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ecutions would be bargained away in return for their support
for a negotiated end to the war also denigrated the seriousness
of international insistence that justice be done.
A detailed review of political efforts to address the crisis
is beyond the scope of the immediate study, which focuses
primarily on humanitarian action. (For some of the major
political events during the years 1991 to 1993, see the chronology
in Annex 2.) However, there is ample evidence to support
the conclusion of Rosalyn Higgins in “The New United Nations
and Former Yugoslavia” (International Affairs, 69, 3 [1993],
p. 469): “We have chosen to respond to major unlawful violence,
not by stopping that violence, but by trying to provide
relief to the suffering. But our choice of policy allows the
suffering to continue.”
From the start, humanitarian activities had been a showcase
for governments, unable to forge agreement on a common
political or military strategy, to demonstrate concern for the
people of the region. While the High Commissioner for Refugees
and other senior officials repeatedly cautioned against
letting such activities become an all-purpose response to the
crisis, their pleas were not heeded. Early in 1993, one senior
official told us that “Humanitarian aspects have become the
centerpiece of the U.N.’s entire Yugoslavia operation. This
was not intended.”
During our first mission to the region in March 1993, the
terms humanitarian alibi and the humanitarian fig leaf were
gaining currency. At the time of our second mission in late
June, reduced contributions to the U.N.’s humanitarian efforts
caused apprehension that even the commitment of governments
to underwrite humanitarian action was waning. “It is
not simply that the U.N.’s humanitarian efforts have become
politicized,” François Fouinat, coordinator of the UNHCR
Task Force for the former Yugoslavia, concluded in October.
“It is rather that we’ve been transformed into the only manifestation
of international political will.”
Humanitarian organizations initially saw themselves buying
time for a political solution. As time passed, that solution
failed to materialize and the fighting took an ever widening
toll. In fact, diplomatic initiatives seemed implicated in an
intensification of the suffering. The Vance-Owen plan, even
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