Humanitarianism & War Project

	\|\|\|\| Status Report #28: March 21, 1998.
	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 November 18, 1997.
	CONTENTS:
	Research Completed Research in Progress Conferences Financial Support Personnel Website Publications

	RESEARCH COMPLETED
	The Project recently concluded an intense period of work on economic sanctions, much of it done in collaboration with the Fourth Freedom Forum in Goshen, Indiana and the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies based at the University of Notre Dame. The work involved four publications and various debriefings, including one at the US State Department in January and another at the Netherlands Foreign Ministry in the Hague in February.
	The sanctions report, prepared at the UN's request and now circulating as a UN document, has been well received. Following a November 1997 discussion, the UN InterAgency Standing Committee (IASC) established an inter-agency technical group to pursue methodological and monitoring issues. An IASC statement to the UN Security Council dated December 29, 1997 also picked up on a number of our report's recommendations. The IASC urged that ''the design of a sanctions regime ... take fully into account international human rights instruments and humanitarian standards established by the Geneva Conventions.'' The IASC letter recommends pre-assessment of the impacts of sanctions before they are imposed, strict monitoring once in place, and clearer exemptions for humanitarian agencies. (S/1998/147, February 23, 1998.) Recent UN sanctions-related missions to Burundi and Sierra Leone have also reflected concerns expressed by the report.
	Copies of two publications on sanctions may be downloaded from our website: Towards More Humane and Effective Sanctions Management: Enhancing the Capacity of the United Nations System, by Larry Minear, David Cortright, George A. Lopez, Julia Wagler, and Thomas G. Weiss (a reprint of the UN report, with a political introduction) and The Humanitarian Impacts of Economic Sanctions on Burundi, by Eric Hoskins and Samantha Nutt. A third publication, Political Gain and Civilian Pain: The Humanitarian Impact of Economic Sanctions is available commercially (click here for ordering information.)
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	RESEARCH IN PROGRESS
	Research is proceeding simultaneously in all three of our issue clusters: Humanitarian Interactions, Humanitarian Politics, and Humanitarian Impacts (click here for an overview). In recent months, examination of the interface between humanitarian action and human rights has featured prominently in our work. It was the subject of a meeting of senior NGO officials from nine North American organizations and coalitions in January in New York City, hosted by Lutheran World Relief.
	Focusing on the experience of aid providers in Goma and Rwanda, Researcher Mark Frohardt examined innovations that had been introduced within and among individual agencies.
	Officials at the meeting reflected upon their own experiences in understanding and managing the tensions in providing aid in settings where criminal and belligerent elements were among the beneficiaries. The group encouraged the Project to push ahead with such research and will revisit the issues in May in Washington. In the meantime, we are establishing an informal working group to exchange experiences and adapting our website to serve as an information resource. We are also discussing collaborative arrangements with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, with whom we met in early March.
	As for our other two research clusters, S. Neil Macfarlane, who heads our work on Humanitarian Politics, visited the Caucasus, New York, and Washington, while Ian Smillie, his counterpart on Humanitarian Impacts, conducted research in Bosnia, Bonn, and London. We have completed a study undertaken by the Project at the request of UNICEF and carried out by Joanna Macrae and Mark Bradbury of the Overseas Development Institute in London, reviewing UNICEF's experience in selected countries making the transition from emergency relief to reconstruction and development. Presented to UNICEF in New York in early January by the two consultants, accompanied by Larry Minear, Thomas Weiss, and Ian Smillie, the findings will inform our further work on Issue 5, "Capitalizing on Development Potential."
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	CONFERENCES
	Project Co-director Larry Minear attended the International Symposium on the Relationship between Humanitarian Action and Political-Military Actions February 9-10 in Brussels, sponsored by the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the ICRC. He served as rapporteur for a working group on coordination mechanisms. A month later, he made a presentation to the Humanitarian Dialogue on Future Challenges and Issues in Geneva, a meeting convened to discuss the future of the Henry Dunant Institute.
	He will also attend the International Seminar on Lessons Learned on Humanitarian Coordination in Stockholm April 3-4, organized by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Sweden. His discussion paper prepared for the meeting, ''Learning to Learn,'' (attached) suggests some of the emerging conclusions of our Phase 3 research on institutional learning and change. Recent meetings attended by Co-director Thomas G. Weiss include a presentation to a conference on "Exodus and Exile: Refugees, Migration, and Global Society" at Tufts University in February and the annual meeting of the International Studies Association in Minneapolis in March, where humanitarian issues were prominently before the academic community.
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	FINANCIAL SUPPORT
	We are grateful for contributions received since the time of our last Status Report from the United Kingdom's Department for International Development, CARE-US and from Mercy Corps International. In addition, the list of contributors to Phase 3 of our work includes the Andrew W. Mellon, Ford, and McKnight Foundations; the UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the World Food Programme, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the United Nations Staff College, the International Organization for Migration; the Dutch and U.S. governments; the American Red Cross, CARE-US, the Danish Refugee Council, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Lutheran World Relief, the Mennonite Central Committees of the United States and Canada, Save the Children US, and World Vision. We look forward to the confirmation of grants from other organizations in the coming months.
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	PERSONNEL
	With the expansion of our activities in Phase 3, we now have a dozen consultants associated with our work. In the Humanitarian Interactions cluster, Giles Whitcomb and Marc Sommers are working on issues of coordination and Mark Frohardt, Bill O'Neill, Diane Paul, Julie Mertus, and Zonibel Woods on human rights and gender issues. Work on Humanitarian Politics is being spearheaded by S. Neil MacFarlane, with several other consultants soon to be added to his team. Our Humanitarian Impacts research involves Ian Smillie and, as mentioned above, Joanna Macrae, and Mark Bradbury. Greg Hansen is now completing the text of Humanitarian Action in the Caucasus: A Handbook for Practitioners, which we hope to co-publish with the Local Capacities for Peace Project in the Occasional Papers series in the coming months in English and Russian. A search is being concluded for post-doctoral fellow on human rights who will be added in July to the Humanitarianism and War team in Providence with support from the Watson Institute.
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	WEBSITE
	Our website has begun to attract more attention, in part thanks to reciprocal link arrangements with organizations such as Amnesty International and MSF-Holland. If you have comments or suggestions on our website or would like your organization to have a link placed on our site, please let us know at H&WProject@Brown.edu
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	PUBLICATIONS
	In addition to those listed above, the following publication has appeared since our last status report.
	An Overview and Assessment of 1989-1996 Peace Operations Publications, Occasional Paper #28, by Cindy Collins and Thomas G. Weiss. Providence: Watson Institute, 1997 (182 pp.).
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