| email | search | about | publications | status reports | people | links |
| ||
|
||
|
|
|
||||
Humanitarian
Action and Security in Liberia 1989-1994 |
|
| text (pdf) | order info | |
 |
INFO |
 FULL
TITLE: Humanitarian Action and Security in Liberia 1989-1994 (Occasional
Paper 20)
|
|
|
ABSTRACT |
| Liberia's civil war, begun in 1989, framed two issues in stark terms for this research, conducted in 1994: the relationship between regional and multilateral institutions and the management of tensions between political security and humanitarian objectives. ECOWAS/ECOMOG moved into a vacuum in Liberia created in part by UN disinterest, making for serious problems of humanitarian access and politicization. Political considerations eclipsed humanitarian operations, the study found, which, given greater support, could not only have done more to ease suffering but also yielded political dividends as well. The study recommends that, given the demonstrated risks of collaboration with UNOMIL and ECOMOG, humanitarian institutions be further insulated from political intrusion. | |
|
The research was discussed at a consultation held in Brussels in November 1994. (It had become impossible due to security concerns to hold such a session, as planned, in West Africa.) Participants included a former Liberian president and several present or former cabinet members as well as key UN, donor government, and NGO officials. The Brussels session preceded discussion later in November of some of these issues at a high-level governmental consultation in Accra, Ghana. The annexes contain the names of participants in Brussels and a diagram of the international system as it responded to the Liberian crisis.
|
|
|
KEYWORDS |
|
Humanitarian principles, humanitarian space, coordination, institutional cultures, peacekeeping, warfare, security, local institutions, civil society, regional organizations, sovereignty, politicization; Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Nigeria; UN, UN Security Council, UNSRSG, UNOMIL, ECOWAS, ECOMOG, OAU, U.S., USAID, European Union, African Development Bank, UNDP, UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, WHO.
|
|
||||
|
-brown university | the
watson institute - -Tufts University | Feinstein International Famine Center - |
||||
|
|