6

The Evolving

Humanitarian Enterprise

LARRY MINEAR

With the ebbing of East-West tensions and the advent of the post-Cold War era, the world has changed more quickly and profoundly than has the UN system. It is not unprecedented, of course, for institutions to have to play catch-up with current events and historical trends. Yet the new geopolitical picture, freighted with negative humanitarian potential, has caught the world body largely off guard.

In one sense, the United Nations has been the victim of unrealistic expectations. Freed from the paralysis caused by superpower politics and posturing, and assisted by reduced warfare around the world and a handsome peace dividend, the United Nations was expected to turn its attention overnight to languishing or moribund elements of its Charter. Ironically, the United States, which helped tie the UN's hands, has led the chorus of those now demanding sudden manual dexterity from the world organization.

A more probing view, as Mohammed Ayoob points out in Chapter 2, would have anticipated what has happened. The world is now reaping the whirlwind sowed during the Cold War. Indeed, the perception that the world's reprobate regimes are now suddenly behaving more reprehensibly or that the life of the world's poor is more brutish and short confirms the extent to which East-West blinders obscured Cold War ravages as they happened. To have expected Cold War manipulation to be followed by principled multilateralism also seems utopian.

Unreasonable expectations aside, the United Nations has been slow to sense the magnitude of the post-Cold War challenge and to seize the moment. Faced with a series of major humanitarian crises–several of them reviewed in this book–UN officials and organizations have tended to treat each crisis as wholly unprecedented. For instance, the United Nations has not identified structural problems it now faces as an organization of sovereign governments seeking to respond to human need in civil wars in which state sovereignty is contested. Instead, it has stubbornly assumed that it can deal effectively with both seated governments and insurgents in civil wars much as if it were responding to natural disasters. Or again, rather than anticipating the humanitarian problems created

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by economic sanctions against pariah regimes, the Security Council has imposed sanctions first and counted the humanitarian cost later.

Intrastate conflicts have now replaced superpower jousting as the major complication in the life of the United Nations. "As the atom is to nuclear physics, the nation-state was supposed to be the basic unit of international politics," Peter J. Fromuth has written from his vantage point at the U.S. mission to the United Nations. "Yet since the end of the Cold War, the pent-up hatred and frustration of nationalist, ethnic, religious and other forces have exploded, splitting the nation-state atom and sending shock waves across the international system." As a result, "Although the Security Council increasingly acts as a kind of global hotline for emergency response, the distress calls are not at all what the Charter's framers had intended."¹

Five years into the Dial 1-800-UN era, the UN's energy and determination have exceeded its capacities. It has tackled a wider range of problems in a larger array of places rasher then rethinking and altering its terms of engagement. Each emergency has distinctive features, and the United Nations is more successful in some conflicts than in others. However, reinventing the wheel with each new crisis has meant that mistakes are repeated and lessons remain unlearned. Reacting rather than anticipating, the United Nations has made surprisingly few fundamental changes of an institutional or a policy nature.

This is not to suggest that the humanitarian enterprise has remained static while the world has changed around it. Institutional evolution has begun to reflect the reality that internal armed conflicts have replaced wars between states as the primary cause of humanitarian problems. Although "natural disasters" still occur, most crises today involve civil wars–a new challenge for humanitarians.

Five years into the post-Cold War era, the UN humanitarian enterprise has evolved less rapidly than its peacekeeping activities. The quantitative data are telling. In spring 1994, sixteen UN peacekeeping operations were underway, involving 71,816 military and civilian personnel contributed by seventy countries and costing $3 billion.² At that same time, major humanitarian initiatives responding to consolidated UN interagency appeals were taking place in eleven countries at a cost of about $500 million.³

But there are also qualitative differences. Whereas many of the UN peacekeeping undertakings launched before the end of the Cold War (for example, in Lebanon and Pakistan) had no major humanitarian component, most of those launched since 1989 (the four cases examined in Part 3 of this book as well as Angola, Mozambique, and Rwanda) have included or paralleled major UN humanitarian efforts. In fact, UN multifunctional operations have provided the most treacherous terrain for the UN humanitarian response. These operations are also probably the most formative in the evolution of the next generation of UN humanitarian activities.

UN humanitarian programs require review both in their own right and in relation to UN peacekeeping activities. This chapter uses the French term

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secouristes to describe UN organizations, such as the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (IJNHCR), whose primary function is to provide humanitarian assistance. It applies the English term securists to UN organizations such as the departments of peacekeeping and political affairs that are engaged in humanitarian support functions and that affect the context in which secouristes function. The UN personnel described in Chapter 5 may be considered in the former or the latter category depending on whether they play direct humanitarian roles (for example, human rights protection) or contextual support functions (for example, electoral or civilian police duties).

The effectiveness of the humanitarian enterprise is a function of how well secouristes and securists, each introduced in the next section, do their respective jobs. The enterprise increasingly seeks to build upon the comparative advantages of each, as a review of conceptual and operational issues suggests. Later sections examine the options available to the United Nations for structuring the relationship between the two groups and the implications of these options for humanitarian organizations outside the United Nations. The chapter ends with some concluding reflections.

In a broad sense, UN humanitarian activities can benefit from the accomplishments of its diplomats and troops. A rising UN tide lifts all boats. Conversely, difficulties on the UN political-military side, and in the connections with UN humanitarian institutions, can undercut the organization's humanitarian work. The UN humanitarian enterprise is accordingly challenged to function better in its own right and to achieve a more synergistic–but also a more delimited–relationship with the UN system as a whole.

The Actors

The cast of UN characters involved in civil wars is large and many-splendored. Among the secouristes are organizations and individuals with direct humanitarian roles and others engaged in associated tasks. The securists are an equally diverse and disparate troupe.

Major humanitarian crises generally involve four major UN secouriste organizations. UNICEF, whose mandate is to assist women and children, has the longest history of work in situations of armed conflict.

The World Food Programme (WFP) is charged with managing emergency and longer-term food resources; it does so with staff stationed in national capitals and sometimes in rural hinterlands. The World Health Organization (WHO) is the primary UN agency for assistance in the health sector. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has responsibility for protecting refugees and promoting lasting solutions to their problems. The UN Development Programme (UNDP), which provides preinvestment and technical assistance to developing countries, has a representative in each country who serves

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as point person for the UN system. The mandates of each organization emphasize the nonpolitical nature of their tasks.

Recent evolution has been most noticeable in UNHCR, which has experienced both a broadening of the concept of what constitutes a refugee and an increase in activity within countries in which people are displaced. "In typical situations today," the organization reported in 1993, "UNHCR provides protection and assistance to groups of refugees fleeing combinations of persecution, conflict and widespread violations of human rights."⁴ UNHCR has resisted a worldwide mandate to care for persons displaced within their own countries who have not crossed international borders, but it nevertheless has selectively accepted responsibility for these persons.

The other organizations, too, have evolved. UNICEF's work was affected the least among UN organizations by the politicization of the Cold War since it had developed a tradition of providing assistance in areas controlled by insurgents or by governments without conferring political recognition on either. Yet, UNICEF has spurred the adoption of international legal protections for, and has defended the rights of, children in armed conflicts. WFP has made its policies and procedures more conducive to managing emergency activities in conflict settings. WHO has begun to augment its emergencies unit, to station personnel not only in national capitals but also in more remote areas, and to take greater initiative in situations in which the political authorities have not specifically requested its involvement. UNDP has provided training in complex emergencies for national counterparts and its own staff, who traditionally have devoted their attention to development rather than relief.

The UN Volunteers Program, a member of the UNDP family, has greatly expanded its involvement in emergencies. Establishing a Humanitarian Relief Unit in 1991, in less than three years the agency had upward of 300 volunteers working at subsistence pay in overseas placements (90 percent in complex emergencies, 10 percent in natural disasters), and plans further growth. The program's burgeoning workload and closer association with UN peacekeeping activities provide a microcosm of the evolution of UN secouristes as a whole.⁵

The major post-Cold War secouriste innovation, of limited success to date, has been the UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA). Established in April 1992 following the unsatisfactory UN response to the needs of the Kurds in northern Iraq a year earlier,⁶ DHA's assigned task is to coordinate the UN system's response to humanitarian crises. Based in New York but with a major presence in Geneva, DHA chairs and staffs meetings among UN aid agencies, orchestrates joint fund-raising appeals for the UN system, carries out humanitarian diplomacy with governments to expand access to distressed populations, and liases with UN secouristes.

The family of UN secouristes also includes the UN's principal human rights body, the Geneva-based Commission on Human Rights. The commission's operational arm, the UN Centre for Human Rights, staffed by UN secretariat personnel, monitors human rights concerns. As part of its global watch over

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human rights matters, governments that make up the commission occasionally dispatch rapporteurs to investigate particular crises in specific countries. From time to time, the United Nations also creates special entities such as the Commission of Experts, set up by the Security Council to investigate grave breaches of international law in the former Yugoslavia.

UN human rights work has also undergone positive evolution in recent years. In Cambodia, the UN's assignment included "fostering an environment in which respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms was ensured," although the direct role played by the commission and center was limited.' Confronted by massive human rights abuses in the former Yugoslavia, the commission held emergency sessions concerning specific countries for the first time. Its rapporteur was mandated to report to the UN General Assembly and, for the first time in the commission's history, to the Security Council. Field staff were dispatched to the region, although their numbers and timing left a great deal to be desired.8

Beyond humanitarian and human rights organizations, the UN family of secouristes includes–in widening circles–the rood and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), the International Labour Organisation (ILO), and the Bretton Woods institutions (the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund). These institutions do not play major roles during armed conflicts but swing into action as conflicts recede and reconstruction and development prospects improve. The UN interagency mission to the former Yugoslavia in early 1994 included representatives of many such organizations as well as staff from the International Organization for Migration, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and nongovernmental groups.

Beyond the secouristes, the companion securists include some agencies engaged in direct humanitarian support and others whose tasks are linked more to security. The major actors are the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) and the Department of Political Affairs (DPA), the Security Council, and the Secretary-General. Their functions are discussed in other chapters, especially in Chapter 4. However, a brief discussion with particular reference to these actors' links to humanitarian actors is in order here.

DPKO sets up and manages peacekeeping operations authorized by the Security Council. Those initiatives are increasingly geared toward protecting humanitarian operations, as in Somalia and Bosnia. In addition to providing counsel on security matters, escorting convoys, and occasionally transporting and distributing relief supplies, UN troops often affect the political and security climate in which humanitarian activities are carried out. UN peacekeeping initiatives may also include civilian police, electoral supervisors, and human rights monitors. In the case of Cambodia, the United Nations had roles in areas of finance, information, public information, and security as well.

The Department of Political Affairs, the Security Council, and the Secretary-

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General also influence the security context. DPA monitors tensions around the world, carries out ongoing analyses of political hot spots, briefs the Secretary-General, end provides support for UN diplomatic troubleshooting end conflict resolution efforts. In major crises in which the Secretary-General is represented by a special representative to whom the UN in-country humanitarian coordinator reports, DPA serves as the link between that person and the UN executive head.

The Security Council is the UN organ with primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security. In the wake of the Cold War, the council has come to view population displacement and violations of human rights as serious threats to international peace. In a significant departure from tradition, it now addresses regularly, if not altogether consistently, problems of perceived international consequence within individual countries. Its actions have brought a new level of political prominence to humanitarian values and have subjected those values to greater political manipulation.

The Secretary-General has been increasingly occupied with humanitarian matters. On a number of occasions, Boutros Boutros-Ghali has become directly involved in humanitarian crises or has goaded the Security Council into becoming involved. In July 1992, he chided the Security Council for devoting more attention to the "rich man's war" in the former Yugoslavia than to the worsening crisis in Somalia. In February 1993, he criticized UNHCR's suspension of relief efforts in eastern Bosnia and demanded reinstatement of relief work. In May 1994, he decried the "failure not only of the United Nations but also of the international community" to prevent genocide in Rwanda.⁹

The complexity of the tasks faced by UN secouristes and the new levels of involvement of UN securists in humanitarian action raise crucial issues for the evolving humanitarian enterprise. Humanitarian activities of nongovernmental organizations and the International Committee of the Red Cross are affected as well.

The Issues

Recent experience frames in bold relief a number of key issues for the evolving humanitarian enterprise. Some of the issues are conceptual, others are operational. Some concern the secouristes in their own right, others concern their interaction with securists.

Primary among the conceptual issues is how humanitarian action is conceived. As presented earlier and as popularly understood, humanitarian action encompasses both assistance and protection. That is, it involves both meeting basic human needs for such essentials as food, shelter, and medical care and protecting basic human rights such as the right to be secure in one's person and free from persecution. The two categories overlap: There is a fundamental

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right to humanitarian assistance, and human rights encompass economic and social as well as political rights.

Traditionally, however, assistance and protection have been approached a' separate activities carried out by distinct sets of organizations. Since their inception, UN and other aid agencies have usually assisted distressed popula- tions after they have crossed an international border or, within their country of origin, under ground rules agreed to with the regime in power. For their part, human rights institutions have sought to monitor conditions that give rise to displacement, although they have often had even less access than relief organizations. Considerations of sovereignty have blocked assistance and protection activities within states whose regimes were given wide latitude in the treatment of their populations. Although concerned with similar if not identical populations and problems, the two sets of humanitarian actors typically have not seen themselves as engaged in a common endeavor.

Recent developments, however, have created havoc with the established division of labor. From Afghanistan to Angola, from El Salvador to the Sudan, abusing the fundamental human rights of civilians has been not just an outcome of war but also an explicit strategy of belligerents. Warring parties have thrown down the gauntlet to the international community, challenging its commitment to protect and assist victims.

The result has been instructive. On one hand, commonalities have emerged with new clarity. Human rights monitors can alert humanitarian aid organizations to serious human needs, and relief personnel can flag human rights abuses. On the other hand, tensions between assistance and protection providers have become more apparent. Protecting human rights in places such as Bosnia has meant helping people flee genocidal surroundings, whereas providing assistance to them in their home areas has meant leaving them vulnerable to continued abuse.

Another key conceptual issue concerns how humanitarian need is understood. In recent years, the idea of a "relief-to-development continuum" has gained currency among theoreticians and is now beginning to affect the operational approach of practitioners. A humanitarian emergency is viewed not as an isolated set of events or a particular state of affairs that requires a quick response with specific inputs. Rather, it is seen as a stage in the evolution of a society, with complex historical, political, social, and economic roots and consequences. Such an approach requires rethinking relief, reconstruction, and development as distinct activities by separate agencies to provide food, build infrastructure, or boost incomes.

How a crisis is conceived and the response it receives, from local authorities or the international community, have a major bearing on a society's ability to reduce its vulnerability to future emergencies. Relief efforts can empower–or marginalize–local institutions and leadership. Participants at a recent workshop for UN staff in complex emergencies noted that in order to contribute to empowerment, "donors should address disasters in the context of development

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. . . The UN system should as a matter of urgency examine and devise innovative ways of using relief for rehabilitation, reinforcing subsequent development."¹⁰

Recent crises have dramatized the fact that behind many failed states are failed development strategies. These crises have highlighted the importance of effective strategies that nip emergencies in the bud or, better yet, prevent them even from budding. There is a vicious cycle, however, in that resources that could have been used for long-term development have been preempted for emergencies. Donor countries are now more interested in alleviating the immediate problem than in underwriting more effective development strategies to prevent future crises. "Donor fatigue" has become a household word, even though its extent is debatable and its tenor, from a donor standpoint, self-serving.¹¹

There is also fatigue on the receiving end among societies bruised by the Cold War and angered by dwindling resources for development. "Over our carcasses, the ideological giants locked horns," said Ambassador Kofi N. Awoonoer of Ghana, General Assembly spokesperson for the Group of 77. "Not much clean water, or vaccines, or books accompanied enterprises of such historical moment." Awoonoer articulated the need among poorer countries, whose situation is even more perilous now than during the Cold War, for sustained and effective aid to address underdevelopment, the "grim and merciless reality [upon which this] relentless human tragedy is grounded."¹²

Given that the rising demands of major emergencies and the higher cost of responding after crises have become irreversible, the international community now has more fires to fight than it can handle. In fact, it has already begun to apply triage. Reflecting political considerations rather than humanitarian extremity, the United Nations has said no to peacekeeping in Burundi but yes in Rwanda, no to the assertive protection of humanitarian operations in the Sudan but yes to neighboring Somalia. A key element in resisting the use of triage is a better understanding of the interplay–positive as well as negative–among relief, reconstruction, and development.¹³

A third conceptual building block in the evolving humanitarian system concerns how conflict is perceived. Whereas in an earlier day wars were not diffficult to identify, the shift from interstate to intrastate war has required a more dynamic understanding of conflict. Civil strife is now a more pervasive reality for developing societies and international secouristes. It is present in one form or another and at one level or another in many communities undergoing social change, sometimes as a positive barometer rather than a negative threat. The issue is not whether conflict exists but whether its causes can be addressed and the energies it commands channeled constructively.

Conceptual breakthroughs have resulted in priority being attached to conflict prevention and conflict resolution, particularly in the form of development. Effective development is now seen as helping avoid conflicts, providing a sense of participation in fragile political economies, and consolidating negotiated arrangements to end warfare. More time is needed, however, before a more

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appropriate balance is struck–in resources, institutional capacity, and know-how–between conflict prevention and conflict resolution on the one hand and humanitarian remediation on the other.

The experience of Operation Lifeline Sudan provides a telling example of the necessary rebalancing. With an eye in early 1989 to stanching the wounds of the Sudan's civil war, which in 1988 had claimed 250,000 lives, the United Nations persuaded the government and the insurgent Sudan People's Liberation Movement to allow massive outside emergency assistance. In the first six months this aid prevented countless deaths from starvation and warfare. Yet more than five years later the war continues to victimize the civilian population. There is a growing realization that what is required first and foremost is not larger amounts of aid but rather augmented pressure for peace. In the words of one UN official, there are already "enough people on the humanitarian side."¹⁴

The growing sense that conflict is a more serious threat to development than was earlier understood does not imply that conflict must cease before reconstruction and development commence. "The response to conflict situations should always contain elements of relief, rehabilitation, reconstruction, and development with the emphasis changing to reflect the predominant stage the situation has reached," concluded one discussion. "Whatever the nature of the assistance, it should be designed and implemented in a manner that will foster sustainable development in the future."¹⁵

A final issue of pivotal importance to the emerging humanitarian system and the UN role concerns how relationships between the humanitarian and the political-military spheres are understood. As the interactions multiply, they require continued analysis and reflection. Are humanitarian considerations important in their own right or as one element in a broader political vision?

During the Cold War, the superpowers subsumed humanitarian action under geopolitical imperatives. The location of suffering and the political stripes of a particular state played a major role in the perception of need and the response provided. Those suffering from drought or floods in Vietnam or from lack of health care in Cuba were largely denied aid–emergency as well as longer term–the U.S.-led international community. Refugees fleeing communist regimes had readier access to asylum in the West than those fleeing right-wing dictatorships. The Soviet Union and its allies politicized relationships in the opposite direction.

During the early post-Cold War period, the pendulum has swung in a different direction. Rather than making humanitarianism subservient to political action, humanitarian efforts have often taken the place of political actions. Humanitarian action in the Sudan, to recall the earlier example, has been pursued with inadequate attention to the more difficult task of ending the war that perpetuates the carnage and requires fresh infusions of outside succor.

In the former Yugoslavia, consensus about how to counter egregious violations of human rights and territoriality has proved elusive. In the words of one analyst, "We have chosen to respond to major unlawful violence, not by

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stopping that violence, but by trying to provide relief to the suffering. But our choice of policy allows the suffering to continue."¹⁶ At a practical level, the damage to the integrity of humanitarian efforts has been substantial. "People look at us as if to say, 'We know you're feeding us to compensate for the fact that your governments won't act,"' observed one NGO worker in Sarajevo.¹⁷

The debate over "humanitarian intervention" illustrates the current confusion about humanitarian and political linkages. Some policymakers find military force appropriate and necessary in furthering humanitarian objectives. Others insist that coercion does violence to the essentially consensual nature of humanitarian action, creating practical problems for the aid enterprise as well. Even the term itself sparks disagreement. Some view humanitarian intervention as a new and welcome reality in post-Cold War politics. Others find it a violation of international law, which stipulates humanitarian access as a right and renders intervention moot.¹⁸

It is noteworthy that viewpoints on this issue do not diverge primarily along secouriste/securist lines. In Somalia in November 1992, some humanitarian agencies urged more military presence to support humanitarian operations, and others discouraged it. Opinion is also divided within the politico-military side of the United Nations and within the foreign offices and defense ministries of member states. Some see an enhanced humanitarian support role for the military as its major post-Cold War mission; others view acceptance of such a role as perilous or diversionary.

Economic sanctions raise comparable issues. However harsh their consequences on civilian populations, sanctions are viewed in some quarters as preferable to military force, whose damage is seen as more indiscriminate. Others believe the appropriateness of sanctions is called into question by the suffering they have caused. Some view the newfound attention of the Security Council to humanitarian distress, expressed in its approval of economic sanctions and military action, as positive. Others caution against the politicization of humanitarian action, which they see as the inevitable result of the selectivity in the council's approach.

Achieving a broader and more informed consensus on issues such as these four–how human need is understood and how humanitarian action relates to conflict, development, and the political sphere–constitutes the unfinished conceptual business of the United Nations and the international community. The emerging consensus will have major implications for how the United Nations structures its institutions and how it tackles its work.

Options and Implications

The humanitarian enterprise in late 1994 finds the United Nations at a fork in the road. The likely expansion of internal armed conflicts in many parts of the Third and former Second Worlds promises a rich array of challenges to the UN

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system, secouristes and securists alike. In responding to the continuing calls for multifunctional operations, there are, broadly speaking, three roads out of the fork.

UN activities of succor may be integrated into the organization's overarching objectives, which are by definition political. Commenting on the changing context in which the United Nations functions, Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, in his book An Agenda for Peace of June 1992, noted that whereas 279 vetoes cast in the Security Council during the Cold War rendered the United Nations powerless to deal with many major conflicts, no vetoes had been cast since May 1990. The United Nations and its security arm have emerged as "a central instrument for the prevention and resolution of conflicts and for the preservation of peace." Addressing "the deepest causes of conflict: economic despair, social injustice and political oppression," he observed, contributes to peace.¹⁹

The integration route would lodge UN humanitarian activities more clearly within the political rubric framed by the Security Council, implemented by the Secretary-General, and carried out by the Departments of Peacekeeping and Political Affairs. The political-military United Nations would assume a bigger role in humanitarian operations. This approach would continue and consolidate a trend of recent years, although by late 1994 the Secretary-General and the Security Council were showing new caution in implementing the peace enforcement element in An Agenda for Peace.

Under the second route, UN activities of succor would be more fully insulated from the political-military aspects of the world organization. Acknowledging that UN secouristes are part and parcel of a world body that has overarching political objectives, the insulation approach nonetheless affirms the indispensibility of strong and, to the furthest extent possible, independent humanitarian activities to the success of the broader UN political agenda.

The insulation route is exemplified in a statement by UNICEF Executive Director James P. Grant before the UN Commission on Human Rights: "We recognize that sanctions are a necessary tool for international action, occupying the middle-ground between rhetorical resolutions and the use of armed force. Sanctions must, however, be applied in a manner in which children of poor families–the most vulnerable and, I might add, the most innocent in a society–do not suffer most cruelly." Grant concluded, "Without renouncing the non-military mechanisms of international pressure wisely provided in the Charter, it should be possible to refine our existing tools–or to develop others–so that children are not major and unintended victims of particular sanctions."²⁰

A third route would separate certain humanitarian activities in particular circumstances from the United Nations altogether and have other actors perform them. Proponents of this approach believe problems created for the integrity of humanitarian operations by their association with UN political-military action are so fundamental that best efforts at insulation will ultimately fail. "Under the

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same colors," said one observer of the UN system, "you cannot be both good guys and bad guys at the same time."²¹

Other institutions are indeed available to carry out specific humanitarian tasks, particularly with the proliferation of nonstate actors in the wake of the Cold War. These include the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), nongovernmental organizations, and the good offices of prominent individuals. Although such actors are beyond the scope of this particular chapter, they have indispensable contributions to make to a more effective humanitarian regime, contributions that may remain largely untapped under the integration or insulation routes.

Advocates of the separation route put forward different candidates to assume responsibility in situations in which the United Nations cannot. In the view of James C. Ingram, former executive director of the UN World Food Programme, "Reducing the humanitarian costs of conflicts might be better achieved by accepting the logic of the ICRC's custodianship of humanitarian law, its political neutrality, and its operational effectiveness, and building on these strengths or, alternatively, creating a new body outside the United Nations." Other analysts who disagree with Ingram's nomination of the International Committee of the Red Cross nonetheless agree with him that the international community is "haltingly building a pluralistic multilateral world order, many of the elements of which are not contained within the United Nations system."²²

The best indicator of the path the United Nations will take at the fork is suggested in a paper entitled "Protection of Humanitarian Mandates in Conflict Situations." Drafted under the first UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Jan Eliasson, before his departure in late March 1994, the statement reflects two years of discussions of the DHA Inter-Agency Standing Committee with the Departments of Peacekeeping and Political Affairs. Although changes may still be made in the version circulating in July 1994, the broad directions are clear.

The paper situates UN humanitarian action squarely within the post-Cold War context described earlier. "The increasing demand for international action in internal conflicts reflects a new dimension in international relations," it notes. "Actions by the Security Council to resolve conflicts, to keep or enforce peace or implement peace agreements within the borders of a country are becoming more numerous. As a consequence, the political, military and humanitarian dimensions interrelate in multifaceted United Nations operations."²³

Against this backdrop, the paper supports the integrationist approach. "Given the interrelated causes and consequences of complex emergencies, humanitarian action cannot be fully effective unless it is related to a comprehensive strategy for peace and security, human rights and social and economic development as proposed within the framework of the Agenda for Peace. Increasingly, the trend is for an integrated United Nations presence in conflict situations to obtain the objectives of peace. Often humanitarian

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personnel are working together with peacekeeping forces." Since political, military, and humanitarian objectives "can be carried out effectively in integrated and unified operations," the paper proposes operational guidelines "to provide a framework for reconciling [these] objectives."²⁴

But the paper takes the insulationist route as well. Because "humanitarian and political objectives do not necessarily coincide," UN humanitarian organizations should "maintain a certain degree of independence from UN-authorized political and/or military activities.... Humanitarian organizations are responsible for and should enjoy autonomy in accordance with their mandates."²⁵ Although UN personnel within integrated field operations necessarily report to the special representative of the Secretary-General (that is, through political channels), they are also entitled to maintain links to their own UN organizations. A decision by the special representative or the Secretary-General to suspend humanitarian operations or withdraw personnel for security reasons must involve consultations with DHA.

Eliasson's successor, Peter Hansen, has embraced the paper's integrationist-cum-insulationist approach. He has reorganized DHA to reflect his conviction that "properly organized, staffed, and managed, [the department] can meet the challenge of not only providing leadership to the coordination of emergency relief assistance, but also contribute to the overall peace-building efforts of the United Nations." His decision to locate the complex emergency and policy analysis branches in New York rather than in Geneva has sent an integrationist message. Yet he has also conveyed a commitment toward building up DHA's capacity to be "a strong humanitarian advocate" vis-à-vis the political-military United Nations.²⁶

The evolution of DHA demonstrates the changing character of inter national emergencies and of the UN response. When created in 1992, DHA absorbed and built upon the UN Disaster Relief Office (UNDRO). Created in 1971, UNDRO had been based in Geneva, "the humanitarian capital of the world," with only token representation in New York and a preoccupation with natural disasters.

Under DHA early on, a larger proportion of staff was based in New York, managing a portfolio focused increasingly on complex emergencies. A DHA reorganization in 1994 by newly appointed Under-Secretary-General Hansen promises to continue the trend, stressing the humanitarian element in multifunctional UN operations and a stronger advocacy voice with the political-military United Nations. Although DHA will retain a strong staff complement in Geneva, that city's status as the humanitarian capital may be eroded over time.

Given political and institutional realities, Hansen's choice was probably predictable and, in a broad sense, realistic. His compromise acknowledges the limitations of both integration and insulation. The danger in making no clear-cut choice and no major structural changes, however, is that in straddling the roads at the fork, UN humanitarian action may end up in a thicket.

Apart from how problems between secouristes and securists are conceived

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and addressed, major issues among UN humanitarian agencies themselves also require attention. Confronting instances of egregious turf protection, DHA has not been able to harmonize action among these agencies, to sharpen the definition of priorities, or to improve community-wide effectiveness. This problem is larger than DHA, which lacks the clout to introduce essential changes. Moreover, even had DHA in the early going earned the respect and cooperation of the UN aid agencies, human rights remain outside its portfolio. Further, its connection with development programs, which are to have their own Under-Secretary-General, remains unclear.

Conclusion

Recent experience suggests that in active civil wars in which the United Nations plays a major role–as negotiator of political settlements, as implementer of economic sanctions, as enforcer of military determination–neither the integrationist nor the insulationist line has produced effective humanitarian action. The threats to the integrity of such action are far more serious and structural than the United Nations has been prepared to face.

In late 1990 the UN Security Council, intent on moving from economic pressure to military force in confronting Iraq, did not seek the views of UN humanitarian agencies, represented in Baghdad at the time by organizations such as the World Food Programme. UN and other secouristes were not consulted as the December 1992 Unified Task Force (UNITAF) landing in Mogadishu was planned. The UN Human Rights Centre was not involved in UN planning for politico-military activities that would have direct consequences for human rights–in theaters such as Cambodia, El Salvador, and Haiti.

The disconnects in the former Yugoslavia were even more searing and dysfunctional. UN secouristes were unwelcome in Croatia because of the continued presence of Serb forces in Croatia's "UN-protected areas." UN aid workers encountered hostility in Bosnia because of the UN's perceived political tilt against Muslims and because of well-publicized incidents in which UN troops had prevented the flight of Muslims from the country. Upon arrival in Muslim communities, aid officials felt it necessary to introduce themselves as representatives of "the good United Nations" and not the "bad United Nations."

In Serbia and Montenegro, the damage to the health and welfare of the local population as a result of UN economic sanctions far outstripped the value of the UN humanitarian aid to those affected by the war. UN sanctions also delayed relief supplies, made aid programs harder to administer, and fueled growing official and popular resistance to cooperating with the United Nations on its political agenda "Trying to implement a humanitarian program in a sanctions environment," said a senior UN secouriste, "represents a fundamental contradiction."²⁷

Other tensions as well included the pressure to moderate criticisms of ethnic cleansing in order to keep aid routes open and the willingness in some quarters

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to call off prosecutions of war crimes in return for a negotiated end to the conflict. As the war progressed, UN solicitousness in Geneva toward belligerent leaders who were prosecuting the war with a vengeance back home drew increasing criticism. For their part, UN diplomatic and military personnel had their own grievances with the Security Council for undermining their credibility and effectiveness.

Given problems as fundamental and schizophrenic as these, the integrity of humanitarian action would be best served by abandoning the effort to incorporate such action fully into the political-military United Nations. A preferable strategy would be more frankly insulationist at some points and more clearly separationist at others.

Why expect UN humanitarian organizations and personnel to assist civilian populations in hot wars when UN troops are present without the consent of the belligerents or when UN economic sanctions have been imposed? Perhaps in such settings the United Nations should relieve its secouristes from involvement altogether, relying instead on a special cadre of securists within the Department of Peacekeeping to take over humanitarian tasks until civilian practitioners can return. The international community could also turn to non-UN entities such as the ICRC.

Conversely, why assume that the United Nations should be the central humanitarian and political-military player in such settings? The United Nations might remain largely behind the scenes on the political-military side but be active on the humanitarian side, as it did for a time in the Liberian civil war. When the war erupted in late 1989, an initiative by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) tackled the problem with a combination of diplomatic and military pressure. UN involvement was limited initially to humanitarian activities, which were reasonably successful.

With the arrival in Liberia in 1992 of the Secretary-General's special representative and greater UN involvement in political-military matters, problems developed between UN secouristes and securists. UN political officials discouraged UN aid agencies from assisting in insurgent-controlled areas in the interest of promoting a peace process that was then at a critical stage. However, had the United Nations not associated itself so directly with the political-military action led by ECOWAS, a humanitarian-led UN presence might have worked to "discourage the worst atrocities, achieve greater neutrality and accessibility of aid, and even pay political dividends."²⁸

Alternatives that require such major conceptual and institutional innovation generate strong opposition. The idea of turning humanitarian tasks over to the political-military United Nations meets with resistance from UN aid executives whose mandates entitle them to be involved. (Such a radical suggestion strikes a more responsive chord with their embattled staff on the front lines.) Conversely, discouraging direct UN political-military involvement implies the existence of tasks beyond the competence of the world's premier political organization. It is difficult to discourage UN involvement on either front, even though simultaneous UN activity on both fronts creates problems.

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The international community has a unique opportunity at a time of eroding sovereignty to capitalize on a growing desire to meet basic human needs and protect basic human rights within national borders. Yet early efforts by the United Nations to do so, groping for the proper mix of policy instruments and the best division of labor among actors in the new generation of multifunctional operations, have been unsatisfactory.

The world does not have a great deal to show for its initial round of post-Cold War humanitarian initiatives. The experiences reviewed in this book demonstrate the obstacles faced and the mixed results achieved. Although the record is not altogether negative, the more restrained response to the tragedies in Rwanda and Haiti suggests that the high-water mark of assertive humanitarianism may have passed.

It would compound the existing tragedies, however, if the results of recent efforts were to discourage a more active global concern for human needs. Instead, the international community needs to ponder its experience more deeply, building on the positive and learning from the negative.

Painful though the early post-Cold War baptism by emergency may have been, key issues have been identified. They require hard-headed reflection and decisive redress. They include the need to devise strategies for achieving a better balance between resources for emergencies and for development and the need to determine how far the application of economic sanctions is compatible with the pursuit of humanitarian values. Institutionally speaking, the most crucial issue is the extent to which the UN system itself should be viewed as central to all future humanitarian action.

If an omnipurpose, omnifunctional, and omnipresent United Nations is neither conceptually consistent nor institutionally realistic in today's civil wars, UN humanitarian organizations need to be deployed in more focused and delimited ways that reflect their comparative advantage. At the same time, more major and multifaceted responsibilities should be assumed by nonstate actors, which have already demonstrated their willingness and ability to do so despite serious limitations of resources, institutional capacity, and scale.²⁹

Perhaps the most critically needed element in the evolutionary process is an all-embracing vision that views humanitarian action comprehensively and that affirms the importance of humanitarian values in their own right, not simply as a means to attain stated political objectives. In the final analysis, universal respect for and effective implementation of humanitarian values, inclusively understood, represent the foundation of lasting international peace and security.³⁰

Notes

1. Peter J. Fromuth, "The Making of a Security Community: The United Nations After the Cold War," Journal of International Affairs 46, no. 2 (Winter 1993): 344.

2. Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies, Peacekeeping & International Relations (March-April 1994): 2-3.

3. UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs, Consolidated Inter-Agency Humanitarian Assistance Appeals: Summary of Requirements and Contributions (Geneva: DHA, April 20, 1994). The aggregate figure of $523 million includes different time periods and excludes funds for Mozambique and Afghanistan.

4. Sadako Ogata, The State of the World 's Refugees: The Challenge of Protection (New York: Penguin Books, 1993), 170. Cf. also Francis M. Deng, Protecting the Dispossessed: A Challenge for the International Community (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1993).

5. United Nations Volunteers, Meeting the Humanitarian Challenge (Geneva: UN Development Programme, April 1994).

6. See Larry Minear and Thomas G. Weiss, "Groping and Coping in the Gulf Crisis: Discerning the Shape of the New Humanitarian Order," World Policy Journal 9, no. 4 (Fall-Winter 1992): 755-778.

7. Cf. Jarat Chopra, United Nations Authority in Cambodia, Occasional Paper #15 (Providence: Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies, 1993), 2.

8. For a more extended discussion, cf. Larry Minear, Jeffrey Clark, Roberta Cohen, Dennis Gallagher, lain Guest, and Thomas G. Weiss, Humanitarian Action in the Former Yugoslavia: The U.N. 's Role, 1991-93, Occasional Paper #18 (Providence: Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies, 1994), 83-92.

9. For the Secretary-General's comment on Yugoslavia, see Trevor Rowe, "Aid to Somalia Stymied," Washington Post, July 29, 1992. For his action on the former Yugoslavia, cf. Minear et al., Humanitarian Action in the Former Yugoslavia, 160. For his statement on Rwanda, cf. UN Press Release SG/SM/5295, May 25, 1994, 4-5.

10. "Summary Recommendations and Conclusions," UN Disaster Management Training Programme Workshop for Resident Coordinators on Slow Onset of Complex Emergencies, Nyeri, Kenya, May 2-5, 1994.

11. For comments that dispute the prevalence of "donor fatigue," cf. Judith Randel and Tony German (eds.), The Reality of Aid 94: An Independent Review of International Aid (London: Actionaid, 1994).

12. Kofi N. Awoonoer, "The Concerns of Recipient Nations," in Kevin Cahill (ed.) A Framework for Survival: Health, Human Rights, and Humanitarian Assistance in Conflicts and Disasters (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 67, 69.

13. This point is elaborated in the final chapter of Larry Minear and Thomas G. Weiss, Mercy Under Fire: War and the Global Humanitarian Community (Boulder: Westview Press, forthcoming).

14. Quoted in John Prendergast, Sudanese Rebels at a Crossroads: Opportunities for Building Peace in a Shattered Land (Washington, D.C.: Center of Concern, 1994), 35.

15. "Concluding Statement of the Paris Colloquium on Development Within

Conflict: The Challenge of Man-Made Disasters," (Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Centre, May 3-June 1, 1994).

16. Rosalyn Higgins, "The New United Nations and Former Yugoslavia,"

International Affairs 69, no. 3 (1993): 469.

17. Quoted in Minear et al., Humanitarian Action in the Former Yugoslavia, 6.

18. For further discussion, cf. Thomas G. Weiss, "Intervention: Whither the United Nations?" Washington Quarterly 17, no. 1 (Winter 1994): 109-128.

19. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy,

Peacemaking and Peace-Keeping (New York: United Nations, 1992), 7-8. Although since the publication of this report a veto has been cast over a financing issue, the Secretary-General's basic point remains valid.

20. James P. Grant, "What It Means to Be Human: The Challenge of Respecting Children's Rights in the 1990s," Remarks to the UN Commission on Human Rights, Geneva, March 8, 1994, delivered by Stephen Lewis.

21. Off-the-record interview with the author.

22. James C. Ingram, in Thomas G. Weiss and Larry Minear (eds.), Humanitarianism Across Borders: Sustaining Civilians in Times of War (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1993), 192.

23. Department of Humanitarian Affairs, "Protection of Humanitarian Mandates in Conflict Situations" (New York: United Nations, April 13, 1994), 1.

24. Ibid., 1, 2, 4, and Annex, 1.

25. Ibid., 2, 8.

26. Peter Hansen, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Letter to All DHA Staff, June 6, 1994, 1.

27. Judith Kumin, quoted in Minear et al., Humanitarian Action in the Former Yugoslavia, 97.

28. Colin Scott, "Hard to Be Humanitarian in Africa," Providence Journal-Bulletin, June 30, 1994, A18.

29. For an exploration of such alternatives, cf. Leon Gordenker and Thomas G. Weiss (eds.), Nongovernmental Organizations: The Democratization of Global Governance, special issue of the Third World Quarterly 16, no. 3 (1995).

30. This concluding statement paraphrases Gervase Coles's observation that "it is respect for, and implementation of, human rights, which is the foundation of peace and security, not vice-versa" in "Facing the Problem of Mass Movement Today," United Nations Fund for Population Activities: The State of World Population 1993 (New York: United Nations Fund for Population Activities, 1993), 34.