The perils of humanitarianism: Refugee and IDP protection in situations of regime-induced displacement

Refugee Survey Quarterly

Volumn 29, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 38-60

  Orchard, Phil ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ASYLUM SEEKER; CIVIL WAR; DATA SET; FORCED MIGRATION; GOVERNMENT RELATIONS; PEACEKEEPING; POLITICAL CONFLICT; REFUGEE;

BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA; DARFUR; KOSOVO; SERBIA; SUDAN;

EID: 77956154912     PISSN: 10204067     EISSN: 1471695X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/rsq/hdq005     Document Type: Article

References (118)

1. One recent estimate suggests that in the twentieth century, 43 million to 54 million non-combatants died from war-related causes.
2. A. Downes, Targeting Civilians in War, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2008, 1.
3. However, this pales in comparison to the estimate by R. J. Rummel that in the twentieth Century 262 million civilians were murdered by their own governments through genocides, policides, and mass killings.
4. R. J. Rummel, Death by Government, New Brunswick, N. J., Transaction, 1994. Data until 1999 is available on his website, at: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM (last visited 27 Nov. 2009).
5. M. Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2006, 9.
6. see also J. Crisp, "Refugees and the Global Politics of Asylum", The Political Quarterly, 74(1), 2003, 76.
7. D. Keen, Complex Emergencies, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2008, 13.
8. M. Humphreys and J. M. Weinstein, "Handling and Manhandling Civilians in Civil War", American Political Science Review, 100(3), 2006, 429.
9. Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, Internal Displacement: Global Overview of Trends and Developments in 2007, Geneva, Norwegian Refugee Council, 2008, 15.
10. R. Cohen and F. M. Deng, "Mass Displacement Caused by Conflicts and One-Sided Violence: National and International Responses", in SIPRI Yearbook 2009, ed. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009, 20.
11. B. Barbour and B. Gorlick, "Embracing the 'Responsibility to Protect': A Repertoire of Measures Including Asylum for Potential Victims", International Journal of Refugee Law, 20(4), 2008, 562.
12. UNHCR, "Global Trends: Refugees, Asylum-seekers, Returnees, Internally Displaced and Stateless Persons", 16 Jun. 2009, Table 5.
13. UNHCR, "Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialized Countries", Yearly, 2004-2008, Table 2.
14. A. Betts, "Institutional Proliferation and the Global Refugee Regime", Perspectives on Politics, 7(1), 2009.
15. IDPs are defined in the Guiding Principles as "persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized State border". UN Doc. E/CN.4/1998/53/Add.2, 11 Feb. 1998. Primary responsibility for the protection of IDPs rests with their territorial State. However, they are often in more precarious situations than refugees and other civilian victims of conflict and, hence, some of the highest death rates recorded in humanitarian emergencies occur amongst IDPs.
16. R. Cohen and F. M. Deng, Masses in Flight: The Global Crisis of Internal Displacement, Washington, D.C., Brookings Institution Press, 1998, 275.
17. E. Mooney, "The Concept of Internal Displacement and the Case for Internally Displaced Persons as a Category of Concern", Refugee Survey Quarterly, 24(3), 2005, 14-16.
18. S. O'Callaghan and S. Pantuliano, "Protective Action: Incorporating Civilian Protection into Humanitarian Response", Humanitarian Policy Group, 2007, 8.
19. H. Slim and A. Bonwick, Protection: An ALNAP Guide for Humanitarian Agencies, London, Overseas Development Institute, 2005, 27. Italics in the original.
20. M. Weiner, "Bad Neighbors, Bad Neighborhoods: An Inquiry into the Causes of Refugee Flows", International Security, Vol. 21, No. 1, 1996, 5-42.
21. A. R. Zolberg, A. Suhrke, and S. Aguayo, Escape from Violence: Conflict and the Refugee Crisis in the Developing World, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989, 30.
22. S. Schmeidl, "Exploring the Causes of Forced Migration: A Pooled Time-Series Analysis, 1971-1990", Social Science Quarterly, 78(2), 1997, 152.
23. C. A. Davenport, W. H. Moore, and S. C. Poe, "Sometimes You Just Have to Leave: Domestic Threats and Forced Migration, 1964-1989", International Interactions, 29, 2003.
24. Schmeidl uses refugee data from 1971 to 1990. Davenport et al. use data from 1964 to 1989. One key area of difference, Moore and Shellman suggest, using data from 1976 to 1995, is that "refugee production relative to IDPs is a positive function of state targeting of civilians, as measured by genocide...", thus those facing a genocidal regime will frequently try to leave the state rather than seek sanctuary elsewhere within its territory.
25. W. H. Moore and S. M. Shellman, "Refugee or Internally Displaced Person? To Where Should One Flee?", Comparative Political Studies, 39(5), 2006, 619.
26. Davenport, Moore, and Poe, "Sometimes You Just Have to Leave", op. cit., 32-33.
27. H. Rae, State Identities and the Homogenisation of Peoples, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002.
28. see also A. R. Zolberg, "The Formation of New States as a Refugee-Generating Process", The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 467, May 1983.
29. A. Dowty and G. Loescher, "Refugee Flows as Grounds for International Action", International Security, Vol. 21, No. 1, 1996, 49.
30. see also Crisp, "Refugees and the Global Politics of Asylum", op. cit.
31. B. Valentino, P. Huth, and D. Balch-Lindsay, "'Draining the Sea': Mass Killing and Guerrilla Warfare", International Organization, Vol. 58, No. 2, 2004, 376.
32. see also J. Azam and A. Hoeffler, "Violence Against Civilians in Civil Wars: Looting or Terror?", Journal of Peace Research, 39(4), 2002, 461-485.
33. This definition echoes, but is broader, than the definition of one-sided violence proposed by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program as "the use of armed force by the government of a state or by a formally organized group against civilians which results in at least 25 deaths in a year". Uppsala Conflict Data Program, available at: http://www.pcr.uu.se/database/definitions_all.htm (last visited 30 Nov. 2009).
34. Uppsala Conflict Data Program, available at: http://www.pcr.uu.se/database/definitions_all.htm (last visited 30 Nov. 2009).
35. Amnesty International, Amnesty International Report 1995: Sierra Leone, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3ae6aa024.html (last visited 2 Apr. 2009).
36. Human Rights Watch, Human Rights Watch World Report 1993: Liberia, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/467fca5ec.html (last visited 24 Nov. 2009).
37. United States Department of State, Country Report on Human Rights Practices 2003-Liberia, available at: http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2003/27735.htm (last visited 23 Nov. 2009).
38. Amnesty International, Amnesty International Report 2003-Liberia, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3edb47-da0.html (last visited 23 Nov. 2009).
39. P. M. Kamungi, "Kenya's Internally Displaced Persons: Numbers and Challenges", UNDP Disaster Prevention, Management and Coordination Unit, December 2002, 13-4, available at: http://www.internaldisplacement.org/8025708F004BE3B1/(httpInfoFiles)/AB0DBF9A3CBF8DA1C125752800345935/$file/Kenya+-+December+2008.pdf (last visited 20 Nov. 2009).
40. J. Bennett, "Forced Relocation in Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi: An Emerging Policy", Forced Migration Review, 7, 1999, 28.
41. While ethnic cleansing has not been defined in international law, it is arguably encompassed within the definition of crimes against humanity.
42. See Barbour and Gorlick, "Embracing The 'Responsibility to Protect'", op. cit. 545-46.
43. One broadly accepted definition is that it refers to "the elimination by the ethnic group exerting control over a given territory of members of other ethnic groups".
44. Mazowiecki in J. Jackson-Preece, "Ethnic Cleansing as an Instrument of Nation-State Creation: Changing State Practices and Evolving Legal Norms", Human Rights Quarterly, 20, 1998, 821.
45. Genocide or policide refers to "the promotion, execution, and/or implied consent of sustained policies by governing elites or their agents - or, in the case of civil war, either of the contending authorities - that are intended to destroy, in whole or part, a communal, political, or politicized ethnic group".
46. B. Harff, "No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust? Assessing Risks of Genocide and Political Mass Murder since 1955", American Political Science Review, 97(1), 2003, 88.
47. Fourteen cases of mass displacement - all cases of regimeinduced displacement - were also cases of genocide or policide.
48. Amnesty International, Amnesty International Report 1994: Djibouti, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3ae6a9f234.html (last visited 1 Apr. 2009).
49. The size of forced displacement is based in part on W. B. Wood, "Forced Migration: Local Conflicts and International Dilemmas", Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 84(4), 1994, 609.
50. The coding procedure included two researchers independently coding each mass displacement event. In cases where their coding scores differed differentiated, I reviewed the data and served as a third vote to determine which code was assigned. Inter-coder reliability was approximately 70-80 per cent.
51. For a similar coding process, see M. Gibney and M. Dalton, "The Political Terror Scale", Policy Studies and Developing Nations, 4, 1996.
52. J. Fearon, "The Rise of Emergency Relief Aid", in M. Barnett and T. G. Weiss (eds.), Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2008, 50.
53. B. Hovy, "Statistically Correct Asylum Data: Prospects and Limitations", New Issues in Refugee Research, UNHCR Working Paper No. 37, 2000.
54. J. Crisp, "'Who Has Counted the Refugees?' UNHCR and the Politics of Numbers", New Issues in Refugee Research, UNHCR Working Paper No. 12, 1999.
55. O. Bakewell, "Can We Ever Rely on Refugee Statistics?", Radical Statistics, 72, 1999.
56. Wood, "Forced Migration", op. cit., 611.
57. One check on this problem is to supplement such research with in-depth case studies, a task which I will undertake as part of a broader project.
58. This echoes findings by the Human Security Report Project that the number of campaigns of one-sided violence increased substantially between 1989 and 2004 with a more recent drop off, lending "support to the widely-held view that the targeting of civilians has become increasingly prevalent". Human Security Centre, Human Security Brief 2007, Vancouver, Human Security Centre, University of British Columbia, 2008, 42.
59. A. J. Bellamy and P. D. Williams, "Protecting Civilians in Uncivil Wars", Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect Working Paper No. 1, 2009, 11.
60. S. G. Caverzasio, Strengthening Protection in War: A Search for Professional Standards, Geneva, International Committee of the Red Cross, 2001, 19.
61. Arthur Helton stressed the similar basis for refugee protection in law, noting that "the concept must be associated with entitlements under law and, for effective redress of grievances, mechanisms to vindicate claims in respect of those entitlements".
62. A. Helton, "What Is Refugee Protection? A Question Revisited", in N. Steiner, M. Gibney, and G. Loescher (eds.), Problems of Protection: The UNHCR, Refugees, and Human Rights, New York, Routledge, 2003, 20.
63. F. Terry, Condemned to Repeat? The Paradox of Humanitarian Action, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2002.
64. Neutrality, Barnett and Weiss note, "demands that humanitarian organizations refrain from taking part in hostilities or from any action that either benefits or disadvantages the parties to the conflict". Impartiality requires "that assistance be based on need" and independence "demands that assistance should not be connected to any of the parties directly involved in armed conflicts".
65. M. N. Barnett and T. G. Weiss, "Humanitarianism: A Brief History of the Present", in M. N. Barnett and T. G. Weiss (eds.), Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2008, 3.
66. F. Fox, "New Humanitarianism: Does It Provide a Moral Banner for the 21st Century?", Disasters, 25(4), 2001, 275-6.
67. M. Barnett, "Humanitarianism Transformed", Perspectives on Politics, 3(4), 2005.
68. Slim and Bonwick, Protection, op. cit., 87-91.
69. O'Callaghan and Pantuliano, "Protective Action", op. cit., 11.
70. M. Frohardt, D. Paul, and L. Minear, Protecting Human Rights: The Challenge to Humanitarian Organizations, Providence, Thomas J. Watson Institute for International Studies Occasional Paper #35, 1999, 42.
71. O'Callaghan and Pantuliano, "Protective Action", op. cit., 13.
72. Slim and Bonwick, Protection, op. cit.,114.
73. M. Dubois, "Protection: The New Humanitarian Fig-Leaf", in International Conference: Protecting People in Conflict & Crisis, Oxford University Refugee Studies Centre, 2009, 3.
74. D. McNamara, "The Politics of Protection", in International Conference: Protecting People in Conflict & Crisis, Oxford University Refugee Studies Centre, 2009, 5, 12.
75. Bellamy and Williams, "Protecting Civilians in Uncivil Wars", op. cit., 16.
76. O'Callaghan and Pantuliano, "Protective Action", op. cit., 8.
77. D. Chandler, "The Road to Military Humanitarianism: How the Human Rights NGOs Shaped a New Humanitarian Agenda", Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 23, 2003, 699.
78. K. Mills, "Neo-Humanitarianism: The Role of International Humanitarian Norms and Organizations in Contemporary Conflict", Global Governance, 11(2), 2005, 164.
79. R. Belloni, "The Trouble with Humanitarianism", Review of International Studies, 33(3), 2007.
80. Chandler, "The Road to Military Humanitarianism", op. cit., 699.
81. B. S. Chimni, "Globalization, Humanitarianism and the Erosion of Refugee Protection", Journal of Refugee Studies, 13(3), 2000, 244.
82. S. K. Lischer, "Military Intervention and the Humanitarian Force Multiplier", Global Governance, 13(1), 2007, 100.
83. see also Keen, Complex Emergencies, op. cit., 117.
84. T. G. Weiss and A. Pasic, "Reinventing UNHCR: Enterprising Humanitarians in the Former Yugoslavia, 1991-1995", Global Governance, 3(1), 1997, 47.
85. S. Ogata, The Turbulent Decade: Confronting the Refugee Crisis of the 1990s, New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 2005, 55.
86. Keen, Complex Emergencies, op. cit., 139.
87. P. Andreas, Blue Helmets and Black Markets: The Business of Survival in the Seige of Sarajevo, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2008, 13.
88. Report by Médecins Sans Frontie'res-Holland, cited in L. Minear, "Lessons Learned: The Darfur Experience", in N. Behrman (ed.), ALNAP Review of Humanitarian Action in 2004: Capacity Building, London, Overseas Development Institute, 2005, 77.
89. This period marked the displacement of the majority of the Darfuri refugees in Chad - 180,000 out of 250,000 fled between May 2003 and June 2004 - and of the internally displaced - of the estimated 2.7 million IDPs, almost 1.5 million had been displaced prior to September 2004.
90. D. Bartsch and N. Belgacem, "Real-Time Evaluation of UNHCR's Response to the Emergency in Chad", Evaluation and Policy Analysis Unit, UNHCR, Geneva, 2004, p. 3.
91. OCHA, "Darfur Humanitarian Profile No. 34", 1 Jan. 2009, available at: http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWFiles2009.nsf/FilesByRWDocUnidFilename/EGUA7QPR45full_report.pdf/$File/full_report.pdf (last visited 1 Oct. 2009).
92. Minear, "Lessons Learned", op. cit. 104.
93. S. Pantuliano and S. O'Callaghan, "The 'Protection Crisis': A Review of Field-Based Strategies for Humanitarian Protection in Darfur", London, Humanitarian Policy Group, 2006, 17.
94. B. Cronin, "International Consensus and the Chaning Legal Authority of the UN Security Council", in B. Cronin and I. Hurd (eds.) The UN Security Council and the Politics of International Authority, London, Routledge, 2008, 72, 75.
95. see also N. J. Wheeler, "Introduction: The Political and Moral Limits of Western Military Intervention to Protect Civilians in Danger", Contemporary Security Policy, 22(3), 2001.
96. S. Chesterman, "Legality Versus Legitimacy: Humanitarian Intervention, the Security Council, and the Rule of Law", Security Dialogue, 33(3), 2002.
97. UNSC res. 1926, 19 Apr. 2000, 3.
98. J. H. S. Lie and B. de Carvalho, "Protecting Civilians and Protecting Ideas: Institutional Challenges to the Protection of Civilians", NUPI Working Paper 760, 2009, 1.
99. V. K. Holt and T. C. Berkman, The Impossible Mandate? Military Preparedness, the Responsibility to Protect and Modern Peace Operations, Washington D.C., The Henry L. Stimson Center, 2006, 6.
100. W. J. Durch and J. A. Schear, "Faultlines - UN Operations in the Former Yugoslavia", in W. J. Durch (ed.) UN Peacekeeping, American Politics, and the Uncivil Wars of the 1990s, New York, St. Martin's Press, 1996, 227.
101. T. G. Weiss, Military-Civilian Interactions: Intervening in Humanitarian Crises, Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield, 1999.
102. H. Yamashita, Humanitarian Space and International Politics: The Creation of Safe Areas, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2004.
103. Cited in UNHCR, The State of the World's Refugees 2000: Fifty Years of Humanitarian Action, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000, 224.
104. P. D. Williams and A. J. Bellamy, "The Responsibility to Protect and the Crisis in Darfur", Security Dialogue, 36(1), 2005, 29.
105. E. Reeves, "'Chaos by Design': Khartoum's Patterns of Violence in Darfur, 2008", available at: http://www.sudanreeves.org/Article224.html. (last visited 2 Apr. 2009).
106. see also A. de Waal, "Darfur and the Failure of the Responsibility to Protect", International Affairs, 83(6), 2007, 1045-6.
107. Cited in Africa Research Bulletin, "Sudan: UNAMID Seeks Support", Africa Research Bulletin 2008, 17398. UN SC res. 1769, 31 Jul. 2007.
108. UNAMID Facts and Figures, available at: http://www.un.org/depts/dpko/missions/unamid/facts.html, (last visited 4 Dec. 2009).
109. International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect: Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, Ottawa, International Development Research Centre, 2001, 32.
110. The 2005 United Nations World Summit declaration endorsed the concept and added war crimes and crimes against humanity. United Nations General Assembly, "Outcome Document of the High-level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly", A/60/L.1, Sep. 20, 2005, 138-39.
111. The two cases of multilateral humanitarian intervention without the consent of the State concerned in the post-Cold War era - in Northern Iraq in 1991 and Kosovo in 1999 - both occurred prior to the R2P doctrine being introduced and without the authorization of the UN Security Council.
112. See P. Orchard, "Regime-Induced Displacement and Decision-Making within the United Nations Security Council: The Cases of Northern Iraq, Kosovo, and Darfur", Global Responsibility to Protect, 2(1), 2010.
113. Press Statement by Javier Solana, Secretary General of NATO, 23 March 1999, available at: http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/1999/p99-040e.htm (last visited 2 Jul. 2009).
114. S. Power, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, New York, HarperCollins, 2002, 549-450.
115. see also The Independent Commission on Kosovo, The Kosovo Report: Conflict, International Response, Lessons Learned, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000.
116. UNHCR, The State of the World's Refugees 2000, op. cit. 234.
117. see also N. Morris, "UNHCR and Kosovo: A Personal View from within UNHCR", Forced Migration Review, 5, 1999, 14-16.
118. A. J. Bellamy, "Responsibility to Protect or Trojan Horse? The Crisis in Darfur and Humanitarian Intervention after Iraq", Ethics and International Affairs, Vol. 19(2), 2005, 33.