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<TITLE>Sergio Vieira de Mello...Toward Cooperation Between Humanitarian Aid
and Military Forces</TITLE>
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<CENTER><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+4">Toward Cooperation Between
Humanitarian Aid</FONT></FONT></CENTER>
<CENTER><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+4">And Military Forces</FONT></FONT></CENTER>
<CENTER><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+3">Sergio Vieira de Mello</FONT></FONT></CENTER>
<CENTER><I><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+2">Director of Policy
Planning and Operations, United Nations High Commission for Refugees</FONT></FONT></I></CENTER>
<P><B><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+1">THE EVOLVING RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN HUMANITARIAN AID AND MILITARY FORCES</FONT></FONT></B> </P>
<P><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+0">In recent years, the United
Nations has experienced both qualitative and quantitative changes in its
activities related to peace, security, and humanitarian endeavors. While
some intractable ideological regional conflicts have been resolved,
different ones have emerged with the end of the Cold War. Micronationalism
is a new name for self-determination and a threat to the integrity of
modern states. Attacks on and uprooting of civilian populations have often
become objectives of war, as we have witnessed in the former Yugoslavia
and Rwanda. Such attacks have caused human suffering on an unprecedented
scale. These forced movements of populations constitute a threat to
international security and peace and reflect policies and practices that
are essentially destabilizing and intolerable.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<P><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+0">Such a tragic worldwide state
has led to closer cooperation between political, military, and
humanitarian facets of international concern. Today, the office of the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) protects and assists
over 27 million people in more than 140 countries, including refugees,
internally displaced persons, victims of war, and people who have returned
to their countries but still require our care. In recent years, UNHCR has
worked closely with military forces in humanitarian actions, both within
and outside the framework of United Nations peacekeeping and
peace-building operations. These actions have given us opportunities to
examine, review, and reflect on the relevance of humanitarian principles
and on the most desirable working relationship between UNHCR and military
forces.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<CENTER></CENTER>
<CENTER><B><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+1">THE NATURE OF
HUMANITARIAN AID</FONT></FONT></B></CENTER>
<P><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+0"><I>Addressing Human Suffering.</I>
As an unfortunate result of our operation in the former Yugoslavia,
humanitarianism is now perceived as merely "relief operations."
Yet humanitarian action is significantly more than the delivery of relief
goods. Humanitarian principles stress the primacy of action to address
human suffering and the right of civilians under international law to be
protected from discrimination, violence, torture, and other serious
violations of human rights; they also stress the right of civilians to
receive, in exceptional circumstances, material assistance necessary for
their survival. Independence, impartiality, and neutrality are central to
achieving these goals and must be respected during humanitarian operations
in conflict areas such as the former Yugoslavia and Somalia.</FONT></FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+0"><I>Consent to Humanitarian
Action.</I> Humanitarian protection and assistance must be provided to
civilians impartially, on the sole basis of need, without regard to race,
religion, ethnicity, nationality, or political opinion of the victims; by
definition it must also be provided without in any way contributing to the
military or political effort of any party to the conflict. This has become
a serious predicament in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in and around Rwanda.
Humanitarian actions require the consent of the parties to the conflict,
and assume that when the parties consent, they will abide by fundamental
principles. We all know that this is not the case in Bosnia.</FONT></FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+0">While military action to remove
obstructions to humanitarian operations may be justifiable on moral or
political grounds, military enforcement of humanitarian aid is neither
compatible with humanitarian principles nor realistic in terms of actual
efficacy. UNHCR learned one critical lesson from its operation in
Bosnia-Herzegovina: close involvement with the military requires increased
attention to ensuring that humanitarian action is not only neutral and
impartial in intent, but also perceived as such by the conflicting
parties. Unfortunately, in protracted and bitter conflicts such as the one
unfolding in Bosnia, humanitarian assistance eventually is perceived by
both parties as aid to their enemy, with fatal consequences.</FONT></FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+0"><I>Temporary Military
Operations with a Protective Intent</I>. In conflicts where consent to
humanitarian action is denied, a military operation may be the only way to
create conditions under which massive human suffering can be alleviated.
The creation in 1994 by the North Atlantic Council of heavy-weapons
exclusion zones in and around Sarajevo and Gorazde is an example of a
credible military threat effectively used to end intolerable shelling of
civilian targets. Such military action, and the use of force it may
entail, however, is entirely different from humanitarian operations. We
are keenly aware of the consequences of each use of NATO air power under
the exclusion-zone regime and therefore show restraint in its use except
for self-defense. This restraint by the political leaders and military
commanders of the U.N. Protection Forces (UNPROFOR) has been often
criticized.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<P><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+0">Our experience in Bosnia has
also unfortunately demonstrated that exclusion zones, ultimatums, and
cease-fires become eroded and ineffective over time in the absence of
progress in the political settlement of the conflict. These measures are
temporary and stabilizing, as is the deployment of peacekeeping forces
such as UNPROFOR, and have a protective intent. None of them, however, is
a substitute for political negotiations.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<CENTER></CENTER>
<CENTER><B><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+1">OPERATIONAL PRINCIPLES
FOR MILITARY SUPPORT OF HUMANITARIAN ACTIONS</FONT></FONT></B></CENTER>
<P><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+0">Operational Principles. Based on
our experience, UNHCR, together with other United Nations humanitarian
agencies, has identified broad operational principles for military support
in humanitarian operations. These principles, which follow, are
particularly important when humanitarian organizations are required to
operate in war zones.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<UL>
<LI><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+0">Military support must be at
the request of humanitarian organizations, not political authorities,
and must be needs-driven.</FONT></FONT></LI>
<LI><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+0">Military support should be
requested only when there is no comparable civilian alternative, and the
use of military assets should be short-term, with a planned handover to
civilians as soon as possible.</FONT></FONT></LI>
<LI><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+0">Maximum effort must be made
to ensure that military support is perceived as humane, neutral, and
impartial and the motivation for its use as humanitarian and not
political.</FONT></FONT></LI>
<LI><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+0">A humanitarian operation must
retain its civilian character and be under complete civilian control.</FONT></FONT></LI>
<LI><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+0">To the extent possible, the
use of military assets should ensure that the operation retains its
international and multilateral character.</FONT></FONT></LI>
</UL>
<P><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+0">Practical Examples. Three recent
actions are examples of NATO military support based on the above
principles; the first two illustrate the fragility of combined military
and humanitarian arrangements in the face of security threats.</FONT></FONT>
</P>
<UL>
<LI><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+0">In Sarajevo, an unprecedented
humanitarian airlift has been conducted, although often interrupted for
security reasons by a multinational group of NATO air forces at the
request of UNHCR. Materials have been flown into an airport reopened and
secured in June 1992 by the UNPROFOR. Five governments also have
seconded military logistic personnel to UNHCR for its operation in the
former Yugoslavia. Their expertise has made an invaluable contribution,
particularly in managing the complex logistics of our activities in a
hostile environment.</FONT></FONT></LI>
<LI><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+0">As a result of the denial of
land access to besieged civilian populations for humanitarian aid,
airdrops by NATO military aircraft were organized over enclaves in
Bosnia. Since August 1994, however, such airdrops have been suspended,
despite a standing UNHCR request, because of the threat posed by Bosnian
Serb air-defense systems deployed around those enclaves. This situation
clearly illustrates the delicate balance that we must strike between
humanitarian imperatives and the need to keep conflicts from escalating.</FONT></FONT></LI>
<LI><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+0">At the request of UNHCR and
with its coordination, several large military and civilian assets were
deployed by governments in the early stages of the 1994 Rwanda
emergency. The magnitude of the Goma emergency proved to be overwhelming
in a matter of 48 hours, and UNHCR turned to a number of governments for
help. Several of them mobilized massive military and civilian means and
joined forces to help us tackle this major crisis. In Bosnia, in
addition to strengthening the Sarajevo Air Operations Cell at UNHCR
Headquarters so that it could coordinate the new humanitarian airlift,
government support included largely self-contained assets for strategic
and theater airlift and associated ground operations at five airports
within the region, experts and resources for water treatment and
distribution, medical expertise and resources, and the execution of a
number of essential engineering tasks.</FONT></FONT></LI>
</UL>
<CENTER><B><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+1">IMPROVING OPERATIONS
WITH MILITARY FORCES</FONT></FONT></B></CENTER>
<P><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+0">Development of Service Packages.
In view of the type and magnitude of military support granted by various
countries to UNHCR in the Rwanda operation and of the problems
encountered, particularly the lack of specification of what UNHCR needed,
our office worked to develop a mechanism for close and efficient
cooperation with military forces. The result of this study was the
creation of so-called Service Packages, namely, military and civil-defense
support that can be provided at the request of UNHCR for humanitarian
emergencies. Service Packages, which have been developed for 20 defined
sectors of assistance, are not substitutes for UNHCR's emergency response
mechanism and are not assumed to be automatic. Rather, they constitute an
enhanced cooperation mechanism that brings expertise to deal with
humanitarian crises, in particular military forces' massive and rapidly
deployable capacity to save lives. Service Packages are also tools that
may be used, by UNHCR and other humanitarian agencies, to enhance planning
and increase predictability in dealing with large-scale human suffering.</FONT></FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+0">The U.N. Rapid Deployment
Brigade Initiative. I would like to briefly allude to an initiative that
has caught my attention in recent months. Several countries, in particular
Canada, the Netherlands, and Denmark, have put forward a proposal for the
creation of a U.N. Rapid Deployment Brigade. I believe that the
availability of such a force, which the Secretary General welcomes, would
increase the ability of the Organization, Secretary General and Security
Council alike, to swiftly react to emerging political, military and
humanitarian crises. I am not suggesting that this type of operation would
be in any way a panacea. It would be acceptable and effective only in
certain instances. But it deserves serious scrutiny. If nothing else, it
would fill an important gap--the swift mobilization of resources by the
Department of Peacekeeping Operations--when a crisis situation emerges and
the political will to act exists. It would also assist us in overcoming
the tedious debate about "humanitarian intervention" and provide
the Secretary General and the Security Council with a rapid
military-reaction capability for political and humanitarian preventive and
containment purposes.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<P><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+0">I suggest that the following
restrictive criteria be applied to the eventual use of such a military
resource. The force should be used only:</FONT></FONT> </P>
<UL>
<LI><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+0">When impending or actual
gross and persistent violations of human rights cause international
moral indignation;</FONT></FONT></LI>
<LI><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+0">When all other reasonable
international and regional diplomatic efforts have failed;</FONT></FONT></LI>
<LI><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+0">When it will preserve the
territorial integrity of the "receiving state" and will not
interfere with the state's authority structure;</FONT></FONT></LI>
<LI><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+0">For a strictly limited time
and in a strictly limited scope.</FONT></FONT></LI>
</UL>
<CENTER><B><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+1">CONCLUDING REMARKS</FONT></FONT></B></CENTER>
<P><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+0">The protection of Iraqi Kurds in
Northern Iraq through multilateral intervention, and the belated but
nonetheless welcome "Operation Turquoise" in Southwestern
Rwanda, are sui generis. They deserve mention for their "humanitarian
jurisprudence" for, however disputable, they represent effective
attempts at countering ethnic cleansing and genocide.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<P><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+0">Prevention of such humanitarian
crises is, however, preferable. UNHCR, the International Organization for
Migration (IOM) and OSCE are now preparing for an international conference
on refugees, returnees, displaced persons, and other types of population
movement into, within, and out of CIS and neighboring countries. At this
conference, we will strive to address conflict prevention and an array of
legal, economic, social, and humanitarian issues from a non-political
perspective. Our objective is not only to resolve existing problems,
whether caused by conflict or not, but to prevent the occurrence of new
ones that will have consequences for regional and international security
and stability.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<P><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+0">Can Partnership for Peace help
us achieve that ambitious goal? I leave you with that question.</FONT></FONT>
</P>
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