op 18 front pages-converted - The Watson Institute for International ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

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 90
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 91
Page 1 and 2:
Occasional Paper #18 HUMANITARIAN A
Page 3:
CONTENTS Foreword .................
Page 6 and 7:
accountable is the United Nations f
Page 8 and 9:
areas within the former Yugoslavia.
Page 10 and 11:
The deteriorating social situation
Page 12 and 13:
IRC LWF MSF NATO NGO ODA ODPR OFDA
Page 14 and 15:
xiv
Page 16 and 17:
“We got our own hands dirty in th
Page 18 and 19:
civilian populations beyond areas i
Page 20 and 21:
European Union on November 1, 1993
Page 22 and 23:
with its concern for minority popul
Page 24 and 25:
U.N. put as much effort into stoppi
Page 26 and 27:
No. of displaced / refugees 200,000
Page 28 and 29:
How many persons were reached by U.
Page 30 and 31:
the entire population of central Bo
Page 32 and 33:
quantitative data to qualitative ju
Page 34 and 35:
denied access to the centers where
Page 36 and 37:
ing proceeded uninterrupted. In the
Page 38 and 39:
also difficult. Human Rights Watch,
Page 40 and 41:
UNHCR as Lead Agency UNHCR received
Page 42 and 43:
primary responsibility for the wide
Page 44 and 45:
wars, the terrain was more familiar
Page 46 and 47:
* Joint Appeals (UNHCR, UNICEF, WHO
Page 48 and 49:
teur it appointed was given more au
Page 50 and 51:
port of third-country nationals bac
Page 52 and 53:
followed locally. It became more di
Page 54 and 55: had two principal contacts: the gov
Page 56 and 57: national NGOs resident in Serbia an
Page 58 and 59: and military equipment to Yugoslavi
Page 60 and 61: Montenegro because the Federal Repu
Page 62 and 63: munity played a major role in polit
Page 65 and 66: CHAPTER 3: TEN CENTRAL POLICY CHALL
Page 67 and 68: homeless and lower-income pensioner
Page 69 and 70: international community,” recalle
Page 71 and 72: electricity up and running was unde
Page 73 and 74: UNICEF, charged with the survival a
Page 75 and 76: Relief and Beyond Two issues emerge
Page 77 and 78: ties away from the areas of fightin
Page 79 and 80: sons forced to flee intolerable cir
Page 81 and 82: evacuees to 30,000 bodies.” The i
Page 83 and 84: war in which human displacement was
Page 85 and 86: Based on interviews and observation
Page 87 and 88: tarian organizations did their best
Page 89 and 90: eneficiary population had been reac
Page 91 and 92: with 113 persons, including two WHO
Page 93 and 94: humanitarian access. A lot of time
Page 95 and 96: here than in any previous conflict
Page 97 and 98: fered at a “lower price” would
Page 99 and 100: Third, and perhaps the most visible
Page 101 and 102: ity and seriousness of the U.N.’s
Page 103: had to adapt to UNPROFOR rather tha
Page 107 and 108: some of those persons who have alre
Page 109 and 110: In a letter sent in June 1993 to th
Page 111 and 112: indirect extermination of the whole
Page 113 and 114: insisting on a presence in Serb-hel
Page 115 and 116: has exactly the same problems—lac
Page 117 and 118: Yugoslavia lends urgency to address
Page 119 and 120: town of Srebrenica.” DHA’s atte
Page 121 and 122: population at risk. The numbers wer
Page 123 and 124: tions would also have been construc
Page 125 and 126: observed, the situation was reverse
Page 127 and 128: erly preceded by interagency assess
Page 129 and 130: Local Resources Recent humanitarian
Page 131 and 132: the ground rules for dealing with t
Page 133 and 134: standably dismayed by the time pree
Page 135 and 136: 10. Assisting Civilians without Pro
Page 137 and 138: sanctions against the Federal Repub
Page 139 and 140: that the drops were a bad idea but
Page 141 and 142: CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS Several
Page 143 and 144: political, and military entities. O
Page 145 and 146: ferently. The interface between the
Page 147 and 148: takings ultimately rely. Second, we
Page 149 and 150: ANNEX 1 PERSONS INTERVIEWED * UNITE
Page 151 and 152: Stephanie Allen Early Joan Edwards
Page 153 and 154: Karen Kenny Peter Kessler Mostafa K
Page 155 and 156:
Jacques Mouchet Sadako Ogata Pierre
Page 157 and 158:
Serge Telle Tatjania Termacic Sonya
Page 159 and 160:
Derek Boothby Shannon Boyd David Cr
Page 161 and 162:
Marc van Wynsberghe Civil Affairs O
Page 163 and 164:
Ann Grant Rita Hudson Zlatko Hurtic
Page 165 and 166:
Martin Damery Ursula K. Eugster Car
Page 167 and 168:
Arthur Helton John Hicks Lidia Himi
Page 169 and 170:
Jan Williamson Roger Winter John Wo
Page 171 and 172:
ANNEX 2 CHRONOLOGY OF MAJOR EVENTS
Page 173 and 174:
the ICRC suspended relief operation
Page 175 and 176:
Summer 1993. In May, fighting betwe
Page 177 and 178:
ANNEX 3 TEAM MEMBERS Jeffrey Clark,
Page 179 and 180:
ANNEX 4 ABOUT THE HUMANITARIANISM A
Page 181:
167
show all

op 18 front pages-converted - The Watson Institute for International ...

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?