Humanitarianism & War Project

	\|\|\|\| Status Report #29: July 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 March 1998.

	CONTENTS:
	Research Completed Research in Progress Publications Conferences and Workshops Upcoming Events Personnel

	RESEARCH COMPLETED
	Our Project, in conjunction with the Local Capacities for Peace Project, has completed Humanitarian Action in the Caucasus: A Guide for Practitioners, to be published in September in the Watson Institute Series. Written by Greg Hansen, the monograph is the product of research and problem-solving workshops conducted by the two projects in the Caucasus since 1994. A series of debriefings in Moscow and the region is being planned, as well as a Russian translation. The initiative has been made possible by special grants from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and the regional office of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA) in Tbilisi. Agencies interested in receiving multiple copies of the text or in participating in dissemination activities in the region should contact the Humanitarianism and War Project in Providence.
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	RESEARCH IN PROGRESS
	Our research on the dynamics of learning by humanitarian organizations after the Cold War is well underway, with work proceeding in each of our three issue clusters. In the cluster on Humanitarian Interactions, work by Giles Whitcomb and Marc Sommers on coordination experiences in Rwanda and Sierra Leone is expected to be published early next year. A team comprised of Mark Frohardt, Julie Mertus, Diane Paul, and Bill O?Neill has been examining the interface between humanitarian action and human rights. Monographs are being prepared on Protecting Human Rights in Complex Emergencies and on Assistance and Protection: The Gender Connection.
	The latter two publications will incorporate the experiences of NGOs and others at the interface between assistance and protection, the subject of two discussions in our series with North American NGO executives. In May, we met with 13 officials from seven U.S. and Canadian NGOs and Interaction at American Red Cross headquarters in Washington, DC. Three of our consultants participated in a meeting in May hosted by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance to frame discussions of these issues for the Interagency Standing Committee (IASC) and the Executive Committee for Humanitarian Action (ECHA). Building on and advancing our research in this area, we have established a focus group of NGO officials to exchange views on a regular basis. We are also exploring research topics of interest to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
	Research in the Humanitarian Politics cluster is beginning in earnest this summer. Oxford University-based consultant Neil MacFarlane and several associates plan two monographs for publication next year. The first will address the various ways in which politics influence the decisions taken by humanitarian actors. The second will explore connections--positive and negative, micro and macro--between humanitarian action and conflict. As in our other research, the focus will be on innovative approaches devised and possibilities for replication.
	Work in the Humanitarian Impacts cluster by Ottawa-based Ian Smillie is also moving along nicely. A study on capitalizing on the development potential of relief activities has circulated for comment and will be published before year's end. A second monograph on maximizing the potential of emergency assistance for local institution-building will follow. It, too, will draw heavily on agency experience which is being solicited in interviews with individual organizations and through a field questionnaire being completed by World Vision staff.
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	PUBLICATIONS
	Project Co-director Thomas Weiss and Joseph Lepgold have published an edited volume on Collective Conflict Management and Changing World Politics (Albany: State University Press of New York, 1998), including a chapter by Weiss on "Collective Humanitarian Conflict Management: More or Less than the Millennium?" A special issue of a journal edited by Weiss and referenced in an earlier Status Report has been republished in book form as Beyond UN Sub-contracting: Task-Sharing with Regional Security Arrangements and Service Providing NGOs (London: Macmillan, 1998).
	Two recently published books by Brown University colleagues may also be of interest. Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda, by Peter Uvin (West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press, 1998) examines the connections between genocide and what were considered model development strategies of the preceding decades. The Politics of Peace Maintenance (Boulder, Colorado and London: Lynne Rienner, 1998), edited by Jarat Chopra and with a chapter by Antonio Donini on humanitarian action, reviews the new international political capacity required for the interim management of internal conflicts.
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	CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS
	In early April, Project Co-director Larry Minear attended a seminar sponsored by OCHA and the Swedish Foreign Ministry, "Lessons Learned on Humanitarian Coordination," for which he prepared a paper, "Learning to Learn," now available for downloading.
	The same trip included attendance at a conference in London co-sponsored by ECHO and the Overseas Development Institute, "Principled Aid in an Unprincipled World," discussions at ODI, and use of the library compiled by ALNAP (The Active Learning Network on Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Assistance.)
	In June, Minear and Project consultant Julie Mertus made a presentation on the interface between emergency relief and human rights to the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response in Geneva, comprised of the heads of eight major coalitions of humanitarian organizations and the ICRC. They also conducted a series of interviews and discussions at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, UNHCR, the ICRC, and among NGOs.
	Weiss was guest speaker at the ICRC's second high-level Wolfsberg Humanitarian Forum in early June, introducing the debate on political and humanitarian action. His challenging of the proposition that politics and humanitarianism can be insulated from each other sparked lively debate. He also made a presentation on the role of NGOs at a conference in Finland on global governance and social policy organized by The National Research and Development Centre of Welfare and Health and The World Institute for Development & Economic Research. At the Pearson International Peacekeeping Training Centre in Cornwallis, Nova Scotia, Weiss made a presentation on military-civilian interactions to a NATO group tasked with reviewing Kosovo options.
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	UPCOMING EVENTS
	Weiss will make a presentation on "The Role of NGOS in Responding to Conflict" at a conference organized by The 21st Century Trust at Cambridge University in September. He and Minear will monitor the review by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of humanitarian assistance and human rights issues this month in New York.
	Project consultants Neil MacFarlane and Greg Hansen will make presentations at a conference in Copenhagen in late September, 'Conflict and Forced Displacement in the Caucasus: Perspectives, Challenges, and Responses." The meeting, which will bring together a large group of international actors in the region, is sponsored by the Danish Refugee Council, a long-standing contributor to the Project.
	In late October we will launch a series of twice-a-year conversations between AID and ECHO designed to encourage communication and collaboration. We will facilitate the exchanges by preparing background papers and moderating the discussions. The fourth in our series of dialogues with North American NGO executives is scheduled for November 17 in New York. This time the subject matter will be lessons to be learned from agency experience with institution-building.
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	PERSONNEL
	We are pleased to welcome James Ron to the Watson Institute and the Humanitarianism and War Project as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in human rights. Jim comes to Brown from University of California at Berkeley and has worked as a consultant for the ICRC and Human Rights Watch. He joins a dozen others who are now involved in Project-related research.
	In response to suggestions that we provide more information about our researchers, future Status Reports will include brief profiles of some of them. This issue contains excerpts from a recent interview with Diane Paul that appeared in the Watson Institute's Briefings.
	Diane Paul is a researcher on human rights issues with a special focus on the former Yugoslavia. When the conflict erupted, she became a social welfare delegate for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, developing programs to address psychological trauma caused by the war in Croatia and Bosnia. She later served as a primary investigator for the Center for the Study of Societies in Crisis, researching protection strategies in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
	Q: You began your career as a clinical social worker. Tell me more about your involvement in Bosnian human rights advocacy.
	A: I started off working with traumatized children and women who had been sexually assaulted. I later joined the American Red Cross to work with survivors of the Holocaust. They wanted a social worker who was sensitive to issues of grief and loss. When the war broke out in the former Yugoslavia, I learned about a program to work with people who had been traumatized by the war. In 1993, I became one of the Red Cross delegates to work with refugees and displaced persons. Initially, I was in Croatia to set up programs to address the trauma people were experiencing. Then, I became interested in the issue of protection, the need for physical security for those people caught up in a conflict.
	I came back after six months and was introduced to Fred Cuny--the American relief worker who has been missing in Chechnya since April 1995--by another Humanitarianism and War Project consultant, Mark Frohardt. We set out to study the issue of protection for people under threat, specifically in Bosnia. I went back to Bosnia in 1994 to conduct a protection study and interview UNHCR and NGO representatives about their field strategies to mitigate the effects of the war. Clearly, what was lacking in the situation was the political will to stop the war, to stop direct attacks on civilians, but Fred believed that there were things that could be done to mitigate the abuses.
	I expanded the study to look at other regions with the idea that strategies used across conflicts could be mapped out to provide a resource base or menu for use in the field. I looked at literature reviews as far back as World War II--for instance, the actions of people in Hungary to protect civilians, especially Raoul Wallenberg's work. For example, protective documents were used successfully in Croatia to protect refugees in danger of forcible return; a strategy similar to the protective passes issued by Wallenberg and others to Jewish citizens in WWII Budapest, although the effort in Croatia was very modest and took place under circumstances which were far less difficult and did not involve danger to staff. I found that his techniques were very useful. We applied some of them in Croatia, and, to our astonishment, they worked. Our collection of very practical, field-level strategies is on its way to becoming a book.
	Q: Are you still researching human rights and civilian protection in the former Yugoslavia?
	A: Yes, I am a consultant for Human Rights Watch/Europe and Central Asia Division. Much of this research has been on human rights violations in the former Yugoslavia with a focus on Bosnia-Herzegovina following the signing of the Dayton Agreement. I presented congressional testimony earlier this spring on behalf of Human Rights Watch.
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