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

UNICEF, charged with the survival and development needs of
women and children in such areas as nutrition, domestic
needs, health, and psycho-social rehabilitation.
UNHCR did not succeed in mounting major social service
activities or in energizing other aid organizations to do so. For
example, services in rape counseling, particularly necessary
given the use of mass rape as a strategy of war, were demonstrably
inadequate. UNHCR also failed to deal effectively with
the sizable population of orphans or with the surge of international
interest in assisting them. In each instance, UNHCR
responses were marked by lack of urgency and priority.
Disclosures of mass rapes of Muslim women in late 1992
unleashed a spate of investigators and counselors, many of
them insensitive to the reluctance of the victims, for personal
and cultural reasons, to tell their stories. It was not until
January 1993 that UNHCR sent a professional to the region to
review the matter, formulate guidelines, and lay the groundwork
for social service activities. Her contract, however, was
short-term, and when she left in May she was not replaced. As
of late 1993, guidelines on sexual violence were not yet finalized
and disseminated. UNHCR’s first senior social services
officer with region-wide responsibilities did not arrive on the
scene until August 1993; a junior officer had arrived in Bosnia
only two months earlier. A social services officer sent out in
1992 was assigned to higher priority food and logistics activities.
After two years, social services still represented a small
fraction of UNHCR’s total budget for the region: in Bosnia 4.3
percent, Croatia 4 percent, and Serbia 3 percent. Acknowledging
that these efforts could have been launched earlier and
more energetically, UNHCR officials continued to urge caution.
Conceding the need for more extensive activities, they
also stressed the dangers of proceeding in ways that revictimize
victims, a legitimate concern that some critics viewed as a
rationalization for inaction. Social services activities later included
visits to individuals and families, income generation
projects, day care centers, and the training of local people to
provide counseling. As of late 1993, however, some of these
activities remained in the pilot project stage.
In the area of psycho-social rehabilitation, WHO in 1993
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