The Comfort of Strangers
The Comfort of Strangers

Author: Folajinmi Olabode Adisa

Publisher: Unchs (Habitat)

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 118

ISBN-13:

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The Comfort of Strangers gives detailed information on the background to the Rwandan refugee problem and a vivid portrayal of the effects of the mass exodus of Rwandans into Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi and Zaire. The global community has, over the past eighty years, put in place an international refugee regime to regularize the status and provide for the control of stateless people ail over the world. Although host communities may initially open their doors to large numbers of people fleeing from their homelands, the long-term impact on the host countries is usually devastating and not often taken into account. This includes environmental dégradation, diminishing food security, dépréciation of the infrastructural base, pressure on the social and health sectors 3nd security risks. These Iead to sympathy fatigue and resentment. This book embodies an in-depth report made for UNCHS (Habitat) on the Rwandan refugee crisis and makes recommendations for its resolution, including compensation for host communites to enable them restore basic infrastructures and increase administrative capacity. Dr. Adisa also calls for a more efficient and humane treatment of the refugees and for their assisted resettlement.

Rwandan Refugee Camps in Zaire and Tanzania 1994-1995
Rwandan Refugee Camps in Zaire and Tanzania 1994-1995

Author: Laurence Binet

Publisher: Médecins Sans Frontières

Published: 2016-05-18

Total Pages: 102

ISBN-13:

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The “Rwandan refugee camps in Zaire -Tanzania 1994-1995” case study is describing the constraints and dilemmas met by MSF when confronted with camps under the tight control of ‘refugee leaders” responsible for the genocide of the Rwandan Tutsis from April to June 1994. The camps were transformed into rear bases from which the reconquest of Rwanda was sought, via a massive diversion of aid, violence, propaganda, and threats against refugees wishing to repatriate. Was it acceptable for MSF to assist people who had committed genocide? Should MSF accept that its aid was instrumentalised by leaders who used violence against the refugees and proclaim their intention to continue the war in order to complete the genocide they had started? For all that, could MSF renounce assisting a population in distress and on what basis should its arguments be founded?

The Path of a Genocide
The Path of a Genocide

Author: Astri Suhrke

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 439

ISBN-13: 1351477676

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The Great Lakes region of Africa has seen dramatic changes. After a decade of war, repression, and genocide, loosely allied regimes have replaced old-style dictatorships. The Path of a Genocide examines the decade (1986-97) that brackets the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. This collection of essays is both a narrative of that event and a deep reexamination of the international role in addressing humanitarian issues and complex emergencies.Nineteen donor countries and seventeen multilateral organizations, international agencies, and international nongovernmental organizations pooled their efforts for an in-depth evaluation of the international response to the conflict in Rwanda. Original studies were commissioned from scholars from Uganda, Rwanda, Zaire, Ethiopia, Norway, Great Britain, France, Canada, and the United States. While each chapter in this volume focuses on one dimension of the Rwanda conflict, together they tell the story of this unfolding genocide and the world's response.The Path of a Genocide offers readers a perspective in sharp contrast to the tendency to treat a peace agreement as the end to conflict. This is a detailed effort to make sense of the political crisis and genocide in Rwanda and the effects it had on its neighbors.

The Hunting and Killing of Rwandan Refugees in Zaire-Congo 1996-1997
The Hunting and Killing of Rwandan Refugees in Zaire-Congo 1996-1997

Author: Laurence Binet

Publisher: Médecins Sans Frontières

Published: 2014-04-01

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13:

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The ‘Hunting and killings of the Rwandan refugee in Zaire/Congo’ case study is describing the constraints and dilemmas faced by Médecins Sans Frontières’ teams in 1996 and 1995 when trying to bring assistance to the Rwandan refugees in Eastern Zaire, after their camps had been attacked by the rebel forces supported by the Rwandan army: could MSF extrapolate from the little known conditions of these refugees and their health needs to speak out about their presumed current plight, despite the fact that it had no access to them? Conversely, given lack of access, should MSF refrain from making predictions? Is it wise for a humanitarian organisation to predict the worst? Given that MSF was being used to lure refugees from hiding, should the organisation cease activities in the area or pursue them, condemning manipulation in the hope of preventing massacres – but at the risk of endangering its teams and other operations in the region? Should MSF call for the refugees to remain in eastern Zaire, with its deadly dangers, or participate in their forced repatriation to Rwanda, where their security was not guaranteed either?

The Price of Indifference
The Price of Indifference

Author: Arthur C. Helton

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2002-03-07

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 0191037524

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Refugee policy has failed frequently over the past decade, resulting in instability, terrible hardships and loss of life. This book is the first effort to review systematically the recent past and re-design policy to give fresh answers to old problems. Specific recommendations are made to re-conceive refugee policy to be more proactive and comprehensive as well as to re-organize how policy is formulated within and among governments. Refugee policy has not kept pace with new realities in international and humanitarian affairs. Recent policy failures have resulted in instability, terrible hardships, and massive loss of life. This book systematically analyzes refugee policy responses over the past decade, and calls for specific reforms to make policy more proactive and comprehensive. Refugee policy must be more than the administration of misery. Responses should be calculated to help prevent or mitigate future humanitarian catastrophes. More international cooperation is needed in advance of crises. Humanitarian structures within governments, notably the United States, as well as the wide variety of international institutions involved in humanitarian action must be re-oriented to cope with new challenges.

Surviving the Slaughter
Surviving the Slaughter

Author: Marie Beatrice Umutesi

Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press

Published: 2004-10-15

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 0299204936

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Though the world was stunned by the horrific massacres of Tutsi by the Hutu majority in Rwanda beginning in April 1994, there has been little coverage of the reprisals that occurred after the Tutsi gained political power. During this time hundreds of thousands of Hutu were systematically hunted and killed. Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire is the eyewitness account of Marie Béatrice Umutesi. She tells of life in the refugee camps in Zaire and her flight across 2000 kilometers on foot. During this forced march, far from the world’s cameras, many Hutu refugees were trampled and murdered. Others died from hunger, exhaustion, and sickness, or simply vanished, ignored by the international community and betrayed by humanitarian organizations. Amidst this brutality, day-to-day suffering, and desperate survival, Umutesi managed to organize the camps to improve the quality of life for women and children. In this first-hand account of inexplicable brutality, day-to-day suffering, and survival, Marie Béatrice Umutesi sheds light on a backlash of violence that targeted the Hutu refugees of Rwanda after the victory of the Rwandan Patriotic Front in 1994. Umutesi’s documentation of the flight and terror of these years provides the world a veritable account of a history that is still widely unknown. After translations from its original French into three other languages, this important book is available in English for the first time. It is more than a testimony to the lives and humanity lost; it is a call for those politicians, military personnel, and humanitarian organizations responsible for the atrocious crimes—and the devastating silence—to be held accountable.

Refugee Manipulation
Refugee Manipulation

Author: Stephen John Stedman

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2004-05-13

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 9780815780892

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Since World War II, refugee organizations have faced a recurrent challenge: the manipulation of refugees by warring parties to further their own aims. Some armies in civil wars, facing military defeat, use refugees as assets to establish the international legitimacy of their cause, treat refugee camps as sanctuaries and recruitment pools, and limit access to refugees to ensure that they will not repatriate. Focusing on the geopolitical security environment surrounding militarized camps and the response of humanitarian agencies, the contributors to this volume examine the ways armed groups manipulate refugees and how and why international actors assist their manipulation. They then offer suggestions for reducing the ability of such groups to use the suffering of refugees to their own advantage. The contributors examine three cases: Cambodian refugees along the Thai border in the 1970s and 1980s, Afghan refugees in Pakistan in the 1980s and 1990s, and Rwandan refugees in Eastern Zaire from 1994–96. They argue that refugee manipulation occurs because warring parties gain resources in their fight for power and other actors, often the host government and regional and major powers encourage and support it. Manipulation is allowed to occur because the international refugee regime and major states have not identified a consistent approach to stopping it. In the post-Cold War era the United Nations and its members have chosen to treat the issue as a humanitarian problem instead of a security problem. As the contributors make clear, however, manipulation of refugees has important ramifications for international security, turning some civil wars into larger protracted regional wars. They argue that the geopolitics of refugee manipulation leads to sanguine conclusions about stopping it. Solutions must change the moral, political, and strategic calculations of states that are implicated in the manipulation. As long as the problem is not deemed a security threat

Refugees, the State and the Politics of Asylum in Africa
Refugees, the State and the Politics of Asylum in Africa

Author: J. Milner

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2009-11-06

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 0230246796

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How do African states respond to the mass arrival and prolonged presence of refugees? This book answers this question by drawing on recent case studies and examining the politics behind refugee policy in Africa. The implications of this approach are important not only for the study of asylum in Africa, but also for the future of refugee protection.