Humanitarianism & War Project

	\|\|\|\| Status Report #6: July 1, 1992
	DURING THE LAST TWO MONTHS, the work of the Project has make significant advances in both Central America and the Persian Gulf.
	Arrangements have now been finalized to conduct our work in Central America jointly with the Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress set up by former President Oscar Arias with the funds resulting from his 1987 Nobel Peace Prize. Located in San Jose, Costa Rica, this institution is actually an active program agency in its own right. With generous support granted by the Pew Charitable Trusts at the Philadelphia foundation's June trustee's meeting, the Humanitarianism and War Project is now finalizing a detailed work program with our colleague Luis Guillermo Solis, the Director of the Center for Peace and Reconciliation of the Arias Foundation.
	Already the Center is proceeding with a translation into Spanish of the second draft of "Humanitarian Principles and Policy Guidelines: A Handbook for Practitioners," which will serve as the background document for a regional workshop in San Jose in mid-November. Comments from this regional event will complement those received from other quarters. We have just learned, for example, that UNHCR has circulated copies widely among headquarters and field staff. We are also planning to hold a discussion among practitioners in other regions later in 1992 before the text is finalized and published at year's end.
	Following the San Jose workshop in November, Project co-directors Larry Minear and Thomas G. Weiss will stay on to work with a team being organized by the Arias Foundation to conduct a regional case study emphasizing recent conflicts in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. The study will be published in 1993 by the "Humanitarianism and War Project" after discussions with political leaders and aid practitioners in San Jose next Spring. David Lewis, a Mexican national and recent Brown graduate, knowledgeable about security problems in the Caribbean Basin, has joined us as a Research Associate for the duration of the work in Central America.
	The Project has just completed the first comprehensive and independent evaluation of international humanitarian assistance in the Persian Gulf region following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Entitled "United Nations Coordination of the International Humanitarian Response to the Gulf Crisis, 1990-92," the report was requested and partially funded by the United Nation's new Department of Humanitarian Affairs. It will be available as a conference room paper for this month's review of coordination issues by the UN's Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).
	The study draws heavily on the views of persons directly involved in the crisis. During the period from April 1 to June 15, more than two hundred aid officials and political leaders were interviewed in Amman, Ankara, Baghdad, Damascus, Tehran, Geneva, Kuwait City, New York, Providence, and Washington. Existing studies and documents on the Gulf Crisis by UN agencies, governments, and private relief groups were also conducted.
	The report reviews the UN's coordinating efforts of its own humanitarian agencies and in relation to governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the International Committee of the Red Cross. The report concludes that although many in the UN worked tirelessly to assure that humanitarian needs generated by the Gulf crisis were met, the UN failed to coordinate the world's humanitarian response effectively. Both humanitarian and political difficulties are identified, some of the UN's own making, others not.
	Among the UN agencies, coordination was complicated by the multiplicity of UN institutions involved, several with overlapping mandates and most without common administrative procedures. The absence of a single coordinator with the requisite authority to assure concerted action within the UN system was also a critical shortcoming. Donor governments complicated the UN's coordination efforts by proceeding bilaterally, all the while holding the UN accountable for ensuring a concerted approach. NGOs proved difficult to coordinate both because of their lack of coordination among themselves, and because they established their activities before the UN was in a position to assert coordination.
	Complicating the coordination challenge of the UN and the work of all agencies was the scale of the crisis and the rapidity with which it evolved. Within days following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the first evacuees arrived at the Jordanian border. Within days after the eruption of civil strife within Iraq in March 1991, the first of some 1.5 million fled to the Turkish border and into Iran. In each instance, the existing humanitarian machinery was unable to cope.
	Based on the problems identified, the report recommends changes in the functioning of all types of aid institutions. It calls on the UN to designate a single individual in a given country or region who would, for the duration of a major emergency, be accountable for effective coordination of the UN's humanitarian responses. "Donor" governments are urged to provide resources in ways that support the UN's coordinating role and private relief groups to organize themselves in more concerted and professional fashion.
	In view of the altogether critical role in the humanitarian response played by governmental and private institutions in the region and by local people themselves, international aid agencies are urged to acknowledge that the host countries themselves are the first-line of defense in the global humanitarian regime and should be supported more actively and treated with greater respect. The recommendations propose drafting and adopting a number of prototype "memoranda of understanding" that would, in advance, strengthen working relationships and streamline conflicting procedures.
	The study, a multidisciplinary and multinational undertaking conducted from April 1st to June 5th, was led by Larry Minear. Other team members included Thomas G. Weiss; U.B.P. Chelliah, an Indian development specialist who assisted in Jordan in late 1990; Jeff Crisp, a UK specialist on human rights and migration issues currently with UNHCR's evaluation unit; and John Mackinlay, a former British officer who now directs a related research project at the Watson Institute, Second Generation Multinational Forces.
	The report will be printed in July as an Occasional Paper by the Watson Institute and circulated among those who receive the Project's status reports. Multiple copies for use in training will be available from the Project.
	The interviews are enormously rich and varied in their scope and perspectives and will enrich the Project's ongoing work and serve as the basis for comparison with the experience of the international community in other conflict settings.
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