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

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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