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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
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 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 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 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
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