Internal exiles: What next for internally displaced persons?

Third World Quarterly

Volumn 24, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 429-447

  Weiss, Thomas G ^a  

^a CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

HUMAN RIGHTS; REFUGEE; UNITED NATIONS; WAR;

EID: 33746477653     PISSN: 01436597     EISSN: 13602241     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/0143659032000084393     Document Type: Article

References (67)

1. 1 UNHCR Population Statistics, 7 June 2002 (data available at http://www.unhcr.ch/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/home?page=statistics).
2. Commission on Human Rights, Specific Groups and Individuals: Mass Exoduses and Displaced Persons (16 January 2002) document E/CN.4/2002/95.
3. Roberta Cohen & Francis M Deng, Masses in Flight: The Global Crisis of Internal Displacement, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1998, p 3. The figure of 25 million in 49 countries is the current estimate by the authoritative Norwegian Refugee Council at www.idpproject.org.
4. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, The State of the World's Refugees 1997-98, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p 54.
5. Document E/CN.4/1992/23.
6. Roberta Cohen & Francis M Deng, Masses in Flight: The Global Crisis of Internal Displacement, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1998, p 3. The figure of 25 million in 49 countries is the current estimate by the authoritative Norwegian Refugee Council at www.idpproject.org.
7. Armenia, Angola, Azerbaijan, Burundi (2), Colombia (2), East Timor, Georgia, Indonesia, Mexico, Mozambique, Peru, the Philippines, Russian Federation, Rwanda, El Salvador, Somalia, Sri Lanka, the Sudan (3), Tajikistan, Turkey and the former Yugoslavia.
8. Francis M Deng & Larry Minear, The Challenges of Famine Relief: Emergency Operations in the Sudan, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1992
9. and Francis M Deng & I William Zartman (eds), Conflict Resolution in Africa, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1991.
10. Francis M Deng, 'Frontiers of sovereignty: A framework of protection, assistance, and development for the internally displaced', Leiden Journal of International Law, 8 (2), 1995, pp 249-286
11. and Francis M Deng et al, Sovereignty as Responsibility, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995.
12. Adam Roberts, 'The role of humanitarian issues in international politics in the 1990s', International Review of the Red Cross, 81 (833), 1999, p 19.
13. See also Michael Ignatieff, 'Human rights: The midlife crisis', New York Review of Books, XLVI (9), 1999.
14. See S Neil MacFarlane, 'Intervention in contemporary world politics', Adelphi Paper 350, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, p 79. He cites, among others, the struggles between Protestants and Catholics in 15th and 16th century Europe, the interventionist tendencies of the French Revolution, and the position of the Holy Alliance in the 19th century, as well as other forms of humanitarian intervention in the same period.
15. Christine Bourloyannis, 'The Security Council of the United Nations and the implementation of international humanitarian law', Denver Journal of International Law and Policy, 20 (3), 1993, p 43.
16. T A van Baarda, 'The involvement of the Security Council in maintaining international law', Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, 12 (1), 1994, p 140.
17. Edward Luttwak, 'Kofi's rule: Humanitarian intervention and neocolonialism', The National Interest, 58, 1999/2000, p 60.
18. Kofi A Annan, The Question of Intervention, New York: United Nations, 1999.
19. See Raimo Väyrynen, The Age of Humanitarian Emergencies, Research for Action #25, Helsinki: World Institute for Development Economics Research, 1996
20. and Nicholas J Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
21. International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect, Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2001.
22. The accompanying volume by Thomas G Weiss & Don Hubert, The Responsibility to Protect: Research, Bibliography, and Background, Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2001, contains a bibliography with 2200 entries, one indication of the 'cottage industry'. An updated version of the bibliography is available at http://web.cuny.edu/RalphBuncheInstitute/ieiss/l~ndex.htm.
23. Independent International Commission on Kosovo, Kosovo Report, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
24. Alton Frye (ed), Humanitarian Intervention: Crafting a Workable Doctrine, New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2000
25. and Interagency Review of US Government Civilian Humanitarian & Transition Programs, document dated 12 July 2000.
26. Advisory Council on International Affairs and Advisory Committee on Issues of Public International Law, Humanitarian Intervention, The Hague: AIV and CAVV, 2000
27. and Danish Institute of International Affairs, Humanitarian Intervention: Legal and Political Aspects, Copenhagen: Danish Institute, 1999.
28. David Rieff, A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002.
29. Document E/CN.4/1998/53/Add.2.
30. These include: The Global IDP Survey of the Norwegian Refugee Council; the International Journal of Refugee Law; the Forced Migration Review of Oxford's Refugee Studies Programme; International Review of the Red Cross; and the ICJ Review. In addition, a number of NGO newsletters have published the Guiding Principles, including: Uprooted People of the Global Ecumenical Network of the World Council of Churches; The Mustard Seed of the Jesuit Refugee Service; On the Record of the Advocacy Group Human Rights Tribune of Human Rights Internet; Monday Developments of InterAction and the RRN Newsletter of the Overseas Development Institute. And these sorts of publications proliferate.
31. These languages include Abkhaz, Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Bahasa Indonesian, Burmese, Cebuano, Chin, Dari, Dinka, Georgian, Kirundi, Luo, Macedonian, Magui, Pashtu, Portuguese, Ruturo, Serbo-Croat, Sgaw Karen, Sinhala, Somali, Swahili, Tagalog, Tamil, Tetum and Turkish. The helpful and less technical Handbook has been thus far translated into Albanian, Bahasa Indonesia, French, Macedonian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. The far more voluminous Annotations have not been translated - something local groups have indicated would be useful. See Walter Kälin, Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement: Annotations, Washington, DC: American Society of International Law and the Brookings Project on Internal Displacement, 2000, Studies in Transnational Legal Policy No 32. The PID has conducted 10 regional and country workshops on internal displacement, about two a year since they began in 1998. The follow-up to these workshops by the governments and certain armed opposition movements in Africa, Asia and the Americas has been facilitated by the existence of documents in the languages of the parties themselves.
32. For a discussion, see Guy Goodwin-Gill, The Refugee in International Law, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.
33. See Thomas G Weiss & Amir Pasic, 'Dealing with displacement and suffering caused by Yugoslavia's wars', in Roberta Cohen & Francis M Deng (eds), The Forsaken People, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1998, pp 175-231
34. and Thomas G Weiss & Amir Pasic, 'Reinventing UNHCR: Enterprising humanitarians in the Former Yugoslavia, 1991-1995', Global Governance, 3 (1), 1997, pp 41-57.
35. There are substantial voices of dissent within UNHCR and outside it against the expansion of the agency to provide aid to so many victims rather than be the protector solely of refugees. See, for example, Gil Loescher, The UNHCR and World Politics: A Perilous Path, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
36. Kofi Annan, Renewing the United Nations: A Programme for Reform, New York: United Nations, 1997.
37. There are other proposals being aired - for example, Arthur Helton's Strategic Humanitarian Action and Research (SHARE), a new intergovernmental mechanism situated outside the UN system. See Arthur Helton, The Price of Indifference: Refugees and Humanitarian Action in the New Century, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp 286-293.
38. Document HR/4584, REF/I 172, 18 April 2002.
39. Francis M Deng, Protecting the Dispossessed: A Challenge for the International Community, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1993
40. Cohen & Deng, Masses in Flight
41. Cohen & Deng, The Forsaken People
42. and David A Korn, Exodus Within Borders, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1999.
43. Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli, Selected Bibliography on the Global Crisis of Internal Displacement, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2001.
44. John Fawcett & Victor Tanner, The Internally Displaced People of Iraq, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution- SAIS Project on Internal Displacement, 2002.
45. Document A/50/558, p 11.
46. Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, 'Musings of a UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights', Global Governance, 9 (1), 2003, pp 7-14.
47. Manual on Field Practice on Internal Displacement, New York: OCHA, 1999, is a useful compendium of best practices that complements the Handbook and should also be translated.
48. These options were spelled out by Roberta Cohen & Jacques Cuénod, Improving Institutional Arrangements for the Internally Displaced, Washington, DC: Refugee Policy Group, 1995, pp 81-86.
49. These options were debated by an independent group of experts, including the author, on 30 September 1998 at the Brookings Institution. See 'Roundtable report on new directions for the mandate of the Representative of the Secretary-General on internally displaced persons', unpublished document.
50. For an earlier analysis, see Thomas G Weiss, 'Whither international efforts for internally displaced persons?, Journal of Peace Research, 36 (3), 1999, pp 363-373.
51. Michael Pugh & S Alex Cunliffe, 'The lead agency concept in humanitarian assistance: The case of the UNHCR', Security Dialogue, 28 (1), 1997, pp 17-30.
52. Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of International Migration (with the PID, Oxford's Refugee Studies Centre, and refugee study organisations in Sri Lanka and Tanzania) is floating an alternative option, namely a UN High Commissioner for Forced Migrants. The mandate of this high commissioner would include refugees as well as individuals internally and externally displaced because of repression, conflict, natural disasters, environmental degradation and development-induced displacement. The work of the new agency would be governed by the Refugee Convention and the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement.
53. For instance, see John Boli & George M Thomas (eds), Constructing World Culture: International Nongovernmental Organizations since 1875, Stanford, CT: Stanford University Press, 1999
54. Ann Marie Clark, Diplomacy of Conscience: Amnesty International and Changing Human Rights Norms, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001
55. Martha Finnemore, National Interests in International Society, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996
56. Margaret E Keck & Kathryn Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998
57. Audie Klotz, Norms in International Relations: The Struggle against Apartheid, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996
58. David Holloran Lumsdaine, Moral Vision in International Politics: The Foreign Aid Regime, 1949-1989, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993
59. Thomas Risse, Stephen C Ropp & Kathryn Sikkink, The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999
60. and Paul Kevin Wapner, Environmental Activism and World Civic Politics, Buffalo, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995.
61. For a recent review of the literature, see Theo Fanell, 'Constructivist security studies: Portrait of a research program', International Studies Review, 4 (1), 2002, pp 49-72.
62. Document A/50/558, p 20.
63. The humanitarian impulse also appears in the face of natural disasters, but the politics of helping requests are totally different from acting without the support, or even against the will or stated wishes, of local political authorities. For a longer discussion, see Thomas G Weiss, 'The humanitarian impulse', in David M Malone (ed), The UN Security Council in the Post-Cold War World, Boulder: Lynne Rienner, forthcoming.
64. This is distinct from the emotionally charged or biased media coverage that is seen as 'impulsive' by Matthew S Parry, 'Phyrric victories and the collapse of humanitarian principles', The Journal of Humanitarian Assistance, October 2002, at http://www.jha.ac/articles/a094.htm, p 4.
65. For additional information, see ALNAP, Humanitarian Action: Learning from Evaluation, Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action Annual Review Series, London: ALNAP, 2001.
66. For a discussion of the failure to change as a result of analyses, see Nicola Reindorp & Peter Wiles, Humanitarian Coordination: Lessons from Recent Experience, London: Overseas Development Institute, 2001
67. and A Wood, R Apthorpe & J Borton (eds), Evaluating International Humanitarian Action: Reflections from Practitioners, London: Zed Books, 2001.