Politicization of the UNHCR After the Cold War
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Kirtley, Gail Lane-Griffith
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Kirtley, Gail Lane-Griffith. 2023. Politicization of the UNHCR After the Cold War. Master's thesis, Harvard University Division of Continuing Education.Abstract
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is the United Nations global face for refugee protection. It has guided the world through its moral obligation to protect populations made vulnerable from conflicts for more than 70 years. However, it did not begin as a global participant. Instead, it was established to meet the immediate needs of European refugees after WWI and again after WWII. Its mandate was not expected beyond that. However, the UNHCR has survived, not because it wanted to butbecause it had to. The global environment that the organization operates in today is very different than the environment that existed just a decade ago. Still, the UNHCR adapts to the ever-changing political and physical environment created for it.
The thesis here unpacks a short period in the UNHCR’s history and attempts to explain the challenges faced and the adaptability of the organization. The investigation compares the political influence before and after the Cold War and explains why the UNHCR has always and will remain the target of political pressure. Nation states created it, gave it moral power, and accepted its expertise but as you will see the UNHCR refugee protection and humanitarian aid operations were always carried out while the organization was managing influence and pressure from donor states.
For their part, donor states exerted influence over the UNHCR either directly, by withholding funding or indirectly, by failing to uphold with agreements that bind them to international law and convention. The outcome has been dire for refugees and innocent
populations displaced by conflict. Millions of people after the Cold War who were trying to find safety were placed in and remained in refugee camps for generations, murdered, or forgotten by the global community. The UNHCR leading the global humanitarian aid effort performed admirably at times and failed at times, but failures can and should be laid at the doorsteps of nation states and the international community.
Sadly, the global refugee population is again growing and challenges facing the UNHCR are again shifting, this time due to increasing occurrences of natural disasters. Nation states have a road map that could be referenced as a guide to help set national strategic priorities that include refugee protection. It is unlikely to occur in authoritarian regimes or in liberal democracies as either rarely learn from history when developing humanitarian policies in the context of national security or economic strategies.
Below offers an introduction to the UNHCR that includes a description of its birth and the purpose for which it was intended following WWI; how early UNHCR leadership navigated global politics to save many refugees immediately after WWII; and the global strategic competition it navigated for 70 years during the Cold War. Its introduction is followed by a description of the global chaos in the decade following the end of the Cold War as new conflicts played out in one corner of the world, the former Yugoslavia.
The Yugoslav enclave of Srebrenica was selected as a case study because the horrific events there could have been mitigated by shoring up security using military force and protecting the aid support provided by the UNHCR and humanitarian aid
organizations. Although critics of the UNHCR place culpability for failures in Srebrenica and the other Muslim enclaves on the organization’s poor operational planning and inadequate policies, you will see that Nation states bear the burden. In an ideal world, nation states would have moved refugee protection forward using lessons learned from Srebrenica. You will also see that they did not and as the global refugee crisis continues to shift, it is again unlikely that the big nation states will develop national security and economic strategies in consonance with policies that bring adequate resources to bear for refugee protection and humanitarian aid.
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