It is hard to generalize about safe havens. As A. Arulanantham points out, recent operations have been conducted in an ad hoc manner, without a uniform legal mandate. Some safe areas have been protected with extensive military power (e.g. Iraq) whereas others have been based on mere consensus (Sri Lanka). Nonetheless, all safe haven attempts have intended to protect potential refugees within their own borders. The idea was to “keep refugees close to home and to keep the pressure on human rights violators to clean up their act and to restore the rights and security of their own citizens”.
Safe haven policies have led the UNHCR to cover categories of people other than refugees. The organization describes its policy in recent publications as “proactive, homeland oriented and holistic”. This new ‘proactive policy’, mainly channeled through safe havens, has been a primary vehicle for providing protection to IDPs in situations of conflict. This development is closely linked to rhetoric of the right to remain, and was designed by UNHCR to solve the problem of countries being increasingly reluctant to receive growing numbers of refugees. It offered to eliminate the causes of refugee flows by protecting individuals in their homeland.
Although the rhetoric of this policy sounds very appealing, the key is to evaluate firstly the quality of the protection being offered, and secondly to evaluate whether the right to remain seems to have undermined the traditional right to flee. We will do this by looking at three prominent examples of safe haven policies: Operation Provide Comfort in Iraq; the six Bosnian ‘safe zones’; and Operation Turquoise in Rwanda.
In the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam Hussein’s persecution of the Kurds led to a massive flight of 1.8 million Kurds, 1.4 milion of which went to Iran, and 400,000 to the Turkish border. This was a frightening prospect for the Turks, who for historical reasons were very reluctant to open their borders. Faced with the prospect of a massive refoulement by Turkey, and due to the increasing news coverage of the plight of the victims, Western governments decided to act. The allies decided to “take pressure off Turkey and to keep it on Iraq” and passed Resolution 688 at the UN Security Council.
This resolution for the first time interpreted Article 39 of the UN Charter in the light of a humanitarian crisis. Resolution 688 transformed the victims into the threat, stating that their flight would ‘threaten international peace and security’ in the region. Eventhough the Resolution made no reference to sending troops, the U.S., France and Great Britain sent in military forces to set up a safe zone in Northern Iraq.
The non-military nature of the zone was made clear, as American, British and French troops were visibly identified as protecting the Kurds. The only potentially non-civilian aspect was the presence of PKK elements within the zone, which could explain why Turkey felt threatened by it.
The issue of whether there was consent for the intervention is problematic. Minear and Weiss argue that Operation Provide Comfort was based on consent because the UN had negotiated several times a memorandum of understanding with governmental authorities. On the other hand Karen Landgren points out that the safe zone was established in a military climate and not based on consent.
In the case of the Iraqi ‘safe zone’ the ‘coalition’ was extremely credible militarily. They traded on their military victory during the Gulf war and had many aircrafts in the region. Moreover Iraqi troops were very vulnerable to air attacks because of the particular geo-strategic location of the zone. More importantly, this military threat was accompanied by a strong political will to see the ‘mission’ succeed. The United States would not let the memory of the Gulf war be tarnished by a failure in its ‘safe zone’ operation.
Operation Provide Comfort did save countless lives, providing security for the Kurds in the ‘safe zone’. This can largely be explained by the operation’s extremely favorable conditions. The political will was strong, the US wanted the operation to be a success, and the military threat was clear and overwhelming. Due to the credibility of the operation the coalition was successful in protecting the Kurds, even though the operation had not been based on the consent of parties involved.
However this statement has to be qualified for two main reasons. Firstly, protection in Northern Iraq has seriously diminished in recent years. Secondly, one cannot argue that this has been a case of politically neutral protection since Operation Provide Comfort seems to have opened the way for Operation Poised Hammer. In August 1991 Turkey intervened in the zone to prevent supporters of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) to stage raids against targets in Turkey. And in March 1995, 35,000 Turkish troops went into Iraq, leading to thousands of refugees being once again displaced. This incursion was condemned by the European Union as a violation of international law, however the ‘coalition’ seemed to have given the incursion tacit consent by allowing Turkish jet bomb planes to fly over the Kurds.
In the case of Operation Provide Comfort it does seem that the establishment of a safe zone hindered the Kurds’ right to flee. Not only were they stopped cold at the Turkish border, it is because of this refoulement that the international community decided to establish a safe zone. Thus Kurds could not choose between staying in the safe zone or seeking asylum, it was considered that they were being offered sufficient protection within the ‘safe zone’. However, as we have seen with the Turkish incursion, the ‘safe zone’ was not free of Human Rights violations.
Bosnia-Herzegovina - Six Bosnian Safe Havens
During 1992 the Bosnian Serb Army proceeded to ethnically cleanse large parts of Northern, Eastern and Central Bosnia, driving 100,000 civilians into enclaves. Thousands of refugees were fleeing to Europe and to other parts of the former Yugoslavia. By the end of 1995 it was estimated that 2.6 million had fleed the former Yugoslavia, with 530,000 going to Europe. European Union countries closed their borders to the Bosnians by imposing visa controls and a large discussion ensued on whether allowing Bosnians to flee would be considered as benefiting the ethnic cleansing policy. As Sadako Ogata, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, pointed out, “if you take these people, you are an accomplice to ethnic cleansing. If you don’t, you are an accomplice to murder”.
This discussion was fundamentally flawed because allowing people to flee from persecution and murder is at the basis of refugee law and definitely does not entail that one is actually helping the perpetrators but rather that one is saving people’s lives. It merely highlights the lack of political will within the European Union to either intervene to actually stop the killings or to let the refugees escape. Instead the UN decided to provide humanitarian assistance to the people trapped in Bosnia. As in Iraq, the decision was taken that the UN would attempt to create safe havens for civilians without threatening the integrity of the states in question. This tactic, relatively successful in Iraq, worked less well in Bosnia Herzegovina.
On April 16th 1993 the UN, acting under Chapter VII, passed Resolution 819 setting up a safe area in Srebrenica. Resolution 824 extended the concept to the towns of Zepa, Tuzla, Sarajevo, Gorzade and Bihac. The hope was that the residents of these towns could remain in relative safety and receive humanitarian assistance. The wording of these resolutions was very strong, describing a clear mandate for a Chapter VII operation with the backing of possible NATO air strikes. However this robust mandate did not translate into reality. Of the 34, 000 troops demanded by UNPROFOR only 7,600 were authorized. In actual fact throughout the operation “there were only about five thousand UN ground troops in and around Sarajevo, perhaps three thousand in and around Tuzla, and five hundred each in Gorzade, in Bihac and in Srebrenica/Zepa”. The threat of NATO air strikes was not effective in deterring attacks on the enclaves. Offensive air action required the dual approval of UNPROFOR and NATO, signaling a general reluctance to escalate the level of air threat. This was made abundantly clear when Srebrenica and Zepa fell to the Serbs with limited air action.
The Special Representative of the Secretary General for the Former Yugoslavia, Y. Akashi, pointed out that UNPROFOR was forced into an uncomfortable ‘no-man’s land’ between a peace-keeping and a peace-enforcement operation due to the gap between the strong language of the resolutions and the clear lack of political will to put this tough rhetoric into practice. Eventhough UNPROFOR was authorized to ‘deter attacks’ against safe areas in Resolution 836, they decided to interpret their mandate as using force only ‘if its own troops were under attack’. This was largely due to the lack of resources and equipment invested in the operation.
Indeed in the case of the Iraqi ‘safe zone’ the ‘coalition’ was extremely credible militarily. They traded on their military victory during the Gulf war and had many aircrafts in the region. Moreover Iraqi troops were very vulnerable to air attacks because of the particular geo-strategic location of the zone since they would have to cross much open land to pursue an attack. More importantly this military threat was accompanied by a strong political will to see the ‘mission’ succeed. The United States would not let the memory of the Gulf war be tarnished by a failure in its ‘safe zone’ operation.The military protection put in place to protect the ‘safe areas’ was not sufficient to be effective. This was acknowledged by the UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who announced that the troops deployed would not “guarantee the defense of the safe area, but would provide a basic level of deterrence, assuming consent and cooperation of the parties”. This assumption of consent was seriously flawed. The UN safe haven operation in Bosnia was not based on the consent of the parties involved. Due to the UN Security Council’s inability and unwillingness to resolve the conflict neither side had an incentive to cooperate with the protection of the safe areas. UNPROFOR and the ‘safe areas’ became parties to the war and both the Bosnian Serb Armies and the Bosnian Muslims continued their maximalist strategies, and did not respect the ‘protective’ nature of the safe areas.
This lack of consent can be traced back to a crucial failure of the operation: the failure to demilitarize the enclaves. Resolution 819 was not clear in outlining what the criteria of a safe area should be, and due to heightened outrage that the Bosnians should give up their arms the resolutions ended up having no demilitarization requirements. The areas were used as resting and training grounds for the Bosnian army who launched attacks from the enclaves. It is thus clear that these safe areas were not of a civilian nature and thus seen as threatening to the Serbs. Many individuals became aware of this flaw and called for the demilitarization of the enclaves. Russia and the EU repeatedly made calls and the UN Secretary General emphasized the need in his report to the Security Council in May 1994 to demilitarize the safe areas and thus “establish a regime that would be in line with the Geneva Conventions”. However the zones were never demilitarized.
The Serbs perceived the enclaves as helping Bosnian forces maintain territory, greatly eroding their commitment to the ‘safe haven’ regime. The areas were seen as strategically challenging; this explains the attempts of BSA to attack the safe areas and highlight’s the operation’s lack of impartiality. Throughout the war it was unclear whether the primary aim of the operation was to protect territory or people. This led UNPROFOR to be seen as a military threat.
The ‘safe haven’ operation in Bosnia did save lives and offered a degree of sanctuary from slaughter. However its credibility was largely eroded over time. The lack of political will in the West to either militarily intervene and stop the killings or to really give the sufficient military resources needed for the protection of the areas, led to 14,000 supposedly ‘protected’ people being massacred. Two of the six allegedly ‘safe havens’ fell to the Serbs, and 8,000 Muslim males sheltering in Srebrenica were massacre without any reaction from UNPROFOR.
Like in Iraq, the safe havens were set up as a direct consequence of a third party’s refoulement policy. European countries through their imposition of visa requirements denied the Bosnians’ right to flee. Indeed due to the fact that ‘safe havens’ had been established European countries denied asylum to Bosnian refugees on the basis that they were receiving protection at home. Some analysts have even argued that: “safe areas were the most dangerous place in Bosnia”.
Rwanda - Operation Turquoise
After President Habyarimana’s assassination on the 6th April 1994 majority Hutus started killing Tutsis and minority Hutus seen as accomplices to the Rwandan Patriotic Front. The genocide that ensued was ignored by the international community to the extent that many refused to even call the killings a ‘genocide’ (which would have made them liable for intervention based on the 1948 Genocide Convention). The genocide killed approximately one million people, with another million displaced within Rwanda and two million fleeing the country. Finally in May 1994 the Security Council voted Resolution 918 which strengthened the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) by deploying troops under a Chapter VII mandate. However, there was little support for the Resolution and nobody acted on it.
The majority of the people fleeing were Hutus escaping potential retribution for the genocide. France offered to intervene and the UN Security Council authorized the French initiative on June 22nd 1994 through Resolution 929. Its mandate was to “contribute to the security and the protection of displaced persons, refugees and civilians at risk, including through the establishment and maintenance of secure humanitarian areas”.
The French deployed Operation Turquoise with 2,500 French and Senegalese troops. They set up Zones Humanitaire Sure (ZHS), ‘safe humanitarian zones’, in the Cyangugu-Kibuye-Gikongoro region in Southwest Rwanda. This zone was actually very large and the ‘safe areas’ ended up covering a fifth of the Rwandan territory.
Much has been written about France’s dubious ‘humanitarian’ motivations. Many have argued that France’s intention was to help the Hutu government by preventing total victory of the RPF. It is clear that France had strong ties with the Habyarimana regime. However the official humanitarian line of preventing severe refugee flows into Northern Zaire cannot be disregarded.
Nonetheless the crucial consequence of the French bias towards the Hutus was that Operation Turquoise did not disarm the Hutus and thus the ZHS were never demilitarized. This was to have serious consequences for the protection of these areas. The 1.2 million people that were in the ZHS were fed and sheltered but were not protected. Extremist Hutu militia members, who were still armed, operated in the zones intimidating moderate Hutus and killing Tutsis. These armed activities led the camps to be considered centers of hostility by the Tutsi government, therefore greatly eroding the government’s consent for the ZHS which were so evidently not neutral.
Operation Turquoise did have some humanitarian benefits. It managed to stop the refugee flow to neighboring Zaire which could have been highly destabilizing, and it is generally estimated that it protected the 13,000-14,000 Tutsis still left in the zone. However, as France withdrew from Rwanda in late August and UNAMIR forces replaced Operation Turquoise, the Rwandan government became increasingly fearful that the ZHS were used as a conduit for arms. As a result, the protective regime greatly deteriorated.
By December 1994 the Kibeho camp “appeared to be a center of hostility and a threat to internal security”. The Rwandan authorities feared the military build-up in ZHS and demanded that they should be closed in April 1995. UNAMIR launched ‘Operation Hope’ in coordination with the Rwandan government in order to disarm Kibeho. This attempt was relatively successful, however by March the camp was still seen as a threat by the government. Many IDPs refused to return voluntarily either for reasons of security or because they were dependent on living conditions provided in the camps. On April 17th 1995 the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) moved into the Kibeho camp in an attempt to close it, leading to a significant number of deaths. UNAMIR forces witnessed a number of summary executions of IDPs by the RPA.
The safe haven policy in Rwanda greatly eroded the Rwandans’ right to flee. At the same time as thousands of IDPs were being killed at Kibeho, France blocked the application of Rwandans’ asylum requests on the basis that they were being protected inside their own country. Once again we see the case of a ‘safe haven’ policy impeding refugees’ right to flee and not offering protection of comparable quality.
