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

asis, and until a solution can be found.” At the same time, the
report recommended stepped-up activities where people were
vulnerable in the hope of reducing their need to flee. The
proposals evoked criticism that UNHCR, in its effort to
strengthen protection in order to prevent refugee flows, was
weakening the protection it had historically provided. The
evolution in policy also was seen as playing into the hands of
governments that wanted to shirk their international responsibilities
to asylum seekers.
The protection debate took place on the frontlines in the
former Yugoslavia as well in conference rooms in Geneva and
national capitals. UNHCR protection staff sensed a tension
between their traditional mandate of affirming people’s right
to seek asylum and a policy of encouraging them to remain in
their homes and communities. Even though the peril faced by
minorities seemed to justify their immediate evacuation, field
staff felt discouraged from doing so. “Our entire focus was to
observe, monitor, and report on protection issues,” recalled
one UNHCR protection officer who served in Banja Luka at
the height of Serb attacks on the city’s Muslims, “but not to
assist in helping people to leave.” That seems to have been a
reasonable interpretation of then-current policy.
The Evolution
Over time, UNHCR’s emphasis on protection changed. A
spokesperson in Zagreb in October 1993 spoke of an “evolution”
in agency thinking and approach. Moving away from
actions based on an abhorrence against complicity in ethnic
cleansing, UNHCR, he said, had become more open to helping
people move to safety.
“Evacuation is a last resort, in that it acquiesces in the very
displacement that preventive efforts aim to avoid,” observed
UNHCR’s State of the World’s Refugees 1993. “But in some
circumstances it is the only way to save lives. There is a very
fine line between refusing to facilitate ethnic cleansing and
failing to prevent needless deaths.”
“There comes a certain moment when you can’t continue
to ask philosophical questions,” recalled UNHCR Special
Envoy José-Maria Mendiluce in July 1993. “I prefer 30,000
66