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HEINZREPORT 2002

 

Copyright © 2001  Human Rights
Watch                                                                                       

 

 

REFUGEES, 
ASYLUM SEEKERS, AND INTERNALLY

DISPLACED PERSONS

 

50 Years On: What Future for
International Refugee Protection?

How
countries treat those who have been forced to flee persecution and human rights
abuse elsewhere is a litmus test of their commitment to defending human rights and
upholding humanitarian values.  Yet,
fifty years after its inception, the states that first established a formal
refugee protection system appeared to be abandoning this principle, and the
future of the international refugee regime was under serious threat.

       The year 2000/2001 marked the fiftieth
anniversary of the establishment of an international refugee protection regime,
set up primarily by European states to respond to the needs of some 30 million
people displaced during the Second World War. In December 1950, the Office of
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was established and
in July 1951 an international instrument to protect the rights of refugees—the
1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951 convention)—came into
effect.

       At the core of the international refugee
regime is the fundamental right of any individual to seek and enjoy asylum from
persecution in other countries. 
Enshrined in article 14 (1) of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, the principle of asylum recognizes that when all other forms of human
rights protection have failed, individuals must be able to leave their country
freely and seek refuge elsewhere.  The
availability of asylum can literally be a matter of life or death for those at
risk of persecution or abuse. 

 

A Changing Climate for
Refugees

       Until the 1990s most refugee movements
were a consequence of Cold War politics, and refugees often had a strategic
geopolitical value in the arena of superpower rivalry.  Their existence was used either to discredit
countries of origin, or to bolster the image of receiving countries and
strengthen alliances with superpower partners, as in the case of Nicaraguan
refugees in Honduras, Afghans in Pakistan, and Cambodians in Thailand.

       Several factors coincided at the
beginning of the 1990s to change the political environment for refugees.  First, the end of the Cold War era caused
refugees to lose much of their geopolitical and military value.  Host countries preferred to establish good
political and economic relations with their neighbors and refugees were viewed
as a potential irritant.  Many refugee
hosting countries, affected by regional economic crises, claimed that fewer
resources were available to host large, long_term refugee populations or fund
lengthy and expensive asylum determination procedures.  Refugees were made scapegoats for
many countries’ domestic problem and blamed for threatening national or
regional security, draining resources, degrading the environment, and rising
crime.  Politicians shamelessly employed
xenophobic rhetoric to win electoral support and, with the popular press,
peddled images of “floods” of refugees and immigrants pouring into their
countries.  In the industrialized
states, particularly, many governments became obsessed with erecting barriers
to keep people out, rather than providing protection. 

       While this was occurring, the convergence
of political and economic instability throughout much of the world with the
increasing global accessibility of international communications and travel
meant that larger numbers of people were on the move—some to escape the misery
of economic privations, others to escape persecution, conflict, and gross human
rights abuse.  As legal channels of
migration were curbed, people turned increasingly to alternative methods to
reach their country of destination, including the services of opportunistic,
exploitative and often dangerous human trafficking and smuggling rings that
were able to circumvent routine migration controls.  By the end of the 1990s, governments, particularly in
industrialized states, viewed the trafficking and smuggling of persons as one
of the most serious aspects of transnational organized crime and joined forces
in a concerted drive to end the practice. 
Unfortunately, protecting the human rights of trafficked and smuggled
persons was not the primary motive behind these efforts.  Instead, combating human trafficking and
smuggling became  these governments'
primary response to the asylum and migration issue.  Much less attention was paid to why asylum seekers and migrants
made use of such methods to reach their country of destination or to the root
causes of such outflows, and even less to the need to preserve the right of all
persons, regardless of their means of travel, to seek and enjoy asylum from
persecution

 

Industrialized States:  The Beginning and the End of Refugee
Protection?

 

Western Europe

       Nowhere was the retraction in protection
more pronounced than in the industrialized countries of Western Europe, North
America, and Australia—the very countries responsible for establishing the
international refugee regime.  Western
European countries made particularly vigorous and visible efforts to control
inflows of asylum seekers and perceived abuse of the asylum system.  The pursuit of a zero immigration policy
throughout Western Europe since the 1970s, and the closure of almost all
alternative legal channels of immigration, coupled with the global trends
described above, led to a marked increase in the number of people applying for
asylum in Western European countries between 1985 (157,280 applicants) and 1992
(673,947 applicants).  Governments
perceived that the asylum system was being abused by individuals who were leaving
their countries for economic reasons rather than in pursuit of international
protection.  Racist violence rose in
many countries, fueled by the anti_immigration rhetoric of politicians and the
media, creating a hostile environment for refugees and migrants throughout the
region.

 

Harmonization of European
Asylum Policy

       During the 1990s, European Union (E.U.)
countries sought to harmonize their immigration and asylum policies.  This process started in the early 1990s with
various non_binding resolutions adopted by member states of the then European
Community on different aspects of asylum policy.  Two important treaties, the Schengen Agreement on common border
controls, and the Dublin Convention establishing arrangements for identifying
state responsibility for assessing asylum applications came into effect in 1997
and 1994, respectively.

       The 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam, effective
from May 1999, further advanced harmonization, as states determined common
criteria for dealing with asylum applicants, reception of asylum seekers,
family reunification, and deportation policies.  A disturbing protocol to the treaty restricted the right of E.U.
citizens to seek asylum in another E.U. state.

       In an effort to proceed from the agenda
established in the Amsterdam Treaty, in October 1999 a “Special Meeting of the
European Council on the Establishment of an Area of Freedom, Security and
Justice” was held in Tampere, Finland. 
The Presidency Conclusions of the Tampere European Council were
generally viewed as a positive development by advocacy groups as they included
a  a reaffirmation of the right to seek
asylum, and a commitment to work towards the establishment of a common European
asylum system based on the full and inclusive application of the 1951
convention and to harmonize European asylum policies with “guarantees to those
who seek protection in or access to the European Union.”  Less positive, however, was the continuing
emphasis on common policies to contain and control asylum and migration
movements.

       In December 1998, the E.U. High Level
Working Group on Asylum and Migration was set up to produce Action Plans on the
root causes of migration in six major refugee and migrant producing
countries.  The Action Plans focused on
integrated strategies to control migration outflows both from the regions of
origin and into E.U. countries.

       In July 2000, the French government, then
holding the E.U. presidency, issued an “action plan to improve the control of
immigration.”  Similar to other such
E.U. initiatives, the French proposed an information exchange, early warning,
and response system to coordinate E.U. member states’ response to “waves” of
immigration, characterized as a “fire-brigade policing” approach.  In addition, they proposed establishing a
network of E.U. immigration liaison officers in principal migration source
countries to help control migration flows.

 

Access to Asylum Barred

       Central to the right to seek asylum is
the principle of freedom of movement and the right of an individual to leave
any country, including their own.  Yet
European asylum policy systematically obstructed these rights during the
1990s.  Most explicit was the
introduction of visa requirements for nationals of common refugee producing
countries, including those with well_documented human rights problems, such as
China, Burma, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone,
Turkmenistan, and Rwanda.  Beginning
with a September 1995 Regulation, the E.U. maintained a common list of
countries whose nationals were required to obtain visas before entering the
territory of any E.U. state.  The
October 1999 Presidency Conclusions of the Tampere European Council, and a
draft 2000 European Commission (E.C.) Regulation on a common visa regime, also
contributed to a standardization of visa imposition across the European
Union.  As no would_be refugee was
likely to be able to obtain a visa to come to a Western European country, this
effectively forced asylum seekers either to travel on false or forged
documents, or with no documentation.

       At the same time, E.U. countries
introduced legislation that penalized asylum seekers who traveled on forged or
false documents and the companies that transported them.  Carriers' liability legislation, resulting
in heavy fines for airlines and shipping companies that transported
undocumented or incorrectly documented migrants, became a requirement under the
Schengen Agreement on border controls. 
Private travel companies were effectively made responsible for
front_line immigration controls and they began to take proactive measures to
avoid the fines, including rigorous pre_departure immigration checks by airline
staff.

       The E.U. adopted a new policy on border
control in October 1996, establishing “airline liaison officers.”  By July 2000, the U.K., Danish, German, and Dutch
governments were all using immigration officers in their embassies and
consulates in main refugee-generating countries to assist airline staff in
checking the authenticity of travel documents. 
In a July 2000 report, UNHCR criticized efforts to intercept potential
asylum seekers at the point of departure without a substantive review of their
asylum claim as an obstruction of the right to seek asylum which could amount
to constructive refoulement if individuals were thereby prevented from leaving
countries where their lives and freedom were threatened. 

       Those asylum seekers who did manage to
evade pre_departure border controls and reach their country of destination
faced punitive measures on arrival. 
Increasingly, asylum seekers who arrived in E.U. countries with false,
forged, or no documents were immediately detained—ostensibly for short periods
to allow the authorities to verify their identity, but in practice often for
weeks or months.  Illegal entry also impacted
negatively on refugee status determination procedures.  Asylum seekers who entered illegally were
often given fast_track assessments, or considered as “manifestly unfounded”
cases, and their means of entry contributed to negative assessments of credibility.


       Article 31 of the 1951 convention
explicitly exempted refugees who come directly from the territory where they
fear persecution from punishment for illegal entry, provided that they present
themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their
illegal entry or presence.  Long before
the virtual cordon sanitaire was created around Western Europe, the drafters of
the 1951 convention recognized that many refugees must leave their countries
under extreme circumstances and have little opportunity to obtain legal travel
documents or permission to enter their country of asylum.

 

Containment in the Region

       E.U. and other states also sought
increasingly to contain refugee movements within their region of origin.  This began in January 1998 with the E.U.’s
“Action Plan on the Influx of Migrants from Iraq and the Neighboring Region,” a
panicked response to fears of a possible “mass influx” of Turkish and Iraqi
Kurds into Western Europe.  The proposal
set the tone for Action Plans on Somalia, Afghanistan, Morocco, Iraq, and Sri Lanka
prepared by the E.U. High Level Working Group on Asylum and Migration.  These dealt cursorily with preventive
measures such as conflict resolution, development, and poverty reduction in
refugees’ countries of origin, but focused primarily on exporting migration
controls, such as airport liaison officers, anti_immigration information
campaigns, and readmission arrangements to the source countries.  While welcoming the comprehensive approach
to migration that addressed root causes as well as migration policies, advocacy
groups criticized the action plans for failing effectively to address human
rights violations in countries of origin and the need for refugee protection
for those who fled such violations. 
Like the first Iraq action plan, the overriding aim of the High Level
Working Group action plans appeared to be containing migration in the region
and preventing flows of asylum seekers and migrants to E.U. countries.

 

 

1951 Refugee Convention
Under Threat

       Western European governments sought to
dilute their obligations under the 1951 convention and its 1967 protocol,
despite reaffirming the centrality of these treaties in both the 1997 Amsterdam
Treaty and the 1999 Presidency Conclusions of the Tampere European
Council.  In particular, they applied
the refugee definition in an overly restrictive way, not intended by the
drafters of the convention, thereby excluding many people at risk of
persecution from international refugee protection.  Those excluded included people who fled persecution by non_state
agents, such as the Taliban in Afghanistan, or situations of generalized
violence and civil conflict, as in Colombia. 
Governments also insisted that asylum seekers demonstrate actual
persecution, not just a credible fear of future persecution.  Advocacy groups, such as the
non-governmental European Council on Refugees and Exiles, argued that these
narrow interpretations were inconsistent with international refugee law.

       E.U. states also introduced various
alternative, or complementary, protection regimes as substitutes for 1951
convention  protection.  Under most of these regimes, states granted
asylum seekers temporary leave to remain on humanitarian grounds, but did not
extend to them the full rights and protection of 1951 convention refugee
status.  These alternative regimes were
often highly discretionary with no consistency between E.U. states regarding
the length of stay allowed or the rights afforded to the individual.  Moreover, temporary protection—which was initially
intended to deal with mass influx emergencies where states were unable to
conduct individual refugee status determination—was increasingly applied as a
subsidiary form of refugee protection.

       Taken together, the overly restrictive
application of the 1951 convention and the increasing use of alternative,
subsidiary forms of protection resulted in states narrowing their obligations
under the 1951 convention, the denial of meaningful protection for those in
need, and serious erosion of the international refugee protection regime.   Added to this, between 1998 and 2000
various E.U. governments proposed drastic revisions to the 1951 convention in
order to make it more “relevant” to contemporary migration challenges.  The Austrian government, while holding the
E.U. presidency, first proposed this in a July 1998 strategy paper that
depicted the 1951 convention as a product of the Cold War period that had never
been intended to deal with contemporary large_scale refugee movements caused by
civil war, inter_ethnic violence, and persecution by non_state agents.  The Austrians proposed a comprehensive,
integrated approach to migration that addressed trade and development, as well
as migration policy.  This proposal,
particularly its reference to the need to amend the 1951 convention, was
considered too radical by most E.U. states at the time.

       British Home Secretary Jack Straw
reopened the issue in June 2000, at a conference organized by the Portuguese
E.U. presidency on a common European asylum system, launching a vigorous attack
on the relevance and efficacy of the 1951 convention.  He claimed that the European asylum system was massively abused
by economic migrants who had no credible asylum claim and who were brought to
Europe by highly organized criminal trafficking or smuggling syndicates.  He characterized the 1951 convention as
inadequate and never intended to deal with contemporary “massive
intercontinental migratory movement.” 

       He proposed a new approach to refugee
protection whereby E.U. states would designate those countries and ethnic groups
most at risk of persecution, agree on quotas of asylum seekers from these
countries, and determine asylum claims within regions of origin.  He also proposed a list of “safe countries”
which would include “all E.U. states, the U.S., Canada, Australia and many
others” (our emphasis) from which applications for asylum would not be
considered.  A third group would include
“the accession states and others” where there would be a general presumption of
safety and asylum claims would be considered under an accelerated process. 

       The British proposal was a worrying
return to the notion of “safe countries of origin” and highlighted yet again
the lack of commitment amongst European governments to upholding the right of
all individuals to leave their countries and seek asylum.

 

Australia:  Xenophobia and Threats to Asylum

       Australia also increasingly pursued a
punitive asylum policy and showed little regard for either abiding or being
judged by international human rights standards.  Despite only receiving a tiny proportion of the world’s
refugees—9,450 asylum applicants in 1999, compared with 95,110 applicants in
Germany—Australia reacted with disproportionate zeal to a perceived threat of
being overwhelmed by “floods” of foreigners brought in through illegal people trafficking
and smuggling.

       Australia pursued a draconian policy of
mandatory detention for all asylum seekers and other non_citizens who arrived
though “illegal” channels with forged, illegal, or no documents, and who
declared themselves as asylum seekers on arrival.  In July 2000, the U.N. Human Rights Committee criticized
Australia for its mandatory detention policies and for not informing, nor
allowing , NGOs access to inform detainees of their right to seek legal
advice.  Asylum seekers were kept in remote
detention centers thousands of miles away from major population centers. 

       In October 1999, Australia made
amendments to its 1958 Migration Act that, according to UNHCR, seriously
undermined refugee protection.  Refugees
arriving in an unauthorized manner were refused family reunification rights for
a minimum of thirty months after they received refugee status and were not
provided with travel documents in violation of article 31 of the 1951
convention; article 28 of the 1951 convention, which provides for travel
documents for refugees that permit re_entry; and fundamental principles of
family unity upheld in the 1951 convention, in UNHCR Executive Committee
Conclusions, and in other international human rights instruments. 

       On August 29, 2000, the Australian
government stated that it would restrict future cooperation with U.N. bodies
and in particular reject treaty bodies’ requests to delay the deportation of
unsuccessful asylum seekers.  This
followed two high profile interventions by the U.N. Committee against Torture
seeking a delay in the return of asylum seekers until it had considered their
claims that they would face torture in the countries they had fled.  The government also announced that it would
undertake a comprehensive review of the interpretation and implementation of
the 1951 convention and consider the need for remedial legislation. 

      

The Global Picture

        The anti_refugee policies and xenophobic attitudes of
industrialized states had significant global export value.  Traditionally generous hosting countries in
Africa, Asia, and the Middle East referred to the example set in the West when
defending their own increasingly restrictive policies and practices.  Nevertheless, the world’s poorer nations
continued to host the vast majority of the world’s refugees and in times of
crisis endeavored to keep their doors open to those fleeing civil conflict and
gross human rights abuse.

 

Africa

       Traditionally one of the most generous
refugee hosting regions in the world, recent years saw a significant shift in
African refugee policies.  The plethora
of violent internal and regional conflicts that plagued so many African
countries over the past decade meant that at the turn of the century few
countries were immune from refugee crises. 
Yet the presence of militia groups within refugee settlements and the
fear that mass refugee movements would result in instability and conflicts
spilling over national borders made host countries increasingly wary and
contributed to more restrictive refugee policies and, in some cases, lack of
safe asylum.  The Great Lakes refugee
crisis—sparked by the Rwandan genocide in 1994 and subsequent and continuing
mass movements of refugees across as many as nine countries, and the conspicuous
and destabilizing presence of military and political elements in refugee
camps—heralded the end of the legacy of generous asylum and open_door policies
for refugees in Central and East Africa.

 

West Africa

       By mid-2000, a similar scenario was unfolding
in West Africa, where a deteriorating security situation threatened the safety
of hundreds of thousands of refugees. 
Host to the second largest refugee population in Africa, Guinea earned a
reputation as a generous country of refuge. 
By September 2000, there were nearly half a million refugees—330,00
Sierra Leoneans and 126,000 Liberians—inside Guinea.

       This pattern of generous hospitality was
seriously threatened by the deteriorating security situation in the region in
2000.  A rapid influx of refugees into
Guinea from Sierra Leone from May onwards and fears of infiltration by Sierra
Leonean rebels, prompted the Guinean government to close its borders with
Sierra Leone in early August, although “vulnerable” groups were subsequently
allowed entry following interventions by UNHCR.  Tensions rose between Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia from late
July onwards, as each country accused the other of supporting rebel
activity.  A series of cross_border
attacks from both Liberia and Sierra Leone between August and October claimed
the lives of hundreds of Guinean civilians and injured many others.  Most of these attacks occurred close to the
Sierra Leonean and Liberian borders in exactly the same areas where the refugee
camps were located. 

       The attacks resulted in serious reprisals
against Sierra Leonean and Liberian refugees in Guinea, both in the border
camps and in the cities.  On September
9, Guinean President Lansana Conte made an inflammatory broadcast in which he
blamed refugees for harboring rebels and urged the Guinean population to
round_up all foreigners.  For several
days, armed groups of civilian militias, police, and soldiers broke into the
homes of Sierra Leonean and Liberian refugees in Conakry, beat, raped, and
arrested them, and looted their belongings. 
Over five thousand people were detained and hundreds more sought refuge
in the Sierra Leonean and Liberian embassies. 
Hundreds of refugees fled Guinea, many of them by boat back to Sierra
Leone.  Despite pleas for calm and
assurances by government officials that Guinea would remain a safe country of
asylum for refugees, President Conte made further anti-refugee statements in a
speech marking the anniversary of Guinea’s independence on October 2.

       The situation for refugees in camps along
the Liberian and Sierra Leonean borders was also critical.  Several camps in the Forecariah region on
the border with Sierra Leone were attacked by Sierra Leonean rebels and by
Guinean civilians, forcing thousands of refugees to flee back into rebel_controlled
areas of Sierra Leone.  At the same
time, Guinea’s borders with Sierra Leone and Liberia remained closed to
refugees fleeing conflict and human rights violations, and refugees in Guinea
were faced with the unenviable choice of remaining unprotected in Guinea, or
returning to Liberia and Sierra Leone.

 

Guinea in Perspective

 

Security versus Asylum: The
Case of Thailand

       The situation in Guinea exemplified two
worrying trends.  The first was
governments’ readiness to indiscriminately blame and take actions against
foreigners and refugees when faced with national security threats.  In Thailand, for example, the government
reacted harshly when Burmese gunmen seized the Burmese embassy in Bangkok in
October 1999 and took five hundred people hostage in the Ratchaburi provincial
hospital in January 2000.  Following
these events, the authorities announced that all refugees should move to camps
along the border and Maneeloy Student Center, a camp for dissident Burmese refugees,
would be closed.  Thai authorities
deported five Burmese, four of whom had applied for refugee status with UNHCR,
to the border town of Myawaddy where they were arrested by the Burmese
authorities.  Provincial admission
boards were set up to determine asylum claims, and refugee protection was
restricted only to those fleeing fighting in Burma.  All other Burmese were declared to be illegal immigrants and
risked forcible repatriation to Burma. 
In June, the Thai authorities expelled 116 refugees from Don Yang
refugee camp in Kanchanaburi Province, and in August, Thai officials returned
around one hundred ethnic minority Karen from Nu Pho Camp in Rak province.

 

Disparity in International
Response: The Kosovo Factor

       The second trend highlighted by the
Guinea crisis was the gross disparity in the international response to refugee
crises.  Despite the similarities with
the situation in Macedonia during the Kosovo emergency in 1999, the difference
in the international response to the two situations was striking.  Unlike Macedonia, where the international
community poured in resources and reacted quickly to evacuate refugees and thus
relieve the pressure on Macedonia and help to keep the borders open, the
international response to the crisis in Guinea was negligible.  The crisis hardly touched the world media
headlines, international funding was seriously lacking, and there was certainly
no airlifting of refugees to safety in Western countries.

 

Attacks on Humanitarian
Workers Threaten Refugee Protection

       A major threat to refugee protection
throughout 2000 was the alarming spate of attacks on humanitarian workers.  The brutal murders of three UNHCR staff
members in Atambua, West Timor, on September 6, and the murder of the head of
the UNHCR office and abduction of another staff member in Macenta, Guinea, on
September 17, highlighted the extreme dangers 
for humanitarian workers worldwide. 
The murders provoked a global protest and prompted UNHCR to withdraw all
staff from West Timor, as well as from the border areas of Guinea.  At the same time, they left refugees in
these areas almost completely unprotected and unassisted with no outside
witnesses to abuses. 

 

West Timor     

       Despite the return of over 170,000
refugees to East Timor since mass forced expulsions in 1999,  as many as 125,000 refugees remained in
camps in West Timor where many of them had been held hostage by the same
militia leaders responsible for the violence that had erupted in East Timor
following the pro_independence referendum vote in September 1999.  Human Rights Watch charged continuously
throughout 1999 and 2000 that the Indonesian authorities and army had failed to
disarm the militia or prevent attacks on refugees in the camps and on
humanitarian workers assisting them.  In
September 2000, UNHCR reported a total of 120 incidents of attacks, harassment,
and intimidation of humanitarian workers and refugees since it established a
presence in West Timor a year earlier. 
In August 2000, UNHCR was forced to close down its operations in the
camps when three of its staff members were attacked and seriously injured while
delivering assistance to Naen camp, outside Kefamenaunu town.  The murder of the three staff in Atambua
occurred within a week of UNHCR resuming its operations. 

       Following the withdrawal of nearly all
international staff from West Timor, the camps were largely cut off from any
international assistance or protection and there was little information about
conditions inside.   Most critically,
Human Rights Watch and local NGOs expressed serious concerns that the
registration of the refugees by the Indonesian authorities without minimal
safeguards to ensure freedom of choice and in the absence of international
monitoring could result in the forcible relocation of refugees to other parts
of Indonesia against their will.  The U.N.,
on the other hand, insisted that they would not return staff to West Timor
until credible security guarantees were in place.  These included the arrest and trial of the perpetrators of the
UNHCR murders and other attacks on humanitarian workers; the complete disarming
and disbanding of the militias; and the restoration of law, order and security
in the camps in West Timor.  More than a
month after the killings, although the Indonesian authorities had arrested six
suspects, there was no evidence that the militias had been brought under
control or that law and order had been restored to the camps.

       The situations in Guinea and West Timor
posed a grave dilemma for the international community.  On the one hand, it was clearly unacceptable
for humanitarian workers to be the targets of deliberate and vicious
attacks.  On the other, the withdrawal
of all international staff considerably increased the vulnerability of
displaced people and their exposure to attacks, forced return, and other
abuses.  Until governments are able to
ensure the security of humanitarian workers, the protection of some of the
world’s most vulnerable populations will be seriously at risk.

 

Protecting Refugee Women

and Children

       Throughout the year, refugee women were
victims of sexual and domestic violence. 
In Guinea, for example, women were targeted in the retaliatory attacks
on refugees in the wake of President Conte’s inflammatory anti-refugee
declarations.  Human Rights Watch
reported on the rape of Sierra Leonean and Liberian refugee women by groups of
armed civilian militia, police, and soldiers in the September attacks in
Conakry.  Women, some of them as young
as fourteen, were raped—in many cases gang raped—sexually assaulted, and
humiliated, often in the presence of family members.  Many of the women had fled Sierra Leone to escape gross human
rights violations, including rape and other sexual assault.  Human Rights Watch charged that UNHCR and
the international community were slow to publicly condemn these brutal attacks
against refugee women and called on the Guinean government and UNHCR to
immediately investigate the incidents of rape and bring the perpetrators to
justice.  In 2000, Human Rights Watch
issued a report on the high levels of sexual and domestic violence against Burundian
refugee women in camps in Tanzania.  The
situation in Guinea and Tanzania highlighted the persistent dangers for refugee
women and lack of effective protection against or rapid response to sexual
violence in emergency situations and to domestic violence in refugee
settlements. 

 

Protracted Refugee Crises:
The Right to Return

       Throughout the world, millions of
refugees remained in exile unable to return to their homes either because of continuing
political instability and insecurity, or because of deliberate obstructions by
states unwilling to take them back.  In
South Asia, despite high level visits by U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees
Sadako Ogata to Nepal and Bhutan in April and May 2000, and  U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for
Refugees, Julia Taft, to Nepal in October 1999, and to Bhutan in January 2000,
more than 100,000 Bhutanese refugees were denied their legitimate right to
return to Bhutan and remained in camps in southeast Nepal.  The refugees, many of whom were arbitrarily
stripped of their Bhutanese nationality despite having lived in Bhutan for
several generations, were expelled from the country in the early 1990s during a
government crack-down on Bhutanese of ethnic-Nepali origin living in southern
Bhutan.  Since then, the Bhutanese
government has systematically blocked the refugees’ return, claiming that the
majority are not Bhutanese citizens, and has shunned international offers to
assist in resolving the situation.

       Elsewhere, in Bosnia and Hercegovina,
over one million people remained displaced, the majority of them internally,
and unable to return to minority areas due to bureaucratic obstructions and
lack of available housing.  There was,
however, some progress in 2000, and by June UNHCR had registered 19,751
returns, many of them spontaneous, as compared to 7,709 during the comparable
period in 1999.

       Palestinian refugees remained the largest
and most protracted refugee situation in the world.  In 1997, UNHCR estimated that there were 6.4 million Palestinian
refugees worldwide, about half of whom were believed to be stateless.  In March 2000, 3.7 million Palestinian
refugees were registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency
(UNRWA) in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and the Israeli-occupied West Bank and
Gaza.  The Israeli government has made
the return of Palestinian refugees both legally and practically impossible
since their exodus following the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli war, and the 1967 war,
thus denying Palestinian refugees their legitimate right to return to their own
country.  Although the resolution of the
refugee crisis was a key issue on the agenda of the final status negotiations
between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), little progress
was made in 2000.  Human Rights Watch
supported a rights-based approach to the resolution of the refugee problem that
upheld the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their own country, as
well as opportunities for local integration in host countries or third country
resettlement.  Individuals should be
able to choose freely and in an informed manner their preferred option. In the
event that individuals are unable to return to their original homes or place of
residence, they should be able to return to the vicinity and compensation
should be provided according to international standards.

 

The Challenge of the New
Millennium:  Protecting the Internally
Displaced

 

Debate over Institutional
Responsibility

       The plight of internally displaced
persons dominated humanitarian debate throughout 2000.  The year began with an impassioned statement
by U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Richard Holbrooke during a Security Council
session on humanitarian assistance to displaced persons in Africa in
January.  Having recently returned from
a trip to Angola, Holbrooke expressed dismay at the lack of an effective
international response to the problem of internal displacement.  He challenged the very distinction between a
refugee and an internally displaced person (IDP) and made a controversial call
for a single agency to take responsibility for providing protection to IDPs,
citing UNHCR as the most appropriate choice.

       Holbrooke’s statements triggered a
frenzied response within the U.N. system. 
While there was a general consensus that the existing system of
responding to internal displacement crises was inadequate, there was widespread
opposition to giving UNHCR lead agency responsibility for IDPs.  To a certain extent, the debate turned into
an ugly turf battle between rival U.N. agencies unwilling to yield more power
and responsibility to UNHCR.  But there
were also more substantive reasons for the reservations to Holbrooke’s
proposals. 

       Refugee experts pointed out the dangers
of collapsing the terms refugee and internally displaced person in legal and
protection terms.  Refugees, by
definition,  are unable, or unwilling,
to avail themselves of the protection of their own country and have crossed an
international border in search of protection. 
Governments have an obligation under international law to provide
refugees with protection and UNHCR’s mandate is to ensure that governments
abide by these obligations.  Internally
displaced persons, on the other hand, remain, if only technically, under the
protection of their own governments and do not automatically trigger an
international response.  Refugee
advocates feared that UNHCR’s involvement in providing in-country protection to
internally displaced persons could provide an excuse for asylum countries to
return refugees to their countries of origin. 
Indeed, Western European and other industrialized states were already
denying asylum to refugees for whom they believed “internal flight
alternatives” or “in_country” protection existed in their country of origin.

       In a July 2000 address in New York, U.N.
High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata also expressed reservations about
eroding the distinction between refugees and IDPs, because of the specific
nature of protection required by each group. 
Ogata also criticized the international community for focusing too much
on the question of the institutional response to internal displacement, and too
little on the underlying political, economic and social root causes.

       Despite Holbrooke’s resolute support for
a lead_agency model, the U.N. sided with a collaborative approach. A senior
inter_agency network was established to review the U.N.’s response to
situations of internal displacement, under the auspices of the Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and a special focal point on
internal displacement was created in the U.N. secretariat.

 

Human Rights Watch:  Focus on Protecting Internally Displaced
Persons

       While Human Rights Watch did not take a
position on specific inter_agency responsibility for internally displaced
persons, the organization continued to advocate for more consistent and
effective protection for IDPs and for more active adherence by governments with
the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and other human rights and
humanitarian standards pertaining to the internally displaced.  Human Rights Watch monitored and reported on
a wide range of situations of internal displacement worldwide.  These included longstanding situations of
internal displacement, such as in Sri Lanka, Turkey and Colombia, as well as
new displacement crises. 

       The escalation of the border conflict
between Ethiopia and Eritrea during May 2000 provoked massive displacements of
both Eritreans and Ethiopians.  Nearly
1.5 million Eritreans were uprooted by the conflict, including 90,000 who
sought refuge in Sudan—more than a quarter of whom had returned to Eritrea by
October 2000.  In Angola, a new wave of
internal displacement was sparked by the intense fighting following the governmental
campaign launched in October 1999 to flush out UNITA from their traditional
strongholds in the central highlands. 
More than 200,000 persons were displaced during the first half of 2000,
and at the end of June, the total number of IDPs was estimated at 2.5
million.  In Colombia, some 134,000
persons were displaced during the first part of 2000, most by paramilitaries as
well as guerrillas and the armed forces, adding to the estimated total of 1.8
million IDPs and 80,000_105,000 refugees from Colombia in Venezuela, Ecuador,
and Panama at the end of 1999.

       The eastern part of the Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC) experienced a rapid deterioration in the humanitarian
situation from the start of the year, with fighting in the South and North Kivu
areas resulting in major population displacements.  By July 2000, a total of 1.6 million people were displaced in the
DRC.  In the Moluccan islands region of
Indonesia, clashes between members of Muslim and Christian communities since
early 1999 left three thousand or more people dead and displaced hundreds of
thousands.  In Russia, hundreds of
thousands of Chechens remained displaced in the neighboring republic of
Ingushetia following the conflict in Chechnya in 1999.

       Human Rights Watch identified a wide
variety of serious protection problems facing internally displaced persons
worldwide.

 

Access to Safety Denied

       Russian authorities continued to deny
displaced Chechens access to safety in Ingushetia and elsewhere in the Russian
Federation.  On a number of occasions
between October and December 1999, Russian forces fired on convoys of fleeing
Chechen civilians resulting in scores of deaths and injuries.  In October 1999, for example, at least
eleven people were killed when a Russian tank fired on a bus carrying displaced
persons near the Russian-controlled town of Chervlyonnaya.  On October 29, a large civilian convoy,
including Red Cross vehicles, was attacked outside Shaami-Yurt.  Serious abuses, including widespread extortion,
theft, arbitrary arrests, beatings, and in some cases rape, were common at the
Russian check points.  Young males were
particularly targeted, discouraging many from trying to leave.  Russian officials also repeatedly closed the
borders between Chechnya and Ingushetia, Dagestan, Stavropol, and North
Ossetia.  In November 1999, for example,
40,000 civilians were stranded for days in heavy fighting when the Russian
authorities closed the Ingush-Chechen border. 
In January 2000, the authorities announced that males between the ages
of ten and sixty would not be allowed to leave Chechnya, although this policy
was later retracted under international pressure. 

        
In Sri Lanka,  between May and
July 2000, both the armed separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)
and the government imposed severe restrictions on IDPs trying to move out of
areas under their control.  This often
meant that civilians were trapped in conflict zones and unable to flee.

 

Forced Round-ups and
Relocation Programs

       In other situations, government or rebel
forces deliberately rounded-up civilians and held them in camp-like
settlements.  In Burundi, for example,
350,000 people had been forced into “regroupment” camps around the capital,
Bujumbura, by January 2000 as part of the government’s counter-insurgency program.  Soldiers used force and threats to move
civilians into the camps, killing and injuring dozens.  Despite concerted pressure from the
international community, including Nelson Mandela, it was not until June that
the authorities began to systematically disband the camps.  By October most of the camps around
Bujumbura were closed, but officials continued using “temporary” regroupment to
make it easier for soldiers to “cleanse” areas of rebels.

 

Restrictions on Freedom of
Movement

       Human Rights Watch reported on numerous situations
where freedom of movement was obstructed and the movement of displaced persons
manipulated by both government and rebel forces.  In Aceh, Indonesian soldiers reportedly emptied IDP camps by
force and prevented others from leaving their homes.  Acehnese rebels, on the other hand, reportedly encouraged
displacement, preventing displaced persons from staying with relatives and
forcing them into large, more visible centralized camps.  In Congo Brazzaville, rebel militia groups
held displaced persons hostage in camps for much of 1999 and prevented them
from returning to their homes. 
Government authorities also restricted the return of IDPs.  In May 1999, the government facilitated a
mass return of IDPs from their hiding places in the forests of southern Congo
back to the capital with promises to guarantee their safety.  Instead, soldiers at roadblocks raped and
assaulted hundreds of women and girls, and extrajudicially executed scores of
young men who were randomly accused of being rebels.   

            

Lack of Access to
Humanitarian Assistance

       A serious problem facing internally
displaced persons everywhere was lack of access to humanitarian
assistance.  Infant and maternal
mortality and morbidity rates amongst IDPs were, as a result, some of the highest
in the world.  There were three main
reasons for lack of humanitarian access: 


       First,
in places such as Chechnya, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Burundi,
Congo Brazzaville, Sri Lanka, Indonesia’s Moluccan islands, and Angola, the
extremely dangerous security conditions, lack of security guarantees,
landmines, and inaccessibility of camps prevented humanitarian workers from
having access to thousands of internally displaced persons.  In the DRC, for example, the U.N. estimated
that only one million of the 1.6 million IDPs had access to any humanitarian
assistance due to the precarious security conditions in South Kivu.  As a result, infant mortality rates amongst
the displaced were the highest in the region and the maternal mortality rate was
the highest in the world;

       Second, were deliberate obstructions to
the delivery of humanitarian assistance by government authorities or rebel
forces, as in Burundi, Congo Brazzaville, the DRC, Sri Lanka, Aceh, Indonesia’s
Moluccan islands, and Chechnya.  In
Aceh, for example, Indonesian authorities in some cases tried to obstruct local
NGOs and student groups in their efforts to assist IDPs through physical
attacks, detention, torture, and harsh treatment of volunteers, destruction of
volunteer posts, and seizure of medical supplies.  In Burundi, soldiers occasionally blocked international agencies
trying to bring assistance to the camps, and even when access was resumed many
of the camps were inaccessible to relief agencies;

       Third, humanitarian assistance was
limited by inadequate international response and lack of coordination.  In Angola, for example, a U.N. interagency
mission in March 2000 concluded that there were serious gaps in the planning,
delivery, and monitoring of humanitarian assistance.  And in October 1999, the relief agency, Medecins Sans Frontieres
(Doctors Without Borders), decried the “unbearable silence of the international
community” toward the “forgotten war” in Congo Brazzaville.

 

Forcible Return of Displaced
Persons

       Finally, Human Rights Watch reported on
the forcible return of displaced persons to areas  where their safety could not be guaranteed, in blatant violation
of international humanitarian law and the Guiding Principles on Internal
Displacement.  In December 1999, for example,
the Russian military compiled a list of twenty-four towns and village under
Russian control designated as “safe areas” for IDP return.  In a letter to the then prime minister
Vladamir Putin, Human Rights Watch declared that while the armed conflict
continued in Chechnya it was not safe for displaced persons to return.  Documented cases of summary executions of
civilians by Russian soldiers, as well as arbitrary arrests, looting, rape,
beatings, and extortion in Russian-controlled villages were further evidence of
this.  Despite these protests, the
Russian authorities took measures to forcibly return displaced persons. These
included physically returning railway carriages housing displaced persons in
Ingushetia to war zones in Chechnya, refusing to register displaced persons for
assistance, and denial of food and shelter.

 

 

The Way Forward

       As the world marked the fiftieth
anniversary of an international regime to protect the rights of refugees, the
largest group of forcibly displaced persons worldwide—the internally
displaced—remained largely excluded from any consistent form of international
protection and their rights were persistently violated.  Protecting the rights of internally
displaced persons, while at the same time preserving and strengthening the
right to asylum for refugees, were the two critical challenges facing the
international community at the end of 2000.

 

Relevant Human Rights Watch Reports:

Bosnia and Hercegovinia: Unfinished Business, The Return of Refugees
and Displaced Persons to Bijeljina, 5/00 


Burmese Refugees in Bangladesh: Still No Durable Solution, 5/00

Burundi: Emptying the Hills: Regroupment in Burundi, 6/00

Chechnya: "Welcome to Hell," 10/00

Civilian Deaths in the NATO Air Campaign, 2/00

Eastern Congo Ravaged: Killing Civilians and Silencing Protest, 5/00

Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Kosovo: Rape as a Weapon of “Ethnic
Cleansing,”

3/00

Japan: Owed Justice: Thai Women Trafficked into Debt Bondage in Japan,
9/00

Kuwait: Promises Betrayed: Denial of Rights of Bidun, Women, and
Freedom of Expression, 10/00

Malaysia: Living in Limbo: Burmese Rohingyas in Malaysia, 8/00

Rwanda: The Search for Security and Human Rights Abuses, 4/00

Tanzania: Seeking Protection: Addressing Sexual and Domestic Violence
in Tanzania’s Refugee Camps, 9/00

Turkey: Human Rights and the European Union Accession Partnership, 9/00

West Timor: Forced Expulsions to West Timor and the Refugee Crisis,
12/99