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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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