Humanitarianism & War Project

	\|\|\|\| Status Report #17: January 9, 1995.
	THIS IS ANOTHER in our series of reports designed to keep the stakeholders of the Humanitarianism and War Project and its increasingly wide circle of users current on our work. This report covers the period since Ocober 7, 1994.
	The continuation of the 5-year civil war in Liberia has been a distressing event for Liberians and the wider humanitarian community. A review of the past and recommendations for the future were the objectives of a workshop on Humanitarian Action and Regional Security in Liberia. Joining the Project in co-sponsoring the meeting, held in Brussels in mid-November, was the University of Louvain. Participants included a number of Liberians from former and current governments, UN officials with former or current peace-keeping and humanitarian responsibilities, and NGO and ICRC personnel.
	The gathering -- originally scheduled for West Africa in mid-1994 but postponed because of logistical and security difficulties -- benefited from excellent timing. It preceded by several days a meeting of the Liberian factions convened in Accra by the president of Ghana. The circulation of our draft case study in advance, and the presence of such an informed and experienced group, contributed to the success of the session. The final version of the case study, reflecting the comments of participants at the workshop, will be published by the Watson Institute in March. The meeting was made possible in part by special grants from the European Community Humanitarian Office (ECHO), the United Kingdom's Overseas Development Administration, and the UNDP Office of Humanitarian Programmes. An op-ed summarizing the themes of the meeting is attached.
	The dire situation of Rwanda has been perhaps the most dominant item on the world's humanitarian agenda during the past year. In recent months, while the immediate needs of Rwandans within and outside their country have been largely met, security in the refugee camps and continued insecurity in Rwanda itself have represented major ongoing problems. They were so at the time of a visit by project co-director Larry Minear and consultant Philippe Guillot to Rwanda and Zaire in October, and remained so at year's end. The project also carried out interviews in Geneva, Paris, and New York.
	The focus our work in Rwanda has been on the contribution to the response of the international community by international military forces. Included in the review are not only UN troop contingents but also military personnel provided independently of the UN peace-keeping operation by countries such as France, the U.S., the U.K., and Japan. The project's findings and recommendations will be published in a volume in the Development Studies Series of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Minear and Weiss will also serve as advisers to the major evaluation being launched this month by governmnets under the auspeces of the OECD's Develpopment Assistance Committee.
	We continue to monitor closely developments in the Former Yugoslavia, where the latter months of 1994 witnessed an upsurge in challenges to UN presence, in threats of a withdrawal of UN troops, and, at year's end, in renewed diplomatic activity. In November, Minear did further research on the humanitarian contribution of the UN peacekeeping operation, visiting UN troop contingents and civil affairs personnel in Croatia and central Bosnia. The significant increase in that contribution during 1994, and the resulting implications of a withdrawal of UN troops for the civilian populations in the region, are the subject of the attached article he authored for the Geneva Post. (A similar piece appeared the following week in the Boston Globe.) A Weiss op-ed from the Providence Journal commenting on the disarray of the international community in the region is also attached.
	The role of the media as a humanitarian actor was the subject of a workshop co-sponsored by the project and the World Peace Foundation. Held in early December in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the gathering drew together some three dozen participants, including working journalists and editors, aid agency and government officials, and academics and policy analysts. The meeting, entitled "Humanitarian Crises, Policy Making and the Media," provided the occasion for a candid and enlightening exchange of views and experiences, professional and personal, sparked by papers prepared and circulated in advance among the group. The result provided a closer and more analytical look at what is nowadays too loosely called "the CNN factor."
	A brief report on the workshop will be available in February and will be circulated with our next Status Report in April. An edited volume, including papers prepared for the meeting and edited by Robert I. Rotberg and Thomas G. Weiss, will be published by the Brookings Institution later in the year. By year's end the project will also publish a guidebook for use by the media, policy-makers, and humanitarian personnel modeled on our existing Handbook for Practitioners. An op-ed from the Providence Journal by Rotberg and Weiss on the issues of the meeting is attached. Funds from the Pew Charitable Trusts helped make possible this workshop and some of the follow-on activities.
	Other recent activities include service by Weiss on the External Advisory Committee to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees for her next report, The State of the World's Refugees 1995: The Challenge of Solutions. He also served as a resource for a conference in Washington by the Canadian Institute for Strategic Studies on "Peacekeeping '94."
	Looking to the future, activities are going forward related to the case study on Humanitarian Action and Peace-keeping in Georgia. Following an initial visit to the region in August, Team Leader S. Neil MacFarlane, joined by Stephen Shenfield, conducted interviews on the issues in Moscow in December. He and Larry Minear also sought out UN officials and diplomats in New York in November. An informal workshop on the issues is planned for Providence January 23. MacFarlane, Minear, Shenfield, and Weiss will conduct field research in Georgia (including Abkhazia and Southern Ossetia) in March. Their report, published in the Watson Institute Occasional Paper series, should be out in early summer. Developments in neighboring Chechnya have added interest and relevance to the study.
	We await publication of two books. Mercy under Fire: War and the Global Humanitarian Community (Westview) is expected to be out in April, as is Humanitarian Politics (Foreign Policy Association). We will circulate copies as soon as they become available. The United Nations and Changing World Politics, a new textbook co-authored by Weiss with David P. Forsythe and Roger A. Coate, is available from Westview Press.
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