entities.
NGOs had the worst of two worlds. They were required to
seek case-by-case approval of relief supplies and other imports.
“Everything I plan is affected by the embargo,” said Dr.
Geneviève Begkoyian, Belgrade Coordinator for Médecins
sans frontières. “If I need to order an aspirin tablet, I must plan
on two months delay for clearance by the Security Council
before it can even be shipped.” At the same time, NGOs had to
rely on governments and international organizations to plead
their case to the Sanctions Committee, where they lacked
standing. While some NGOs welcomed such help in expediting
their requests, others viewed government advocacy on
their behalf as inappropriate, given their international, nonpolitical
nature.
The indirect effects of sanctions were also substantial,
particularly on the politicization of NGO activities. “Humanitarian
organizations here are on the bad side” of the conflict,
continued the MSF’s Begkoyian from her vantage point in
Serbia, “and so people are not willing to provide donations.
Nobody wants to help Serbs, even though they need assistance
and are bona fide refugees.” Another Belgrade-based NGO
executive observed, “A Serb fleeing from Croatia into Serbia
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has exactly the same problems—lack of resources, need for
housing and a job—as a Croat fleeing from Serbia into Croatia.”
Yet the former received significantly less attention than the
latter, he noted.
Sanctions also discouraged NGOs from taking the extra
time and expense needed to send relief items into the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia. When interviewed by the team in June
1993, the IFRC, which handled the shipping for the network of
national Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, was impatiently
awaiting Sanctions Committee clearance for clothing
from Canada and Germany, medical kits from Switzerland,
baby items from Belgium, and food from Norway, as well as
medical and hygiene items purchased with its own funds. It
already had diverted a shipment of 200 medical kits, recommended
for Serbia and Montenegro by WHO and purchased
by the Swiss Red Cross, to Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina,
where no such obstacle course existed.
Responses by U.N. Humanitarian Organizations
U.N. humanitarian officials sought to protect the integrity
of their work in various ways. Some went to great lengths to
keep their distance from what they called “the other U.N.”
Many with region-wide responsibilities used separate sets of
business cards, listing offices separately to avoid provocation.
Some prefaced discussions in the field with a disclaimer
distinguishing themselves from UNPROFOR. “We’re here to
help you,” they reported saying. To emphasize their independence
from the political and military United Nations, some
suggested painting their vehicles “U.N. blue” as against
“UNPROFOR white.”
Accepting their affiliation, other officials sought to make
the best of a difficult situation, noting that a certain institutional
schizophrenia should be expected and accepted. “We
are a part of the U.N. system and will always be seen as that,”
said Thomas McDermott, UNICEF’s Special Representative to
the Republics of Former Yugoslavia. Even where United Nations
troops are involved, he noted, there will be human needs
that require the special expertise of humanitarian professionals.
With people suffering, McDermott said, “We have to be
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there,” worrying about such essentials as nutritional adequacy,
prenatal care, and the training of social workers. The most
sensible course of action, said a senior humanitarian official in
Belgrade, is simply to accept the fact that “For people here in
Serbia, the U.N. is the U.N., and the U.N. is UNPROFOR.”
Even those who acknowledged that the organization’s
political and military action framed the context for their action
insisted that humanitarian activities never be viewed as a
component of peacekeeping operations. It is worth remembering,
noted DHA Director Charles LaMunière, that in Bosnia
and Somalia, if not in Croatia, humanitarian operations triggered
troop deployment, and that humanitarian action had its
own special imperatives and distinctive style.
In the view of UNICEF’s Deputy Executive Director Richard
Jolly, the fact that different parts of the U.N. take different
approaches reflects the complexity of the issues, not a fatal
disarray within the organization. “I have no problem with
somewhat contradictory responses within the U.N.,” he said.
On the other hand, an insistence on total consistency could
become the enemy of humanitarian action.
Others read the lessons of the former Yugoslavia more
negatively. The conclusion noted earlier that the “UNHCR
should never get involved in a civil war again” was reached by
an official who saw a fundamental contradiction in a humanitarian
operation run, as he put it, by Security Council resolutions.
Some viewed what they called the schizophrenia within
the system as so structural as to justify the creation of a new
unit within the U.N.’s peacekeeping department that would
take over humanitarian duties whenever the Security Council
imposed economic sanctions or committed troops in an enforcement
action.
UNICEF’s Jolly disagreed. To sideline an agency like
UNICEF, whose mission and history equip it to help vulnerable
populations in war zones, would be shortsighted. While
maximum distance between the two facets of the United
Nations should be maintained, he expressed the view that
placing those who need assistance outside the reach of its
existing humanitarian organizations would compromise their
very reason for being.
In short, the United Nations’ experience in the former
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Yugoslavia lends urgency to addressing the relationships and
contradictions between its humanitarian and political and
military activities. In need of attention are day-to-day operational
issues, such as granting goods and services utilized by
the U.N.’s humanitarian agencies the same pass-through
UNPROFOR enjoys.
Broader policy challenges also need attention, such as
infusing political military objectives with greater solicitousness
for humanitarian values. The U.N.’s institutional expressions
of those values—DHA, UNHCR, WHO, UNICEF, WFP,
and the Commission on Human Rights—were not taken into
serious consultation in the Security Council’s original sanctions
decisions, in its assessments of the impacts of sanctions,
or in the decision to tighten them further.
The structural challenge is well framed in UNHCR’s State
of the World’s Refugees 1993. “The coordination of humanitarian
efforts with political and military actions in refugee-producing
conflicts is not without its difficulties,” the report
noted. “It blurs traditionally distinct roles and, if mismanaged,
could compromise the strictly neutral character of humanitarian
aid, which is the best guarantee of access to people
in need.”
8. Orchestrating the Common Effort
The previous discussion suggests a widely shared interest
among humanitarian organizations in protecting the integrity
of their activities. As with challenges reviewed earlier—strategic
planning and negotiations with the warring parties come
particularly to mind—a key question concerns how well the
U.N. orchestrated that common effort.
What Was Needed—and What Emerged
In view of the formidable constraints faced by the many
humanitarian groups engaged in the former Yugoslavia, there
was every reason to have a well-orchestrated common effort.
A coordinated approach would enable funds to be raised in
concert, deployed strategically, multiplied in effectiveness,
and accounted for jointly. It would improve the U.N.’s chances
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of facing down tough interlocutors from the many warring
parties. Problems of logistics and security hampered the work
of all actors but could have been approached with a common
front.
However desirable and necessary, a well-orchestrated
common effort did not materialize. What emerged was not a
single set of U.N. humanitarian activities throughout the
region, but many sets; not a well-choreographed division of
labor between New York and Geneva but a more disjointed
series of activities; not a well-connected network linking its
managers to centers of resources and influence in Brussels,
Washington, Bonn, London, and Paris but a more random
assortment of contacts and channels.
Getting basic data on activities illustrated the problem.
Asked in its capacity as lead agency for an overview of what
the U.N. system had spent on humanitarian activities in the
region, UNHCR provided data only on its own activities and
suggested that the Department of Humanitarian Affairs could
oblige with a system-wide balance sheet. Asked in its capacity
as coordinator of the system’s response to complex emergencies,
DHA suggested checking with UNHCR. “It’s been a
UNHCR initiative from the start,” said DHA, referring both to
the humanitarian response and to decisions about how financial
data were collected and organized.
As a result, fundamental questions remained unanswered
about how much the international community had contributed
to the U.N. and how much had been spent by it. Related
issues such as whether there had been a drop in contributions
also remained unclear. While UN-bashers might suspect financial
mismanagement, the reality was less insidious: interagency
confusion about roles and responsibilities and deeplyingrained
agency instincts inhibited system-wide accountability.
Operational confusion also provoked questions about the
absence of coordination needed to cope with a runaway crisis.
The world system’s response to the deteriorating situation in
the eastern enclaves in mid-1993 provides an example.
In late June, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian
Affairs sent a cable to the U.N. High Commissioner for
Refugees “regarding the desperate water situation facing the
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town of Srebrenica.” DHA’s attention had been drawn to the
crisis by the Under-Secretary-General for Peace-keeping Operations,
who, acting on a report from the scene by MSF-
Belgium, had urged prompt and coordinated international
action. “I would appreciate it if UNHCR could give urgent
attention to the matter,” wrote DHA. “I would be grateful if
you could keep me informed of developments and of course at
our end we are ready to provide any assistance you may
require.”
Received in Geneva, Zagreb, and Belgrade, the DHA
communiqué met with exasperation bordering on ridicule.
For months, UNHCR staff explained, they had been struggling
with the very problem that New York had just discovered
and was belatedly urging them to address. Their response
had been frustrated by the latest problems of access—
the imposition of Bosnian Serb taxes on U.N. convoys—and
the recurring problem of getting essentials for repairing the
water system through the Sanctions Committee in New York
and through the Bosnian Serbs in Pale. Both raised doubts
about whether piping and spare parts for pumps were humanitarian.
(Asked about the Srebrinca incident, DHA explained
that it regularly interceded on behalf of UNHCR in
New York and shared the MSF letter to energize UNHCR.)
Srebrenica’s crisis also illuminated the lack of coordination
among the U.N.’s operational agencies. Returning from a
fact-finding trip in March 1993 and appalled by the plight of
Srebrenica’s women and children, UNHCR personnel had
“begged” UNICEF counterparts in Belgrade to help. UNHCR’s
request had been referred from UNICEF in Belgrade to its
office in Split, which handled activities in the enclaves, and to
Zagreb, UNICEF’s base for activities in the region. Its Belgrade
office had only a limited inventory (sanctions had taken their
toll) and its program priorities ran along other lines. Its Split
office eventually dispatched items that ran into difficulties in
overland delivery. UNHCR essentially was left to handle the
problem itself.
Even granted obstacles over which it had little control, the
United Nations system, faced with the collapse of Srebrenica’s
water system and a looming humanitarian disaster, should
have mounted a more effective response.
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UNHCR and DHA
A historical review provides an apt starting point. UNHCR
was named lead agency in late October 1991. It delivered its
first relief supplies to Croatia and Serbia before the year was
out. In early December, it launched its first appeal for resources,
including requests for UNICEF and WHO. Other
United Nations organizations were not involved, and DHA
had yet to be created. UNICEF opened offices in Zagreb and
Belgrade in November 1991, WHO in July 1992 and WFP in
November 1992.
Consequently, the pattern established UNHCR as the
focal point for the U.N.’s humanitarian activities in all sectors,
including food, health, and social services. The fact that the
initial phase of the crisis involved massive numbers of refugees
in Croatia and Serbia, recalled UNICEF Executive Director
James P. Grant, made UNHCR the appropriate agency. It
also took charge of logistics, putting together a massive fleet of
trucks and drivers which, later complemented by air transport,
delivered relief items on behalf of the U.N. system
throughout the region. UNHCR was not overstating the case
in noting that in the early days, there really was not much
beyond its own activities to coordinate.
The situation on the ground changed in March 1992 with
the declaration of independence by Bosnia and Herzegovina
and in April with the widening of the war to the new nation.
The demands on UNHCR then changed in nature and magnitude.
Rather than assisting primarily refugees who had fled
across borders, UNHCR’s challenge was broadened to include
assisting people displaced, or soon to be displaced, within
their own country. Working within Bosnia and Herzegovina
situated UNHCR in active war zones. Earlier activities in
places such as the Congo, Lebanon, Uganda, and Sri Lanka
had involved sporadic, guerrilla-type combat instead of open
and sustained warfare.
In contrast with its involvement before April 1992 in the
former Yugoslavia and with its pre-Balkans involvement elsewhere,
UNHCR assumed responsibility not simply for a selected
group of refugees or displaced persons but for an entire
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population at risk. The numbers were daunting. A regionwide
target population of half a million in December 1991
doubled in six months to one million, sextupled to three
million in the next six months, and topped four million less
than a year later (See Figure 2.3 on page 32).
As the crisis widened, so did UNHCR’s operations, budget,
personnel, and other infrastructure. The agency tried to
delegate responsibilities. UNHCR dipped into funds it had
mobilized to underwrite their start-up activities and personnel
costs. In August 1992, realizing that needs were outrunning
its capacities, it identified three areas for donor government
action: energy, physical infrastructure, and public utilities.
Initially there were few takers, with UNHCR retaining
direct operational responsibility across a wide range of sectors.
However, in mid-1993 a private sector consortium with
substantial funding from donor governments, the International
Management Group (IMG), was created. It was designed
to address “those large-scale interventions related to
shelter, infrastructure (water and sanitation) and energy in
Bosnia and Herzegovina which are beyond the capacity of the
U.N. system to implement.” The phase-down of UNHCR’s
shelter activities was delayed because IMG did not begin
activities in the region until late 1993.
Despite efforts to delegate some of its major tasks, UNHCR
did so belatedly and haltingly. As a result, the potential
contributions of other organizations remained untapped. On
the one hand, UNHCR concedes that it might well have
delegated coordination of medical evacuations to IOM, thereby
concentrating more fully on its own central functions. On the
other hand, UNHCR was probably right in retaining responsibility
for social services and eventually spinning some activities
off to NGOs. Whatever the particulars, the “culture of
cooperation” needed between the lead agency and its colleagues
was slow to develop. To its own detriment, UNHCR
became, in the words of one observer, “the tree that hides the
forest.”
Also at work was confusion about the concept of a lead
agency. While the terms of reference of a lead agency were
never spelled out, UNHCR might have approached its task, as
had lead agencies in Angola and Ethiopia, more as one of
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coordination and less as one of operation. Some of those
interviewed also believed that a lead agency that was so
massively operational put itself at an institutional advantage
over its partners, discouraging the cooperation it sought. The
lead agency does not necessarily need to be the largest agency.
Where in all this was the Department of Humanitarian
Affairs, created specifically to ensure more effective coordination
among U.N. organizations in complex emergencies? While
DHA was not on the scene in late 1991, when UNHCR received
its mandate, it was in existence the following April, by which
time the magnitude of the lead agency’s task increased.
Some suggested that had the Secretary-General’s letter
been written in April 1992 rather than the previous October, it
should have been addressed to DHA. Others believe that letter
or no letter, DHA should have made the Yugoslav crisis its first
major item of business, even though by April UNHCR was
already well established and DHA was starting from scratch.
Still others hold that given its lack of staff with operational
backgrounds, DHA was wise to keep its distance.
In any event, DHA in New York functioned in quiet—
some would say, invisible—ways. It provided a liaison between
ambassadors from the region and the U.N.’s humanitarian
apparatus; monitored discussions in the Security Council;
kept in touch with the peacekeeping and political affairs
officials and briefed the Secretary-General on developments;
helped prepare international conferences on the former Yugoslavia,
which it co-chaired with UNHCR; participated in missions
to the region; and played a role in several efforts to secure
humanitarian access.
It is difficult to assess the effectiveness of these efforts.
DHA’s interaction with the Secretary-General and other departments
appears not to have been regular or sustained.
Despite procedural changes that reduced access of U.N. secretariat
staff to Security Council deliberations, ways could have
been found to influence more concretely the content of resolutions
affecting humanitarian issues. More could certainly have
been done, said one close observer of Security Council ambassadors
in action, “to keep humanitarian issues in the center of
their minds.” Active and sustained advocacy by DHA with the
Sanctions Committee on behalf of all humanitarian organiza-
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tions would also have been constructive.
In Geneva, DHA was a more visible and assertive part of
U.N. efforts to respond to the crisis. DHA chaired the Inter-
Agency Standing Committee and staffed the Inter-Agency
Support Unit, which were active in mobilizing resources and
tracking pledges and expenditures. Its roles in the last four
consolidated appeals ranged from merely participating as one
member in the assessment missions on which they were based
to co-signing with UNHCR the finished product.
One of DHA’s major contributions to the U.N. system as a
whole was to replace individual appeals by individual United
Nations organizations for particular crises with joint appeals.
As noted earlier, however, the consolidated appeals for the
former Yugoslavia left much to be desired in terms of methodology
and data. DHA also did not systematically follow up on
the appeals with direct advocacy in key capitols.
Close scrutiny of the October 1993 appeal—and the quality
of the appeals improved over time—suggests a number of
serious problems. The document did not articulate the objectives
of U.N. humanitarian activities in the region. It presented
not a common strategy but a compilation of approaches, not a
set of system-wide priorities but a catalogue of activities. It
also did not present an approach for dealing with the warring
parties or outline ground rules and criteria according to which
activities would be carried out—or suspended. In short, there
was a limited value-added element in DHA’s involvement.
The shortcomings reflected not only a dearth of
assertiveness on DHA’s part but also a lack of clear authority
vested in it to resolve interagency differences. DHA also
suffered from a reluctance among operational U.N. agencies
to see it play a major role. Yet despite problems beyond DHA’s
control, it could have played a far more constructive role than
it did.
In short, the interaction between UNHCR and DHA would
have been more productive had the omnipresent and energetic
lead agency delegated more activities and had the neophyte
coordinating vehicle become more assertive. UNHCR
could have used additional help in engaging the political and
military U.N. in New York, perhaps functioning more effectively
in the field as a result. For its part, DHA’s humanitarian
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diplomacy could have benefited from more current and detailed
knowledge of operations in the region and a more
aggressive approach to fund-raising. Such a scenario would
have maximized the contribution of both players: one with
resources and visibility, the other with policy concerns and an
advocacy portfolio.
Tensions notwithstanding, UNHCR contributions were
substantial and much appreciated throughout the system. “If
the High Commissioner had not thrown UNHCR into the
crisis in the former Yugoslavia to the degree that she did,”
noted UNICEF’s Grant, who had himself played similar roles
in other major humanitarian emergencies, “DHA could not
have managed the emergency. UNICEF was most reluctant to
be in the forefront of a European crisis and other candidates
weren’t in evidence.”
Recent Developments
U.N. efforts to orchestrate a common response to the crisis
improved over time. An elaborate array of coordination meetings—in
Geneva, Zagreb, Belgrade, Sarajevo, and Split—
brought principals together regularly across agency lines. By
September 1993, WFP, for instance, participated regularly in
seven sets of such meetings. Organizations outside the immediate
United Nations circle such as the EC and the NGOs also
came to feel more a part of the action.
Some potentially important changes were introduced in
lines of authority and accountability. The High Commissioner
had begun to report to the Secretary-General through his
Special Representative rather than directly. DHA received
approval to post a person in the region on the staff of the
Special Representative, although the position remained vacant.
Yet fundamental structural and institutional matters
remained to be addressed.
Reflecting on the food situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina,
a senior WFP official noted in September that during the first
half of 1993, the United Nations had access to people in need
but lacked the resources to assist them. (The eastern enclaves
were an exception, where fighting and other obstructions
impeded deliveries.) During the latter part of the year, he
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observed, the situation was reversed. The U.N. had food in
hand but greatly reduced access due to the spreading of the
conflict to central Bosnia. Another gap was threatening to
develop in the food pipeline in early 1994 unless additional
pledges were made.
In short, United Nations humanitarian operations after
two years were paradoxically both better orchestrated and
more insecure. With serious start-up problems largely past,
activities were better managed. However, the U.N. was steadily
losing ground in its battles against winter, obstructionism by
the warring parties, and donor fatigue.
9. Achieving Effective Use of Human Resources
A major humanitarian undertaking requires massive and
diverse resources. The mobilization and management of a
complex array of funds, food, medicine, shelter materials, and
transport already have been described. Behind such an operation
were people whose leadership and support were critical
to its success. U.N. performance in meeting the challenge of
mobilizing and managing human resource is discussed in this
section.
Outside Assistance
An accurate tally of the numbers of persons from outside
the region who were involved in the work of the humanitarian
organizations since November 1991 is not available. An educated
guess, however, would place the number of expatriate
personnel from the U.N.’s humanitarian organizations and
secretariat, donor governments and intergovernmental organizations,
international NGOs, and the ICRC in the thousands.
Estimating the average time spent in the region by these
visitors is even more conjectural. Many served on short-term
assignments, visited the region on fact-finding missions or
research, or were rotated out for reasons of security or duress.
Taking into account the sojourns of those on short assignments
as well as the stays of those who remained for a year or more,
the average time spent in the region was probably no more
than several months.
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The highest rate of personnel turnover came during the
start-up phase. At that time, various organizations fielded
assessment teams and then follow-up contingents to rent
office space, hire local staff, and lay the groundwork for
operational activities. The initial UNHCR cadre included personnel
quickly transferred from other field positions around
the world. Some were fresh from operations winding down in
northern Iraq and Central America. Others came on temporary
assignment from headquarters in Geneva. Still others
were provided by governments and NGOs.
UNHCR quickly activated arrangements formalized with
the Norwegian and Danish Refugee Councils after the Persian
Gulf crisis to access expertise outside the U.N. on short notice.
By September 1993, the Norwegian Council was providing 72
personnel. Together, the two councils supplied more than ten
percent of UNHCR’s staff for this emergency.
The early progress was characterized by quick personnel
decisions and short-term commitments, and the situation took
a while to stabilize. A succession of ten program managers in
the UNHCR office in Split before early 1993 undermined
activities along the Dalmatian coast and in central Bosnia and
hampered development of productive working relationships
with the many NGOs there. The management of program
operations throughout Croatia from Zagreb also suffered
from early ins and outs. It was not until early 1993 that the Split
and Zagreb positions were anchored by seasoned professionals
who provided a steadiness that had been lacking in responding
to the widening crisis during 1992.
It is difficult to assess the overall quality of U.N. leadership
in the region. UNHCR benefited from continuity in senior
positions, with its first Special Envoy serving for 19 months
and its Belgrade chief serving there for four years, beginning
long before the crisis. Transitions in the senior ranks of WHO
and UNICEF happened sooner. UNPROFOR had one head of
Civil Affairs during the period covered by this report.
While the quality of leadership provided by such persons
is a separate matter, their continuous presence among fastmoving
events and otherwise rapid personnel turnover was
undoubtedly positive in the face of a steady stream of missions,
visitors, and staff. While most of its appeals were prop-
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erly preceded by interagency assessment missions, seven such
appeals in a nineteen-month period represented a major influx
of personnel at an onerous cost. The team that visited in
August 1992 to prepare the September appeal had 36 members.
This impression of a revolving door damaged the image
of the United Nations in the region.
In addition, individual U.N. agencies had their own staffs
and consultants to track individual programs and activities.
Once again, data were not readily available on the costs to
agencies and donors, but they were surely substantial and
rivaled the contribution of such persons to program development,
monitoring, and fund-raising.
U.N. interlocutors and resident program staff in the region
found significant opportunity costs in servicing the steady
stream of visitors. The Serbian Commissionariat for Refugees
kept careful track not only of humanitarian needs but also of
responses received, including material aid and outside visitors.
In March 1993, the procession included delegations from
the Secours Populaire Français, the Supreme Soviet of Russia,
the Spanish and Swiss embassies, the parliament of Greece,
UNICEF, Oxfam (U.K. and Ireland), churches in Scandinavia,
the Greek cities of Larissa and Katerini, the Red Cross of Italy,
and the Humanitarianism and War Project research team
itself.
Officials of Serbia and of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
in the region and abroad, lacking prior contact with the
world’s humanitarian institutions, expressed dismay that the
system could not function in a more integrated and coordinated
fashion. Hospitable to their visitors, they nevertheless
pointed out a lack of correlation between the volume of callers
and the amounts of assistance.
How well were international personnel equipped to deal
with the challenges? Many U.N. personnel performed with
dedication and courage. Yet there was general agreement with
the view expressed by Cedric Thornberry, UNPROFOR Head
of Civil Affairs, that to function in settings such as this, “we
need higher levels of political and humanitarian professionalism
than have been brought to bear on the crisis here.”
The United Nations experienced difficulty providing the
requisite training for those assigned to the region. Many were
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young and inexperienced, some on their first-ever assignment
with responsibilities overseas. All needed grounding in the
evolving security situation and in the necessary precautions,
particularly after the spring of 1992 when personnel were
stationed directly in conflict zones. Although UNHCR added
several security consultants to its ranks, many staff members
found the training and the equipment far from adequate.
One area of weakness was in training protection officers
and human rights monitors. Some were recent university
graduates; others, less junior, were still new to the U.N. and
unfamiliar with its mandates and procedures. Yet they were
expected to operate in a conflict situation, implement policy
directives, monitor serious human rights abuses, and, in the
case of UNHCR officers, protect beleaguered minorities.
As soon as they seemed to grasp their responsibilities,
their contracts—some for only three months—were over. Many
of UNHCR’s protection and program officers, operating in
remote locations with much authority, faced fast-moving developments
that required quick and informed decisions. Many
staff members felt inadequately prepared. The lack of training
among UNPROFOR personnel in human rights and international
humanitarian and refugee law was already noted.
One senior UNHCR official, a former army officer, commented
on the dilemma faced by humanitarian organizations.
Staff dispatched to the frontlines, he said, need to be young
enough to handle rugged living conditions and imminent
peril. Yet they also need to be old enough to have seasoned
judgment and to win the respect of their opposite numbers,
some of whom were senior military officers. “You can’t be
young and old at the same time,” he observed wryly.
One of the reasons for the high turnover of international
personnel was the extreme pressure of humanitarian responsibilities.
Being on call seven days a week and 24 hours a day
took its toll. One protection officer, acknowledging the strain,
simply stopped working overtime night after night in an effort
to preserve his sanity. Others asked to be given more leave
time away from their posts or to be rotated out after a short
period of time. Agency personnel policies and procedures
were not geared to preventing burnout in the unusually tense
surroundings of the region.
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Local Resources
Recent humanitarian crises have shown that the international
community’s response is often improved when it draws
heavily on locally available resources, including personnel,
institutions, food, medicines, and other relief commodities.
Doing so has such obvious benefits that it often becomes a goal
in its own right. Yugoslavia’s developed infrastructure made
this approach more realistic.
Good-faith efforts were made by the U.N. to enlist the
involvement of local institutions. One of the major partners of
UNHCR and of international NGOs such as Oxfam-UK was
Merhamet, a Muslim NGO with an array of programs in
Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Another was the Center
for Grassroots Relief Work (Suncokret), several of whose
social service activities received U.N. funding. As a result of
such collaborations, there were fewer criticisms raised here
about an expatriate-dominated U.N. response than elsewhere.
Yet as the ethnic conflicts deepened, the risk to local
personnel employed by humanitarian agencies increased. Field
staff, interpreters, and drivers with duties that required presence
in conflict areas or the crossing of battlelines were particularly
exposed. “Due to ethnic tensions,” WFP reported in
November 1993, “it is not possible to employ locally recruited
drivers to drive the convoys into Bosnia, thus international
recruited drivers are used.” Several months later, an aid
organization felt it necessary to evacuate its Muslim staff
members and their families from the Banja Luka area of
Bosnia.
The most dramatic example of the peril involved the
Convoy of Mercy, an initiative organized in June 1993 by
Bosnian cities and towns such as Tuzla to transport relief
supplies from warehouses along the Dalmatian coast back to
their respective communities. Many of the 170 trucks that
made the trip were halted at Bosnian Croat road blocks. Eight
civilian Muslim drivers were reportedly dragged from their
vehicles and shot; others were injured. Criticized for not
having provided protection, UNPROFOR officials pointed
out that their responsibilities were limited to protecting U.N.
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convoys. The United Nations itself sought to avoid such
incidents by using expatriate drivers, an approach that lowered
risks but raised costs.
Life threatening perils were not limited to drivers. An
example of the difficulties of using local professionals was
provided by the medical evacuations from eastern Bosnia.
Local physicians played a role in alerting the media to the need
for medical evacuations, triggering an outpouring of international
interest. The same doctors, however, were under enormous
pressure to evacuate those people chosen by politicians
and the military, frequently without compelling medical justification.
As a result, the screening committee set up by the
U.N. to establish criteria for evacuation and to decide day-today
which individuals should be airlifted specifically excluded
local doctors.
Utilization of local personnel sometimes complicated the
orderly execution of programs. Serb nationals hired as drivers
by UNHCR in Belgrade were able to pass through Serbcontrolled
checkpoints en route to eastern Bosnia, but were
not allowed by Bosnian Serb soldiers to enter Muslim enclaves
“for their own safety.” A driver for a Zagreb-based aid agency
was arrested at a checkpoint en route to Banja Luka. Since he
was a Croat, his organization assumed he had been arrested by
the Serb soldiers, only later to learn that he had been picked up
by the Croatian military before leaving Croatia—for being an
army deserter.
A New Level of Professionalism
Using international and local resources effectively—and
the other challenges discussed earlier—demanded a new level
of professionalism among participating humanitarian organizations.
What the High Commissioner called the “new generation
conflicts” was clearly no place for amateurs.
To be effective, organizations needed clearer policies and
procedures to provide guidance for such emergencies. What
criteria will determine whether to become involved? Under
what circumstances will programs, once launched, be suspended?
How will seasoned professionals be found and quickly
deployed? What accountability will be expected? What will be
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the ground rules for dealing with the belligerents and the
media? How close will be the cooperation with the military?
Experience in the former Yugoslavia suggested the need
for a new breed of humanitarians who combine traditional
warm-heartedness for victims and hard-headedness. The case
of Irma Hadzimurotovic illustrated the tough decisions required
of them. A five-year old whose shrapnel wounds were
beyond treatment in Sarajevo, “baby Irma” became an international
cause célèbre in August 1993, the object of a major
campaign by governments and the media to step up medical
evacuations from eastern Bosnia.
Before August, UNHCR had discouraged evacuation of
all but the most critical medical cases. Like WHO, UNICEF,
and ICRC, UNHCR’s policy reflected its assessment of the
risks to evacuees and aid personnel, the extremely high per
person cost, the possibilities of abuse by the non-needy, and
the higher priority given to rehabilitating local health facilities.
UNHCR was also sensitive to charges of participation in
ethnic cleansing. Despite reservations, UNHCR and others
had set up a screening committee which, between April and
August 1993, had approved and facilitated about ninety
medevacs.
With the case of Irma, for whom treatment in Great Britain
was eventually arranged, a wave of international criticism
engulfed UNHCR for not speedily evacuating such persons,
particularly since Sarajevo airlift planes returned home empty.
There were many children, adults, civilians, and soldiers for
whom Sarajevo’s once renowned medical facilities could no
longer provide. The prevailing impression was that many
were falling through the international safety net because of
U.N. negligence and incompetence.
Aid officials were understandably rankled by donors
who, not having provided beds earlier, were suddenly critical
of U.N. lethargy. And, once seized with the issue, they laid
down restrictive guidelines about whom they would accept.
But the world also had a right to expect its humanitarian
institutions—even confronting the needs of four million uprooted
people—to give special attention to those most vulnerable.
The controversy demonstrated in microcosm the no-win
situation in which humanitarian agencies found themselves,
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needing to make discriminating judgments but liable for criticism
however they proceeded.
In February 1993, a visiting politician from northern Europe
arranged for the release of a group of 27 Serb prisoners
held in a Bosnian jail in Zenica in exchange for a group of
Muslims held by Bosnian Serbs. An UNPROFOR contingent
provided transport. The event, publicized by prearrangement
with media from the northern European country, seemed to
involve the ICRC, which had the task of monitoring prisons
and arranging prisoner of war exchanges.
In fact, the ICRC had been neither consulted nor allowed
to verify that the individuals were released voluntarily. Several
of the 27 had been returned to Serb-controlled territory
against their will, preferring to remain following their release
within the Serb minority in Zenica. The ICRC lodged a strong
protest with the politician’s government. In addition to breaching
voluntariness and misrepresenting the ICRC, the exchange
of prisoners on a one-for-one basis had violated the spirit of the
Geneva Conventions.
The Balkan crisis produced other instances of ostensibly
humanitarian initiatives that sometimes complicated the work
of humanitarian professionals. In one case, a U.S. politician
and movie actress brought a Bosnian 8-year old to the U.S. for
heart surgery and then turned to UNHCR to arrange transport
home. In another, European groups gathered and trucked
food and clothing to Zagreb on the assumption that the United
Nations would arrange distribution and provide accommodations
for those accompanying the shipments.
In still another, a woman named Sally Becker, acting on
her own, drove a car load of sick children in August 1993
across central Bosnia in the hopes of evacuating them to
Britain. The United Nations, with which no advance arrangements
had been made, was criticized for not assisting. In
November, Becker's more carefully pre-arranged Operation
Angel succeeded, with U.N. assistance and following U.N.
ground rules, in evacuating 44 children and adults.
Amateur humanitarianism can nurture international concern.
As the conflicts dragged on and the world became
increasingly inured to the suffering, such initiatives put human
faces on the tragedy. While U.N. agencies were under-
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standably dismayed by the time preempted from day-to-day
activities by high-profile cases, they were properly judged
according to the benefits of their large-scale interventions on
individuals. Public scrutiny helped identify ill-considered
policies and cases of poor judgment.
Yet freelance humanitarian action proved a mixed blessing
for the established organizations and for broader humanitarian
interests. Every undertaking by well-meaning individuals
and groups was not necessarily a contribution to the
cause. “The bitter lesson of the Bosnian conflict,” ICRC President
Cornelio Sommaruga observed in a conclusion that might
apply to the entire U.N. operation, is that “humanitarian work
can be neither negotiated nor conducted by politicians without
becoming ensnared in the issues that divide the parties to
the conflict.”
Too important to be left to the professionals, humanitarian
action was too demanding to be entrusted to amateurs. There
was no substitute for seasoned judgments by competent humanitarian
professionals. To the extent that other post-Cold
War conflicts also showcase humanitarian action, aid organizations
increasingly may face challenges in utilizing outpourings
of popular humanitarian concern while exercising their
own best and dispassionate judgment.
Nurturing Constituencies for the Long-Term
A new level of professionalism therefore requires support
from a more discerning constituency. That constituency showed
signs of schizophrenia about the plight of people in the former
Yugoslavia.
On the one hand, there was considerable support for a
major humanitarian effort to respond to the Yugoslav crisis.
U.N. organizations, donor governments, and NGOs alike
believed that their respective publics would tolerate nothing
less than their full-scale involvement in the crisis. Contributors
wanted to see agency personnel and vehicles, with logos
prominently displayed, distributing relief on the frontlines.
On the other hand, there was also a sense of futility.
“When you have these ethnic groups intent on killing each
other,” said one commentator on a North American talk show
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in late 1993, “there is little the international community can do.
We certainly should be doing something, but everything specific
that is proposed we are against.” As the war wreaked
ongoing havoc and resisted efforts at diplomatic resolution,
the viewpoint of those who advocated letting the war “burn
itself out” seemed to gain credibility.
“Every humanitarian crisis around the world has a threshold
of acceptable suffering,” commented Mohamed Sacirbey,
U.N. Ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina in mid-1993.
“As the conflict in Bosnia has worn on,” he continued, “the
threshold has been raised. Three civilians deaths were frontpage
news a year ago; thirty barely make the news today.” In
subsequent months, levels of expressed humanitarian concern
eroded further still.
Despite a waning of confidence over time in the world’s
efforts to provide effective assistance and protection, the crisis
in the former Yugoslavia also came to be more clearly perceived
as a threat to cherished international values. “Whatever
the outcome of any future negotiations,” observed UNHCR’s
Special Envoy José-Maria Mendiluce about Bosnia, “the most
distinguishing feature of this country—its pluralism—will
have been killed off. This is the most important casualty: the
casualty of no longer being able to live together.”
Paralleling the damage in the region, the casualty for the
international community was that of no longer being able to
live with itself. “If you watch TV and then go to bed,” observed
an Italian woman in mid-1993, “what you have seen unconsciously
works in your head. You cannot forget the families,
the children, the animals, the towns, the soldiers, the hospital
where the staff locked the children in and left. We know there’s
a war and in wars bad things happen,” she continued, “but it
is hard to accept these kinds of things. I myself cannot accept
the fact that the war is killing people in this way.”
Successful humanitarian action was critical to the basic
values of the international community. At stake in U.N.-led
efforts were not only the lives and futures of millions in the
Balkans but also the integrity and self-respect of the international
community itself. The outcomes will have major implications
for future humanitarian initiatives and for the values
those initiatives affirm.
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10. Assisting Civilians without Prolonging the War
As the humanitarian involvement of the United Nations in
the crisis approached the end of its second year, the conflicts
proceeded with no end in sight. With each setback in the peace
process, a negotiated settlement seemed harder to imagine, let
alone achieve.
As peace prospects receded and a potentially catastrophic
winter loomed, a single question came into sharper focus: was
humanitarian assistance keeping the conflict alive? While
evidence from our interviews was fragmentary, the question
was clearly legitimate. One of the key measures by which the
U.N.’s humanitarian effort would be judged was whether it
had prolonged the war.
Keeping the War Alive
“We’ve prolonged the war by being here,” lamented an
official of one major NGO. “If there had been no humanitarian
intervention, the war would have been over sooner. It might
have been ugly, but it would be over.” Having provided lifesaving
essentials for civilian populations on all sides, the
international community had, in effect, freed the protagonists
to fight more single-mindedly for their political objectives.
Speaking privately, some U.N. officials acknowledged a similar
view. “We don’t know who the end-users are,” said one,
reflecting on difficulties of monitoring relief supplies. “We’re
feeding all three armies.”
Had inordinate amounts of relief supplies ended up in the
hands of the militaries and fed the troops? This question was
hard to answer because of the difficulties of monitoring already
noted. UNHCR had started systematic monitoring in
the Sarajevo area only in the fall of 1993, when, according to
one official, the tonnage arriving significantly exceeded civilian
food needs. Two British army officers deputized by UNHCR
concluded from their initial monitoring in October that over
half of the food going to Muslim areas was being properly
distributed. They had not reached a judgment about Serb
areas.
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In the war zone in central Bosnia, leakage was also hard to
measure. One UNHCR official reported seeing food aid wrappings
around Bosnian army foxholes outside Mostar. NGO's
agreed, however, this food had been dropped into the pocket
by air, and an acknowledged drawback of airdrops was the
imprecision of targeting. The fact that the first to request
reinstatement of UNHCR’s relief convoys in eastern Bosnia in
February 1993 were the Bosnian Serbs, whose civilian populations
were not particularly in need at that time, fueled speculation
that their troops were major beneficiaries.
An international NGO carrying out a seed distribution
program in Bosnia found that of the first 100 tons channeled
through a government agency, up to twenty-five percent went
astray. The second shipment was then distributed directly
through local communes, with far better results. NGO experience
with gas hook-ups was similar; the connections identified
by the government as priorities did not favor the elderly and
others in particular need. They agreed, however, that the
assistance provided made people better able to cope with food
and heat shortages, and consequently to withstand the effects
of the war.
Another link between assistance and the continuing war
surfaced in November 1993, as the U.N. sought to improve
roads so as to accommodate convoys of large trucks. In one
news account, a Canadian soldier operating a backhoe—to
help trucks reach people and prevent starvation during the
upcoming winter—was thanked by a Bosnian Muslim soldier
for making his own task easier. “Roads improved by the
United Nations to facilitate access for convoys carrying food
and medicine,” concluded the reporter, “will make it easier for
the three factions battling over Bosnia to move troops and
guns.” The economies of all three belligerents, he suggested,
benefit from relief supplies, without which the parties might
be more inclined to be conciliatory.
Economic sanctions may have extended the war. In Serbia,
a black market emerged. Profits from sanctions-breaking
spurred the development of lawless forces which had a strong
interest in sustaining the conflict. Relief food, said NGOs
working in Sarajevo, also ended up on the black market there.
Others reached a different conclusion. Easing the economic
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sanctions against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, they
suggested, would reduce pressure on the regime there to end
the fighting. Lifting the arms embargo, which had reduced the
availability of weapons, might trigger widespread fighting.
There was also by late 1993 a growing awareness that
humanitarian activities may have provided governments with
their “humanitarian alibi.” Yet it seemed highly conjectural to
conclude that had European and American governments responded
with less heart, they would have evidenced more
backbone. Based on available data, it was safer to conclude that
humanitarian concern had dissipated the urgency of diplomatic
efforts rather than necessarily preempting political action.
Keeping Civilians Alive
Whatever its role in sustaining the conflict, humanitarian
action succeeded in keeping civilian populations throughout
the region alive. United Nations organizations, NGOs, and the
ICRC managed for two years to focus international attention
on the situation. Holding the suffering before the international
community, they pointed out, was different from sustaining
the conflicts that produced the suffering. There was irony in
the fact that humanitarian organizations were probably better
at spotlighting the distress than alleviating it.
Humanitarian officials also noted that media attention
and constituency awareness were highly selective. One
Sarajevo-based NGO took pride in the continued coverage of
the distress of people in the Bosnian capital. Yet he pointed out
that during the time of the coverage, other areas were even
more desperately in need of attention. That observation recalled
the sardonic statement in 1992 by a Bosnian Serb general
who welcomed the international preoccupation with Sarajevo
because it allowed ethnic cleansing to proceed elsewhere with
impunity.
For many humanitarian professionals, the connection between
their day-to-day activities and the ongoing war was a
source of continuing apprehension. Asked for his considered
judgment about the connection, one UNHCR protection officer
commented, “Our presence here in some ways perpetuates
the war. But without us being here, be assured that many,
123

many people would not survive. Can we simply let them be
sacrificed in the name of some principle?” His personal conclusion
and that of his organization was an emphatic “no.”
Other humanitarian officials were less concerned about
the connections. Since political solutions were well beyond
their competence, they pressed ahead doing what they could—
irrespective of its relation to lengthening the war. Some flatly
denied even the possibility of any connection, however remote.
“If I felt that anything I am doing on the humanitarian
side contributed to prolonging the war,” said a senior UNHCR
official late in 1993 with passion, “I would resign on the spot.”
Minimizing the Inherent Risks
However fragmentary the evidence, the efforts of U.N.
and others to assist and protect vulnerable civilian populations
during the conflicts had direct and indirect impacts on
their duration and perhaps even on their eventual outcome. In
this respect, activities in the former Yugoslavia were no different
from humanitarian action in other armed conflicts around
the world.
The interplay between humanitarian action and political
and military forces is a constant in all wars, as other reviews
conducted by the Humanitarianism and War Project demonstrate.
What differs from country to country and region to
region is not the existence of a connection but its impact.
The issue is not whether humanitarian activities influenced
the course and duration of war. It is whether humanitarian
institutions, in responding to humanitarian imperatives,
were fully cognizant of the connections and did their best to
take them into account. The earlier discussions of strategic
planning and of dealing with intransigent warring parties
suggest that many institutions were not as aware as they
should have been.
Decisive humanitarian action is not risk-free, and the
inherent risks must be carefully weighed. Credited with relieving
the suffering of hard-to-reach people in the spring of
1993, airdrops also had negative consequences. Some wouldbe
recipients were targeted by snipers; some of the food fell
into military hands. Such problems, however, did not mean
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that the drops were a bad idea but rather that they needed to
be prepared and executed more carefully.
Reaching an overall judgment about how much the United
Nations was able to assist civilians without prolonging the
war may be analogous to reviewing the question of whether
humanitarian organizations who helped the victims of ethnic
cleansing encouraged genocide. The experience in the former
Yugoslavia suggested that humanitarian organizations should
do their best to avoid perpetuating or increasing violence,
whether in the form of war or ethnic cleansing. Yet having
weighed the consequences and sought to minimize undesirable
side-effects, humanitarians acted properly in coming to
people’s rescue.
In short, prolonging wars is a risk inherent to humanitarian
action. If preventing the belligerents from receiving any
benefits were the objective, no life-saving efforts at all would
be launched. If the outcome of this war on the humanitarian
side is somehow positive, the fact that humanitarian organizations
sustained the war will be less of an issue. However, the
humanitarian consequences could be catastrophic if—seized
by a sudden awareness of the connection—the international
community were to disengage.
Conclusions
How well did the United Nations establish and maintain
effective humanitarian terms of engagement in the former
Yugoslavia? In our judgment, the ten policy challenges were
poorly managed, and the options poorly considered. There
were serious problems on the humanitarian and the political
and military sides of the U.N.’s operations, and in the interaction
between the two.
“The type of conflict that we witness in the Balkans today
is a cancer that can spread through the entire fabric of national
and international society,” observed High Commissioner
Sadako Ogata in late 1993. “Consequently, the way in which
we manage—or mismanage—and eventually resolve this as
well as other similar conflicts will be a test of our ability to
control what could otherwise take epidemic proportions.”
The process of reflecting upon the choices made and
125

affecting the lessons on future initiatives will require sustained
thought and rigorous analysis, well after the conflicts
themselves have subsided.
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CHAPTER 4:
RECOMMENDATIONS
Several recommendations emerge from the experience of
the past two years with humanitarian action in the former
Yugoslavia. They reflect the defining realities identified in
Chapter 1, the operational landscape described in Chapter 2,
and the policy challenges elaborated in Chapter 3.
The first set of recommendations addresses the need to
chart an improved course of action in the immediate future.
The second identifies equally urgent action for the mediumterm.
The third looks to longer term structural changes.
The Immediate Future
Several specific steps are needed to improve the quality of
the U.N.’s humanitarian response in the coming months.
First, we recommend that the international community “stay
the course” in the former Yugoslavia. The credibility of the United
Nations and of the international community hangs in the
balance. The health and well-being of the many uprooted and
local persons alike in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the worsening
plight of those in Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro cry
out for more effective attention. The difficulties detailed in this
report, combined with other high-visibility setbacks in Somalia
and Haiti, should not provide a pretext for precipitous
disengagement.
The world would heap tragedy upon tragedy in the Balkans
and beyond were it to conclude from the continuing war and
attendant human distress that retrenchment and disengagement
represented the best immediate course of action. The
lesson is not that humanitarian impulses are dangerous and
risky and should therefore be discouraged or rejected. Rather,
humanitarian undertakings in complex emergencies need a
different mix of approaches, resources, institutions, and personnel.
A new level of determination and creativity is required to
find a political resolution to the problems that continue to fuel
the conflict. A fresh start also necessitates reversing the worrisome
downward trend of resources available. It would be
127

ironic and disastrous if humanitarian institutions, already
constrained by the belligerents from carrying out their tasks,
were now to be denied much-needed resources.
Second, we recommend several specific course corrections. The
humanitarian consequences of the sanctions regime on vulnerable
civilians in Serbia and Montenegro and the impacts on
the local economy of caring for refugees in Croatia require
immediate attention. The current Consolidated Appeal, which
would benefit a modest number of social cases in those countries,
deserves prompt and full funding.
Already nominally exempt from sanctions, humanitarian
supplies required by U.N. programs in the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia and—channeled through Serbia—in Bosnia, should
be exempted from case-by-case review by the Security Council’s
Sanctions Committee. The credibility and effectiveness of
United Nations humanitarian efforts is undermined by the
current system. U.N. humanitarian organizations deserve the
same treatment enjoyed by UNPROFOR. The ICRC and established
NGOs merit similar consideration.
As negotiators work to achieve a cease-fire that will curtail
the suffering and allow humanitarian activities to proceed, the
views of the U.N.’s humanitarian and human rights organizations
should be taken into account. Not consulted systematically
to date, officials such as the High Commissioner for
Refugees and the Special Rapporteur on the former Yugoslavia
should be provided the opportunity to ensure that their
respective areas of responsibility receive due consideration.
They could be helpful in anticipating the human consequences
of various options.
The Medium-Term Future
The experience in the former Yugoslavia illuminates the
need for a better institutional framework for humanitarian
action in war zones. Discussions of appropriate changes should
begin at once, although identifying the best options and putting
them into place may take longer. The existing framework
could be improved in the following five aspects.
First, an improved institutional framework would address contradictions
within the United Nations between its humanitarian,
128

political, and military entities. Our report details key points in
which the effectiveness of humanitarian efforts have suffered
from association with actions taken by the Security Council
and UNPROFOR.
We recommend the development of a series of protocols to
address frictions between the U.N.’s humanitarian work and
its political and military policies and activities. One such
protocol would provide a standard list of items that automatically
would be exempted from Sanctions Committee review
whenever economic coercion is imposed. Standard terminology
for humanitarian exemptions also could be formulated for
use in Security Council and other resolutions.
Another protocol would clarify the circumstances under
which United Nations humanitarian operations could be suspended,
terminated, or reinstated. It could delineate who has
the authority to decide, according to what criteria decisions
would be reached, and what provision would be made for the
affected humanitarian personnel and property.
Second, an improved institutional framework would help ensure
a clearer and more productive division of labor among the U.N.’s
humanitarian entities.
While UNHCR accomplished many tasks well in very
difficult circumstances, the concept of lead agency and the
nature of its coordinating and operational responsibilities led
to considerable confusion. The question remains open as to
whether having a lead agency is the best means of assuring
coordination in the field, and how such coordination relates to
the system-wide functions that the Department of Humanitarian
Affairs has been mandated to perform.
We recommend further clarification about the lead agency
concept. If the lead agency concept is embraced, a protocol
should be developed to delineate lead agency roles, coordination
responsibilities, operational activities (if any), and the
respective responsibilities of other entities, including DHA.
Such a protocol would help ensure a more effective use of the
comparative advantages of the United Nations’ humanitarian
apparatus. It could also address the extent to which individual
U.N. organizations should be allowed the option that several
exercised in this crisis: to delay their involvement or to establish
incongruent priorities.
129

Third, an improved framework would consolidate and strengthen
key innovations of the last two years. Path-breaking steps in the
human rights area included convening the first emergency
session by the Commission on Human Rights; deploying the
first field monitors by the Centre for Human Rights in countries
of origin; appointing a Special Rapporteur with broader
authority to monitor human rights and report to the Security
Council; assigning human rights responsibilities to UNHCR
protection officers; establishing a Commission of Experts to
investigate cases of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions;
and, most notably, creating an international tribunal to
prosecute war crimes.
Such breakthroughs require political support, financial
resources, and prompt follow-up. Institutionalizing these gains
would have enormous significance both in the former Yugoslavia
and for future situations where strong and effective
machinery also is necessary. Constraints on resources, bureaucratic
impediments, and a lack of political will seriously
have limited their impact to date.
Fourth, an improved institutional framework would capitalize
on experiences regarding the use of military forces to support
humanitarian operations. This conflict, like Somalia, saw the
commitment of U.N. troops for the expressed purpose of
protecting humanitarian activities and personnel. As in northern
Iraq, troops played a direct delivery as well as a support
role. While the uses of the military here were not unique, they
are nevertheless instructive as a major example of post-Cold
War involvement.
We recommend the development of a protocol to help
ensure a more effective humanitarian and military interface in
future settings of armed conflict. Such a protocol should
articulate a clear division of labor between humanitarian and
military elements within the United Nations, detailing the
respective assistance and protection responsibilities and accountabilities
of each.
We also recommend the development of manuals for use
by U.N. humanitarian and military personnel. Separate manuals
for each set of personnel would help avoid situations in
which individual United Nations organizations and national
peacekeeping contingents approach their respective tasks dif-
130

ferently. The interface between the U.N.’s humanitarian and
military entities as well as with other humanitarian actors,
including intergovernmental organizations, the ICRC, and
NGOs, also should be addressed.
Fifth, an improved institutional framework would specify clear
expectations about performance and mechanisms of accountability.
The international community bears responsibility for the operational
and human implications of the strategies chosen.
Practitioners are also responsible not only to those who provide
resources but also to those in need of their effective use.
Accountability ranges beyond the fiscal to the programmatic.
Accountability is more difficult to assure in situations of
armed conflict, where civilian structures are frequently weak
and access by monitoring personnel limited. In precisely these
circumstances, however, accountability is no doubt even more
necessary—if for no other reason than to limit how much
outside assistance fuels the conflicts. At the same time, unrealistic
demands for accountability may work against responsive
and decisive action.
We recommend greater accountability to the victims of
conflict. U.N. practitioners should be encouraged to include
local institutions and groups in setting priorities. The Sanctions
Committee review process also should be made more
transparent, with sessions no longer held behind closed doors.
In order to help develop the ground rules for a more
comprehensive approach to accountability, we recommend
creation of a private watchdog organization. This entity could
monitor from an independent and informed vantage point the
activities of the various humanitarian organizations around
the world.
The Longer Term Future
Looking to matters requiring even further discussion and
time to implement, we single out for special attention an issue
that emerges from the experience in the former Yugoslavia,
corroborated in other peacekeeping operations under way in
Somalia and Angola.
That issue concerns the connections between humanitarian
action and what the U.N. Secretary-General has called An
131

Agenda for Peace. The Agenda encompasses a greater emphasis
on peace and an increased willingness to use multilaterally
sanctioned expressions of economic and military force to
achieve and preserve it.
While the Secretary-General recently has been less assertive
in promoting his Agenda, its implementation raises serious
questions about relationships between humanitarian initiatives
and United Nations undertakings involving coercion.
Pondering the experiences from the former Yugoslavia
and other peacekeeping theaters, the international community
finds itself at an important fork in the road. The upsurge
in crises in the early post-Cold War era presents a challenge of
unprecedented magnitude and complexity for the world’s
humanitarian institutions. At the same time, the new-found
but still selective interest of the Security Council in such crises,
perceived as threats to international peace and security, injects
an undeniably political element into the world’s responses.
First, we recommend a wide-ranging debate about the links
between humanitarian action and political and military strategies. Is
humanitarian action simply the third leg of a three-legged
stool or do human needs have a compelling urgency of a standalone
sort? Can humanitarian objectives be achieved in a war
situation without the application of force? Is there an incompatibility,
in some or all situations, between the application of
force and the protection of human rights? Can coercion-led
humanitarian initiatives be sustained? What alternatives exist
for gaining and maintaining humanitarian access? To what
extent are economic sanctions an appropriate and useful tool
in the service of humane objectives? Are the available alternatives
necessarily more inhumane in their consequences? Debate
on these matters needs to be informed by the actual
experiences of practitioners in the former Yugoslavia and
elsewhere.
The blurring of humanitarian and political tasks, to the
detriment of each, also bears further scrutiny. Neither repeated
invocations of impartiality by U.N. humanitarian institutions
nor ritual incantations of neutrality by its peacekeepers
confers those qualities upon their activities in the field. The
debate should engage not only U.N. officials but also other
practitioners and the public upon whose support these under-
132

takings ultimately rely.
Second, we recommend discussion of the need for a new institutional
capacity within the U.N. to provide assistance and protection
when economic sanctions or military enforcement are carried
out under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter. The contradictions
between the humanitarian, political, and military aspects of
the United Nations system in the former Yugoslavia were so
serious and pervasive as to necessitate consideration of all
available alternatives. Terrain such as the former Yugoslavia’s
may be too treacherous for many of the U.N.’s civilian humanitarian
organizations to carry out their respective activities.
A new entity, lodged within the U.N.’s political and
military apparatus, would be controversial. The opposition of
some U.N. humanitarian personnel to being out of the action
already was noted. However, less radical measures, such as
seeking to insulate humanitarian activities from association
with political and military policies, might be unsatisfactory.
Finally, we recommend that DHA, already the U.N. focal point
for humanitarian concerns, serve as an increasingly energetic advocate
on such matters with the other two departments and with the
Security Council and the Secretary-General. Real leadership in
this area is urgently needed. Elaboration of An Agenda for
Humanitarian Action, companion to An Agenda for Peace and the
forthcoming An Agenda for Development, could explore areas of
consensus for action. DHA also should work to ensure the
fuller engagement of resources beyond and independent of
the United Nations.
This study demonstrates the indispensability of leadership
by the United Nations system in addressing major humanitarian
crises. It also illuminates obstacles facing the world
organization in achieving its promise. A sequenced series of
improvements in the immediate, medium, and longer term
stands to make for more effective international humanitarian
responses to future crises of the magnitude and complexity of
that in the former Yugoslavia.
133

134

ANNEX 1
PERSONS INTERVIEWED *
UNITED NATIONS (Humanitarian and Human Rights)
Ko Allewijn
Jean-Claude Amiot
Michael Barton
Fabrizio Bassani
Samir Sanad Basta
Charles-Henry Bazoche
Christopher Berthauld
Terence Blunsum
Jan Bolling
Alexander Borg-Olivier
Philippe Boullé
Military Liaison Officer,
UNHCR, Zagreb
Logistics Officer, UNHCR,
Belgrade
Head of Information, WHO,
Geneva
Deputy Director, Office of
Emergencies, UNICEF, Geneva
Director, UNICEF, Geneva
Chief of Mission, UNHCR,
Belgrade
Logistics Officer, UNHCR,
Kladusa, Bosnia and
Herzegovina
Radio Technician, UNHCR,
Belgrade
Senior Protection Officer for
Croatia, UNHCR, Zagreb
Principal Officer, DHA, New
York
Chief of the Information
Management Branch, DHA,
Geneva
135

Poul Brandrup
Emery Brusset
Senior Adviser to DHA (ICVA),
Geneva
Operations Officer, Inter-
Agency Support Unit, DHA,
Geneva
J. Cailhol Chief of Logistics, UNHCR,
Kladusa, Bosnia and
Herzegovina
Fiorella Cappelli
Dario Carminati
Heather Courtney
Isabel de la Cruz
Dusan Dragic
Michel Dupra, M.D.
Pirjo Dupuy
Judy Anne Dwyer
Chief of Administration,
UNHCR, Zagreb
Head of Desk, Special Operation
for the Former Yugoslavia,
UNHCR, Geneva
Public Information Assistant,
UNHCR, Washington
Field Officer, UNHCR, Split
Director, Humanitarian
Programmes, Office of the
Administrator, UNDP, New
York
Health Officer, Emergency
Programme for Former Yugoslavia,
UNICEF, Zagreb
Senior Regional Resettlement
Officer, UNHCR, Zagreb
Senior Social Services Officer,
UNHCR, Zagreb
136

Stephanie Allen Early
Joan Edwards
Jan Eliasson
Kirill Ermichine
Marjorie Farquharson
François Fouinat
Barbara Francis
Frederick Garlock
Gregory Garras
Pierce Gerety
James P. Grant
Education Advisor, Emergency
Programme for Former Yugoslavia,
UNICEF, Zagreb
Senior Project Officer, Soros
Humanitarian Fund for Bosnia
and Herzegovina, UNHCR,
Zagreb
Under-Secretary-General for
Humanitarian Affairs, New
York
Human Rights Officer, U.N.
Centre for Human Rights,
Zagreb
Human Rights Officer for
Bosnia, U.N. Centre for Human
Rights, Geneva
Coordinator, the former Yugoslavia,
UNHCR, Geneva
Senior Public Information
Officer, UNHCR, Washington
Assistant Chief of Mission,
UNHCR, Belgrade
Associate Protection Officer,
UNHCR, Medjugorje/Mostar
Deputy Director of International
Protection, UNHCR,
Geneva
Executive Director, UNICEF,
New York
137

Stephanie Grant
Piers Hankinson
Eileen Hazbun
Vaisanen Heikki
Klaus von Helldorff
Asmira Hrustanovic
Jerrie Hulme
Peter Janssen
Soren Jessen-Petersen
Basharat Jazbi
Laurens Jolles
Richard Jolly
Consultant on the former
Yugoslavia Project, U.N. Centre
for Human Rights, Geneva
Food Distribution Monitor,
UNHCR, Sarajevo
Financial Reports Officer, DHA,
Geneva
Security Consultant, UNHCR,
Zagreb
Deputy to the Special Envoy,
UNHCR, Zagreb
UNHCR, Field Assistant,
Kladusa, Bosnia and
Herzegovina
Senior Logistics Officer,
UNHCR, Medjugorje/Mostar
Field Officer, Protection Division,
UNHCR, Sarajevo
Director of External Affairs,
UNHCR, Geneva
Special Advisor to the Director-
General, WHO, Geneva
Legal Officer, UNHCR,
Belgrade
Deputy Executive Director,
Programmes, UNICEF, New
York
138

Karen Kenny
Peter Kessler
Mostafa Khezry
Esko Krentkryski
Judith Kumin
Charles LaMunière
Anthony Land
Karen Landgren
Johanna Larusdottir
Brian Lauder
Michael Lewington
Donatella Linari
Former Human Rights Officer
for Bosnia, U.N. Centre for
Human Rights, Geneva
Public Information Officer,
UNHCR, Zagreb
Protection Officer for Croatia,
UNHCR, Zagreb
Senior Liaison Officer, Liaison
Office, UNHCR, Pale
Chief of Mission, UNHCR,
Belgrade
Director and Deputy Under-
Secretary-General, DHA,
Geneva
Head of Office, UNHCR,
Sarajevo
Chief of Mission for Bosnia and
Herzegovina, UNHCR, Zagreb
Specialist in International
Public Health/Head of Office,
WHO, Split
Telecommunications Consultant,
UNHCR, Belgrade
Military Liaison Officer,
UNHCR, Zagreb
Resident Project Officer,
UNICEF, Belgrade
139

Jan Erik Linstad
José Luis Loera
Hans Lunshof
Bruno Martin, M.D.
Katherine Mazy
Thomas McDermott
John McMillan
José-Maria Mendiluce
Staffan de Mistura
Anton Mifsud-Bonnici
Mladen Mladenovic
Nicholas Morris
David Morton
Senior Programme Officer,
UNHCR, Belgrade
Field Officer, UNHCR,
Belgrade
Protection Officer for Croatia,
UNHCR, Zagreb
Coordinator for the former
Yugoslavia, UNICEF, Geneva
Social Services Officer for
Croatia, UNHCR, Zagreb
Special Representative,
UNICEF, Zagreb
Public Information Officer,
UNHCR, Zagreb
Special Envoy, UNHCR, Zagreb
Deputy Director, Division of
Public Affairs, UNICEF, New
York
Protection Officer, UNHCR
Field Office, Kladusa, Bosnia
and Herzegovina
Driver/Interpreter, UNHCR,
Belgrade
Special Envoy, UNHCR, Zagreb
Emergency Food Coordinator
and Director of Operations,
WFP, Zagreb
140

Jacques Mouchet
Sadako Ogata
Pierre Ollier
James O’Neill
Wendy Paeth
Philippos Papaphilippou
Bertrand du Pasquie
Chargé de Mission for Croatia,
UNHCR, Zagreb
High Commissioner for Refugees,
UNHCR, Geneva
Field Officer, UNHCR,
Srebrenica
Field Representative, WFP,
Split
Financial Reports Officer, DHA,
Geneva
Program Officer, UNHCR,
Zenica
Former Director, UNHCR Suboffice,
Mostar
Albert Alain Peters
Irina Petrovic
Colin Pryce
Gukka Pukila, M.D.
Anthony Randall
Paul Richards
Director, UNHCR, New York
External Relations Officer,
UNHCR, Zagreb
Convoy Team Leader, UNHCR,
Sarajevo
WHO, Sarajevo
Transport-Logistics Consultant,
WFP, Belgrade
Senior Logistics Officer,
UNHCR, Sarajevo
141

Leila Ridjanovic
Marco Roggia
Rene van Rooyen
Nils Rosdahl, M.D.
Anders G. Rundberg
Lyndall Sachs
Marie Sandstrom
Anne Dawson-Shepherd
UNHCR Medical Unit, Sarajevo
Associate Protection Officer for
Croatia, UNHCR, Zagreb
Representative, UNHCR,
Washington, D.C.
Deputy Special Representative,
WHO Area Office, Zagreb
Electronic Data Processing
Officer, UNHCR, Zagreb
Public Information Officer,
UNHCR, Belgrade
External Affairs Officer,
UNHCR, Zagreb
Head, UNHCR Sub-office, Split
Manoel de Almeida e Silva Senior External Relations
Officer, UNHCR, Zagreb
Marie de la Soudière
Douglas Stafford
Michael Stanley
Marie Stavropoulou
Former Consultant, Women
and Children, the former
Yugoslavia, UNHCR, Geneva
Former Deputy High Commissioner,
UNHCR, Geneva
Food Distribution Monitor,
UNHCR, Sarajevo
Assistant to the Special Representative
on Internally Displaced
Persons, U.N. Centre for
Human Rights, Geneva
142

Serge Telle
Tatjania Termacic
Sonya Thompson
Hans Thoolen
Norma Tinio
Monique Vignal-Tuffelli
Alejandro Cedeno Ulloa
Charles Vincent
Wilbert van Hövell
tot Westerfield
Robert White
Hubert Wieland
Special Assistant, DHA, Geneva
Human Rights Officer, U.N.
Centre for Human Rights,
Zagreb
Logistics Officer, UNHCR,
Zagreb
Coordinator, U.N. Voluntary
Fund for Technical Cooperation
in Human Rights, U.N. Centre
for Human Rights, Geneva
Programme Officer, Emergency
Programmes, UNICEF, New
York
Medical Coordinator, UNHCR,
Sarajevo
Protection Officer, U.N. Field
Office, Kladusa
WFP Representative, Belgrade
Senior Protection Officer,
Special Operation for the
Former Yugoslavia, UNHCR,
Geneva
The former Yugoslavia Task
Force, UNHCR, Geneva
Human Rights Officer, U.N.
Centre for Human Rights,
Zagreb
143

Roman Wieruszewski
Andrzej Wojtczak, M.D.
Steven Wolfson
Bayisa Wak-Woya
Neill Wright
Kirsten Young
Robyn Ziebert
Janko Zlovre
Assistant to the Special Rapporteur,
U.N. Centre for Human
Rights, Geneva
Acting Special Representative,
WHO, Belgrade
Protection Officer, UNHCR,
Zenica
Senior Protection Officer,
UNHCR, Split
Chief of Operations, UNHCR,
Zagreb
Protection Officer, UNHCR,
Medjugorje and Mostar
Field Officer, UNHCR, Western
Herzegovina and Mostar
Public Information Officer,
UNHCR, Split
UNITED NATIONS (Political and Peacekeeping)
Yarmila Aragon
Yolanda Auger
Richard Barrons
Information Assistant,
UNPROFOR, Zagreb
Deputy Director of Civil Affairs
and Senior Legal Adviser,
UNPROFOR, Zagreb
Chief of Staff, British Forces
Headquarters, UNPROFOR,
Split
144

Derek Boothby
Shannon Boyd
David Crumlish
Alain Dumont
Brian L. Flanagan
Carlos Gutierrez
Acting Director, Division for
Europe, DPA, New York
Public Information Officer,
UNPROFOR, Zagreb
British Battalion, UNPROFOR,
Split
UNHCR Liaison Office, BiH
Command, UNPROFOR,
Kiseljak
Public Information Officer,
Civilian Police, UNPROFOR,
Zagreb
Office of Civil Affairs,
UNPROFOR, Sarajevo
Brig. Gen. de Vere Chief of Staff BiH Command,
W. Hayes UNPROFOR, Kiseljak
Aleksander Ilitchev
Darko Ivic
Fabrice LeSaffre
John A. McInnis
Deputy Secretary, Security
Council Sanctions Committee,
New York
Bosnian Government Liaison
Officer, UNPROFOR Headquarters,
Sarajevo
Liaison Officer to UNHCR/
Belgrade, Bosnia and
Herzegovina Command Convoy
Operations, Belgrade
Deputy Force Commander,
UNPROFOR, Zagreb
145

Michel Maufrais
James Ngobi
Michael O’Reilly
Sector Engineer, UNPROFOR
Headquarters, Sarajevo
Secretary, Security Council
Sanctions Committee, New
York
Commissioner, Civilian Police,
UNPROFOR, Zagreb
B. L. Pedersen U.N. Military Observer,
Kladusa, Sector North, Bosnia
and Herzegovina
Jean Peterson
Vazquez de Prada
Emma Shitaka
Michelle Stimson
Anne Marie Thallmann
Shashi Tharoor
Cedric Thornberry
Laura M. Vaccari
Civil Affairs Coordinator,
UNPROFOR, Belgrade
Spanish Battalion, UNPROFOR,
Medjugorje
Political Officer for Bosnia,
UNPROFOR, Zagreb
BiH Command, UNPROFOR,
Kiseljak
Humanitarian Affairs Officer,
UNPROFOR, Zagreb
Special Assistant to the Under-
Secretary-General for Peacekeeping
Operations, DPK, New
York
Head, Civil Affairs,
UNPROFOR, Zagreb
Political Officer, Europe Division,
DPA, New York
146

Marc van Wynsberghe
Civil Affairs Officer, Humanitarian
Liaison, UNPROFOR,
Zagreb
INTERGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS
John Adlam
Anne Convery
Klaus Hirsch
Jean-Louis Lapierre
André LeSage
Edwin P. McClain
Paul I. Norton
Bjorn Petersen
James N. Purcell, Jr.
Peter Schatzer
James Shepherd-Barron
Marie Spaak
Coordinator, ECTF, Zenica
Head of Office, IOM, Zagreb
Regional Director, ECTF,
Geneva
Logistics Coordinator, EC,
Belgrade
Programme Coordinator, IOM,
Geneva
Regional Coordinator Serbia,
Montenegro, and Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia-
Macedonia, IOM, Belgrade
Programme Coordinator, IOM,
Geneva
Director of Operations, ECTF,
Zagreb
Director-General, IOM, Geneva
Director of External Affairs,
IOM, Geneva
ECTF, Split
EC Humanitarian Assistance
Coordinator, Belgrade
147

Edmund Thys
Head, ECTF, Zagreb
GOVERNMENTS
Fredrik Arthur
Mahmutcehajic Azim
Haydn Barret
Caroline Temple-Bird
Branko Brankovic
Thomas Brennan
Rene Carrillo
Dragomir Djokic
Delic Domenika
Mustafic Ferhat
Peter Galbraith
Chargé d’Affaires, Embassy of
Norway, Zagreb
Deputy Commissioner for
Refugees and Displaced Persons,
Zenica
Consultant, Mining Project,
ODA, Zenica
Consultant, ODA, Zagreb
Director, Department for the
U.N. and Non-Aligned Movement,
Federal Ministry for
Foreign Affairs, FRY, Belgrade
OFDA, USAID, Washington,
D.C.
Regional Disaster Adviser,
USAID, Zagreb
Ambassador of FRY to the U.N.,
New York
Advisor to the Commissioner of
Refugees, Federal Republic of
Serbia
Representative of the Town of
Gradacac, Bosnia
U.S. Ambassador to Croatia,
Zagreb
148

Ann Grant
Rita Hudson
Zlatko Hurtic
Timothy Knight
Maja Kurent
Zeljko Matic
Dayton Maxwell
Ronald J. Neitzke
Amila Omersoftic
Robert N. Peirce
Slobodan Popovic
Economic Officer, U.K. Mission
to the U.N., New York
Food for Peace Officer, USAID,
Washington, D.C.
Coordinator for Humanitarian
Affairs, Embassy of the Republic
of Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Zagreb
OFDA, USAID, Zagreb
Coordinator, ODPR, Republic
of Croatia, Zagreb
Foreign Policy Adviser, Office
of the President, Republic of
Croatia, Zagreb
Acting Director, OFDA, USAID,
Washington, D.C.
Chargé d’Affaires, U.S. Embassy,
Zagreb
Commissioner for Refugees and
Displaced Persons, Government
of Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Sarajevo
First Secretary, U.K. Mission to
the U.N., New York
Public Relations Manager,
Commissariat for Refugees,
Federal Republic of Serbia,
Belgrade
149

Adalbert Rebic
Mohammed Sacirbey
Bryan Sparrow
William A. Stuebner
James W. Swigert
William Tyas
Alexandar Vukovic
Dobrica Vulovic
Dragan Zupanjevac
Head of Office, ODPR, Republic
of Croatia, Zagreb
Permanent Representative of
Bosnia to the U.N., New York
Ambassador of the U.K. to
Croatia, Zagreb
Field Representative, OFDA,
USAID, Zagreb
Deputy Chief of Mission, U.S.
Embassy, Belgrade
Consultant, Mining Project,
ODA, Zenica
Ministry of Health, Republic of
Serbia, Belgrade
Commissioner of Refugees,
Republic of Serbia, Belgrade
Counselor, FRY Mission to the
U.N., New York
INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE RED CROSS
François Bellon
Urs Boegli
Dominique Borel
Head, Task Force on the former
Yugoslavia, Zagreb
Coordinator of Operations,
Coordinating Office for Former
Yugoslavia, Zagreb
International Organizations
Division, Geneva
150

Martin Damery
Ursula K. Eugster
Carlos von Flüe
Andreas Lendorff
Brigitte Troyon
Theo Verhoeff
Protection Coordinator, Zagreb
Deputy Head of Mission,
Belgrade
Head of Delegation, Zagreb
Head of Relief Division, Geneva
Delegate, Belgrade
Delegate, Belgrade
NONGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS
George Adams
René Albeck
Jason Aplon
Jasmina Bajrahtarevic
Haydn Barratt
Genèvieve Begkoyian
Joe Behaylo
Martina Belic
Country Director, IRC, Split
Programme Director, DRC,
Zagreb
Humanitarian Assistance
Coordination Office, ICVA,
Split
Suncokret (Center for
Grassroots Relief Work),
Zagreb
Project Manager, IMC Engineering
Associates, Zenica
Coordinator, MSF, Belgrade
Nexus, Zagreb
Center for Women War Victims,
Zagreb
151

Maria Bellacque-Bellar
Musadik Borogovac
Amra Cengic
Nils Ole Christensen
Ivan Zvonimir Cicak
Fred Cuny
Amela Curcovic
Åge Eknes
Brent Epp
John Fawcett
Stephanie Frease
William Frelick
Felice Gaer
John Heffernan
AICF, Sarajevo
Journalist, Press Centre, Third
World Relief Agency, Zagreb
Genocide Documentation
Officer, Red Cross of Bosnia
and Herzegovina, Zagreb
Driver, DRC, Zagreb
Chairman, Helsinki Committee,
Zagreb
President, Intertect, Sarajevo
Assistant, ICVA, Zagreb
Norwegian Institute for International
Affairs
Field Representative,
Samaritan’s Purse International
Relief, Zagreb
Programme Director, IRC,
Sarajevo
External Relations/Liaison
Officer, IRC, Zagreb
Senior Policy Analyst, USCR,
Washington, D.C.
Director, Jacob Blaustein
Institute for the Advancement
of Human Rights, New York
Country Director, IRC, Croatia
152

Arthur Helton
John Hicks
Lidia Himica
Marcia Jacobs
Nico Keulemans
Wells Klein
Sonja Licht
Enrico Lundin
Geoffrey May
Jonathan Moore
Michel Moussalli
Per Nehler
Rolf Nordengren
Philip Oldham
Director, Refugee Project,
Lawyers Committee for Human
Rights, New York
IMC, Zagreb
Balkan Women’s Relief Project,
Zagreb
Balkan Womens’ Relief Project,
Zagreb
Secretary for Emergencies and
Rehabilitation, WCC, Geneva
American Council of Nationality
Services, New York
Executive Director, Soros
Foundation, Belgrade
Swedish Rescue Services Board,
Zagreb
Director, CRS, Geneva
Senior Associate, Carnegie
Endowment for International
Peace, Washington, D.C.
Member, Board of Trustees,
RPG, Washington, D.C.
Head of Delegation to Croatia,
IFRC, Zagreb
Project Manager, Swedish
Rescue Services Board, Zagreb
Project Manager, CRS, Zagreb
153

Iso Papo
Robert Pianka
Diana Pokempner
Samantha Power
Faruk Redzepagic
Lionel Rosenblatt
Elisabeth Salter
Staale Schmidt
Alan Simmance
Ivana Sirovic
Dimic Sladjana
Peter Stoecklin
Sam Toussey
Representative of the Jewish
Community of Sarajevo, Zagreb
IOCC, Belgrade
Human Rights Watch, Washington,
D.C.
Assistant to the President,
Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, Washington,
D.C.
Executive Director, Merhamet,
Zagreb
President, Refugees International,
Washington, D.C.
Executive Secretary, Justice,
Peace, and the Integrity Creation,
WCC, Geneva
Representative, ICVA, Zagreb
Coordinator, NGO Task Force
on the Emergency in Former
Yugoslavia, ICVA, Geneva
Humanitarian Assistance
Coordination Office, Split
Public Relations Officer, Red
Cross of Serbia, Belgrade
Head of Delegation, IFRC,
Belgrade
IMC, Split
154

Jan Williamson
Roger Winter
John Wood
Thomas Yates
Martin Zak
American Council of Nationality
Services, New York
Executive Director, USCR,
Washington, D.C.
Coordinator Emergency Aid,
LWF, Zagreb
Country Director for Croatia,
IRC, Zagreb
Assistant Head of Operations
for the former Yugoslavia
(except Bosnia), IFRC, Geneva
OTHER
Jane Howard
Thomas Tjelten
Correspondent, BBC World
Service, Belgrade
Correspondent, National Public
Radio, Sarajevo
* A number of persons interviewed requested anonymity, a
request respected in this report. Titles given are those applicable
at the time of the interviews.
155

156

ANNEX 2
CHRONOLOGY OF MAJOR EVENTS
The humanitarian crisis was triggered by the dissolution
of Yugoslavia, comprised since 1918 of six republics and two
self-governing provinces. Key political events in 1991 included
declarations of independence by Croatia and Slovenia
(June 25) and their formal secession (October 8); proclamation
of the Serbian Autonomous Region of Krajina within Croatia
(March 16), later expanded and consolidated as the Serbian
Republic of Krajina (December 19); and proclamation of an
Assembly of the Serbian Nation of Bosnia-Herzegovina (October
24). Bosnia-Herzegovina proclaimed independence the
following March.
Political decisions led to military confrontations. From
late 1991 to 1992, the major fighting took place in Croatia
between Serbs and Croats; during 1992 and 1993, the principal
military action pitted Serbs from Bosnia and the Federal
Republic of Serbia against the Bosnian army. Fighting intensified
in the spring of 1993 in eastern Bosnia when, with an eye
to territorial shifts resulting from peace negotiations in Geneva,
each protagonist sought to consolidate its position. Later in the
year, Croatians from Bosnia and Herzegovina and from Croatia
teamed up to fight against the Bosnian army in central Bosnia.
In 1991, the U.N. joined negotiations being pursued by the
European Community through the appointment in October of
a Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Cyrus Vance.
At year's end, Vance negotiated a cease-fire in the war in
Croatia in January and an agreement to set up U.N. Protected
Areas in Serb-occupied Croatia and station troops there. He
later joined with European Community representative David
Owen, who continued an EC initiative begun under Lord
Carrington, to arrange for the deployment of U.N. troops in
Bosnia and propose the creation of ten ethnically diverse
regions within a loose central government framework. Vance
was replaced in May 1993 by Norwegian Foreign Minister
Thorvald Stoltenberg, who with Lord Owen proposed a division
of Bosnia and Herzegovina into three regions, largely
along ethnic lines.
157

Against this backdrop, the present study examines the
suffering of the people and efforts by the United Nations and
others to provide assistance and protection. The chronology of
major events during the two-year period beginning in late
1991 has been assembled from U.N. documents, news accounts,
and Breakdown in the Balkans: A Chronicle of Events—
January 1989—May 1993, by Samantha Power (Washington,
D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1993).
Fall-Winter 1991-1992. U.N. efforts concentrated on assisting
civilians in Croatian areas under Serb attack such as
Vukovar, Osijek, and Dubrovnik. The siege of Vukovar, lasting
three months from late August, created massive suffering;
efforts to help people in Dubrovnik, besieged from early
October for more than a year, became a riveting international
event. In September the EC established the Peace Conference
on Former Yugoslavia in an effort to negotiate a settlement to
the conflict. The U.N. concentrated on peacekeeping issues,
deploying peacekeeping troops to Croatia following Security
Council action in February 1992.
In October 1991, UNHCR was designated lead agency in
the world organization’s humanitarian response. In November,
it appointed a Special Envoy, in December appealed for
$17 million for the relief operation, and by year’s end had
made its first relief deliveries to the region. It reported casualties
of 6,000 deaths, 15,000 wounded, and more than 500,000
displaced.
Spring 1992. In March, Bosnia and Herzegovina declared
independence. Fighting erupted in early March in Sarajevo
and in the eastern Bosnian Muslim enclave of Gorazde. A
campaign of ethnic cleansing by the Serbs to force Muslims out
of their homes picked up speed. In May, the Security Council
demanded an end to the war and to ethnic cleansing and
imposed economic sanctions on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Also in May, as the fighting in Sarajevo reached the
level of all-out war, the U.N. began relief operations, relying
on UNPROFOR troops for protection. Convoys of relief supplies
into Sarajevo were intercepted by the Serbs. Following
the killing one of its officials in a convoy ambush in mid-May,
158

the ICRC suspended relief operations, not to be resumed until
early July. UNHCR reported 1.2 million Bosnian refugees in
mid-May, one quarter of the pre-war population.
Summer 1992. Amid continuing hostilities, the toll of the
conflicts emerged more clearly. In July, UNPROFOR reported
four “concentration camps,” which the ICRC succeeded in
visiting in August. Human rights abuses in camps and prisons
on all sides were reported. Responding to an increasing number
of incidents of ethnic cleansing, the United Nations Human
Rights Commission in August, holding its first-ever
special session on abuses in a single country, dispatched a
Special Rapporteur on a fact-finding mission. The first U.N.
food convoy reached Sarajevo July 1; two days later an airlift
began.
At an emergency meeting in late July in Geneva, UNHCR
sought to mobilize a comprehensive response to assist displaced
persons, then estimated at 1.3 million in Bosnia, 598,000
in Croatia, and 382,500 in Serbia. In August, the Security
Council condemned ethnic cleansing, demanded international
access to camps, prisons, and detention centers, authorized
use of force to ensure humanitarian relief deliveries, and
urged stepped-up relief efforts to prevent massive loss of life
in Bosnia during the coming winter. In late August, a joint UN-
EC London Conference forged agreement among the warring
parties and the international community on mutual obligations.
Several working groups were set up, including one on
international humanitarian issues chaired by UNHCR.
Fall 1992. Following the downing in early September of an
Italian plane in the Sarajevo airlift, U.N. relief operations were
suspended for a month. UNHCR and the EC appealed for
humanitarian aid to prevent winter disaster. The U.N. reported
400 acts of terrorism between April and September
against non-Serbs refusing to leave U.N. Protected Areas in
Croatia. Serb military pressure wasstepped up against Muslim-majority
enclaves in eastern Bosnia. In September,
UNPROFOR’s mandate expanded to include Bosnia and
Herzegovina and protection of humanitarian operations; in October,
the Security Council imposed a no-fly zone over Bosnia.
159

Winter 1992-93. In November, the first United Nations
convoys reached the Bosnian enclave of Tuzla, besieged for
seven months, as well as Srebrenica. Croatia reacting to the
strain, closed its borders to refugees. The ICRC evacuated
1,500 Muslims and Croats from Sarajevo. Reflecting winter
ravages and Serb strangulation, ten elderly patients in a Sarajevo
nursing home died during a two-day stretch (190 had
perished since the previous April). Estimates of 20,000 rapes of
Bosnian Muslims by Serbs in ethnic cleansing strategy were
made public. In February, the Security Council voted to prosecute
war crimes.
The U.N. and 29 foreign ministers launched in December
another round of Bosnian negotiations to end the war. In
January, Vance and Owen introduced a comprehensive peace
plan. That month a Croatian army attack on Serb-controlled
territory along the Dalmatian coast heightened tensions. In
February, the Sarajevo city council boycotted U.N. aid to
protest the lack of supplies reaching Muslims in eastern enclaves.
Citing obstruction by all factions, UNHCR suspended
aid deliveries, reinstating them several days later when its
conditions had been met. The United States, soon joined by
other countries, began airdrops into eastern Bosnia. Conditions
in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia worsened due to
refugee inflows, impacts of international economic sanctions,
and inflation of more than 200 percent a month. In Croatia,
difficulties in meeting the needs of the displaced also mounted.
Spring 1993. Problems of assisting people on location in
eastern Bosnia and of taking them to safety worsened in the
face of escalating military pressure on Sarajevo and the eastern
enclaves. In March, U.N. trucks evacuating Muslims from
Srebrenica to Tuzla returned with Serb evacuees from Tuzla to
Srebrenica. In April, weapons were discovered in United
Nations relief vehicles and at the Sarajevo airport; the U.N.
contended they were planted by foes of the program. Also in
April, the Security Council tightened economic sanctions
against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and in May designated
six enclaves with a population of 1.2 million as “safe
areas.”
160

Summer 1993. In May, fighting between Croatian and
Muslims in central Bosnia around Mostar began a new wave
of ethnic cleansing. A Croat detention center containing 1,500
Muslims was discovered near Mostar, a city besieged for
months without international access. Meanwhile, the situation
worsened in Sarajevo, beset by fresh military pressure and
by major shortages of food, fuel, and medical supplies. In July,
UNHCR, concerned about a falloff in international support for
humanitarian efforts, announced reductions of 50 percent in
assistance to central Bosnia. Alarm was voiced regarding the
upcoming winter, expected to be harsher than 1991-1992.
Fall 1993. Negotiators in Geneva hammered out an agreement
accepted by Bosnian Serbs, Croatia, and eventually by
the the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Yet the agreement,
confirming the partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina into three
ethnic mini-states, was rejected by the Bosnian parliament.
Following cease-fires in September, warfare resumed in October
in Sarajevo and eastern and central Bosnia. Convoy operations
were suspended for a month in Central Bosnia following
the death of a Danish driver and the wounding of several other
staff members. Distancing itself from the Sarajevo authorities,
the Muslim enclave of Bihac in September declared itself the
Autonomous Zone of Western Bosnia. During the fall, the
economic and social situation deteriorated further in Croatia
and Serbia. A new U.N. Consolidated Appeal in October
raised the numbers of those needing urgent assistance from 3.8
million in March to 4.3 million.
161

162

ANNEX 3
TEAM MEMBERS
Jeffrey Clark, Deputy Director of the Refugee Policy Group,
has been involved in humanitarian and development issues
since 1977, when he worked for AID’s Office of Foreign
Disaster Assistance. Previously, he headed the international
staff of the House Select Committee on Hunger and directed
an African food security initiative at the Carter Presidential
Center. He has written widely on humanitarian issues, focusing
on the Horn of Africa.
Roberta Cohen is Senior Adviser for Human Rights at the
Refugee Policy Group. Earlier she held senior advisory positions
on human rights in the U.S. Government and served as
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights. She is
an officer and board member of several leading human rights
organizations and has written extensively on issues of refugees,
displaced persons, and human rights.
Dennis Gallagher is the founder and Executive Director of the
Refugee Policy Group. He is also the Executive Director of the
North American-European Dialogue on Politics and Migration,
an initiative aimed at improving policy-level understanding
of the significant international migration challenges
that will occur in the 1990s.
Iain Guest is a Senior Fellow at the Refugee Policy Group and
adviser on peacekeeping to the International Human Rights
Law Group. He covered the United Nations and development
issues for The Guardian and International Herald Tribune, served
as reporter on several BBC documentaries, and authored a
book on the U.N.’s handling of disappearances. In 1992, he
was spokesman for the UNHCR repatriation operation in
Cambodia.
Larry Minear has worked on humanitarian and development
issues since 1972 as an NGO official and consultant to U.N.
organizations. In 1990, he headed an international team that
163

carried out a case study of Operation Lifeline Sudan. Codirector
with Thomas G. Weiss of the Humanitarianism and
War Project and its principal researcher, he served as team
leader and primary author of the current case study.
Thomas G. Weiss is Associate Director of the Thomas J.
Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies, Associate Dean
of the Faculty at Brown University, and Executive Director of
the Academic Council on the United Nations System. Previously
he held a number of posts at the United Nations and the
International Peace Academy. He has written extensively on
development, peacekeeping, humanitarian relief, and international
organizations.
164

ANNEX 4
ABOUT THE HUMANITARIANISM AND WAR PROJECT
The Humanitarianism and War Project is a policy research
initiative undertaken by the Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for
International Studies of Brown University and the Refugee
Policy Group of Washington, D.C. Based on analysis of recent
international experience in providing protection and assistance
to civilians in situations of armed conflict, the project
seeks to contribute to the evolution of a more effective international
humanitarian regime for the post-Cold War era.
The initiative builds on the methodology of a 1990 case
study of Operation Lifeline Sudan that resulted in a book and
a set of recommendations for aid practitioners. At the same
time, it encompasses a wider range of regional and country
experience. Since its inception in 1991, the project has conducted
field research in five regions: the Gulf (Iraq and neighboring
countries); the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia/Eritrea, the
Sudan and Somalia); Southeast Asia (Cambodia); Central
America (Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala); and the
Balkans. Conflicts in other areas are also being monitored.
In addition to the present report, other publications in the
Occasional Paper series address the issues of the project (No.
8), the Gulf crisis (No. 13), and Central America (No. 14). Two
project books are available commercially: Humanitarian Action
in Times of War: A Handbook for Practitioners (Boulder: Lynne
Rienner, 1993, $8.95)—also available in Spanish and French
from UNICEF in New York—and Humanitarianism Across
Borders: Sustaining Civilians in Times of War (Boulder: Lynne
Rienner, 1993, $35.00). A third volume, Qualities of Mercy: War
and the Global Humanitarian Community, is scheduled for publication
in 1994. A bibliography of publications to date is
available from the Watson Institute, from which other Occasional
Papers may also be ordered. Additional copies of this
report are available at $8.95 each from the Refugee Policy
Group, 1424 16th Street, NW, Suite 401, Washington, DC
20036. Single copies mailed to locations inside the U.S. (including
shipping and handling) cost $11.35, and to international
addresses (by air parcel post), $16.55.
165

The project currently receives financial support from 23
organizations. The sponsoring agencies are comprised of six
U.N. organizations (UNICEF, WFP, UNHCR, UNDP, DHA/
UNDRO, UNSEPHA); four governments (the Netherlands,
France, the United Kingdom, and the United States); ten
nongovernmental groups (Catholic Relief Services, Danish
Refugee Council, the International Centre for Human Rights
and Democratic Development [Canada], International Federation
of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Lutheran
World Federation, Lutheran World Relief, Mennonite Central
Committee, Norwegian Refugee Council, Oxfam-UK, and
Save the Children Fund-UK); and three foundations (The Pew
Charitable Trusts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Arias
Foundation). In January 1994, the project will enter a second
three-year phase, adding new sponsors at that time.
166

167