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<TITLE>U.N. Assistant Commissioner for Refugees Sergio Vieira de
Mello...Security for Peoples, Security for States</TITLE>
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<CENTER><FONT SIZE="+4">Security for Peoples, Security for States</FONT></CENTER>
<CENTER><FONT SIZE="+2">U.N. Assistant High Commissioner for Refugees</FONT></CENTER>
<CENTER><FONT SIZE="+2">Sergio Vieira de Mello</FONT></CENTER>
<P>I was pleased to participate for the second time in the yearly NATO
Workshop. I will discuss the issue of <I>security</I>, perhaps from a
slightly less usual angle. In the field of humanitarianism there has been
at least one positive development in the past several years the growing
realization amongst those in key governmental positions as well as those
in academic circles and perhaps the public at large that humanitarianism
alone can neither resolve existing humanitarian problems nor effectively
prevent them. Humanitarian issues are now increasingly being placed by
states where they belong, namely, on the political agenda, a situation we
have long been calling for. </P>
<CENTER><B><FONT SIZE="+1">THE LINK BETWEEN SECURITY FOR STATES</FONT></B></CENTER>
<CENTER><B><FONT SIZE="+1">AND SECURITY FOR PEOPLES</FONT></B></CENTER>
<P>Why was politicizing humanitarian issues necessary and why do we welcome
this belated development? Population displacement, until roughly the
1980s, was by and large the consequence of political persecution, colonial
and independence wars, or international conflicts. Recently and
increasingly, however, the mass displacement or, indeed, the elimination
of people belonging to certain ethnic or cultural communities has become
the very cause as well as the ultimate objective of conflict. The internal
wars in Iraq, Rwanda, and Burundi; the Azeri Armenian dispute over Nagomo
Karabakh; and the conversion of Yugoslavia into a slaughterhouse are all
brutal demonstrations of this trend premeditated or not toward ethnic
elimination, ethnic purity, and monoethnicity in a given territory. </P>
<P>What all of this means is that the narrow definition of security as it
is applied to states is inadequate for present realities and therefore
misleading. One must go deeper into the structure, into the ethnological
strata, as it were, of states, and broaden the notion of security to
include that of people. The security of states and the security of peoples
are clearly intertwined, for the insecurity of peoples inexorably leads to
the disintegration of states and to regional and international
instability. </P>
<CENTER><B><FONT SIZE="+1">INTERNATIONAL RESPONSES</FONT></B></CENTER>
<CENTER><B><FONT SIZE="+1">TO CIVILIAN DISPLACEMENTS</FONT></B></CENTER>
<P>Let me give you a few recent examples of successful as well as
disastrous international responses to the new and ominous syndrome of
genocide as an objective of conflict. </P>
<P>The first international acknowledgment that a humanitarian problem was
intrinsically part of a political and military equation perhaps its very
essence was the Kurdish refugee crisis of April 1991 in Iraq. Security
Council Resolution 688 condemned the violation of Kurdish human rights by
the Iraqi regime and recognized that the consequent mass displacement of
civilian populations threatened international peace and security in the
region. As some of you may recall, Operation Provide Comfort took place in
response to the presence of a large number of displaced Kurdish people on
the border between Turkey and Iraq which, quite apart from the obvious
humanitarian consequences, could have led to an aggravation of
international and internal tensions and, in all likelihood, to a crisis
within the territory of a NATO member. The significance of Resolution 688
was that it enabled a coalition of certain U.N. member-countries (all NATO
members) to effectively impose on Baghdad an Exclusion Zone in northern
Iraq, which in turn made it possible for the displaced Kurds to remain
safely in Iraq, thanks to the combination of the coalition security
umbrella and international humanitarian assistance. From a security angle,
one can say the international community managed to achieve an acceptable
balance between the security of states Turkey, Iran, and the region and
the security of the Kurdish people of Iraq. Paradoxically, the effort may
even have contributed to preserving Iraq as a unitary state within its
recognized borders. But was the operation successful only because Iraq had
been defeated militarily a few weeks earlier and how long will this
artificial state of affairs remain viable. </P>
<P>In total contrast to the relative success in Iraq is the case of Rwanda.
There, the international community failed entirely with the exception of
the unilateral French <I>Operation Turquoise</I> to contain the emerging
crisis and to preserve the security of the states and of the peoples in
the Great Lakes subregion. According to then-Force Commander of the United
Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIRI) General Dallaire, the
withdrawal of the U.N. force was a disastrous prelude to the total
collapse of civil society and to the genocide in Rwanda, which took at
least half a million lives in the spring of 1994. In Zaire, whose
integrity and internal stability is of extreme importance to regional
stability and security, the arrival of more than one million Hutu refugees
represented, and still represents, a major threat to the delicate internal
ethnic balance, as well as to the country's economy and environment. </P>
<P>In Tanzania, the standing exemplary asylum policy and practice was
reversed when the country was faced with yet another major influx from
both Rwanda and Burundi and was disappointed by sparse international
support. In Burundi, which is on the verge of following the path Rwanda
took two years ago, little action has again been taken by the
international community to prevent a major disaster. No concerted
international efforts have been made to address the root causes of the
problems in the area, apart from some admirable individual initiatives by
former Presidents Nyerere of Tanzania and Carter of the United States. It
seems we do not feel terribly concerned about the fate of peoples and
states in a remote Central African subregion until the crisis begins to
haunt our conscience, as it presently does, and to hurt our interests and
our purses. </P>
<P>Let me now address NATO's primary geographical area of concern, the
former Yugoslavia, which is an extremely complex illustration of my
thesis. While a degree of commitment from states to resolve the political
and military challenges linked to the problems of the post-communist era,
ethnic relations, and economic reforms existed before Dayton, its
effectiveness was dismal. Without discrediting the contributions made by
UNPROFOR, of which I myself served as head of Civil Affairs, I must say
that the model chosen by the international community a cocktail of U.N.
peacekeeping and humanitarian action under both Chapter VI and Chapter VII
mandates, combined with mild use of NATO air power and the absence of any
progress in political negotiations for over three and a half years was a
recipe for disaster for the former states of Yugoslavia, for its successor
states (with the exception perhaps of Slovenia and the Former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia), <I>and</I> for their peoples, right here at
NATO's doorstep. The High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) was perhaps the
only U.N. organization that was there long before, during, and now after
the war, and witnessed the insane logic and scale of displacement and
human suffering caused by the collapse of Yugoslavia. </P>
<P>What was successful in Iraq, namely the creation of a security zone to
provide civilian populations with security as well as preserve the
security of states, was a failure in Bosnia and Herzegovina under Security
Resolution 836, which established the so-called safe areas. Broadly
speaking, neither the integrity and security of states in the modern,
democratic, tolerant, multiethnic sense nor of their constituent peoples
survived in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia. There is no
better example than Bosnia of the need to combine the protection of
distinct social communities "nationalities," in the Soviet sense
and the security of the subsuming state structure. And we have learned
that comprehensive prevention is the most effective strategy for achieving
this critical balance between the security of states and peoples.
Admittedly, the security of states comes first, as only a strong state
configuration can ensure respect for human and minority rights and the
rule of law and democratic principles, and hence the identity and security
of people. </P>
<CENTER><B><FONT SIZE="+1">A NEW INITIATIVE TO ADDRESS REGIONAL CIVILIAN
DISPLACEMENT</FONT></B></CENTER>
<P>Comprehensive preventive strategies, therefore, are another name,
perhaps the best synonym, of security. In an effort to provide more
preventive strategies, an ambitious attempt at learning lessons from the
former Yugoslavia and addressing a variety of forms of involuntary
population movements as well as preventing their occurrence in and around
the territory of the former Soviet Union has been taking place. The
process has led to the convening of an international conference in Geneva
on the entire gamut of population movements in CIS and neighboring
countries. The conference was organized by a joint Secretariat composed of
UNHCR, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), through its
Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights based here in Warsaw.
The conference was attended by all 12 CIS countries, 70 other interested
states, 30 international organizations, and 77 international and national
non-governmental organizations (NGOs). States addressed sensitive problems
related to all forms of migratory movements from a humanitarian angle, but
also attempted to deal for the first time with the root causes of those
problems, which are historical, social, economic, as well as political. In
this sense, the approach was comprehensive, with a particular focus on
prevention. </P>
<P>One of the major topics of discussion was the CIS countries, where
various types of major population movements have taken place during recent
years. Population displacements have been caused by conflicts, such as
those in Tajikistan, Chechnya, Georgia, and Abkhazia, as well as conflict
between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Large numbers of so called Formerly
Deported Peoples under Stalin have been returning to their former places
of residence, for example, the Crimean Tatars are returning to Ukraine and
the Meskhetian Turks are on their way to Georgia from Central Asia. Up to
three million Russians have also been moving to the Russian Federation
from neighboring countries, due to cultural, economic, or social
insecurity and various other reasons. Displacements caused by
technological or ecological disasters, such as Chernobyl and the Aral Sea,
have been quite serious. In addition, thousands of persons coming from
other regions have sought asylum in the CIS countries, and large numbers
of illegal migrants have crisscrossed those countries. These movements
have often been accompanied by various criminal activities human, drug,
and arms trafficking as is chronically the case in Central Asia, largely a
result of the never ending war in Afghanistan. </P>
<P>While population movements in the CIS were a focus of the conference,
participants understood that there are broader security implications in
the region not only within the CIS, but also in the neighboring regions of
unmanaged population displacement and migration already known to have
involved some nine million people in the CIS countries. The Program of
Action adopted by the conference, which is uniquely action oriented,
covers a wide range of issues including the return or resettlement of
refugees, internally displaced persons or Formerly Deported Peoples, the
regulating of illegal migration, the building of legislative and
administrative capacities to deal with migratory problems, the
establishing of regional cooperation for the monitoring and early warning
of migratory movements, and various displacement prevention measures,
including promotion of legislation and state behavior that is conducive to
balanced cultural rights, citizenship entitlements, and built-in conflict
prevention and resolution. The underlying objective of the program is to
achieve an agreement among states to improve the lives of displaced people
in the CIS region and to reduce tensions that might lead to further
displacement. In other words, the program hopes to achieve security for
both peoples and states through the resolution of displacement problems,
but particularly through their prevention, in a geographical area where
lack of such security could have devastating regional and international
consequences. </P>
<P>In addition to the Program of Action, the conference had an ancillary
benefit. The three organizations UNHCR, IOM, and OSCE that worked so
closely together with states, intergovernmental organizations, and NGOs
will continue to work together following up the conference with a view to
implementing the Program of Action. This effort is an excellent new model
of cooperation for dealing with the resolution and prevention of region
specific humanitarian problems, enhancing the work of the United Nations
and functional or regional political organizations. </P>
<CENTER><B><FONT SIZE="+1">BROADENING THE CONCEPT OF SECURITY</FONT></B></CENTER>
<P>As I conclude, I want to stress again the need to widen the notion of
<I>security</I>. While it has been broadened from a strictly political
and military sense to include economic, social, and environmental
stability, I believe it should now be further widened to include security
of peoples it should take the human dimension into account. In this
regard, I welcome the OSCE's inclusion of the problems of forced
population displacements among the parameters of the future European
Security Architecture. </P>
<P>As we have unfortunately witnessed in the recent past, the mass
uprooting of certain populations for ethnic, cultural, religious, or
linguistic reasons has become a predominant cause of war. In today's
world, there can be no security for states without ensuring the security
of peoples, and vice versa. </P>
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