AUGUST IS NOT KNOWN for being an active month in our circles. While many of our readers may have slipped away for holidays, we would like to use this lull to update you on our activities and to share with you a number of recent publications.

The Handbook for Practitioners
Case Study on the Former Yugoslavia
Qualities of Mercy
Central America Case Study
Other Publications and Activities
Forward Planning

We trust that by now you have received copies of Humanitarian Action in Times of War :A Handbook for Practitioners. Initial comments have been favorable. We are pleased that UNHCR will adapt the text for publication in its next Refugee Abstracts. We encourage others to mention it in in-house organs and other publications. Translations into Spanish and French are moving forward, for which we are grateful to UNICEF. Publication is expected late in the fall.

Larry Minear visited Zagreb and Belgrade for a week in late June for the second of three rounds of interviews, laying the groundwork for a team visit in September to complete data gathering and arrive at findings and conclusion. At the encouragement of the United Nations, we have moved up publication of the report, tentatively titled The UN's Humanitarian Response to the Crisis in Former Yugoslavia, so that it will be available for discussions in the General Assembly on humanitarian coordination issues. An opted, entitled "Manipulating the U.N. in the Bosnia crisis," reflecting impressions from Minear's visit is enclosed.

During the month of July at the Rockefeller Foundation's Study and Conference Center at the Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio, Italy, Project Co-directors Thomas G. Weiss and Larry Minear completed the first draft of a 300-page manuscript designed to convey some of the major findings of the Project to the concerned international public. The working title is Qualities of Mercy : War and the Global Humanitarian Community. We will be refining the text during the coming six months and hope the completed product will be in circulation by mid-1994.

We enclose a copy of Humanitarian Challenges in Central America: Learning the Lessons of Recent Armed Conflicts. As noted in our last Status Report, the report is a joint effort by the Arias Foundation and our Project. It will be translated into Spanish and, along with the Handbook, serve as the focus of a small workshop in Costa Rica in mid-November.

Thomas G. Weiss made a presentation in June in Oslo at a meeting of the Commission on Global Governance organized by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A copy of his remarks, "Obligations and Limits of International Intervention," is available on request. A copy of his op-ed "Intervene Forcefully or Not at All" is also enclosed. A presentation by Minear and Weiss, joined by John Mackinlay of Brown University, to the U.S. Department of Defense's new Office on Humanitarian Affairs is scheduled for October.

Plans are underway to continue the Humanitarianism and War Project for a second three-year period beginning January 1, 1994. The issues being addressed remain critical for the international community and the organizations supporting our work. A second three-year period will allow us to capitalize on the momentum established to date. Additional in-country research is needed, both in conflicts not yet visited and in those needing continued monitoring. An extended lease on life will also allow us to respond to requests from practitioner organizations for debriefings and training sessions. We are in the process of contacting current sponsors to discuss the possibility of ongoing financial support.

On all of these matters, we would welcome your comments. Please feel free to share with us your reactions to the various publications, your suggestions about our future activities, and your interest in continuing our collaborative relationship into the 1994-96 period.