The Problem of Violence Against Refugees

Professor Mariano-Florentino (“Tino”) Cuellar at Stanford Law School has an interesting article forthcoming in the Georgetown Journal of International Law on an unusual subject: refugee security. The title of the article is Refugee Security and the Organizational Logic of Legal Mandates. The abstract and article are available for download here.

Cuellar presents a compelling case for greater attention to the issue of physical security at refugee camps. Let’s face it, there are a few hundred individuals detained in the war on terror, and yet there are literally millions of people who are at risk of serious violence in refugee camps throughout the developing world. Why the disproportionate focus on one and not the other? Frankly, refugee security is one of those issues that is easily neglected. We assume that refugee camps are safe havens from individuals fleeing violence “out there.” Not so. Cuellar suggests that “vulnerable populations fleeing persecution and violence in their home countries are routinely afflicted by violence and physical insecurity in the refugee camps where most of them are housed.” And Cuellar does a nice job highlighting the numerous issues at play in the physical protection of the displaced populations in refugee camps. He maintains that refugee advocates must become experts in the management of conflict within and around the camps, something that the UNHCR woefully fails to do.

Here is a taste (pp. 15-16):

While physical security threats may be inherent in a system that relies so heavily on refugee camps near conflict zones, UNHCR and its partners still retain the power to mitigate some of the consequences of security problems and advocate forcefully against them. Nonetheless, during most of UNHCR’s history, the refugee advocates working there …. have repeatedly neglected, denied responsibility for, or downplayed their role in mitigating dangers faced by refugees…. [R]efugee advocates frequently question whether security problems are worth their attention when host states (such as Tanzania) and powerful countries (such as the United States) are the ones with the responsibility and power to solve them…. UNCHR and its partners have not been powerless to blunt the impact of security threats…. Why is there no high-level bureacratic unit devoted to protecting refugee security within an international organization that was explicitly created to advocate for and protect refugees…? Why has it historically made constant fundraising appeals to obtain food and shelter for refugees but not explicitly to find solution to the violence affecting their camps? … The puzzle is all the more interesting because it is not resolved by some of the most commonly-offered explanations advanced either by UNHCR officials or by scholars…. Similarly unavailing are assertions that UNHCR lacks the legal mandate to seek solutions to security problems or that nothing can be done about security problems without, for example, massive interventions from the United Nations Security Council or deployments of peacekeepers.