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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. 114
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. 115
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Occasional Paper #18 HUMANITARIAN A
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CONTENTS Foreword .................
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accountable is the United Nations f
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areas within the former Yugoslavia.
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The deteriorating social situation
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IRC LWF MSF NATO NGO ODA ODPR OFDA
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xiv
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“We got our own hands dirty in th
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civilian populations beyond areas i
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European Union on November 1, 1993
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with its concern for minority popul
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U.N. put as much effort into stoppi
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No. of displaced / refugees 200,000
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How many persons were reached by U.
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the entire population of central Bo
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quantitative data to qualitative ju
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denied access to the centers where
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ing proceeded uninterrupted. In the
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also difficult. Human Rights Watch,
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UNHCR as Lead Agency UNHCR received
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primary responsibility for the wide
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wars, the terrain was more familiar
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* Joint Appeals (UNHCR, UNICEF, WHO
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teur it appointed was given more au
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port of third-country nationals bac
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followed locally. It became more di
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had two principal contacts: the gov
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national NGOs resident in Serbia an
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and military equipment to Yugoslavi
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Montenegro because the Federal Repu
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munity played a major role in polit
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CHAPTER 3: TEN CENTRAL POLICY CHALL
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homeless and lower-income pensioner
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international community,” recalle
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electricity up and running was unde
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UNICEF, charged with the survival a
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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 and 104: had to adapt to UNPROFOR rather tha
Page 105 and 106: Serbian aggressors is not effective
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: erly preceded by interagency assess
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,
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ANNEX 4 ABOUT THE HUMANITARIANISM A
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167
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