UNHCR Takes the LeadMany observers have praise for UNHCR’s performance in Tajikistan’s humanitarian crisis. Its extensive and active field
presence from 1993 to 1995 set a potentially valuable precedent for working with local authorities, including in matters of law
and order.The transferability of the precedent to other emergency situations is, however, uncertain. As UNHCR staff recall, the timing of the emergency gave the refugee agency a crucial opportunity to take the lead in humanitarian relief. In November 1992, very few international relief programs were operating in Tajikistan when the UNHCR sent a “good offices” mission along with a humanitarian assessment team from the UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs.
Several hundred thousand Tajiks were already internally displaced and, seeking to contain a potential regional humanitarian crisis, the UN delegation recommended beginning operations in January 1993. By the end of 1992, the massive flight of Tajiks into Afghanistan was underway, with unknown numbers perishing in the icy Pyanj River that marks the natural frontier.
The absence of the World Food Programme gave UNHCR the further opportunity to distribute food relief. This service, according to UNHCR field staff, reinforced both trust and gratitude on the part of the refugees, who soon turned to UNHCR staff for help with their security problems.
Other factors that helped strengthen UNHCR’s standing with the local Tajiks were the field staff’s language facility, a characteristic difficult to emulate in large emergencies, and the fact that western organizations had no association with Tajikistan’s colonial experience under the Tsars and Soviets.
Indeed, today, in contrast to many countries where international relief workers and human rights monitors are treated with suspicion and hostility, it is striking to witness the genuine welcome extended to international workers by local villagers, returned refugees, and even officials of the local police and prosecutors offices in southern Tajikistan.
As a result of its solid grounding during the Tajik emergency, UNHCR played a broader role than any other operating agency. Developing an “integrated approach,” the agency undertook to monitor human rights and to participate in peace talks between the warring sides. Under this approach, the UN Department of Political Affairs would handle the negotiations toward a cease-fire and eventual peace accord, and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations would monitor compliance with the cease-fire.
Peacekeeping
In October 1994, a UN team of military observers set up offices in Dushanbe, Garm, Qurghonteppa, and Pyanj. The small unarmed contingent of UNMOT (UN Mission of Observers to Tajikistan) grew from 15 to 40, to monitor the tenuous cease-fire and observe the peacekeeping force provided by Russia and other former Soviet states. As of July 1998, the UN had 72 military observers in Tajikistan, 51 civilian observers, and 150 Tajik employees.
UNMOT has found itself in a typical dilemma which is familiar to such civil conflicts: its size is limited, its mandate contains no policing or enforcement functions, and it faces hostile, armed factions among the Tajiks. And its recruits often lack the language fluency and experience to work most efficiently in a former Soviet republic, where the men in arms are often not constrained by conventional military norms.
“Preventative Protection” for Returnees
As early as April 1993, only four months after government forces regained control of Dushanbe, UNHCR began to facilitate the return of thousands of refugees from Afghanistan. Some 8,000 others also returned spontaneously, without direct assistance from UNHCR, to the mountainous region of Gorno-Badakshan and other locations.
As in other refugee settings, notably Georgia-Abkhazia, UNHCR encouraged early repatriation even though a political solution to the civil war was far from view. That policy failed in Abkhazia due to the inability to obtain guarantees from the Abkhaz authorities for the basic security of returning ethnic Georgians.
In Tajikistan as well, the government and its local supporters were reluctant at first to receive the refugees, and some refugees were beaten and killed. But to counter this risk, UNHCR initiated a program of “preventive protection,” deploying active field officers to monitor the safety of the returnees.
This controversial concept was utilized to characterize UNHCR’s humanitarian response in Bosnia and Herzegovina as well, where as a protection strategy it was clearly inadequate. For a variety of reasons, including the size and complexity of the emergency, Tajikistan was different.
The presence in Tajikistan of UNHCR protection officers, who could intervene swiftly to investigate crimes and mediate disputes, is viewed as having reduced the potential for even more incidents of violence during the first repatriation of 1993-1994. It also set a precedent for the presence of international monitors who were seen as neutral ombudsmen. This enabled UNHCR, and its successors, to work with local authorities who were struggling to cope with these problems of forced migration and policy initiatives coming from the leadership in Dushanbe.
And still, in September 1993, the efforts to repatriate 20,000 Tajiks from northern Afghanistan suffered a serious setback when 15 returnees were murdered in the Qurghonteppa area. Contributing to this instability were the cross-border incursions by the Tajik opposition, launched from camps in Afghanistan that were off-limits to UNHCR staff.
The Handoff to OSCE
By the end of 1995, some 43,000 refugees and hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs) had returned to their villages. This left an estimated 17,000 refugees in Afghanistan, which included hardline opposition leaders who blocked repatriation in order to strengthen their position against the government. Funds were limited, and UNHCR began to “phase down,” declaring the emergency over. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed with UNDP on July 11, 1995, laying the ground work for the transition to long-term development.
A truly comprehensive approach was not taken; UNHCR left too soon. According to one UN official, “There was a rush to pull out. The perception was, okay, the emergency is over, tomorrow morning at 9:00 we start ‘development.’”
But the sporadic fighting was far from over. During 1995 and 1996 cross-border incursions continued and internecine conflicts broke out within the government camp. By the end of 1996, a new humanitarian emergency compelled the UN to expand its operations again and issue a donor alert.
UNHCR, concerned about ensuring continuity in its system of “preventive protection,” began searching for an appropriate agency to take over its field offices. Former field personnel recall a “long discussion about who should take it: an international human rights organization or an intergovernmental body?”
In the end, the refugee agency decided to transfer its responsibility for shelter construction to Save the Children–USA, and its in-country protection role to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, (referred to as OSCE, for its new name, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe). In 1994, OSCE had opened a two-person mission in Dushanbe, mainly focusing on its traditional activities of election monitoring, legal advice and conflict mediation.
Assuming responsibility for returnees’ protection was something new for OSCE’s Tajikistan mission; it highlighted the organization’s evolution from a political process in Europe, to an international organization with a more operational role in building civil society. Unlike the United Nations, the OSCE works from an annual budget adopted at meetings of the permanent council of 54 member states that contribute to it. It does not issue appeals for its programs.
As one UN official puts it, “OSCE was interested in cutting its teeth in field monitoring of human rights across the board.” But the hand-off by UNHCR was not a one-to-one trade, and OSCE was short-staffed, with a wide variation in experience.
“There was not an OSCE person for each of the UNHCR field officers, so the level of coverage dropped off,” says the UN official. “And even though the number of returning refugees also dropped to about a thousand a year, each OSCE officer had to cover a region of three to four districts. We’ve been criticized for not having a clear exit strategy.”
Since its establishment in December 1993, the OSCE mission to Tajikistan has had continuous renewals of six-month duration. Its staff has expanded from two to nine, working out of offices in Dushanbe, Qurghonteppa, Shaartuz, and Dosti. Initially, the OSCE mandate consisted of the following:
Then, on July 6, 1995, in anticipation of the UNHCR hand-off, the OSCE permanent council asked the Tajikistan mission to follow the human rights situation of returning refugees and internally displaced persons in Tajikistan. The mission was to bring problems to the attention of the Tajik authorities, with the aim of facilitating the reintegration of refugees and IDPs into Tajik society.• maintain contact with and facilitate dialogue and confidence-
building between regionalist and political forces in the country;
• actively promote respect for human rights;
• promote and monitor adherence to [OSCE] norms and principles;
• promote ways and means for the [OSCE] to assist in the devel-
opment of legal and democratic political institutions and
processes;
• keep the [OSCE] informed about further developments.While the success of the current refugee reintegration owes much to the OSCE field staff in southern Tajikistan, the heavy caseload of housing disputes has left little time for broader activities in human rights education and legal reform. Nor has OSCE fulfilled its mandate to promote the institution of an independent ombudsman for human rights in Tajikistan.
OSCE Since the Peace Accord
For the Tajik people, who had not laid eyes on an international relief program prior to six years ago, the array of international workers in large white land rovers can still create confusion. According to one relief worker in the field, the Tajiks in one area had formed their own short-hand, calling the WFP the “Food NGO” and Save the Children–UK the “Cow NGO” for their project providing a cow to female-headed households. But OSCE gives out neither food, clothes, building materials nor death certificates. Rather, it does “all the rest”: acting as human rights monitor, conflict mediator, informal ombudsman and educator in the rule of law.There is a continuous demand for improvisation, for the laws affecting refugee repatriation and postwar reconciliation in Tajikistan are constantly changing. OSCE field staff estimate that they spend two-thirds of their time mediating cases such as housing disputes, and one-third giving advice to Tajiks with legal and administrative needs.
“We have 12 to 13 decrees, a law on displaced persons, and various resolutions,” says Junaid Ibadov, a Tajik legal expert who developed a training program on the status of refugees and IDPs in Dushanbe and the southern districts of Bokhtar and Khodja-Maston. But Ibadov says that so little is known about these documents, even by the legal profession, that there is a great need to educate them and local citizens as well.
This view is shared by OSCE field staff, who report that even local prosecutors will call them for advice on how to handle a housing dispute. Moreover, despite the acute economic hardship, OSCE is encouraged by local officials who still try to do their work in cold, unheated offices, often earning little more than $15 a month.
Mediating House Disputes
The region of Qurghonteppa, regarded as the “epicenter” of the war, has suffered from the most bitter housing disputes. Since opening its office in late 1995, OSCE has directly tended to some 65 cases, which included finding legal support for plaintiffs.
In straightforward housing cases—if no money changed hands and there is no contention over a deed—the plaintiff goes directly to a local prosecutor who makes a ruling. He then sends the police to the house with the plaintiff, and the occupant usually vacates the place without much trouble.Many returnees have encountered more complicated problems, particularly if they sold their house in panic in 1992, as they fled the oncoming civil war. Now they wish to have it back, but prices have shot so high that few people, let alone returning refugees, can find the money to pay current market value.
Moreover, a number of houses were given by Popular Front leaders to their bodyguards as war gifts. These are potentially dangerous cases to resolve, as some of the people in question have ties to the present militia (police). Fearful of reprisals, some of the original owners have given up their appeals and even left their villages.
In principle, the local prosecutor’s office is supposed to intervene in cases of harassment by the militia, and when a local Tajik seeks help from the OSCE, the field officers first establish whether the individual has been intimidated. They then encourage the people to pursue their rights, and approach the local authorities. While it is the role of local authorities to investigate and resolve these problems, it is OSCE’s role to show its vigilance toward the work of officials and the harassment of individuals.
Replacing Lost Documents
While housing disputes have dominated the OSCE workload in Qurghonteppa, the field office in Shaartuz has been deluged with people in need of legal documents, such as identification papers or deeds to their property. Following the final wave of repatriation last year, as many as 300 people came daily to the OSCE office, just hoping to make photocopies of whatever papers
they possessed.Here the role of informal ombudsman has been crucial, particularly for the many widows who have no experience dealing with authorities. Everything they owned before the war is registered in the name of their late husband, and it is very daunting for widows to navigate an unhelpful bureaucracy.
Human Rights Monitoring
Whereas two years ago repatriation triggered grave security violations among the returning refugees, this time around there have been very few complaints of violence as severe as beatings or murder. According to NGO officials who have interviewed scores of refugees both before and after repatriation, the returnees felt both hope and fear.
“They were fearful about going home having the reminder of what happened last time, and also arriving into winter,” notes one NGO field worker, who confirms similar findings by others who have been monitoring the peace process.
“At the same time, the Tajiks I’ve talked to are tired of fighting and tired of war. They just want peace,” the field worker says. “Also, time has passed and the government and opposition are working together. People see a role-model for peace there.”
Another NGO official who has spent a good deal of time in the villages of returnees has found “general excitement” about having the refugees back. But the official points out that backlash against ethnic Uzbeks in the aftermath of last August’s coup attempt has aggravated the tensions in certain communities. “Things are not all forgotten and forgiven,” warns the official. “There was fear in August, fear of the potential for another war.” And those fears were realized in the armed clashes between government forces and Islamic opposition groups east of Dushanbe during the first half of 1998.
Some international officials are equally concerned about reports that there are “visits” to returnees late at night, and that some villagers are frightened to come forward to report such intimidation. But fear is not the only hurdle blocking the refugees, as OSCE officers have found. “There’s such huge deprivation in their basic material conditions, that they often don’t even want to talk about ‘rights.’”
Some progress has been made by urging the local television station to inform the public with reports about repatriation. And the OSCE office aims to expand its local education by possibly linking programs with community youth activities sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme.
But the undercurrents of tension are complex, reflecting not only fear among returnees but also resentment on the part of the local officials. Many officials are Kulobis who won their postings after the war, and who believe that the refugees are unduly favored. Several highly placed international officials stress that efforts to prevent further resentment should be made by widening assistance to the people who stayed in behind during the war. This would include proposals for legal counseling assistance, which should benefit the whole community, not only the returning refugees.
The need to address the terrible conditions of nonrefugees was starkly illustrated during a visit to a village of ethnic Uzbeks, nestled between the ruins of Garmi homes on the outskirts of Shaartuz. As men and children in rags gathered to recite the familiar litany of needs—food, clothes, land—there was little evidence of any benefits for government loyalty during the war.
The group’s leader, a bony 71-year-old man named Dauron, described their desperation to obtain small plots of land from the huge cotton farm nearby, just as had been given to certain groups of refugees, to grow food for their families. In addition, Dauron and his neighbors begged for the international workers to help dredge the Soviet-built irrigation canals, now mired in marshy growth, in order to revive the region’s cotton cultivation.
But such plans are not considered viable by international development analysts, who advise the Tajik villagers to abandon the dream of reviving their mass-scale cotton monoculture. Rather, international officials are supporting smaller-scale cultivation of food and other commodities that can be sold in the local markets.
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