PART FIVE
The International Response to Population Displacement in the Former Soviet Union
The former Soviet Union, like the crumbling Yugoslavia before it, brings into bold relief the urgent needs of disintegrating societies and the limits of the traditional international aid community to cope with them. As plans are underway for an international conference on displacement and migration in the former Soviet republics, the issues raised in Abkhazia are echoed in the following themes running through numerous interviews conducted in the United States, Moscow, Georgia and Abkhazia.
Understanding Political and Administrative Structures
Many NGOs and international organizations have been frustrated by the maze of jurisdictions from Moscow to the local republics, overlaid with various ministries (central and local), military commands and police forces. International organizations and NGOs expend great amounts of energy and time obtaining permits, customs documents, and travel visas, only to have them contradicted at various turns. Though frustrated by this state of affairs, people interviewed for this report still expressed reservations about the formation of a statewide umbrella organization, fearing that it could evolve into something as cumbersome as the former Soviet system. Rather, they repeated the need for a mutual program of on-going consultations for NGOs and international organizations to learn how the region functions at the official level and vice versa.
A Model Agreement for International Relief Organizations
Given the context of social crisis, a model formal agreement should be considered to govern relations between international relief organizations and the central state authorities. Such an agreement would clearly spell out the NGO's program goals, its impartiality, and its need to supervise the distribution of the aid it supplies.
Public Education on General Humanitarian Principles
International organizations and NGOs must devote significant time to educating the public‹both government officials and local populations‹about the role of international human rights and humanitarian law, the concept of individual rights, and the role of private voluntary organizations, all of which are still relatively new to the former Soviet Union. Dissemination programs similar to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) should be implemented immediately to acquaint government officials and the public with the relevant state responsibilities. On the most rudimentary level, several relief officials said that the local population can rarely differentiate among all the "big, white four-wheel-drives" marked with the classic red cross of the ICRC, the adapted red cross of Médecins sans Frontières, and the various United Nations logos.
Preemptive Study and Planning
The former Soviet Union, virtually uncharted territory to the international humanitarian community until the end of 1991, poses a broader and more enduring challenge than the former Yugoslavia. International organizations and NGOs would do well to identify the numerous high-risk regions in the FSU for purposes of monitoring for early warning of conflict and mass displacement. New legal classifications should be considered to accommodate statelessness in territories which are themselves disputing their statehood. Such a scheme should immediately clarify which institutional actor should take charge of which aspects of a population's emergency needs.
International Institutional Mandates
In the region, UNHCR is one of several international institutional actors, which also include OSCE and the International Organization for Migration. However, the increasing number of "forced migrants" in the former Soviet Union who elude the conventional refugee classification is sharpening the debate within the UNHCR over its institutional mandate. International relief officials working in Russia and the Caucasus, including UNHCR staff, repeatedly urged UNHCR to redefine its mandate on a regional basis, so that it could respond swiftly to crises as they continue to erupt in the former Soviet Union. Hundreds of thousands of former Soviet citizens are likely to be uprooted over the course of the coming decade.
Most commentators agree that the distinction between traditional cross-border refugees and IDPs is receding in practice. If the High Commissioner for Refugees determines that UNHCR should start an operation for IDPs, the necessary special authorization from the Secretary General is likely to be obtained. The debate, according to several insiders, is more a matter within UNHCR, where a number of staffers see the work with IDPs as a threat to funding for traditional refugee problems. "Donors say, 'Yes. Definitely. Do conflict resolution. Try to prevent the crisis,' " one UNHCR official said. "But then there's no funding."
This UNHCR official argues that establishing an early presence, preferably prior to a full-blown crisis, is crucial to developing credibility with the local authorities and local populations involved. Even without a major assistance program, the UNHCR should consider establishing a preliminary administrative structure at a cost of only a few hundred thousand dollars, through which international and local NGOs could begin work similar to what the groups are doing in the poorest regions of Georgia. According to the same UNHCR official, Geneva is making some moves to address this issue. Headquarters convened a meeting to talk about its future plans, and also sent a mission from its Internal Evaluation Unit to assess the situation in the troubled program in Georgia.
Another UNHCR colleague working in the former Soviet Union, however, foresaw problems in expanding UNHCR's role and a broader legal mandate. He preferred to take refugee crises ad hoc, and on the subject of Chechnya, for example, he opposed involvement inside the embattled republic because it was "in a state of total war." The UNHCR should work in the environs, he said, and leave the war zone to other groups that are already there.
Recruitment of More Effective UN Field Officers
UNHCR may require some time to build a more productive relationship with the Russians and other republics. Relations got off to a strained start in the first throes of post-Soviet migration. According to some of its own employees, UNHCR can begin by recruiting field officers who speak one of the local languages, and failing that, by appointing representatives who have some knowledge of the former Soviet Union. Some of the repatriation plans for Abkhazia seemed to be conceived in ignorance of daily reality in the towns and villages‹most notably in this instance with the notion that security for repatriates would be ensured by the "local Abkhaz police," for example.
Working with Russia Toward a Long-term Solution
Finally, for a resolution to the specific problems of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, several people interviewed urged the international community to seek every diplomatic means of influencing Russia to endorse some kind of long- term settlement. It is widely believed that unrest in these former republics will not end until Russia finds a settlement suitable to its own interests. Those interests could be enhanced by the attachment of practical aid programs for reconstruction and resettlement, as well as ongoing assistance in potentially explosive areas. Along with diplomatic interventions, cooperation from the leading power in the region will most likely require an economic package from the international community designed to help the local authorities implement a long-term settlement.
Copyright © 1995 by the Open Society Institute ISBN 0-9641568-1-4 .
