Sadako Ogata; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
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oes the ending of the Cold War then mean an end to refugees? Unfortunately, on the contrary, in some ways it has led to an intensification of the problem. The dominant feature of displacement in the post-Cold War era is that it is largely the product of internal conflicts rooted in nationalistic, ethnic, and religious violence. In the Middle East, the confrontation between the Iraqi authorities and the Kurds led to one of the largest and swiftest refugee outflows ever. In Africa, ethnic strife and civil war have long been a major cause of refugee movements. Now, with the withdrawal of superpower support, the stranglehold of some authoritarian regimes has been weakened, unleashing, at least in the short term, vicious tribal warfare and threatening the timid sprouting of democracy here and there. Large pockets of insecurity in Ethiopia, the continued ethnic strife in southern Sudan, and the civil war in Somalia make the Horn of Africa a region of chronic displacement--internal and external. In recent months, over 236,000 Ethiopian and Somali refugees have fled to Kenya, where UNHCR faces a major emergency in a region prone to drought and famine.
We face another emergency in Bangladesh where almost 200,000 refugees from Myanmar have sought asylum from ethnic and religious persecution. Elsewhere in Europe and Asia, resurgent nationalism is raising its head with a vengeance, straining many fragile state structures and tearing others apart. Yugoslavia is the most clear example, where bitter ethnic conflict has led to the displacement of 650,000 persons within the republics of Yugoslavia, in addition to several hundred thousands to other parts of Europe. The mosaic of ethnic, religious, and linguistic minorities living in uneasy proximity in what was formerly the Soviet Union represent another fertile breeding ground for conflict. The violent dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the enclave of Nakorno Karabakh could well escalate into full-scale war with massive outflow of refugees. Would it be overly pessimistic to say that we are viewing just the tip of the iceberg in Eastern Europe and Central Asia?
The dilemma of displacement appears to have come full circle in the forty-one years of UNHCR's history: having started as a European problem and spread globally, it has come back to haunt Europe once again. Nor should we ignore the economic decline and impoverishment of large parts of the globe as an important factor of instability in a volatile world. In Albania, disastrous economic conditions, high unemployment, and food shortages led to massive social discontent, recurrent riots, and mass exodus of tens of thousands by boat to Italy last year. In the case of Vietnam, depressed economic conditions combined with political repression have long sustained an outflow of boat people. Closer to the United States, Haitians have taken to boats to escape to the United States from the debilitating effects of poverty and repression at home. The recent military overthrow of a democratically elected government in Haiti serves to underline the fragility of democracy in many poor countries.
It is clear that many parts of the world will remain in a volatile state for some time to come. It is equally clear that the political and strategic value of granting asylum has diminished, forcing a reassessment of the traditional response to refugee problems.
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