January 3, 2002

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Hello, and welcome to Global Q&A. Today we are speaking with Roberta Cohen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Foreign Policy Studies. Ms. Cohen is also codirector of the Brookings-CUNY Graduate Center Project on Internal Displacement, as well as a Senior Advisor to the Representative of the U.N. Secretary General on Internally Displaced Persons. Thanks for being with us today Roberta.

RC: Thank you for inviting me.

It took the international community many years to come up with a formal and legal definition for internally displaced persons. Maybe we can begin by explaining what it means to be internally displaced, and some of the regions around the world where this is a major problem?

RC: First I want to say that internally displaced persons are not refugees, because often they are confused with being refugees. Refugees are forced to flee their homes and they cross a border. They go into another state. Internally displaced persons are forcibly displaced within their own countries. They are forced to flee or leave their homes, so they are forcibly displaced within their own country by armed conflict, generalized violence, violations of human rights, and natural or human made disasters. But they don't cross an international border. So the two main features here of this definition is coercion, sort of involuntary movement, and remaining within ones own country. Now, internal displacement is not confined to one region of the world. It has become quite an international phenomenon. There are more than 40 countries that have internally displaced populations. There are 20 to 25 million people that are estimated to be displaced by conflict and human rights violations, and within their own countries. Roughly it is about 10 million in Africa, probably more than that. 5 million in Asia. 4 to 5 million in Europe, and 2 million in the Americas. Within these regions, the countries with the most serious problems are in Africa – Sudan, Angola, DRC, and Sierra Leone. In Asia – Afghanistan, Burma, Indonesia, Iraq. In Europe, Turkey, Bosnia-Herzegovia, the Russian Federation, Yugoslavia. In the Americas – Colombia. I would add that when we talk about internally displaced persons, we have to remember this is a phenomenon that breaks up the immediate family. It cuts people off from their communities. It ends their employment. It precludes formal education. It deprives people of access to food, shelter, health services, and it makes people who are on the run very vulnerable to acts of violence, such as attacks on settlements or camps of displaced persons – disappearances, rape. Internally displaced persons are considered among the world's most desperate populations at risk. They are often more deprived of shelter and health services than others in the population, and death rates are often much higher among internally displaced and non-displaced within the same country.

How does what many consider to be an internal issue transform into a global crisis?

"We are talking about civil wars or conflicts, which often divide along ethnic or tribal or religious lines, and really tear apart countries."

RC: Internal displacement is generally a symptom of division and conflict within a society. We are talking about civil wars or conflicts, which often divide along an ethnic or tribal or religious lines, and really tear apart countries. When these conflicts, these civil wars, these divisions within the society are not attended to, they often intensify and they spread and they can spill over borders, and they can become a regional or a global crisis. A good example of this, of the crisis in one country inflaming the situation in others, and lead to large refugee flows and also military invasion is the Great Lakes region of Africa, the Congo. And the genocide in Rwanda, the whole conflict within Rwanda, has spread and influenced, I should say impacted what has happened in Burundi, and in the Congo. In West Africa you have the same dynamic with Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea -- conflict in one area spreading over and destabilizing neighboring countries. You see that also in the Horn of Africa. The conflict in the Sudan has had ramifications for Uganda and Ethiopia, or in Europe, where the conflict in displacement in Kosovo intensified, and resulted in the expulsion of about 900,000 people forced into neighboring countries, and then you had a NATO involvement.

So in many cases, would you say that internally displaced persons lead to refugee crisis?

"The containment of borders has often forced people to remain in their country, and you can see that not just in Afghanistan, but in other places as well."

RC: Yes. They do become refugees. But in some cases they don't become refuges because there is a lot of containment. If you look at Afghanistan today, the neighboring countries closed their borders. So yes, there would have been, there already is a large refugee population in bordering countries, but there would have been a much greater outflow. But the containment of borders has often forced people to remain in their country, and you can see that not just in Afghanistan, but in other places as well. Colombia is like that too, to some extent.

You write that the issue of internally displaced persons constitutes the newest global crisis, but that the protection of IDP's, as they are called, currently does not fall under the responsibility of any specific body. Is that because it deals directly with issues of sovereignty? What kind of reaction are you getting from your research in this field?

RC: Well, yes, I would say that in keeping with traditional notions of sovereignty, the international system that was set up after the Second World War, protected people who crossed borders, who became refugees. Persons displaced, but persecuted within their own countries, they were expected to be cared for by their governments. Their governments had the responsibility and sovereignty was to be respected. When their governments failed to protect and assist them, which happened in many cases as we know, the international community basically stood by. But that attitude and that tendency began to change about 10 years ago with the end of the Cold War and with the involvement of international agencies and nongovernmental groups that were directly involved on the ground with internally displaced populations. This has led to many debates over whether there should be some kind of international agency created to deal with internally displaced populations. Should a single agency or an exisiting agency like the United Nations High Commission for Refugees be assigned to do it, or should there just be a collaborative approach by everybody existing in the field? The approach that has been decided upon is a collaborative approach. UNICEF, UNHCR, the World Food Program, the UN Development Program, the International Organization for Migration, the variety of nongovernmental groups, the International Committee of the Red Cross – there will be a kind of generally collaborative approach, and there is at the same time a representative of the Secretary General on Internally Displaced persons, who was appointed by the Secretary General in 1992, and there is to be created in January a new IDP unit in the office of the coordinator for humanitarian affairs at the UN. So basically I would add that quite a number of countries have come around to accept the idea that there is need for some kind of international system to deal with internal displacement even though in is an internal issue. True, there are still countries that refuse to acknowledge the issue and international involvement, like Burma, or even Turkey to a lesser extent, but there are many other countries around the world -- whether its Angola, or Sri Lanka or Georgia or Azerbaijan, Colombia, Afghanistan, Sudan – they recognize that they need international help to assist and protect their populations, and their involvement is needed. In the majority of cases, a real acknowledgement. There is a resolution passed every year at the General Assembly on internally displaced persons. I think we have made quite a leap forward in terms of accepting this as an issue that has to be dealt with internationally.

"...these are the first international standards drawn from existing law, that specifically are relevant toward internally displaced persons."

1951 saw the creation of an international refugee convention, is there a similar convention in place for internally displaced persons?

RC: When the representative of the secretary general on internally displaced persons was first appointed in 1992 there was no document that existed that was specifically tailored to internally displaced persons, and at the request of UN bodies, international organizations, and NGOs, he brought together legal teams and experts from many countries, and guiding principles on internal displacement were developed and presented to the UN. These are 30 principles, and they set forth the rights of the internally displaced, and the obligations of governments and insurgent groups towards these populations, and they cover protection from displacement, during displacement and reintegration, and they are based on existing international human rights laws, humanitarian law, and refugee law by analogy. It is not a treaty, but these are the first international standards drawn from existing law, that specifically are relevant toward internally displaced persons. The acceptance has been really tremendous. The international organizations, NGOs, local groups have been translating these, using them for advocacy to monitor conditions, to empower displaced communities. Governments have been using them as the basis of policy, so that even though they were only presented in 1998, they have really taken off. They answer a need to have some kind of body of standards to govern how internally displaced persons are treated. So for the time being, we have those principles, and that is a very important development.

And will there be state signatories on this?

RC: For principals you don't have that, unlike say a treaty or a convention. With principles they are not ratified, not a binding treaty. But they have gained a good deal of acceptance, and some people said, ‘well, maybe there should be an international convention,' and there are many reasons why that wouldn't be a good idea. One of them is that it could take decades to do it, and I don't think we have that much time. We have 20 to 25 million internally displaced persons right now, and the principles are very important. Secondly, they are based on existing laws. There is a lot of law out there that protects IDP's, so you don't really need so much new law as you do a statement that brings existing law into one document, and this does that, so I think it is right now an extremely valuable initiative.

You cite research from the U.S. Committee for Refugees that shows that the number of internally displaced people grew from a documented 1.2 million in 11 countries in 1982 to a striking 20 to 25 million in more than 40 countries in 1997. You attribute much of this to the Cold War and the many civil wars that were left behind from the 2 great powers. Can elaborate on that?

RC: Yeah. Sometimes we talk about internal displacement as a post-Cold War phenomenon because of the large number of civil conflicts, but the fact of the matter is that some of the major cases of internal displacement over the past two decades are related to conflicts that began during the Cold War, or were significantly affected by Cold War policies. Let me give you some examples. Both superpowers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, fought proxy wars in a lot of different countries, and this caused great divisions in these countries – as well as violence and displacement. In Angola, the Soviet Union armed the government and the U.S. on the insurgency. In Afghanistan the Soviets invaded in support of a proxy government, and the Afghan resistance was armed by the United States. In Central America, civil wars were armed by the two sides. In Ethiopia, Soviet arms enabled the government to wage war against Eritrean independence. So you have these civil wars, these proxy wars, which produced large numbers of displaced people. In most of these cases, the two superpowers supplied the governments, or the opposing groups they were supporting with a tremendous amount of arms, and these arms either helped fuel a war, or they helped keep in power abusive regimes, like in Somalia and Liberia and Ethiopia. At the end of the Cold War, the superpowers departed, but the old arms left behind provided much of the weaponry for ethnic and clan warfare that broke out. In fact, nations in Africa, which have experienced extreme violence and extreme levels of displacement, are often those countries most closely aligned and aided by the two Cold War antagonists. I would also add that with the end of the Cold War came the demise of the Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia and these two countries had kept a very tight lid on ethnic rivalries and national aspirations, and their demise was followed by struggles for political power and territory in these areas, and caused the first large scale displacement in Europe since the Second World War.

"The governments don't represent all of the people in the country, and they don't choose to. They are at war with their own citizens."

I'd like to talk a bit more about the ethnic rivalries you have mentioned. It seems to me that the Cold War, as you mentioned, brought in a lot of the arms and what not. But what about these ethnic rivalries and differences in religion which have existed in places like Africa since the beginning of time? It seems as if this is an important factor in internal displacement, and have been so since the imposed colonial borders. What is the solution to this?

RC: Well, the colonial, arbitrary borders in many of the countries that were colonized certainly produced situations where ethic groups that were divided by these borders were more loyal to their own ethnic groups than to the state in which they lived, which had these arbitrary boundaries. In Africa you had more than 50 states, there were about 1000 ethnic groups, and the unifying factor is often the ethnic group rather than the nation state that was created. I would say that really the answer to this is multi-ethnic democratic states, in my opinion, can resolve these issues, because unfortunately, in many of the countries where there are these kind of ethnic, religious, linguistic differences, the governments themselves identify with one of the groups, to the exclusion and marginalization of others. The governments don't represent all of the people in the country, and they don't choose to. They are at war with their own citizens. This goes on in Turkey, and you see it in Sri Lanka -- decades of discrimination against ethnic minority groups, then you have violent separatist movements and demands for autonomy and independence. Then you have governments supporting one percent of the population. In the Sudan you have an Arab government trying to impose an Islamic state on the rest of the country. A democratic government in which all groups could share power and resources, or have the potential to do so, and where there is respect for human rights, this, to me, would be the best response toward conflict and displacement, and would be a way of resolving some of the problems that arose from the colonial arbitrary borders.

And does the secretary general on internally displaced persons work closely with human rights groups and democratic groups working in some of these nations?

RC: Yes. He is supposed to primarily dialog with governments, international organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and with the local civil society and displaced communities, and has found in these countries that those where there is some hope to have some kinds of democratic structures – judicial systems, a vibrant civil society – they are much more likely to be able to resolve some of the problems they have, rather then where there is rule by complete suppression and terror.

In your writings you mention that sovereignty is a right that should be respected only when nations adhere to a certain level of international law and responsibility to their citizens. Where does one draw the line when internally displaced people are concerned? When should foreign bodies intervene?

RC: Perhaps I am optimistic on this, but I believe that there is emerging a sense of international responsibility to assist and protect persons who are at risk in their own countries. This is particularly notable in the area of mass starvation. You will recall that in 1988, the international community while a quarter of a million people died of starvation in the Sudan. We don't see that happen anymore. There really is a tremendous international effort to reach starving people whether they are in Somalia or North Korea or Afghanistan or Ethiopia. It is no longer acceptable to have people dying of lack of food in a particular country. Now, when it comes to genocide and violations of human rights, the response is more mixed. We know that in 1991 a safe haven was created for Kurds who were displaced, who had been attacked and persecuted by the government of Iraq. Yet in Rwanda, no one intervened to stop the genocide. In Sepreonicha, the Bosnian Muslims were not protected by the UN forces. But there has been a very strong international discomfort with what didn't happen in Rwanda and Sepreonicha. This has been reflected by the numerous apologies by the UN and by the U.S. president about not taking action in these situations. In East Timor there was intervention, however belated. In Kosovo there was intervention. So I think there is some growing sense that something, some international action has to be taken in severe cases of starvation, mass killing and genocide. As I say, we have made more headway on starvation than on the other cases, but I think as the Secretary General of the UN has spoken of a growing international norm, in favor of intervention to protect citizens of wholesale slaughter, and in his recent acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize, he kind of noted that sovereignty can not be a barricade against dealing with human rights violations, and that we have to look towards creating an international system that protects human security and people, not just states. I think that in that sense, sovereignty, I think the concept is rather evolved that it should no longer be allowed as a rational to deny life sustaining support to people in ones own country, but there is no real sense yet of who should do it and how to do it. I think that we are definitely moving on that path. Now, where I am a little less optimistic, where we are talking about intervention, what we should really be paying more attention to is prevention and political settlement, so that we really don't need to let things get so out of hand. But here efforts at mediation, managing disputes, preventative developments to head off conflicts that lead to displacement, well, here I don't think we see so much movement in progress.

Lastly, as we move forward into 2002, where should international policy makers be turning their attention in terms of internally displaced persons?

RC: Well, in talking about the refugee regime, and the fact that we are just beginning to cobble together a regime for internally displaced persons, I think we need a comprehensive regime. The international system I mentioned that was set up after the Second World War is incomplete, it is inadequate. Today's conflicts produce refugees and internally displaced persons. It displaces people on both sides of the border, so the totality of the problem has to be addressed, and this requires a more comprehensive and international system. Secondly, there needs to be more attention paid to the protection to the physical security and human rights of people. Emergency situations require food, medicine and shelter, and they also require protection against assault, violence and rape, etc. Here, we were just talking about intervention, and I think that there is need to have rapid reaction forces from the UN, the European Union is planning one, so that people under massive assault in their own countries can be assisted physically. Perhaps this will really be the true test of globalization, the international system that can effectively protect people. A focus on this kind of protection is an area that I think is needful of attention and I think is one of the cutting issues. And finally I think we have to be careful that the war on terrorism is not allowed to eclipse other initiatives that address root causes of these problems. We have to begin to address the ethnic conflicts, the poverty, the unemployment, the gaps between rich and poor that are either at the root of a lot of terrorist activities, or certainly exacerbate them. I think Afghanistan will be a good testing ground in the sense that here you have a situation where there is a war over terrorism, but we have a country that is really in a humanitarian crisis, and the addressing of the lawlessness and underdevelopment of Afghanistan will be a rather long-term affair, and is necessary so that this country is not allowed to return to chaos, and is to be a breeding ground of terrorism. I think it will be very important that the U.S. will play a big role in making sure that there is really addressing of the problems of the society in that problem, so that you help build up a new foundation and a new society where you also address security problems in that country. This multi-lateral force is a good idea, and I think it ought to get strong support from the U.S. government.

Roberta, thank you so much for speaking with us today. We at the Foreign Policy Association appreciate your time and your insight.

RC: Well thank you very much.