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Peace Support Operations and Humanitarian Action: A Conference Report
Oxford University
Oxford Center for International Studies
Conference Sponsors
Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (Canada) - International Security Bureau
Canadian International Development Agency - International Humanitarian Assistance
Canadian Centre for Foreign Policy Development - John Holmes Fund
Department of National Defence (Canada) - Security and Defence Forum
Centre for International Studies, Oxford University
Lester B. Pearson Chair in International Relations, Oxford University
Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, Dalhousie University
Office of the President, Dalhousie University
Conference Report:
- Introduction
- Root Causes
- The Meaning of Humanitarianism
- The Roles of the Military
- Dilemmas of Peace Support Operations
- Humanitarian Intervention
- Politics and Humanitarian Action
- The Political Impacts and Ethical Implications of Peace Support and Humanitarian Action
- Politics and Coordination
- Regional Initiatives in Peace Support Operations
- Conclusion
Conference Report
The end of the Cold War in the late 1980s has been accompanied by a significant increase in international and internal conflicts. A number of these conflicts occasioned complex humanitarian emergencies. 1 The results are evident in the dramatic increase in the number of refugees **displaced by** conflict. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), whereas in 1987 the total number of refugees was 12.4 million, by 1993 it had reached 18.2 million. 2
The resolution of the bipolar confrontation between the United States and the USSR in world politics and at the United Nations (UN), however, also opened new possibilities for international cooperation in the management and resolution of conflict. The result has been a dramatic increase in international efforts to respond to both the emergencies and the conflicts that gave rise to them. With regard to the first, "the activities and budgets of the international agencies and NGOs concerned with humanitarian action in situations of war and internal conflict reached an unprecedentedly high level in the early 1990s". By 1993, total annual humanitarian expenditure was estimated at $(US)7.2 billion. 3 In terms of the conflicts that contributed to the emergencies, the United Nations averaged 15 resolutions passed and 5 vetoed from 1945-1988. By 1990, the number had reached 37, and Security Council activity peaked in 1993 with 93 resolutions passed and one vetoed (by Russia). The frequent usage of the term "humanitarian" in the resolutions of the 1990s suggested an evolving perception in the Council that a humanitarian emergency was a clear threat to international peace and security. 4
This perception was accompanied by an expansion in the understanding of the role of multilateral forces in conflict situations from traditional peacekeeping (mandates under Chapter VI of the Charter, and involving the interposition of lightly armed forces between parties to a conflict in which a ceasefire had been achieved, highly restrictive rules of engagement, neutrality, consent of the parties) towards preventive deployment (Macedonia), the erosion of consent (Northern Iraq), deployment in active conflicts or ones in which ceasefires were unstable (Bosnia-Herzegovina), and more robust rules of engagement (Somalia). Mandates have also expanded to include humanitarian functions such as protection of assistance providers and victims, convoying of relief, direct delivery of relief, the supply of intelligence and security information to humanitarian agencies, and on occasion the direct delivery of humanitarian assistance.
This was frequently accompanied by the deliberate (Northern Iraq, Somalia) or inadvertent (Georgia) abandonment of impartiality, direct action against one or another side in the conflict in question (Bosnia-Herzegovina and Somalia) and the addition of Chapter VII (peace enforcement) dimensions to Chapter VI activities (e.g. sanctions and the limited use of force by associated forces as occurred in the former Yugoslavia). In the euphoric conditions of the end of the Cold War, however, no challenge seemed too large; the Agenda for Peace 5 and associated academic literature 6 set out a new, ambitious and seemingly coherent military and humanitarian agenda of preventive diplomacy, peace-making and peace-building to complement the peace-keeping tradition.
However, the mixing of humanitarian and military roles, and the interpenetration of Chapter VI and Chapter VII military functions, have raised new challenges for the two previously largely distinct communities. Humanitarians and soldiers operate within very different cultures and subscribe to different values. They possess fundamentally different organisational structures. On the one hand, organisation in the humanitarian community tends to be horizontal and pluralistic, reflecting the tendency of agencies to prize their autonomy. Authority is a matter of continual negotiation. On the other hand, military organisation is hierarchical, and the lines of authority are comparatively unambiguous. These two very different communities have had to learn to cooperate.
The conditions for such learning have been less than ideal. The conflicts of the 1990s have posed a number of great difficulties for responding international governmental, multilateral and non-governmental actors. First, they have been largely intra- rather than inter-state. 7 This immediately underlined the tension between the imperatives of international humanitarian law and Article 2(7) of the United Nations Charter on sovereignty and domestic jurisdiction.
Second, many of the conflicts have had an important ethnic dimension which eroded the principles of discrimination and proportionality in war. The ethnic element has profoundly complicated not merely the settlement of the conflict in question, but also the response of international actors. In particular, it has profoundly politicised the delivery of assistance to communities targeted in such conflict. 8
Third, the conflicts have occurred frequently in weak or failing states. This context was partly responsible for the humanitarian emergency to begin with, since the incapacity of the state to provide public goods is an important factor underlying the necessity of an international response. Moreover, the incapacity of the state to provide a modicum of security in areas of humanitarian emergency greatly complicated the response to the emergency while posing substantial and multidimensional problems of post-conflict economic reconstruction and political development.
This is linked to a fourth set of factors pertaining to the military situation on the ground: there was often little peace to keep. Ceasefires, where they existed, were unstable. Front lines were poorly established and constantly shifting. Weapons were widely spread through the population and theatre. Local chains of command were frequently loose, with central authorities having little control over units in the field which were frequently indistinguishable from simple bandits. In such conditions, consent was a distinctly perishable commodity at the tactical and operational levels. Many of the conflicts spawned groups with a stake in their protraction. Violence rooted itself within the society, posing severe problems associated with demobilisation and reintegration of combatants.
Despite these difficulties, there have been a number of successes in the 1990s. The involvement of peacekeepers, UN civilian personnel and non-governmental assistance providers in Cambodia's transition from civil war to recovery contributed to a dramatic improvement in the conditions facing the victims of civil conflict while giving that country the opportunity for a return to normality. The combination of peacekeeping, peace-building and humanitarian and development assistance gave the states of Central America a real opportunity to move beyond their civil wars. Peacekeepers and humanitarians played an invaluable role in assisting Mozambique to move beyond the 20 years of civil conflict that had afflicted it since independence in 1975.
However, these successes have been rather fragile in many instances, as has been underlined by the recent deterioration in Cambodia, where Hun Sen recently deposed his co-Prime Minister, and defeated the latter's forces in a new bout of civil conflict. Moreover, in a number of cases the results which were achieved by the international community were less than those desired. The almost instantaneous portrayal of catastrophe via a globalised media has tended to evoke precipitate and ill-conceived responses, at least in those situations that attracted the attention of tele-journalists. Governments have faced an imperative to act, and to act before appropriate planning could be undertaken. In contrast, in those circumstances that failed to attract attention and/or did not engage the political interests or domestic constituencies of major powers, little international reaction was forthcoming. This selectivity has raised troubling ethical and legal questions, since the humanitarian imperative is universal.
Involvement in these emergencies has tended to put international civilian and military personnel in harm's way. The combination of a selective imperative to respond and caution with regard to costs and casualties has produced mandates that have frequently been insufficient to address the situation on the ground, and resources that are insufficient to address the mandates. The challenges encountered by forces deployed in situations that changed rapidly contributed to mission creep without a commensurate increase in resources. Inadequacies in protection have left victim populations at risk, particularly since the community of states has evinced a growing desire to ensure that the large populations affected by humanitarian emergencies remain in or near the conflict zones.
Humanitarian supplies have fallen, deliberately or inadvertently, into the hands of belligerents, raising the question of whether international involvement prolonged the conflict. Enforcement actions by forces based outside the theatre of action have imperilled peacekeepers on the ground within the theatre. Assistance extended to the populations affected by prolonged and frozen conflicts raised the spectre of relief dependence. The international community in many instances has proved incapable of promoting the transition from dependence to sustainable self-sufficiency. The result has been extreme difficulty in moving from emergency response to political and economic normalisation. The interaction between humanitarian and military communities has revealed serious problems in the relationship. As well, the multiplicity of variegated actors involved in humanitarian action and peace support has raised severe problems of coordination and associated waste.
In terms of the military dimension of peace-support operations, the unusually demanding circumstances of intra-state conflict in weak states have accentuated problems of interoperability, communications, and tension between the very different military traditions of contributing states. The latter has been further exacerbated by the inclusion of forces from a number of states with little experience of peacekeeping and with military traditions which emphasise war-fighting (e.g., the great powers, and notably the United States). The new (for them) challenges of peace-support operations have dictated rapid change in doctrine and operational art, and complicated their fulfilment of more traditional missions.
The experiences in Somalia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda and the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (formerly Zaire) have underlined the complexity of the task that the international community has set itself. Painful experiences in these operations have had a serious effect on the will of the major powers to respond, as was evident in the abortive deployment in Haiti in 1993, the slowness of international reaction to clear evidence of genocide in Rwanda in 1994, and the difficulties the Canadian government faced in assembling a multinational force for Eastern Zaire in 1996. More generally, circumspection and disillusion are evident in the declining funds dedicated to humanitarian response, the reduction in numbers of new peacekeeping and other peace-related operations, and in the number of Security Council resolutions in the last half of the 1990s. This in turn has exacerbated the problem of selectivity alluded to earlier. 9
The stakes involved in humanitarian response, and the involvement of peacekeepers and assistance providers in an array of successes and failures in the 1990s, invite analysis of the performance of international actors in complex emergencies and identification of the lessons which have been learned from these experiences. The experiences of the 1990s suggest that the euphoria at the end of the Cold War was misplaced. A substantial case study literature has evolved, 10 but, as yet, there has been little systematic effort to identify cumulative lessons from this collection of experiences.
The issue of military-humanitarian response to complex emergencies has obvious practical importance. However, it is also a subject of great interest to scholars in international relations. It poses in stark terms the tension between statism and pluralism on the one hand, and universal values and global solidarism on the other. The wide range of state and non-state actors involved in humanitarian response raises important questions about the role of the state in international relations. Some argue that this is evidence of a ceding of authority by the state upward to multilateral institutions and downward to non-governmental organisations. Others take the view that humanitarian action can be explained almost completely in statist terms. The advocacy efforts of transnational and non-governmental organisations, meanwhile, raise important questions about the autonomy of national interest and the degree to which its social construction is a product of "communitarian" forces that transcend state borders.
With these pressing considerations in mind, the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies at Dalhousie University and the Centre for International Studies at Oxford University began to plan for a summer seminar that would evaluate the experiences of the 1990s with two objectives. The first objective was to examine the effectiveness of humanitarian responses in the post-Cold War era, to identify strengths and weaknesses, and to derive lessons that might be relevant to actors involved in future humanitarian responses, including the military community. The second objective was to identify areas where further, more focused, research (as well as teaching and training) was appropriate. The seminar was to be an exercise in agenda-setting for future research endeavours. For this reason, the conception of the activity was intentionally broad.
In the meantime, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (Canada) (DFAIT) was itself already involved in a "lessons learned" exercise following the attempt to mount a multinational force (MNF) in Eastern Zaire in response to the deepening crisis facing Rwandan refugees in the Great Lakes region occasioned by the military campaign of the Banyemelenge against Zairean forces and their militant Hutu allies controlling the refugee camps. This effort had highlighted serious and growing problems of coordination among state actors, conflicts of political interest among the major players, and difficulties in relating mandates to the demands of the situation on the ground. The Canadian government reacted to this experience with a serious effort of self-examination with a view to facilitating more effective international response should a similar situation arise in the future. Amongst the numerous activities associated with this effort, DFAIT organised a small meeting in Toronto in cooperation with York University's Centre for Strategic and International Studies. Foreign Affairs had planned a second, larger, meeting to address broader issues related to the military-civilian interface in humanitarian action to be held at some point in the summer of 1997. DFAIT's objectives were fairly tightly focused on the role of the military in humanitarian response and on the derivation of concrete lessons for policy makers from recent experiences of humanitarian action.
Members of the Dalhousie/Oxford organising team were invited to the meeting at York University and it was decided that the two projects should be combined. The meeting at the Maritime Warfare Centre in Halifax in early August was the result. This report represents the perspective of the Dalhousie/Oxford organisers on the conference and in particular those of the rapporteur, who bears full responsibility for what follows. 11
The Dalhousie conference organisers would like to express their appreciation to the Department of Foreign Affairs for its major funding of this activity, for its central role in refining the agenda, and for its substantial assistance in identifying participants and arranging for their participation. We are also grateful to the Department of National Defence for the use of the conference facility at the Maritime Warfare Centre and for logistical support, as well as for a supplementary contribution from the Department's Security and Defence Forum. The Canadian International Development Agency also provided significant financial support for the conference and the presence of a number of its senior personnel greatly enhanced the proceedings. We would also like to acknowledge support from the Canadian Centre for Foreign Policy Development's John Holmes Fund. Finally, the success of the conference was due in considerable measure to the guidance of Ralph Lysyshyn and to the indefatigable efforts of Mike Elliott, both of DFAIT. I should like to recognise the essential role of Don Hubert in orchestrating the Dalhousie end of the conference, and of Katie Orr and her colleagues in assisting him. Both Mike Elliott and Don Hubert made important contributions to the substance of the conference as well; the former in producing a very useful background paper on lessons learned and the latter in providing a persuasive analysis of the mines problem in post-conflict transition.
This conference represented the first substantial collaboration between the Lester B. Pearson Professorship at Oxford University and the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies at Dalhousie University. Its success owes much to the Director of the Dalhousie Centre, Professor Tim Shaw. It has laid the basis for a substantial and long-term relationship between these two universities in general and their international relations units in particular.
Although the presentations made at the conference were uniformly strong and thus there might be reason to follow them explicitly in this report, limitations of time and space suggest that a thematic approach is preferable. Several important issues dominated the conference and occasioned substantial debate. First was the issue of root causes of humanitarian emergencies and the relationship between humanitarian action and development. Second was the meaning of humanitarian action. Third was the question of humanitarian intervention and the role of the military in humanitarian action. Fourth were the dilemmas raised for humanitarian actors in peace-support operations. Fifth was the issue of "humanitarian intervention". Sixth was the relationship between politics and humanitarian action, and the political consequences of the latter. Seventh was the question of coordination. And eighth was the role of regional bodies in peace-support and humanitarian action.
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Emerging from the papers, presentations and discussions was a widespread feeling that the international humanitarian and military responses to complex emergencies generally were one-off affairs which devoted little attention to the roots of these situations. Too much focus on the immediate dimensions of the crisis diverted attention from the more profound factors that produced them. Humanitarian crises are a product of a combination of factors specific to the given situation (e.g., contradictions in social structure, the failure of states, economic crisis, demographic pressure and so on), but which also reflect broader structural characteristics of the international political economy (e.g., structural adjustment, trends in the terms of trade, and the insufficient allocation of resources to development). Many people at the conference felt in fact that complex emergencies reflected, in part at least, the failure of development or the unsustainability of any development which had occurred. In a related vein, a number of participants suggested that the increasing diversion of development resources to relief in emergencies (ironically) enhanced the likelihood that such situations would be repeated. Others, while accepting the importance of root causes, expressed concern that excessive emphasis upon them deflected attention from analysis of the difficulties of responding to complex emergencies, a subject worthy of attention in its own right. Furthermore, one presentation stressed the importance of effective transition, and in particular the creation or recreation of effective state structures, as an element of successful exit strategies, suggesting that specifically military/political problems cannot be divorced from the underlying conditions that created the emergency in the first place.
In this connection, it was widely agreed among participants that the idea of a simple "continuum" of chronological development from emergency relief to development was not useful. Development and reconstruction activities generally proceed (or should proceed) in conjunction with relief. Given the difficulties of resolving many of the conflicts to which the international community has responded in the 1990s, and the consequent protraction of crisis, it is unrealistic to wait for the post-conflict phase before attempting to make the transition to "peace-building" and development.
The issue of causes pertains not only to the origins of complex emergencies, but also to their protraction. One source of the prolongation of crisis is the emergence of many groups in the affected society with a vested interest in the continuation of the abnormal situation. Warlords and bandit groups have substantial capability to interfere with both political settlement and the delivery of humanitarian assistance. Many of them have taken advantage of the collapse of order to make substantial gains from smuggling and from the expropriation of the limited remaining productive sectors of the economy. A number of conference participants pointed out that warlords/bandits have been assisted in this by their relations with multinational corporations, some of which are willing to purchase raw materials produced or extracted from areas under the control of insurgent groups. Charles Taylor, for example, benefited handsomely from the export of timber and diamonds from areas in Liberia under his control. UNITA likewise financed its continuation of the war effort in Angola through the marketing of that country's diamond production through the channels of foreign private corporations. The profits allowed its members to sustain the conflict and this in turn prolonged its effects on victim populations. Indeed, to some extent, the capacity of groups in conflict to survive is facilitated by the delivery of relief, since humanitarian actors are often obliged to purchase access to vulnerable populations. In this respect, humanitarian actors themselves are arguably complicit in the prolongation of crisis, an issue revisited below.
Another disturbing dimension of the role of multinationals in complex emergencies is the privatisation of violence the growing role of private security firms, such as Executive Outcomes, in support of one or another party to a local conflict. Increasing numbers of African governments are contracting with such firms for the provision of security and training of local forces. The companies are being paid with mining and other concessions in the country in question.
This has several disturbing implications. In the first place, these actors have little understanding of or training in international humanitarian law; they are not accountable in the same way as are international forces active in zones of conflict. To the extent that they alter local balances, moreover, they may sustain conflict rather than contribute to its resolution. Discussions at the conference identified a need for greater accountability on the part of private actors involved in complex emergencies and for greater efforts by the home governments of such companies to ensure responsible behaviour.
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The Meaning of Humanitarianism
Any discussion of humanitarian response presumes a settled understanding of what the concept of humanitarian action means. However, despite the accumulating experience of collaboration among the groups of actors responding to humanitarian emergencies, there remain considerable differences with regard to the nature of humanitarian action, particularly as this relates to the role of the military. At one end of the spectrum is the perspective of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) which views the concept in unambiguous terms as rooted in international humanitarian law. Thus, for the ICRC, humanitarianism refers to the right of the individual to the protection of physical and moral integrity and his/her consequent right to assistance, to the duty of the authorities in the jurisdiction under consideration to accept such assistance and the obligation of others to provide it. A focus on human need is necessary to retain political impartiality, which in turn is required for effective and equitable delivery of relief.
At the other end of the spectrum is the view that the peace-making activities of the United Nations are the highest form of humanitarianism, since peace is the prerequisite for the normalisation of the lives of the victims of conflict, and security is necessary for effective delivery of humanitarian assistance. In the middle of this dichotomy are those who suggest that humanitarianism should include efforts to prevent crimes against human beings and bring to justice those responsible for humanitarian crimes notably genocide even where such actions involve the employment of force.
Most in the group felt that humanitarian action must include protection (referring particularly to the human rights of refugees and displaced persons) as well as assistance, although it was widely accepted that the term has been abused and that greater precision of definition and use of the term was desirable.
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The basic problem here aside from the very different cultures and ethos of military and civilian, UN and NGO actors is that association with the military may compromise the impartiality of humanitarians, endangering them in the field and politicising their efforts. These problems are all the more severe when peace enforcement missions are associated with humanitarian responses.
There is a wide range of opinion on this subject. At one end of the spectrum of opinion is the Agenda for Peace view that humanitarian action should be fully integrated in multidimensional peace-related operations that also include military and political aspects. Relief is thus one component of a much broader strategy of stabilisation. Cambodia was cited as an example of this approach. In the middle of the spectrum of opinion is the view that military and humanitarian operations should be insulated need is necone from another. According to this perspective, the mandates of the specialised agencies should be recognised and protected from the compromising involvement of the military, although the two types of activity should be coordinated towards the broader objectives of conflict resolution and normalisation. And at the other end of the spectrum is the ICRC perspective that humanitarian operations should proceed independently from the political and security activities of military forces. According to this perspective, the nature and objectives of the two types of activity are different and mixing them would compromise the humanitarian imperative. Even here, however, the desirability of limited cooperation (e.g., the sharing of information) was recognised.
Beyond this, much time at the conference was spent considering more specific issues relating to military participation in the response to a humanitarian crisis. The functions of military forces in complex emergencies have included the fostering of a secure environment for threatened civilians, providing intelligence and security information to humanitarian actors, protecting delivery activities, and delivering humanitarian assistance. (This list of functions leaves aside the proposition that the contribution of military forces to making peace is itself a humanitarian activity.) The issue of appropriate roles for the military extends into the areas of bridging and development. De-mining is frequently seen as a post-conflict activity, but (following the logic of the rejection of a unilinear "continuum") there is a need for it during active phases of conflict and emergency as well. Thus, the military forces already in the area could be used for de-mining operations. They are there and they have relevant skills.
These potential roles raise important issues of principle and practice. In terms of principles, there is the concern that the involvement of military forces in humanitarian roles, particularly when international military forces are also engaged in enforcement actions, may jeopardise the activities of assistance providers. In this context, some hold the view that there should be no military involvement in the delivery of humanitarian assistance at all. In terms of practice, there are the obvious points that military forces are costlier to transport and more expensive to maintain in the field than are civilian humanitarian efforts.
Conference participants expressed the view that there is a role for the military in the provision of security, and there was some support for military involvement in the areas of logistics, communications and intelligence. Most conference participants felt that there is a need for the more efficient pooling of intelligence from national sources. In the area of logistics, where cheaper options (e.g., the use of chartered aircraft for transport) are available, it is cost-effective to use them. However, given the difficulty of obtaining insurance for civilian transport in dangerous conditions, there are some instances in which the use of military forces unconstrained by this problem would fill an important gap.
Most also accepted the necessity of a protection role for the military. However, it was widely agreed that, for protection to be effective, military forces needed credibility a reality of coercive force on the ground.
It was generally agreed that military forces are not ideal for police functions, and that there needs to be a greater emphasis on civilian police (CIVPOL) in peace-support operations, and some consideration of how to increase the availability of civilian police resources for these operations.
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Dilemmas of Peace-Support Operations
The experience of military involvement in humanitarian responses to complex emergencies during the 1990s suggests a number of generic problems in these multilateral actions. At the strategic level, perhaps the most basic problem has been the fact that the mandates proffered by the UN Security Council have frequently fallen short of what is necessary to implement both humanitarian and peace-building functions. This has frequently been accompanied by a reluctance to provide the resources necessary to fulfil envisaged mandates.
Perhaps the classic case here was that of Rwanda, where the Security Council reduced the allocation of troops to UNAMIR while the Secretariat failed to provide adequate financial and administrative support to get the mission established on the ground. Moreover, during the period under consideration, the Security Council often combined peacekeeping or humanitarian mandates with peace-enforcement missions. The former relied to some extent on a perception of impartiality. The latter undermined that perception, creating serious problems in relations with parties against whom enforcement was aimed, as was evident both in UNPROFOR and in UNOSOMII. It could also foster tension between the Security Council and the troop-contributing countries, as was obvious in the case of UNPROFOR. In some instances, the Council has been reluctant to adjust mandates to changing conditions on the ground. The case of Rwanda comes to mind. When new functions were added (mission creep), the Council often failed to allocate additional resources sufficient to fulfil them, as in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
All of these problems reflect the deeply political quality of decision-making on peace-support operations, and notably the fact that although "in the midst of a humanitarian crisis, members of the international community generally concur that some form of action must be taken, each member of a coalition ... may have divergent interests, dissimilar capabilities and differing perceptions of events on the ground". 12 These issues are treated further below. Here it suffices to note that the use of the MNF variant as opposed to standard peace-support operations under the strategic authority of the Security Council does not fully address this problem, since authority for an MNF resides in a steering group that may reflect the same tensions and contradictions, and which is often constructed on an ad hoc basis under very severe time constraints. As was apparent from discussion of the case of Eastern Zaire, the need to improvise a decision-making structure at short notice complicated the mission.
Also at the strategic level, the experience of the 1990s thus far has suggested that there are real problems in responding quickly to developing crises. Early warning is not as serious a problem as it is often considered to be. There have been, however, significant difficulties in translating early warning into effective and timely action, as was so obvious in Rwanda in 1994.
At the operational level, experience in the 1990s has highlighted problems of interoperability, particularly in the area of communications, as the deaths of American Rangers in Somalia in 1993 amply displays. The cases analysed at the conference also underlined the unevenness of the quality of force contingents thus, for example, some units deployed to the former Yugoslavia arrived unarmed and without appropriate clothing for the theatre. The cases of the 1990s have also suggested a much greater need for substantial, thorough intelligence available in real time or close to it, and have underlined the deficiencies of current UN intelligence capabilities. Matters were also complicated in these operations by the lack of regularised standard operating procedures, rules of engagement and status of forces agreements, and by the tendency for national contingents to operate within two different chains of command (the UN and the home government).
The final operational issue worthy of note is the complexity of the overall relationship between military and civilian actors. The large numbers of actors, their very different natures and cultures, and their considerable independence from one another greatly complicate military activities in peace-support operations. Until recently, military forces had little experience of systematic coordination with the UN agencies and non-governmental organisations. They have had to learn how to manage these relations on the fly, with mixed results.
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The role of the military is related to the concept of "humanitarian" intervention. In particular it involves the use of force by the international community within the domestic jurisdiction of particular states, without their full consent. This force would be used in situations in which these states are creating or tolerating, or are incapable of effectively responding to, humanitarian crisis. It is in this context that the tension between state-centric and solidarist perspectives on international relations are most visible.
Here too, there was considerable variation in the positions articulated at the conference. From the perspective of the purist, "humanitarian intervention" is an oxymoron, since humanitarian action is by definition apolitical, while intervention is by definition political. (This will be discussed in more detail below.) Moreover, the association of the two concepts delegitimises the first, and complicates humanitarian response. To the extent that any international humanitarian action is self-consciously associated with particular political purposes, it jeopardises impartiality and complicates the response to urgent human need. On the other hand, some have argued that the humanitarian focus of the 1990s has obscured important political questions. There was broad agreement within the group that some practices by states or within them were so egregious that the international community had an obligation to intervene to stop them, rather than attempting to deal impartially with their consequences.
Uncertainty remains, however, about where the threshold is located. The difficulty of defining universal thresholds is evident in the unevenness of response to humanitarian crises. Why, for example, did the international community intervene in northern Iraq, but not in southern Sudan? Some participants felt that this problem could be addressed through the explicit identification of triggers for automatic Security Council review. The obvious (albeit extreme) candidate here was evidence of genocide. The problem with the identification of such triggers is, of course, that key actors in the process, who are perhaps reluctant to intervene, might resist the notion that the threshold had been passed. The resistance of Security Council members to the invocation of genocide as a description of events in Rwanda in 1994 because recognition of genocide arguably creates an obligation to act is a case in point. In short, the definition of relatively clear criteria for humanitarian intervention is no substitute for political will. Beyond this, some participants emphasised that whatever the circumstances some members of the UN take the view that internal conflict does not fall within the purview of the Security Council. They argue that UN-sanctioned intervention in internal conflict is a violation of state sovereignty.
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Politics and Humanitarian Action
Underlying much of the discussion of the above issues at the conference was the theme of politics and political interest in humanitarian action. Some conference participants expressed the view that humanitarian action and politics should not, or cannot, be mixed. Humanitarian action is a moral and legal obligation. In this sense, there are no "dilemmas". However, in the view of other participants, this is problematic, for the following reasons: (1) humanitarian response involves political motivations; (2) the interaction among humanitarian actors (IGOs, NGOs, states) is in part political in character (see the discussion of coordination below); and (3) however pure the motives of humanitarian (and military) actors, their actions have political consequences.
In the area of motivation, the failure of mandates adequately to address problems in the field was ascribed in part to the caution of the Security Council in the design of responses to complex situations. This, like the unevenness of international response in general, was deemed to reflect a lack of political will in situations in which the vital interests of major powers are not at stake. The lack of will is reflected also in the gap between the tasks defined in mandates and the resources committed to their implementation. This gap was perhaps most strikingly clear in the case of Rwanda, but was of crucial importance in Angola and Bosnia-Herzegovina, as the case studies presented at the conference illustrated. It also accounted for the lack of staying power in situations that turned out to carry greater than anticipated human costs. The obvious example here was the United States (and subsequently UN) withdrawal from Somalia in 1993-4.
Much of the explanation for these deficiencies resides in the calculation of government interest. The interests of governments are derived from two arenas: the international and the domestic. The essential question with regard to the first is what problems and threats to the state are generated by the circumstances creating, and the consequences resulting from, a humanitarian emergency. For example, the international intervention in the Gulf in 1990-1 was produced in considerable measure by the perceived threat that Iraqi action against Kuwait posed to energy exports from the region. The associated humanitarian intervention in northern Iraq was a product, at least in part, of the threat posed by substantial forced migration of Kurds into Turkey, a NATO ally. Likewise, American action in Haiti in 1994 was partially derived from the problems posed by large-scale Haitian migration to the United States, and the difficulties that it experienced in the effort to stem the tide. This last example illustrates that, although the admixture of political interest to humanitarian action is generally seen to be negative, it may induce a level of international response greater than would have occurred in its absence.
At the domestic level of analysis, two factors are important. The first is that a humanitarian crisis creates substantial public pressure on democratic governments to respond to do something in the face of misery that most human beings find unacceptable. The media and NGOs play a substantial role in transmitting this imperative into domestic politics. This imperative has grown stronger with time as the media have become more efficient in real time delivery of information and commentary, and NGOs have become more effective in domestic, as well as global, advocacy.
The other domestic factor is the sensitivity to potential casualties arising out of peace-support operations. Governments of democratic states have considerable difficulty in justifying the losses of their men and women in conflicts in which the vital interests of the state are not at stake. This factor is particularly telling in the United States. Its intensity was evident in the public and governmental responses to the deaths of American servicemen in Somalia in 1993. And it explains in large measure the reluctance of the United States to commit ground forces in peace-support operations.
From a policy perspective, the problem is that these two domestically generated impulses are contradictory. The first dictates rapid engagement, and the second obstructs the development of mandates and the deployment of resources sufficient for the purpose. The results are the deficit of will that was so frequently mentioned by conference participants, and levels and patterns of response that failed to resolve the conflicts to which the international community was reacting. In such circumstances, military and civilian actors in the field face the danger of being scapegoated for failure on the political front.
It was noted, however, that the problem is not completely intractable. Definitions of interest are social constructs. They evolve in response to changing perceptions among leaders of risk, cost and gain. To the extent that the media and NGOs are effective in developing and broadening constituencies for humanitarian action in the domestic politics of key states, one might expect the level of support for humanitarian action to grow and, hence, the level of leadership risk associated with inaction to increase. Likewise, levels of sensitivity to casualties vary between states and across time. This suggests that while reflecting different historical experiences and political cultures these may respond to careful information policies. Public opinion is not set in stone; it can be shaped.
Moreover, it was pointed out that leaders are not simply passive respondents to the various political currents they encounter. Much depends not merely on the risks they face, but also on their attitude to risk. Public attitudes towards policy, at least in part, are a product of leadership agenda-setting and issue definition. In this context, the uneven response to recent humanitarian crises may have reflected excessive caution and failures of leadership as much as it did the complex and contradictory situations leaders faced. As one participant put it, the real solution to complex emergencies lies in political sagacity.
It seems evident that leaders' definitions of interest and their political will are both variable and sensitive to pressures generated from the external and the domestic environments. This suggests that they can be changed by interested groups. In this respect, the natural alliance between the media and humanitarian NGOs, in which the media plays the role of witness not merely to tragedy but also to the efforts of humanitarians to cope with suffering, is of particular importance. It is, of course, also true that it has its problems. Media (and particularly television) response to complex emergency is often sensationalistic, sporadic and selective. For example, although media coverage of Bosnia-Herzegovina has been substantial and enduring, there was almost no coverage of contemporaneous crises in Angola and southern Sudan. In other words, the media may render the already serious problem of selectivity of response even more severe. It is often the case that the use of star reporters parachuted in at key moments of a crisis lends an air of superficiality to the analysis and reportage of events on the ground. Finally, there is a clear incentive for NGOs to compete for coverage and to manipulate its content, since getting in front of the camera has important implications for the funding of field operations.
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The Political Impacts and Ethical Implications of Peace-Support and Humanitarian Action
The discussion in the previous section raises a second dimension of the political dilemmas of humanitarian action. Whether motives are political or apolitical, humanitarian action has important unintended political consequences in the field, particularly in the conflict conditions of the 1990s. The delivery of assistance sustains populations involved in the conflict. Negotiating access to those in need may require giving a share to parties to the conflict. The protection of minority populations in safety zones conflicts with the military/political objectives of those seeking to push them out of their places of residence. The combination of "neutral" peacekeeping operations and non-neutral enforcement actions directed against one or another party erodes the impartiality of the peace effort as a whole and jeopardises the safety of lightly armed peacekeeping units on the ground. And to the extent that assistance providers rely on international military support for logistics or protection, their neutrality is also drawn into question. When international military personnel are perceived by the parties to be partial, their role in direct delivery of assistance implicates the humanitarian effort as a whole. Such problems are exacerbated by the tendency of local parties and recipient populations to perceive international involvement in undifferentiated terms. Military or civilian, IGO or NGO, Chapter VI or Chapter VII are distinctions which are not easily grasped and which are considered unimportant by the players on the ground.
This has led some to conclude that there is no such thing as a neutral humanitarian action in conditions of active conflict. Beyond this, some in the group questioned whether neutrality is a desirable objective when guilt is clear. Indeed, one might argue in this context that the effort to sustain neutrality in such conditions impedes the normalisation of the situation in question. Whatever one's view on this subject, it is difficult to disagree with the observation in the DFAIT position paper which states that:
The tendency to view crises only in terms of the humanitarian element has significantly complicated strategic decision-making in recent peace support operations. A common shortcoming has been the failure to recognise the linkages between humanitarian mandates and political consequences. 13
There are also important ethical dimensions to these political dilemmas. In situations where there is insufficient resolve to produce sensible mandates, and to back them with the requisite resources, the results could well be politically dysfunctional as well as damaging in humanitarian terms. It is at least plausible, for example, that humanitarian action in some instances (e.g., the former Yugoslavia) has prolonged hostilities and therefore the suffering associated with them. The policy of creating safety zones, coupled with the unwillingness to provide forces adequate to protect them, clearly and gravely enhanced the threat to these populations. In the extreme, humanitarian action with insufficient attention to the political context in which it occurred, may worsen the political/military situation that produced the humanitarian emergency to begin with. For example, the establishment of camps in Eastern Zaire to shelter and sustain Hutu refugees from the 1994 events in Rwanda provided the ex-FAR and the Interahamwe with a platform from which to further destabilise the regional situation. This in turn set in train the course of events that produced the humanitarian crisis to which the proposed Eastern Zaire MNF initiative responded.
These examples raise the question of whether the effect (in humanitarian terms) of intervention may be as, or more, negative than that of non-intervention. One might conclude that when the commitment is weak, it might be ethically preferable to abstain from involvement. This, however, clearly runs against the spirit if not the letter of international humanitarian law.
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Political factors also complicate the coordination of humanitarian response. Five categories of actor are implicated: international governmental organisations (IGOs), donor and recipient states, and international and local non-governmental organisations (NGOs). In addition, there is the problem of the functional relationship between civilian and military bodies at all levels: within governments, in international organisations, and in the field.
Coordinating these various players not least the various agencies of the UN system is problematic at the best of times, for two reasons. First, they have very different organisational "cultures". Second, the various actors and notably the NGOs and the UN agencies value their autonomy and resist subordination. Some participants at the conference noted that there are some advantages inherent in the independence and pluralism of the NGO community i.e., it promotes creativity and flexibility in the response to demanding situations. On the other hand, jealousy over turf and competition for limited resources clearly produce less than optimal results.
The challenge is to define structures of interaction that promote effective integrated action and that also take advantage of the comparative advantage of the different strengths of the various players without sacrificing the advantages of independence, flexibility and specialisation. At one end of the spectrum of opinion are those who argue for the clear subordination of the entire military and humanitarian effort to the Special Representative of the Secretary-General. Others favour very loose cooperative structures, arguing that the advantages of independence of action outweigh those putatively associated with coordination. On the other end of the spectrum are those who for principled reasons refuse any structure of cooperation beyond basic issues such as information exchange, because this might jeopardise their impartiality.
Many at the conference felt that, despite the serious differences of perspective on this subject, significant learning has occurred. Repeated experiences of military-NGO interaction, for example, have caused some Western militaries to adjust their training and doctrine to take account of the need for cooperation and they have invited NGOs to participate in training exercises and seminars. In some instances, military cooperation with NGOs has been very smooth and positive. In others it has not. The difference between the two seems to lie in the degree to which peace-support forces established structures for regular information sharing and consultation.
It was also noted at the conference that a number of the problems of coordination within specific communities (e.g., the UN and the NGOs) could be addressed to some extent by changes in the structure of their relations. Arguably, many of the competitive excesses of NGOs could be curbed by more effective self-policing. The importance of the NGO code of conduct, and also of the development of shared professional standards, was highlighted in this context. These were part of a broader consensus that greater transparency and accountability are necessary for all organisations and groups involved in humanitarian response.
With regard to the UN, the problem has been a failure on the part of the organisation to grasp the nettle. Getting rid of the Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA) is unlikely to make much difference. What is needed is a real decision on who is to coordinate, on what powers this person or organisation needs to do so effectively, and on what should be coordinated. This raises again the question of leadership.
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Regional Initiatives in Peace-Support Operations
The issue of coordination and division of labour was linked in the discussion at the conference to consideration of the role of regional organisations and coalitions in complex emergencies. Some felt that greater emphasis on such regional responses was a partial solution to the problem of political will. It is regional actors whose interests are most at stake in these situations and, therefore, it is regional actors who are most likely to display willingness to address them. On the other hand, the many organisational, political and financial weaknesses of such organisations were noted, and some felt, particularly with regard to the recent emphasis on "African solutions to African problems", that this is a form of major power abdication of responsibility for situations they had been instrumental in creating. Most felt, however, that there was room for further exploration of the creative combination of regional and global, as well as national and local, responses to humanitarian crises.
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The conference clearly identified the main lines of philosophical disagreement and policy difference among the various humanitarian constituencies. Among the most important of these were: (1) the very meaning of "humanitarian"; (2) the nature of the military/civilian relationship and the appropriate roles of the military in humanitarian action; (3) the nature and level of coordination; and (4) the desirability and possibility of neutrality in humanitarian response to complex emergencies.
The conference also reflected a constructive deepening of the understanding of the difficulties inherent in an effective response to any humanitarian crisis. These difficulties include: (1) the problem (for both military and civilian actors) of sustaining impartiality in the field; (2) the complex linkages between humanitarian action and the context in which it proceeds; (3) the tension between Chapter VI and Chapter VII mandates and the negative consequences of attempting to mix them; (4) the difficulty of generating and sustaining political will, particularly where international response involved the possibility of substantial casualties; (5) the difficulties of achieving effective coordination of the large numbers and wide variety of actors responding to complex emergencies; and (6) the problematic relationship between relief and development and the tendency in international responses to focus on immediate symptoms rather than profound causes.
The conference also identified a number of areas in which the accumulation of experience good and bad has produced real progress. This was particularly evident in the military field at the operational level, where there are clear lessons from past experience. Among these are the importance of good intelligence, interoperability, roughly comparable levels of training of national contingents, maintaining the security of troops in unstable conditions, adapting to new missions including humanitarian ones, and maintaining close relations with and good lines of communication to civilian players in the theatre of operation. At the strategic level, lessons focus on the importance of timely response and the relationship between realities on the ground, mandates, and resources.
More broadly, the accumulation of experience has made clear the importance of focusing on root causes as well as the immediate symptoms of an emergency. Furthermore, the cases of the 1990s have pointed to the danger of draining development and peace-building resources to fund humanitarian action. Effective response to any humanitarian emergency associated with conflict requires long-term engagement. The importance of being conscious of the political dimensions of peace-support and humanitarian action is clear, as are the dangers of mismatches between mandates and resources. Many of the cases we examined pointed to the need for effective mechanisms of political management of international response and to the desirability of integrating the UN with regional responses.
Some of these lessons have been translated into practice or are currently under serious consideration. An example of the former is the gradual improvement of interaction between military and NGO actors in the field. In the latter category there is evidence of the development of a number of approaches that may address the problem of timeliness of response. Among these are the initiatives on a standing operational headquarters and a rapid reaction brigade. There is, in short, evidence of a learning process in practice as well as in analysis.
Beyond the military sphere, the problem appears to be not so much a matter of understanding, but of building on understanding to make hard choices. These choices concern, among other things, the following considerations: (1) where the line should be drawn on thresholds for humanitarian intervention and on involvement versus abstention; (2) what the appropriate limits on the role of the military in humanitarian action are; (3) how to establish accountability and transparency in NGOs and IGOs; and (4) what approach to coordination (tight and hierarchical versus loose and consultative) should be adopted. The fact that we continue to spin our wheels on these issues may reflect a deeper problem the lack of resolve to grasp the nettle.
This is related to a fundamental problem that ran through the bulk of the discussion during the conference that of political will, in particular but not only, among key state actors. The essential challenge, therefore, remains how to create the political impetus for timely, non-selective, responses to human suffering. An equally important challenge is how to transform basic consensus on the need to act, and improved understanding of the modalities of humanitarian action, into the commitment of resources, the definition of mandates, and the creation of structures that are sufficient not merely to deal with the immediate human consequences of conflict, but to foster durable settlements of them and to address the underlying social and economic factors that produce them.
A number of participants pointed to issues that had not received sufficient treatment in the conference and suggested that they might receive further, more focused, attention in other venues. These included the ethics of intervention, the issue of financial constraints on humanitarian action, and the relationship between the economic and social implications of globalisation on the one hand and humanitarian emergencies on the other.
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| CIDA | Canadian International Development Agency |
| CIVPOL | Civilian Police |
| DFAIT | Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade |
| (Canada) | |
| ICRC | International Committee of the Red Cross |
| IGO | Intergovernmental Organisation |
| IOM | International Organisation for Migration |
| MNF | Multinational Force |
| NGO | Non-governmental Organisation |
| OSCE | Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe |
| UN | United Nations |
| UNDHA | UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs |
| UNHCR | UN High Commissioner for Refugees |
| UNPROFOR | UN Protection Force (Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia) |
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Friday, 8 August, 1997
| 845 | Opening Remarks Ralph Lysyshyn, DFAIT Neil MacFarlane, Oxford and Dalhousie Universities |
| 900 | Humanitarian Action and War James Mayall, London School of Economics |
| 1100 | Military and Security Issues Chair: Ralph Lysyshyn, DFAIT |
| The Role of Peacekeeping Forces in Humanitarian Action LGen. Maurice Baril, Canadian Forces |
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| Discussant: William Durch, Stimson Center (Washington, DC) |
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| 1400 | Case Studies (1) Chair: David Black, Dalhousie University |
| Rwanda MGen. Romeo Dallaire, Canadian Forces |
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| Eastern Zaire Brian Buckley, DFAIT and Dalhousie University |
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| Discussant: James Orbinski, University of Toronto | |
| 1600 | Case Studies (2) Chair: Ralph Lysyshyn, DFAIT |
| Former Yugoslavia MGen. William Nash, US Army Albania Francesco Rausi, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Italy) Brigadier-Gen. Gian Piero Ristori, Ministry of Defence (Italy) |
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| The Transcaucasus S. Neil MacFarlane, Oxford and Dalhousie Universities |
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| Discussants: Ambassador Jan Kubis, OSCE MGen. (ret’ d) J.A. MacInnis, UNDHA |
Saturday, 9 August, 1997
| 900 | Case Studies (3) Chair: Timothy M. Shaw, Dalhousie University |
| Angola and Mozambique Assis Malaquias, St. Lawrence University |
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| Somalia Ambassador Robert B. Oakley, National Defense University (USA) |
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| Discussant: Jakobus (Jakkie) Cilliers, South African Institute for Security Studies |
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| 1100 | Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons Chair: S. Neil MacFarlane, Oxford and Dalhousie Universities |
| Dilemmas of Protection Meinrad Studer, ICRC (Geneva) |
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| Dilemmas of Repatriation Anne Willem Bijleveld, UNHCR (Washington, DC) |
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| Discussants: Ruth Archibald, DFAIT Michael Barutciski, Refugee Studies Program, Oxford University Eugenio Ambrosi, IOM, Geneva |
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| 1400 | The Politics of Humanitarian Action Chair: Ruth Archibald, DFAIT |
| Political Interest and Humanitarian Action S. Neil MacFarlane, Oxford and Dalhousie Universities |
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| The Media and International Responses Jean Pierre Langellier, Le Monde, Paris |
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| Discussants: Abdul Mohammed, Inter-Africa Group Juliet O’Neill, The Ottawa Citizen |
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| 1600 | Coordination Chair: Ralph Lysyshyn, DFAIT |
| Pluralism and Leadership: NGOs, IGOs and the Coordination Problem Michel Lefebvre, OXFAM - Quebec |
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| Military-Civilian Coordination in Complex Emergencies Chris Cushing, UN Staff College, Turin |
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| Discussants: Graham M. Day, Pearson Peacekeeping Centre, Nova Scotia Andrew Hurst, CARE Canada |
Sunday, 10 August, 1997
| 900 | From Relief to Development: Exit Strategies Chair: Carolyn McAskie, CIDA (Ottawa) |
| Military Exit Strategies William Durch, Stimson Center (Washington, DC) |
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| The Mines Problem: Military and Civilian Responses Don Hubert, Dalhousie and Brown Universities |
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| Discussant: Yvan Conoir, Université du Québec à Montré al |
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| 1100 | Humanitarian Action in Complex Emergencies: An Assessment Larry Minear, Brown University |
| 1330 | Future Dimensions of Humanitarian Emergencies: Working Groups |
| 1430 | Working Group Reports |
| 1530 | Closing Remarks S. Neil MacFarlane, Oxford and Dalhousie Universities Ralph Lysyshyn, DFAIT |
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Syed Ibne Abbas
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Pakistan
Salah Abderahman
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Egypt
Sultan Al-Qadi
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jordan
Eugenio Ambrosi
International Organization for Migration
David J.R. Angell
Permanent Mission of Canada to the United Nations
James Appathurai
Department of National Defence, Canada
Ruth Archibald
Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (Canada), Ottawa
LGen Maurice Baril
National Defence Headquarters, Canada
Michael Barutciski
Refugee Studies Programme, University of Oxford
Anne Willem Bijleveld
United Nations High Commission for Refugees, New York
David Black
Department of Political Science, Dalhousie University
Mieke Bos
Netherlands Embassy, Ottawa
Kerry Buck
Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (Canada), Ottawa
Brian Buckley
Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada (Canada), Ottawa/Dalhousie University
Ken Bush
Department of Political Studies, Queen’s University
David Charters
Centre for Conflict Studies, University of New Brunswick
John Christiansen
African Crisis Response Initiative, US Department of State
Jakobus Kamfer Cilliers
Institute for Security Studies, South Africa
Yvan Conoir
Université du Québéc à Montréal
David Cogdon
Dartmouth, Nova Scotia
Chris Cushing
International Training Centre of the United Nations, Turin
MGen Roméo Dallaire
Department of National Defence (Canada)
LCol Gord Davis
St. Margaret’s Bay, Nova Scotia
Graham M. Day
Lester B. Pearson Canadian International Peacekeeping Training Centre
Mr. Luis de Sêgovia
Embassy of Spain, Ottawa
David Dewitt
Centre for International and Security Studies, York University
Christine Dodge
Lester B. Pearson Canadian International Peacekeeping Training Centre
LCol. Haggai Dulo
Permanent Mission of Kenya to the United Nations, New York
William Durch
Stimson Centre, Washington DC
Mike Elliott
Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (Canada), Ottawa
Nigel Fisher
UNICEF, New York
Patricia Fortier
Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (Canada), Ottawa
Col. Douglas A. Fraser
Canadian Council for International Peace and Security, Ottawa
Herbert Fraser
Department Foreign Affairs and International Trade (Canada), Ottawa
Jean-Jacques Gauthier
Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (Canada), Ottawa
David Griffiths
Pendragon Applied Research, Lawrencetown, Nova Scotia
Momar Guèye
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Senegal, Dakar
Genevieve Hamilton
Australian Mission to the UN, New York
Frank Harvey
Department of Political Science, Dalhousie University
Peter Haydon
Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, Dalhousie University
John Hay
Nepean, Ontario
Amb. Helga Hernes
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway, Oslo
Col. SBH W. Heyvaert
Permanent Mission of Belgium to the United Nations, New York
Don Hubert
Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, Dalhousie University/Brown University
Andrew Hurst
CARE Canada, Ottawa
Charles Ikens
US Department of Defense, Washington, DC
Wodzimienz Kozkowski
Polish Ministry of Defence, Warsaw
Amb. Jan Kubis
OSCE Conflict Prevention Centre
Jean-Pierre Langellier
Le Monde, Paris
Peter Langille
Department of Political Science, University of Western Ontario
Marc Lanteigne
McGill University/Université de Montréal
Michel Léfebvre
OXFAM - Québéc, Montreal
Sunaina Lowe
Lessons Learned Unit, DPKO, United Nations, New York
Albert Légault
Institut québécois des hautes études internationales, Université Laval
Michèle Lévesque
Canadian International Development Agency, Ottawa
Ralph Lysyshyn
Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (Canada), Ottawa
S. Neil MacFarlane
University of Oxford/Dalhousie University
Angela Mackay
Lester B. Pearson Canadian International Peacekeeping Centre
John A. MacInnis
Mine Clearance Unit, UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs, New York
Sandra MacLean
Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, Dalhousie University
Assis Malaquias
Department of Government, St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY
Stephen N. Mathenge
Kenyan High Commission, Ottawa
Reward S. Marufu
Zimbabwe High Commission, Ottawa
James Mayall
London School of Economics
Bernard Membe
Tanzanian High Commission, Ottawa
Klaus Metscher
Permanent Mission of the Federal Republic of Germany to the United Nations, New York
Gary Miller
Médécins sans Frontières, Ottawa
Larry Minear
Humanitarianism and War Project, Brown University
Abdul Mohammed
Inter-Africa Group, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Alex Morrison
Lester B. Pearson Canadian International Peacekeeping Training Centre
Derick Moyo
High Commission for South Africa, Ottawa
BGen. Hashim Mtzeo
Ministry of Defence of Tanzania, Dar es Salaam
MGen. William Nash,
US Army War College, Carlisle
Masashi Nishihara
National Defence Academy, Japan
Maria Nzomo
Institute of Diplomacy and International Studies, University of Nairobi
Amb. Robert B. Oakley
Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, Washington, D.C.
Lt. Col. S.S. Oduro-Kwarteng
Ministry of Defence of Ghana, Accra
Juliet O’Neill
The Ottawa Citizen
James Orbinski
Health and Human Security Group, University of Toronto
Issa Oumarou
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cameroun, Yaoundé
Andre Panzo
Embassy of the Republic of Angola in Canada, Ottawa
Timothy Pitt
Médécins sans Frontières (Canada), Toronto
B.G. Ramcharan
Department of Political Affairs, United Nations, New York
Francesco Rausi
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Italy (Rome)
BGen. Gian Piero Ristori
Italian Defence General Staff, Rome
Stéphane Roussel
Groupe d’études et de recherches sur la securité internationale, Université du Montréal
Maj. Karl Schmidseder
Ministry of Defence of Austria, Vienna
Allen Sens
Institute of International Relations, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
Bernard Sexe
Directeur de la Cellule l’Urgence, Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Paris
Eugene Sharov
National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, Kyiv
Timothy M. Shaw
Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, Dalhousie University
Barbara Shenstone
CARE Canada, Ottawa
Senior Colonel Pirasak Sikangwan
Royal Thai Embassy, Washington DC
Commander Talerngsak Sirisawat
Operations Division, Naval Operation Department, Royal Thai Navy HQ, Bangkok
Antonio Jose Ferreira Simoes
Permanent Mission of Brazil to the United Nations, New York
Aristide Sokambi
Vice-President, GERDDES Afrique, Bangui
Hank Spierenburg
Lester B. Pearson Canadian International Peacekeeping Training Centre
Dinkar Prakash Srivastava
Ministry of External Affairs of India, New Delhi
Meinrad Studer
International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva
Michel Tessier
Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (Canada), Ottawa
Jean Touchette
Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (Canada), Ottawa
C.M Trooster
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, The Hague
Charles Trottier
Université de Québéc à Montréal
Fred Vandingenen
Belgian Joint Staff of the Armed Forces, Brussels
Marti Waals
MEMISA, Brussels
Peter Walker
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Geneva
Edwin Willer
Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (Canada), Ottawa
Greg Witol
Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, Dalhousie University
Col. George Young
Permanent Mission of the United Kingdom to the United Nations, New York
Estanislao Zawels
Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Argentina, Buenos Aires
John Zavales
US Department of Defense, Washington DC
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Notes:
Note 1: Andrew Natsios has characterised complex humanitarian emergencies as including civil conflict, deterioration of the authority and effectiveness of the affected state, mass population movements, massive dislocation of the economic system, and a decline in food security. Andrew Natsios, U.S. Foreign Policy and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Humanitarian Relief in Complex Emergencies (Westport, CT: Praeger with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1996), 7. The conference and this report focus on these situations because of the special problems they pose for international response. It is for this reason that long-term humanitarian issues, such as the displacement of the Palestinian population, or, for that matter, that of Tibetans from their home, are excluded from the discussion. Back.
Note 2: Adam Roberts, Humanitarian Action in War (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1996), 6. Back.
Note 5: Boutros Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace (New York: United Nations, 1992). Back.
Note 6: See, for example, Steven R. Ratner, The New UN Peacekeeping: Building Peace in Lands of Conflict after the Cold War (New York: St. Martin’s Press for the Council on Foreign Relations, 1995). Back.
Note 7: On this point, see Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Supplement to the Agenda for Peace (New York: United Nations, 1995). Back.
Note 8: See S. Neil MacFarlane, "The United Nations in Contemporary World Politics", Inaugural Lecture of the Lester B. Pearson Professorship in International Relations, 11 March 1997 (Oxford: Oxford University, 1997). Back.
Note 9: On this issue, see David Malone and John Cockell, 1996 Jules Léger Seminar--The Security Council in the 1990s: Lessons and Priorities (Ottawa: DFAIT, 1996). Back.
Note 10: Of note in this regard are the DANIDA evaluation of international response to genocide in Rwanda, the substantial series of case studies conducted by the Humanitarianism and War Project at Brown University, and the Canadian Government’s "lessons learned" exercise dealing with the Multinational Force in Zaire. Back.
Note 11: The rapporteur would, however, like to acknowledge Larry Minear’s summation of the conference, which served as an extremely useful point of departure in the preparation of this report. Back.
Note 12: DFAIT, "Lessons Learned from Recent Peace Support Operations: A Canadian Discussion Paper", 6. Back.
Note 13: DFAIT, "Lessons Learned from Recent Peace Support Operations", 1. Back.
