CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 2
GLOBAL TRENDS IN FORCED POPULATION MOVEMENTS 4
THE SPECIAL PROBLEMS OF THE INTERNALLY DISPLACED 5
VIOLENT CONFLICTS AND FORCED POPULATION DISPLACEMENT 6
THE CHANGING WORK OF UNHCR 9
THE EVOLUTION OF INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION OF DISPLACED POPULATIONS 13
THE RIGHTS OF THE INTERNALLY DISPLACED 16
THE PROTECTION OF INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSONS 18
SOVEREIGNTY, HUMANITARIANISM AND INTERNAL CONFLICTS 22
TOWARDS A NEW PARADIGM: THE EVOLUTION OF THE "SITUATIONAL APPROACH" 27
CONCLUSION 31
BIBLIOGRAPHY 33

 Introduction
Over the past half-decade the world has struggled to respond to an unprecedented series of major humanitarian emergencies: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iraq, Liberia, Rwanda, Somalia, Tajikistan and the Former Yugoslavia, to name but the most prominent sites, have all seen massive human suffering and the large-scale displacement of civilian populations in situations that have come to be called "complex humanitarian emergencies"  . The responses of the international community to these emergencies have ranged from the innovative and effective to the haphazard and flimsy, reflecting the basic uncertainty and lack of political will, when it comes to "humanitarian intervention" in situations not directly involving "national security interests" of the great powers and resulting in the absence of any clearly defined international strategy to deal with the causes and consequences of violent conflicts in a radically changed Post-Cold-War era: the creation of a "Safety Zone" in northern Iraq; the deployment of human rights monitors in Rwanda; the deployment of UN troops to ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid in Somalia and the former Yugoslavia; the deployment of a regional peacekeeping force in Liberia; and UN sanctioned military interventions by "subcontracting" in Bosnia, Georgia, Iraq, Rwanda, and Somalia.

In all these cases the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has been a major humanitarian actor, pursuing its mandate of ensuring protection and assistance to the world's refugees and displaced with new and innovative approaches, that will likely shape the future of  humanitarian action in situations of violent conflicts for decades to come: While its original mandate extends only to the protection and assistance of "refugees" as defined in the 1951 Geneva Convention (i.e. displaced persons outside their countries of origin), UNHCR has become increasingly active inside countries of origin with the goal of promoting durable solutions to the plight of the world's displaced people. A new emphasis on prevention and solutions has been gradually evolving over the past decade, variously termed UNHCR's "comprehensive approach" or "regional approach", and is currently being discussed within UNHCR as the "Situational Approach", in an effort towards more formalization of a developing strategy.

This paper starts with an outline of the changing nature of contemporary mass refugee flows and then turns to the special situation of the internally displaced, to provide the necessary background information on Post-Cold-War refugee problems. The next section will take a closer look at the underlying causes of the alarming increase in the world's refugee populations, followed by an account of how UNHCR has managed to cope with these new challenges. This latter section is also meant to illustrate that UNHCR's increasing involvement with returnees and internally displaced persons has already brought about a gradual shift of focus away from the host countries and towards the countries of origin of refugees.
The second part of the paper will argue that this shift in operational realities has not been adequately supported by international legal instruments pertaining to the protection of displaced populations. It traces the evolution of the international refugee regime starting with the original mandate given to the High Commissioner for Refugees and its gradual expansion over the past four decades. It will then turn to the rights of the internally displaced and current international efforts in the protection and assistance of this group.
In the last part of the paper, a discussion of sovereignty and  humanitarian intervention in internal conflicts will identify a wide range of issues that have to be confronted by UNHCR, when engaging in the protection of the internally displaced. Recent developments in the Great Lakes region will be reviewed as a concrete example of the issues involved. Finally, some emerging elements of UNHCR's new "Situational Approach" that has been developed as a blueprint for future operations and has recently been approved by UNHCR's Executive Committee will be discussed.

Global Trends in Forced Population Movements
The global refugee population has increased dramatically in the past two decades.  According to UNHCR figures, there were 2.4 million refugees in 1975, 5.7 million in 1980, 10.5 million in 1985, 14.9 million in 1990, and 18.2 million in 1993.  Subsequently, the number of refugees has decreased somewhat, mainly due to large-scale repatriation programs, the largest of which were to Afghanistan and Mozambique.  In 1995, the number of refugees worldwide totaled 14.4 million, and by January 1996 there were an estimated 13.2 million refugees worldwide.  Of these, 5.7 million were in Africa, 4.5 million in Asia, and 2.1 million in Europe.   In addition to these refugee populations who fall under the mandate of UNHCR, in 1995 there were approximately 2.8 million Palestinian refugees under the mandate of UNRWA.
Most of the world’s refugees are concentrated in poor regions, where host countries sheltering refugees can often ill afford to provide assistance to them and host governments and refugees increasingly rely on the support of international humanitarian agencies.

As will be shown in a later section of this paper, UNHCR was originally mandated to provide protection and assistance to refugees outside of their countries of origin only.  However, although operating under the same mandate, UNHCR has functionally expanded its writ in order to provide assistance to other populations determined to be in refugee-like situations.  At the beginning of 1996 these included 4.6 million "internally displaced persons of concern to UNHCR," 3.3 million former refugees who have now returned to their countries of origin, as well as another 4.8 million people outside of their countries of origin who have not been recognized as refugees by host governments but are nonetheless in need of protection and assistance.
Taken together, there are now some 26 million people "of concern to UNHCR," up from 23 million in 1993 and 17 million in 1991.

The Special Problems of the Internally Displaced
Internally displaced persons (IDPs) have been called “refugees in all but name.”  The working definition of an IDP is “a person who, had he/she managed to cross an international boundary, would have fallen within the definition of a refugee of concern to UNHCR.” This paper is about the changing approach of UNHCR to the prevention and solution of forced population displacement, the resulting shift to the countries of origin of refugees and in particular to the protection and assistance to internally displaced persons. While UNHCR has lately emerged as the lead agency in this latter task, it is important to note that the sheer scale of internal displacement today far exceeds the agency's capacity to provide assistance: According to the US Committee for Refugees, at the end of 1994 there were more than 26 million IDPs worldwide, including 4 million each in Sudan and South Africa, 2 million each in Angola and Turkey, 1.3 million in Bosnia, 1.2 million in Rwanda, 1.1 million in Liberia, and 1 million each in Afghanistan and Iraq.    Thus, according to these estimates, the number of IDPs is about twice that of refugees, who are distinguished from IDPs only in that they managed to cross an international border. Of the 4.6 million IDPs assisted by UNHCR in 1995, the five largest groups were in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1.1 million), Sierra Leone (650.000), Azerbaijan (620.000), Liberia (320.000) and the Russian Federation (310.000).

Since IDPs are often trapped in violent conflicts and are not afforded the protection of other governments, they are generally even more vulnerable than refugees and thus have special needs for protection and assistance by the international community.  In response to the increasing number of IDPs worldwide and their need for international protection, there are increasingly frequent calls for stronger international legal instruments that would establish a clear mandate to provide assistance and protection to IDPs, a topic we will return to later.

Violent Conflicts and Forced Population Displacement
It is often asserted that the worldwide increase in the number of displaced persons results from a corresponding increase in the number of violent conflicts.  However, an analysis of the number and type of conflicts producing significant population displacements (of more than 10,000 people) in the period 1969 - 1992 yields a different conclusion. Using data from the US Committee for Refugees on worldwide refugee and other displaced populations in 1969, 1982 and 1992, MIT political scientist Myron Weiner made the following conclusions:

•The number of countries producing refugee flows of more than 10,000 people was 34 in 1969, 19 in 1982 and 36 in 1992.

•Of the 36 conflicts included in the 1969 sample, 2 were classified as inter-state wars, 4 as anti-colonial wars, 13 as ethnic conflicts, none was classified as civil conflict, and 15 were classified as flights from authoritarian regimes.

•In contrast, by 1992 "intra-state conflicts" were by far the most numerous: of the 35 conflicts, 3 were classified as inter-state wars (mainly for reasons of consistency with the earlier classification), none was included  under anti-colonial wars, 20 were classified as ethnic conflicts, 10 as civil conflicts, and 2 as flights from authoritarian regimes.

•The approximate number of refugees produced by these conflicts were 9.7 million in 1969, 7.7 million in 1982, and 16.5 million in 1992.

•Thus, the number of refugees per conflict as defined above has increased from 287,000 in 1969 to 406,000 in 1982 and 459,000 in 1992.

•The increase in the size of refugee flows (as distinct from the increase in the size of refugee stocks as reported above) was even more pronounced than the increase in the global refugee stock, due mainly to lasting repatriation efforts.

•Even more striking was the increase in the number of IDPs per conflict: Whereas in 1969 the average number of IDPs per conflict was around 400.000, in 1992 this had increased to 857.000. Put in absolute numbers, in the 1980s the number of internally displaced increased from 600.000 in 1984, to 3 million in 1985, 5 to 6 million in 1988, 24 million in 1992 and 26 million at the beginning of 1994!

•There are three main reasons for this aggravated impact of conflicts on civilian populations: First, the increase in world-population from 3.5 billion in 1969 to 5.5 billion in 1992. Secondly, the increase in the availability and destructiveness of arms. And third, the spread of anti-personal mines, with their destructive impact on civilian life, even long after armed struggle in a region has ceased.

•There are geographic clusters of countries producing refugees, or what might be called "bad neighborhoods". For example, in Africa there are three such clusters, one at the horn of Africa, one at the center of Africa, and another one in western Africa. Europe's bad neighborhoods include the successor states to Yugoslavia and the southwestern portions of the former Soviet Union.

This last observation is of particular relevance for the development of sensible policy strategies to address the root causes of forced population displacements. For it suggests that the close proximity of countries with internal wars has "spillover effects", or "neighborhood effects" on other countries, i.e. that there is a high likelihood that conflicts in one country trigger conflicts in neighboring countries, sometimes because the refugees themselves become the source of conflict within or between countries, for example by upsetting an already fragile ethnic balance in the host country, or by facilitating the flow of arms within the neighborhood. Recent events in Eastern Zaire illustrate just how easily conflicts can spill across borders: The presence of some 1.1 million Hutu refugees, who had fled from Rwanda to Zaire in July 1994, in refugee camps along the border has destabilized the region and fueled the conflict between Zaire's own ethnic groups, thus significantly contributing to the outbreak of violence in the Kivu region in October 1996.
The resulting humanitarian crisis was but the latest in a long series that has led to the conviction of senior policy makers within UNHCR that refugee problems have to be treated in a comprehensive manner, taking a regional perspective and encompassing the critical elements of prevention and solutions. In fact, the quest for pursuing such a comprehensive approach has begun almost a decade ago and has already profoundly transformed the work of the world's principal refugee agency.

The Changing Work of UNHCR
In addition to the expansion of the definition and number of those that UNHCR considers to be "of concern" to it, there has also been a marked shift in UNHCR's activities over the past decade, characterized by a reassessment of it's role in the solution of  refugee-creating problems and by the much broader range of tasks it now pursues on behalf of refugees.  While no comprehensive account of this redefinition of UNHCR's role can be given here, several points are particularly relevant to UNHCR involvement inside countries of origin and the development of a new "Situational Approach":

The end of superpower rivalry by way of proxy wars in many regions of the world opened up possibilities for the settlement of long-standing conflicts in countries such as Mozambique, Afghanistan, Namibia, Cambodia, El Salvador and Nicaragua.  These settlements have made possible the repatriation of more than 9 million refugees since the beginning of the decade.  By contrast, between 1975 and 1989 a total of 4-5 million refugees repatriated  .
Voluntary repatriation has long been recognized to be the best "durable solution" to the world's refugee crisis, reinstating the right of any person to live in his home country. It has increasingly become the only feasible solution as well: third-country resettlement now benefits less than one percent of refugees, and local integration is increasingly resented by the predominantly poor host countries which bear the heaviest burden of refugee assistance.

Recognizing these realities, UNHCR has played an important role in assisting the return of refugees, operationally as well as financially, with the explicit aim of ensuring that repatriation takes place under conditions of "safety and dignity".
The new emphasis on repatriation as well as the numerous difficulties and drawbacks experienced by returnees has gradually led to the realization within UNHCR that assistance cannot stop at the border but must be linked to monitoring the conditions of returnees in their home countries as well as reintegration and development programs.  UNHCR now implements or supports a variety of these programs, ranging from human rights monitoring to "quick impact programs" (QIPs) which address basic infrastructure needs such as water, roads and electricity and sometimes even including election monitoring.  In the process, UNHCR has forged closer operational cooperation with other UN agencies such as UNDP and UNICEF as well as with a variety of international and local NGOs.
Finally, and in accord with efforts of implementing a more comprehensive refugee policy, UNHCR has lately turned to measures aimed at the prevention of conflicts that give rise to displacement. Prevention activities originally started with efforts of preventing the recurrence of violent conflicts once a peace settlement had been achieved and repatriation was well under way. It was thus a logical extension of repatriation activities, which increasingly touched on classical peace-keeping tasks such as the demobilization of ex-combatants   Preventive measures now include monitoring activities, "early warning" and reporting, and diplomatic activities that encourage respect for human rights, the protection of minorities, and adherence to international humanitarian law.  Obviously, these initiatives can only be successful if backed by determined political action of the international community, which in reality is often not forthcoming, but the very concept of preventive action and the fact that UNHCR has become progressively involved in countries of origin demonstrate the changing nature of Post-Cold-War humanitarianism. A new consensus regarding the putative right to "humanitarian intervention" on behalf of displaced populations and others suffering human rights abuses is emerging and has already brought momentous changes in the work of humanitarian agencies, as demonstrated by the changing work of UNHCR. By responding to the immense suffering of desperate populations, wherever it is found and wherever help seems operationally feasible, the "new humanitarianism" has already pushed the frontier of international consensus of what constitutes a "permissive" humanitarian intervention well beyond what seemed possible only a few years ago. To be sure, formally, UNHCR stays well within these frontiers by acknowledging the sovereign prerogatives of states. It has operated within the borders of any state only by invitation, hence the consent, of that state. In reality, given the immense moral weight that humanitarian action carries on the international stage, it is very hard for any state to deny that formal consent.  But, as the example of Bosnia aptly demonstrates, formal consent does not automatically translate into willingness to cooperate on the ground, especially if the real intentions of the warring factions deviate substantially from the terms of the agreement.
This situation is, of course, no different than that of other UN agencies treading the thin line of sovereign prerogatives and moral imperatives. What makes the question so particularly urgent for UNHCR, however, is the fact that it is the one agency that has consistently moved the farthest ahead of its official core mandate and has increasingly come to rely on the High Commissioner's vaguely defined authority under its "good offices" function. Perhaps this is an unavoidable consequence of the growing complexities and dynamics of the world's humanitarian emergencies in the "new world disorder". However, a close look at the evolution of the international legal framework governing the protection of refugees reveals that disturbingly little has been achieved in the four and a half decades since the adoption of the 1951 Geneva Convention, which is still at the heart of all legal protection of refugees. The fact that an agency has to operate within an increasingly outdated legal framework, while at the same time it is asked to assume ever greater responsibilities for an ever wider group of suffering people points to the fundamental dilemma of humanitarian action: That humanitarian relief efforts are increasingly used as a substitute for a lack of political will on the part of states. We will return to that concern towards the end of the paper, but first we need to sketch the legal framework for the protection of the world's displaced.

The Evolution of International Protection of Displaced Populations
The contemporary international refugee regime emerged out of the international cooperation addressing the plight of some 20 million refugees displaced in the aftermath of the Second World War.  On December 14, 1950, the UN General Assembly (GA) adopted the Statute of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, establishing UNHCR as a temporary agency, for an initial period of three years. Recognizing the continuing need for a specialized agency to provide assistance to the world's displaced, the General Assembly consequently has renewed the mandate of UNHCR for successive five year periods. According to the GA's original concept its function was to be confined to being merely "an instrument of collaboration with the national authorities", who would ordinarily play the primordial role in the assistance and protection of refugees. Thus, Article 2 of its Statute stipulates that :

" The work of the High Commissioner  shall be of an entirely non-political character; it shall be humanitarian and social and shall relate, as a rule, to groups and categories of  refugees."

At the same time the United Nations elaborated a legal framework for the protection of refugees. In December 1951 a conference of plenipotentiaries reached agreement on the terms of a new Convention that forms the basis of refugee protection up to this day: The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (as amended by the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees)   in Article 1 defines a refugee as any person who

"owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country...."

Thus, while the mandate of UNHCR relates "to groups and categories of refugees", the 1951 Geneva Convention relates only to individually persecuted persons, who have become refugees for one of the five reasons enumerated. At the same time, the drafters of the Convention have been careful not to create a right to asylum: The Convention defines only the status of persons, who have already been recognized as refugees by their host countries. Indeed, the term "asylum" is not even defined in the two refugee treaties.  Nevertheless, the 1951 Geneva Convention does set important standards as to the treatment of refugees. In particular, Article 33 of the Convention prohibits the expulsion or return of refugees to countries where their life or freedom would be threatened (principle of "non-refoulement"). As one scholar observes, "This limit on sovereign prerogative is the foundation of virtually all refugee protection".

While the 1951 Geneva Convention is still at the heart of the international refugee regime, it has become increasingly clear that the principle of individual status determination implicit in the Convention’s definition does not correspond to the needs of an increasing proportion of the world's refugees, particularly in situations of mass outflows. This has been recognized through the adoption of a number of regional, international legal instruments that base the recognition of refugees on "group determination" rather than on proof of individual persecution:
Thus, the OAU in its 1969 convention  and a number of Central American states in the 1984 Cartagena Declaration  adopted a much broader definition of "refugees" as groups fleeing their country of origin due to conditions of war, internal conflicts or generalized violence that threaten their lives or freedom. The majority of refugees today fall under these broader definitions rather than under the narrow definition of the 1951 Geneva Convention.   Even where no relevant regional instrument has been formulated, the principle of group determination has often been adopted and applied in practice.

For UNHCR the tension between the narrow refugee definition and its broader group-based mandate has been overcome relatively quickly in practice even if no formal adaptation of its mandate could be achieved to this day. Already in the 1950s the General Assembly authorized UNHCR in several instances to use its "good offices" in the assistance of refugees not formally within its mandate  . Since the mid-1960s GA resolutions have tended to speak even more broadly of refugees within the High Commissioner's "concern" or "competence" and since the mid-1970s the GA has come to refer to "refugees and displaced persons", who are considered proper subjects for UNHCR action.

The Rights of the Internally Displaced
It has to be noted, however, that the  international legal instruments referred to above provide for the assistance and protection of displaced persons outside their countries of origin only. On the other hand, out of the overarching concern of states to preserve their rights of sovereignty, no such legal instruments pertaining specifically to internally displaced persons (IDPs) have yet been adopted.

Sovereignty implies that the primary responsibility for the protection of a country's citizens lies with the state on whose territory these citizens are to be found. Thus, the question of "international protection" for IDPs is posed in a different context than in the case of refugees, who are outside their country of nationality. In the latter case the need for international protection as a temporary substitute for national protection is inherent in the definition, owing to the fact that refugees find themselves on the territory, hence under the jurisdiction, of a foreign state. The principal instruments of protection for UNHCR in such cases are, then, to guarantee the rights of asylum (including non-refoulement) and to ensure that the standards set by international refugee law are met. On the other hand, no protection standards for IDPs are defined in international refugee law. Thus, while the international legal framework relating to refugees has an important bearing on international humanitarian activities in the protection and assistance of displaced persons in general, the international refugee regime does not directly define the scope of rights and obligations of national and international actors in the treatment of IDPs.

To define the rights of IDPs and the role of international humanitarian actors in the protection of these rights one has to go back to more general human rights instruments, collectively called “the international bill of rights”: These include the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1949 Geneva Convention Relating to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Times of War, the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the two Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and the 1984 Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.  The legal standards set forth in these treaties define the most important rights of civilians in times of violent conflict in general and, precisely because many of those besieged populations become displaced, have an important bearing on the legal situation of IDPs. However, there are severe limitations as to the applicability of these legal instruments in many situations of internal displacement. Due to these limitations, international agencies may be “precluded from addressing the protection needs of the internally displaced unless these persons are subjected to detention, imprisonment or extra-judicial executions.”   What is missing, therefore, is a universal convention that addresses the complex issues relating to the protection and assistance to IDPs.

The Protection of Internally Displaced Persons
The principal agency providing assistance to IDPs has traditionally been the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).  In international humanitarian law, ICRC is given a special mandate to protect civilian and military victims of armed conflicts, including internally displaced persons.  ICRC has a "right of initiative" to act to aid victims in conflict situations (but it is not required to do so).  While states are under no obligation to accept an offer of assistance from ICRC, its offers have traditionally been accepted in most conflicts.

In recent years, UNHCR has increasingly provided assistance and protection to IDPs as well and due to its superior operational capacity has often assumed the role of lead agency in the field.  It has done so by invitation of the host government only and when there was a specific request by the GA to extend its services to groups of internally displaced persons (IDPs) through its "good offices" function. In some conflicts, IDPs have also been assisted by other specialized UN agencies such as UNICEF, UNDP and WFP and by regional organizations; for example, 35% of the WFP's beneficiaries are IDPs.   An important development in recent years has been the proliferation and growth of non-governmental organizations active in humanitarian relief and UNHCR has increasingly come to rely on a number of these NGOs to carry out specific operational tasks. For example, in 1993 more than 25%, or $300 million, of UNHCR’s worldwide budget supported NGO operations.

Activities carried out by humanitarian agencies cannot easily be divided into separate categories of "assistance" and "protection". Indeed, it can be argued that the mere presence of international agencies inside countries experiencing violence, civil disturbance and serious human rights violations already provides some protection in itself. Drawing on its operational experience with internally displaced persons inside countries of origin, UNHCR concludes that a "first level" of protection would be "the provision of shelter from attack against one's life or physical integrity".  In general, UNHCR's work to protect IDPs is concerned with enforcing basic human rights such as the right to access, right to humanitarian assistance, right to return in safety and dignity or, conversely, the right to remain (that is, the right not to be forcibly returned to areas of danger). Again, it has to be said that while UNHCR has come to refer to these concepts as "rights" of the displaced, there is no universal legal instrument defining concepts such as "the right to return" as a human rights standard. Consequently, mechanisms for enforcing these "rights" amount to little more than diplomatic efforts of ensuring basic human rights standards, as listed above. Instruments available to UNHCR to protect displaced persons include presence, monitoring, reporting, mediating, reconciliation, intervening with authorities to request protective action, facilitating family reunification and, if necessary and feasible, organized evacuation from dangerous areas.

In some cases, providing assistance to IDPs is a natural extension of UNHCR's work targeted at returnees and the local population. In other cases, however, protecting and assisting IDPs has proven to be qualitatively different from the activities it undertakes on behalf of refugees: these differences were experienced in the humanitarian relief operation for the Kurds in northern Iraq in 1991, by cross-border operations from Kenya into Somalia in 1992, and by the immense difficulties encountered in the former Yugoslavia since 1991.
The many unresolved issues encountered during these initial post-Cold War humanitarian interventions on behalf of IDPs prompted the UN Commission on Human Rights in 1992 to request the Secretary General to appoint a Special Representative to examine the issue in a systematic manner.  In his report, the Special Representative, Mr. Francis Deng, emphasized the lack of comprehensive international legal standards for the protection of the internally displaced.  He therefore called for the establishment of clear guidelines that could be applied to all IDPs, regardless of the cause of their displacement, the country concerned, or the legal, social, political, or military situation.
As a first step, he urged the compilation of existing human and humanitarian rights standards, which could then be restated as a code of conduct for governments, humanitarian relief organizations and other pertinent actors in a crisis.  These efforts could in time generate a declaration and finally lead to the adoption of an international convention on the rights of the internally displaced.  While the establishment of legal standards that would in theory provide for legal recourse to courts for people whose rights have been violated is certainly a valuable goal in itself, the Special Representative noted that the only meaningful source of protection and assistance available to displaced persons is often the right of access to humanitarian relief, "which means the right of physical access by the international community and the right of the international community to be given that access.”
Deng further noted the importance of recent initiatives to institute and coordinate humanitarian relief efforts effectively, as well as the important role played by the recently established positions of an UN Emergency Relief Coordinator  and the Department of Humanitarian Affairs.  However, the mandate of the DHA, which was created in 1992 to coordinate all UN humanitarian activities, specifically excludes human rights activities, which were feared to be so politically sensitive that they might jeopardize humanitarian action by the international community.  Moreover, the DHA is currently designed only to shape policy and is not operational.  Similarly, while Mr. Deng recommended the renewal and expansion of the mandate of the Special Representative of the Secretary General, this could only serve as a way to focus the new awareness to the plight of the internally displaced rather than to provide concrete protection and assistance to them.
After considering the Deng report, UNHCR established a set of criteria that would guide its future involvement in situations of internal displacement.  The agency now

"assume[s] primary responsibility for protection and assistance in situations of internal displacements when such activities are clearly linked to the prevention or resolution of a refugee problem.  When such links do not exist, UNHCR may also contribute to the broader efforts of the United Nations to help the internally displaced. In both instances, however, the organization's involvement will also be dependent upon a specific request from the United Nations, the consent of the state concerned, and the availability of funds."

Sovereignty, Humanitarianism and Internal Conflicts
Given the above mentioned constraint for UNHCR as a specialized UN agency to become involved in the internal affairs of states only with "the consent of the state concerned" it is perhaps not surprising that the High Commissioner recently commented that sovereignty was, in fact, not one of her main concerns. In the past, the crossing of borders into countries of origin of mass refugee movements has not necessarily been problematic. Countries have usually welcomed the assistance of international humanitarian agencies, relieving them of some of the burdens of refugee assistance, or simply have not been in a position to say no. It is intervention by other states, not humanitarian agencies, that have regularly been resisted in the name of sovereignty. The issue of sovereignty, then, arises for UNHCR mainly as one of "second degree", when fears of political/military "quagmires" have led states to invoke the prerogatives of "sovereign states" as a pretense for political inaction. Historically, of course, stronger states have had little difficulties in overriding sovereign priorities of weaker ones, if their foreign policy interests so demanded. Even today, after a brief aborted experiment with "humanitarian intervention" in Somalia on the part of the US and other states , most states are reluctant to project their power abroad in the name of humanitarianism, when it is not strictly in their "national interest" to do so. Heralded by UN Secretary General Boutros Ghali's "An Agenda for Peace" back in 1992,  the era of absolute state sovereignty may have passed, but this does not automatically translate into a collective willingness on the part of states to enforce even the most basic human rights standards in the face of grave violations of these norms. Or, as the High Commissioner has put it, "moral principles cannot be substituted for incentives".

In some instances, however, the involvement inside countries of origin has represented a more dramatic step even for UNHCR and has then been far more controversial, especially when this has involved working in the context of on-going internal conflicts, such as in Somalia or Bosnia. And it has been in these situations, in which the absence of a strong political will that could provide sufficient backing to the humanitarian action of UNHCR and other UN agencies as well as the plethora of NGOs that has appeared on the international humanitarian scene, has resulted in disastrous outcomes. When humanitarian action is used to provide "band-aid" for a situation of violent conflict, that in fact requires a comprehensive political solution, these agencies are asked to perform a "multi-mandate" operation, that they cannot fulfill. Under these circumstances, not only will humanitarianism fail to achieve a political settlement to a political conflict, if will actually work to exacerbate the conflict itself.

In recent years, there has been much discussion about the unintended adverse "side-effects" of humanitarian intervention in situations of violent conflicts and UNHCR has received its fair share of the criticism raised, often by the very same people who have previously praised its effectiveness in delivering humanitarian aid to populations in distress.
The basic dilemma can be summarized as follows: Any involvement by international humanitarian agencies in a political emergency brings some benefits to the parties of the conflict.  By inserting massive resources, both material and immaterial, into a resource-scarce environment humanitarian action is bound to have a profound impact on the situation on the ground and this will ultimately affect, directly and indirectly, the conflict itself. Whether the "unintended consequences" ultimately work towards a mitigation of the conflict or actually serve to exacerbate it can not be determined in the abstract.

Recent history has provided many examples of ways in which relief efforts have become intimately involved in situations of armed conflict, the struggle for state power and warlordism. These include:
The material assistance provided to civilians may benefit whatever authority is controlling the operational arena. This can happen through the direct provision of food, medicines and other assistance to the authorities; diversion of materials by combatant parties; provision of income by means of renting vehicles, premises and local staff and the paying of "fees" and "taxes" to the warring parties as part of a deal to gain access to suffering populations. The cumulative effect of these forms of involuntary assistance to warring parties may well be that relief aid actually prolongs war, by feeding and supporting armies that could otherwise not remain in the field.

The "strategic protection" afforded to important logistical premises for the relief operation may further the military or political objectives of the controlling authority. This may occur when roads, airfields, ports and other strategic installations are kept open to sustain the relief operation or when supplies are maintained to (besieged) towns and refugee camps.
The daily operations of the relief agencies may confer a degree of legitimacy on the controlling authorities, which they often do not deserve. The sheer presence of relief agencies and their daily dealings with the powers-that-be confers a certain degree of international recognition upon parties to a conflict. The necessity to ensure consent of all warring parties often is skillfully exploited by local warlords to gain humanitarian credentials they do not deserve. And, in its most extreme form, international agencies may be forced to compromise their humanitarian objectives and become involuntary complices in the crimes of warring factions: In Bosnia, UNHCR was accused of furthering the Bosnian Serbs' campaign of ethnic cleansing by evacuating threatened populations from besieged enclaves. In Zaire, Hutu militias were able to use UN protected refugee camps on the border to Rwanda as bases for terrorizing the local population.

This latter experience with a prolonged maintenance of vast refugee camps in Eastern Zaire by humanitarian agencies is but the latest demonstration of the potential for well-intended humanitarian aid to quickly exacerbate the underlying political problems if not backed by sufficient political clout brought to bear towards solving these problems. It also shows that the unwillingness of the international community to invest in durable solutions to a refugee crisis is not unique to internal conflict alone. By not separating the Hutu militias from the genuine refugees, the militias were allowed to exercise brutal control over the refugees, preventing them from going home while at the same time living from UNHCR's assistance in the refugee camps and using the safety of the camps as basis for guerrilla raids into surrounding communities as well as into Rwanda. The perpetuation of the refugee camps also gave the Hutu militias enough time to arm themselves, with Zaire playing a "central role" in helping Rwandan, but also Burundian rebels rearm on its territory. Recent evidence suggests that arms shipments worth millions of dollars have been coming in through Goma airport, the same airport the UN used to fly in food. At the same time, Hutu guerrillas from the camps committed a series of massacres under Zairian Tutsis to drive them out of the region and spurred the Zairian government to expel local Tutsis living around Lake Tanyanika (known as the Banyamulenge). These local Tutsis, in turn, had close military ties with the (Tutsi-) government in Rwanda and with President Museveni's forces in Uganda.
When the Zairian government announced that it will expel all Banyamulenge from its territory, a Tutsi rebel force began attacking Zairian military outposts and refugee camps in South Kivu on October 13, 1996, and within two months gained control of the entire region. There is also evidence that Rwandan and Ugandan forces were involved in a brief cross-border operation from Rwanda. The rebel forces quickly expelled the Hutu militias from the camps and drove a large number of them, including their families, further west into Zaire. At the same time, it ordered the remaining refugees in the camp to return to Rwanda at gunpoint. By the end of November around 500.000 have done so, while hundreds of thousands were still dispersed across Eastern Zaire.  The rebels had done by force what UNHCR has tried to induce for two years with little success: A large-scale return of refugees to their homeland. By now, however, the ethnic conflict had spread from Rwanda far into Zaire, and the mass return of half a million frightened people was anything but an ideal "solution" to a refugee situation. Once more, the world was looking on, when calls for an international intervention had been out for many months already. But the multinational intervention force, which has painstakingly been patched together under Canadian leadership over a period of two months, while events in Zaire where unfolding, and had finally received a UN mandate under Chapter VII for a limited role in securing humanitarian aid, was still not up and running. By now, it so seriously had been overtaken by events on the ground, that its mission was already reconsidered, before it even started.
 

The above given list of potential adverse side-effects of humanitarian action in situations of violent conflict as well as the concurrent example of Rwanda/Zaire serve to remind us that humanitarianism does not operate in a vacuum. Negative consequences of well-intended actions frequently occur, however, when humanitarianism is charged with mandates that it simply cannot fulfill: Humanitarian action cannot be a substitute for a lack of political will on the part of intervening states to put an end to the violence that caused the suffering in the first place. Recently, however, humanitarianism has been increasingly used as a fig-leaf for an embarrassing absence of meaningful political or military action.
Policy makers within UNHCR are keenly aware of the dangers of involvement in internal conflicts without adequate political action to solve the underlying causes of forced displacement. UNHCR has increasingly been used as the "soft option" of intervention, when adequate political or military support was not forthcoming. Aware of this dilemma, the office of the High Commissioner has increasingly stressed the importance of integrating comprehensive long-term solutions at the core of short-term crisis management.

Towards a New Paradigm: The Evolution of the "Situational Approach"
The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has thus come a long way. Starting from its original mandate of 1950 the agency has continually expanded and adapted to a rapidly changing environment. However, over the past decade the pace of changes has so accelerated that even this most dynamic of all UN agencies has experienced severe strains and a growing gap between its operational capacities and ever-increasing outside demands for its services. Between 1986 and 1996 UNHCR's budget increased from US$ 440 million to US$ 1.430 million (in nominal terms), while the number of people "of concern to UNHCR" increased from 11.6 million to 26.1 million. And while in 1986 all of these people were "refugees outside their country of origin" by 1996 only 51 % were "classical" refugees thus defined, while 4.6 million, or 18 % were IDPs. UNHCR now has a total staff of 5.500, of which 4.500 (or some 82 %) are active "in the field" in one of a total of 255 country offices in 123 countries.  In response to the new challenges and operational realities UNHCR has recently undertaken a major evaluation project, called Project Delphi, that should help in restructuring and decentralizing the agency and prepare the ground for a new "regional" or "situational" approach to refugee problems. Above all, policy makers within UNHCR have taken a critical look not only on how to do things, but on what things are being done by a humanitarian enterprise of such major proportions. The recently completed Delphi Report, Annex II (A),  states quite bluntly:

"It is felt that UNHCR is become increasingly exile promoting. The annual programe cycle is being used to make exile incrementally more palatable to the beneficiaries. Within such an orientation, disengagement or designing an exit based on durable solutions has become difficult to achieve."

The report further criticizes:

"At the central and regional/field level the loss of sight of the original objective that led to the organization's engagement in the operation in the first place due to a culture that is based on a yearly cycle of financial allocation rather than the reaching of objectives as its core process."

The preceding discussion has already highlighted the main forces that have led UNHCR to shift its focus towards the country of origin. Operationally the agency has already become involved inside countries of origin of refugee movements for one or more of the following reasons:
The new emphasis on voluntary repatriation as the "preferred" solution, as well as the only feasible one, in view of the increasing closure of asylum options. The resulting needs for return, re-integration and rehabilitation assistance in post-conflict situations. The continuing protection needs of many returning refugee populations. The simultaneous presence of large populations of internally displaced with similar needs as returning refugees. The occurrence of "soft borders" (often with significant movements of displaced persons either way). The realization that "large scale internal displacement may affect regional stability and security, particularly when there is a link to an existing or potential refugee problem". And finally, the increasing needs for, as well as unparalleled opportunities for preventive activities after the end of the Cold War (In 1995, for example, UNHCR launched a "preventive deployment" in five Central Asian states, which have been at least partially successful).
The 1995 issue of UNHCR's "State of the World's Refugees" emphasizes three pillars of the agencies emerging approach: prevention, protection and durable solutions. In an increasing number of today's conflicts this translates into: prevention of internal conflicts, protection of internally displaced persons and repatriation to the country of origin. All of these levels require that UNHCR focus its attention on the situation causing the forced population displacement as well as being present inside the country of origin.  Thus, one of the conclusions emerging from Project Delphi has been that UNHCR should further shift its focus towards the country of origin and adopt a "situational" approach (also called "regional approach"), that is, organize an operation around each "situation" producing refugees, rather than managing refugee situations in each host country individually.

The assumption behind the Situational Approach is that refugee problems are regional rather than national in character and need to be understood in their entirety in order to find real solutions. Organizing each operation around specific "situations" such as caseloads of refugees (e.g. Bosnian, Somali or Afghani refugees) rather than around individual countries of asylum allows a more coherent planning approach that integrates a long-term view at durable solutions from the very beginning of an operation. Currently, if a given refugee population is spread out in 12 different countries of asylum, then these 12 groups are dealt with according to 12 different national procedures of their host countries in addition to different UNHCR procedures. Any attempt to address the overall refugee problem and work towards durable solutions would require cooperation and coordination, which current structures do not facilitate.

The Situational Approach is, then, first of all a management technique, that will help coordinate activities between country offices and across agencies. A "situation manager" (who might still be called "UNHCR's Special Envoy") will be in charge of the overall operation and will have full power to control resources for a given problem area. This represents an opportunity to shift resources between countries as the situation demands (Likewise, the central location of the situation manager would shift, as the process of refugee repatriation shifts the focus of the operation from the country of asylum to the country of origin). The implied decentralization of control from Central Headquarters downwards will be accompanied by an extensive use of modern communication technologies, such as daily or weekly teleconferences with headquarters and country offices, as the situation demands.

The situational approach is thus a logical extension to the management and operational structure of UNHCR of its newly defined mission of finding "comprehensive solutions" to refugee problems. It is an organizational structure that is geared to solutions (i.e. in most cases, voluntary repatriation) and is better suited to support an operation over the "circle of displacement": From non-refugee status to displacement - protection and assistance - repatriation, reintegration, rehabilitation and reconciliation - development and the prevention of new violence. It is clear that UNHCR cannot take on all these functions alone and that by become actively engaged in a number of these tasks it runs the risk of creating too much work for itself. Therefore, another important goal of the new approach will be better coordination with other agencies, enlisting their support and cooperation and ultimately handing the operation over to them. After all, the objective of this new approach is to find durable solutions and ensure that ultimately this will result in the realization of an exit-strategy from a given problem.

Conclusion
The "New World Order" proclaimed at the end of the Cold War has turned out to be a "New World Disorder", propelled by the recurrent outbreak of violent conflicts at the sub-state level. The increased availability and destructiveness of arms in conflicts, that once used to be called "low-intensity conflicts", has resulted in an aggravated impact on civilian populations. At the same time, modern communication technology - the so-called "CNN-Factor" - make sure that we no longer know nothing about the suffering of people in far-away lands. The ensuing crescendo of calls to "do something" has set the stage for an ethos of "humanitarian intervention" that pays little regard to an ultimate solution of a crisis, while at the same time weakening the notion of "absolute sovereignty". Yet, states remain reluctant to commit the power and resources necessary to solve the underlying causes of violent conflicts and failed states. Often, they prefer the provision of humanitarian aid as the "soft option" of intervention without supporting the relief efforts with adequate political backing to put an end to the conflict itself and thereby get stuck in this half-way house. For UNHCR, as the lead humanitarian agency for refugees and displaced populations, this continuous danger of becoming a mere tool for states to avoid political involvement is a very real one. Here, then, lies the greatest potential of the new "Situational Approach": By focusing attention on the attainment of comprehensive durable solutions to a refugee crisis from the very beginning, it will hopefully contribute to shaming countries into action that can restore the name of humanitarian intervention.
 

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