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

sive, though more delimited. ODA provided truck drivers for
UNHCR and consultants to rehabilitate energy systems in
Zenica and Tuzla and to assess the needs of the Kosovo
hospital in Sarajevo. A number of governments, including
those of Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Norway,
and Sweden, provided shelter, either bilaterally or through
UNHCR. As of late 1993, the contributions of EC member
governments—bilaterally and through the EC and the U.N.—
totaled about $1 billion, or more than two-thirds of all international
aid. Generally speaking, however, the lack of security
and other daunting difficulties made for less bilateral government
activity than in other major humanitarian emergencies.
The belligerents were also prominent among political
actors undertaking humanitarian activities in the region. The
policies and practices of the Croatian and Serbian military
authorities turned their respective governments into villains
in the international public mind. However, both governments
were also major humanitarian actors. They functioned from
the start as the first line of humanitarian defense and later as
major elements in the delivery—and obstruction—of international
assistance.
Interviews with officials of the Croatian Office of Displaced
Persons and Refugees (ODPR) throughout the six
months of the team’s review conveyed a picture of good-faith
efforts by serious humanitarian professionals to meet the
needs of Croatia’s refugees and displaced persons. By the fall
of 1993, their numbers had grown to about 624,000 persons, to
which the latest U.N. appeal added another 176,000 “social
cases”—that is, local persons who, while not displaced, were
seriously affected by the war. Accommodating the displaced
persons within existing Croatian educational, health, and
social services systems created sizable financial and administrative
hardships.
Numerous incidents were documented of discriminatory
treatment by Croatian government authorities of individuals
and groups, especially of Serbian and Muslim origin. Yet
official government policy, said ODPR, was that all people
“have the same rights, irrespective of whether they are Bosnian,
Croatian, or Serbs, and are treated the same way by the
Croatian authorities.” That policy, however, was not always
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