by Ray Wilkinson

"There is a terrible price to be paid for an open-door shambles of an asylum policy," thundered Britain's Sun newspaper recently. "A time bomb is ticking." The rival Daily Mail warned that "A massive influx of asylum seekers infected with HIV is overwhelming hospitals ... and routine operations for British patients could be cancelled." The Daily Express took a slightly different line: "Immigration officials have virtually given up trying to stop bogus asylum seekers flooding into Britain." The following day, the Express upped the scare tactics by telling its readers that as many as "Seventy three million people will win the right to live and work in Britain when their countries join the European Union next year."

It was a typical week in an unrelentingly shrill crusade by the tabloid media, highlighted by another writer who denounced Britain "as a daft [stupid] country when it comes to dealing with immigrants and asylum seekers."

"No, I'm not talking about the fact that we admit every Tom, Dick and Harry, or that we provide them all with vast sums in legal aid to fight their deportation; or that we allocate them places in posh hotels, give them social security benefits and, later, houses and jobs," opined the writer, Kilroy. "No, what really demonstrates how daft, how stupid, how weak we have become is that we now give council accommodation and state benefits to those planning to murder us all with deadly poison."

Across the continent, Italians watched as a flotilla of rickety boats ferried illegals from Africa to the holiday island of Lampedusa. One high ranking Italian official reputedly urged naval vessels to open fire on the incoming ships, many of which foundered even before reaching land. A local resident, agitatedly watching the latest ship arrival, shouted to a visitor: "The government should put them into a bloody great ship and then tow it around to [Prime Minister] Berlusconi's place in Rome."

A report described the deplorable conditions the illegals endured to try to reach the European promised land: "Crammed together after days in desperate squalor at sea, they cling to hopes of a better future. At the end of their fetid journey, disease is rife among the families who have left their homeland, taking with them everything in the world they possess. Policemen await them, wearing masks to protect themselves from the disease and rank stench of human suffering."

GUN LAW

At the same moment in Africa, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children cowered among the battered ruin that today is the Liberian capital of Monrovia, trying to escape the latest round of fighting in that country's relentless civil war. "Awash with weapons, the law of the gun prevails and innocent civilians are the victims," High Commissioner Ruud Lubbers lamented before an international peacekeeping force began arriving to try to stop the carnage.

In the Pacific, the detention of children on a flyspeck island called Nauru was an issue of the day. Senior members of Amnesty International marched on the home of Australian Prime Minister John Howard to demand the release of 112 young detainees from Nauru, an offshore camp set up in 2001 to house boatloads of people trying to reach Australia. The government vigorously defended its immigration policy in the face of widespread criticism, but in demanding the children's release Amnesty said: "We look at the Australian government as one of the leaders in the protection of human rights, and if we see continued detention of children, then of course it reflects the reality that the law is different from the practice."

As never before, the plight of people on the move – refugees, asylum seekers, economic and environmental migrants – has insinuated itself into every part of the globe. The issue is debated in the corridors of power from Paris to Beijing. Citizens in a rural South Carolina town anxiously await the arrival of a group of refugees from Africa. The tiny state of Burundi remains battered and bruised after decades of conflict in which hundreds of thousands of civilians were slaughtered or fled. Nauru, one of the world's tiniest republics, became embroiled in the problem by accepting Australian largesse – and groups of unwanted boat people – as an economic lifeline.

The fate of governments and individual political careers succeed or founder on the issue. In some countries such as Britain, the topic became so 'hot' it competed for headlines and space with David Beckham, the superstar icon of the global soccer scene whose every move is recorded and broadcast by an army of mainstream photographers and paparazzi.

Capitals, humanitarian organizations and the U.N. refugee agency, guardian of the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention, found themselves caught up in the maelstrom, struggling with varying degrees of success to adapt their systems, policies and priorities to a rapidly changing environment.

DRAMATIC CHANGES

But why have things seemingly altered so dramatically at the start of a new millennium, and is the situation really as out of control as the cumulative drumbeat of daily headlines suggest?

Mass flight is nothing new. From the dawn of history, entire populations have been periodically forced to flee their homes and their countries during times of conflict. Even in the last few decades, as many as 10 million people fled from East Pakistan to India in the early 1970s in the largest single human displacement in modern history. Millions more were uprooted in Southeast Asia, Africa and Europe.

And though 'terror' will now indelibly be associated with the attacks against New York and Washington on 11 September 2001, that weapon, too, has been used from the earliest times to kill, maim and uproot terrified civilians in their millions.

What is new is that old problems have fused with new realities in a brief period of time to create what some countries perceive as an unprecedented threat to their sovereignty, security and global stability.

Because of improved communications the world, almost overnight, has grown smaller. Nations such as the United States or Australia which, because of their geographic isolation, could watch turmoil in far away places with a certain degree of detachment, see themselves on today's front lines. Viewed from the developed world, crises in Afghanistan, Iraq or Haiti appear appreciably closer to home than even a few years ago.

Europe is no stranger to the large scale movement of refugees, especially during and after two world wars, but governments there feel less in control today, threatened by the unpredictable nature of migrations as boatloads of people from Africa or migrants on scores of well-travelled overland smuggling routes from the east try to breach the increasingly higher walls the continent erects to keep them out.

The number of uprooted persons of concern to UNHCR worldwide actually decreased from an all-time high of more than 27 million in 1994 to more than 20 million today – but that is only part of the story.

There are an estimated 20-25 million civilians internally displaced within their own country, people in desperate straits enjoying little international sympathy or protection – but potentially part of the next major exodus.

Taking advantage of easier communications and shorter distances, millions of so-called economic migrants were also on the move in any given time period.

Smugglers and human traffickers developed a multi-billion dollar business, willing to ship anyone anywhere as long as they could pay often extortionate fees for their passage.

Immigration and asylum systems in developed states became overwhelmed at times as they tried to handle increasing numbers of people and sort out persons in genuine need of help and those simply seeking a better life elsewhere.

Wars became messier and dirtier. Some, such as those in Sudan and Angola, turned into 'protracted' crises lasting for decades and becoming increasingly difficult to resolve.

Terrorism and Washington's subsequent war on terrorism went global, stretching from the mainland United States through Europe, the Middle East, Africa to the once idyllic paradise of Bali, raising suspicions about any 'foreigner' asking for help.

VOLATILE COCKTAIL

This movement of real refugees, asylum seekers, economic migrants, the uncertainty of future terror attacks, the global reach of the traffickers and smugglers, efforts by developed countries to tighten their border security and immigration procedures, combined to produce a volatile cocktail of apprehension, worry and, at times, xenophobia.

High Commissioner Ruud Lubbers dismissed the apocalyptic visions of some politicians and media and insisted that key instruments such as the 1951 Refugee Convention remained the cornerstone of efforts to protect some of the world's most vulnerable people.

He also acknowledged that his organization had reached a significant 'crossroads' and new protection strategies including a strengthened Refugee Convention, improved international cooperation, greater burden sharing among states and increased aid to poorer states hosting refugees were all now on the drawing board.

Volker Turk, head of UNHCR's protection policy and legal advice team, called the current protection environment "infinitely more complex and challenging" than even a few years ago.

But reshaping protection policies to meet new challenges is not a new phenomenon.

The principle of asylum is as ancient as the first forced exodus of peoples and the methods of protection have constantly adapted to the realities of the time.

Initially, it was left to powerful kings or individual countries to offer sanctuary to the downtrodden. Theseus, the King of Athens, told Oedipus, the King of Thebes: "I well remember that I grew up in the house of others and in a foreign land. I faced deadly dangers. So that, whoever asks my hospitality, as you do now, I would not know how to turn away."

It was not until the 20th century that countries began to develop an international conscience. The League of Nations, forerunner of the United Nations, appointed history's first High Commissioner for Refugees in 1921. Two other agencies followed – the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and the International Refugee Organization (IRO) – before UNHCR was created by the U.N. General Assembly in 1950.

At the same time, a body of international humanitarian and refugee law began to take shape. It included the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, followed a year later by the fourth of the Geneva Conventions covering the protection of war-affected civilians.

On 28 July 1951, the Geneva Refugee Convention was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly – a convenient benchmark from which to begin measuring the modern global refugee regime.

Though it was the first truly international agreement covering refugees, it was also a deliberately restrictive instrument. The final document principally covered around one million refugees in Europe who had been made homeless before 1 January 1951. The drafters felt "it would be difficult for governments to sign a blank cheque and to undertake obligations towards future refugees, the origin and number of which would be unknown."

There was no mention of the right to asylum in the document. Or of such issues as gender persecution. The fathers of the Convention – all men – did not deliberately omit this category. In those far-off days, it was not even considered.

In the intervening decades, many gaps were plugged by international, regional and national legislation and other measures were put into place as the numbers of refugees grew inexorably and crises became global and more complex.

National asylum systems were developed, with UNHCR acting in a watchdog capacity. Gender-related violence under certain circumstances is now widely considered to fall within the refugee definition.

A 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees effectively removed the earlier 1951 deadline and geographical restrictions in the Convention. Two years later, the Organization of African Unity adopted its own refugee convention which included the now universally accepted principle of 'voluntary' repatriation.

Interim solutions were forged to solve specific crises. In the wake of the decades-long war in Indochina, a highly complex package called the Comprehensive Plan ofAction (CPA) committing all the principal actors to specific roles was formulated. A key element – which would also be used in later conflicts such as Bosnia – was the development of the principle of temporary asylum or protection under which regional states agreed to accept large numbers of fleeing civilians, but with the proviso that they would eventually return home or resettle in another state.

TURNING POINT

The 1990s were a watershed of sorts for UNHCR. As the cold war era ended the nature of war itself changed. Conventional conflicts were increasingly replaced by messier, internal crises.

Previously, the refugee agency had worked on the periphery of war, helping refugees once they had reached the safety of a neighbouring country. But in the aftermath of the first Gulf war, in Bosnia and in Africa's Great Lakes, field staff deployed to the very centre of these new style conflicts. The agency expanded its staff and took on added responsibilities, running aid convoys, operating airlifts, launching special programmes, rebuilding hospitals and schools, repairing roads.

But behind these activities a hidden time bomb was about to explode and would last for years, both within UNHCR itself, among governments and other humanitarian agencies.

The issue was protection.

Supporters of the organization's new 'super role' argued that all of its activities were 'protection related.' Refugees had first to be given basics such as shelter, food and water before they could be considered as safe and work then started to help them rebuild their lives. Education programmes had to be implemented for child refugees. When they returned home, programmes were needed to help reintegrate refugees and also to help the communities to which they were returning.

In the absence of other agencies, UNHCR undertook many of these activities and increasingly was also called upon to help millions of persons internally displaced within their own countries who had no international godfather to protect them.

If there was little argument that all of these programmes were necessary, there was prolonged and ongoing debate about whether UNHCR's mandate covered such activities, whether its core work of 'pure' protection would suffer as a result and on a practical note, whether the agency even had the resources to accomplish everything it was trying to do.

In an era of tight budgets and manpower reductions, that particular struggle continues. Delivering convoys of food to besieged enclaves such as Srebrenica in Bosnia is high-profile, television-glamorous and easy for accountants and donors to understand and compute the cost. Laboring for months to help fashion new asylum legislation in an obscure Central Asian capital or spending weeks carefully monitoring the well-being of a small group of vulnerable people in Sri Lanka is expensive, time-consuming and difficult to gauge the impact.

One recent internal memo on protection noted the problem: "It is important to recall that the delivery of international protection is a staff intensive, specialized service that cannot be equated with or quantified in the same way as the distribution of relief items. The function is more difficult to measure, but it is in fact the raison d'être, the 'added value' of UNHCR."

LOSING THE PLOT

Critics took aim at UNHCR and its protection role from several directions. They accused it of having 'lost the plot' on protection, diluting or ignoring its core responsibilities in pursuit of projects other organizations could undertake. And depending on the critics particular viewpoint, the agency was also either ignoring the concerns of states or conversely succumbing to national political pressures.

Some capitals warned that UNHCR's role and the Convention itself were increasingly irrelevant.

At the height of the controversy over the introduction of tough new asylum restrictions in Australia, Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock said the refugee agency had become eurocentric and had to begin listening more closely to the countries paying its bills.

"If we are being increasingly forced by the large numbers of asylum seekers turning up by boat to allocate more and more resources for that task, we will not have the resources available to enhance the activities of the UNHCR," he said in one interview, noting that states were spending $10 billion annually to process illegal immigrants.

Opponents of that view said UNHCR was allocated only one-tenth of that global amount to care for more than 20 million people and that if more resources were made available to the agency for frontline work, this could help relieve the strain on national asylum structures and eventually reduce the pressure on their asylum systems.

A WALK IN THE PARK

Volker Turk was a senior protection officer en route to Bosnia in 1997 when he went for a walk in the garden of the Hotel Villa Bled in Slovenia. "It was one of those grey, wet November Balkan days, but suddenly the sun broke through and we saw the lake for the first time and walked around it," he recalled.

He and his colleague, Erika Feller, then deputy director of UNHCR's protection division and now its director, agreed that "We had become big relief operators, dazzled by helping large numbers of people, less able to concentrate on the nitty gritty, complex work of protection. We needed to become the motor of protection once more, to re-establish leadership, to become proactive rather than reactive."

From there flowed the idea of what were first called "three circles consultations." The idea for a revitalized protection regime was outlined in an internal paper: "UNHCR will engage in a series of consultations with experts and senior government representatives concerning measures to ensure international protection to all who need it, with a view to developing comprehensive legal standards ... The objective of this process is to identify the content and nature of such protection, without detracting from international refugee instruments; to consolidate the various elements of UNHCR's mandate; and to review the lawmaking process in the area of international protection."

Feller added, "These consultations will address in particular the inadequacies in the international legal framework."

Two years of roundtables, teleconferences and negotiations followed in what had now been relabelled Global Consultations.

"We were very nervous," Volker Turk said. "At the beginning there were very many naysayers who predicted that the process was doomed."

In the event, two years ago, 162 countries, refugee and humanitarian experts met in Geneva in the most important global meeting on refugees in half a century and adopted a landmark declaration reaffirming the validity of the 1951 Convention. The gathering recognized the 'enduring importance' and the 'relevance and resilience' of the document which Lubbers described as a treaty "about freedom from fear."

"A few years ago, the Convention was under attack," Lubbers said. "States were arguing it was out of date. That is no longer the case. Now, no one is questioning its continued validity."

Encouraged by that endorsement and turning the Global Consultations into a more practical platform, the agency shaped what it called an Agenda for Protection, a framework containing the broad outlines, general directions and yardstick activities to be used by governments and humanitarian organizations to strengthen the protection regime.

Volker Turk said it was "a minor miracle that we have got as far as we have. We have regained our credibility. The carping has stopped." Erika Feller said the agenda had become "part and parcel of the language and working framework of states at the highest level."

High Commissioner Lubbers launched a series of specific initiatives aimed at strengthening both core protection instruments and programmes and bridging the gap between where the agency's protection mandate ends and where other organizations step in to promote long-term rehabilitation and development among returning refugees.

HELP

If Convention critics had backed away from the most radical demands to scrap or opt out of the 1951 treaty, there was general recognition that it still needed help around the edges.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the document's "values are timeless" but added that "with vastly increasing economic migration around the world and most especially in Europe, there is an obvious need to set proper rules and procedures. The United Kingdom is taking the lead in arguing for reform, not of the Convention's values, but of how it operates."

One suggestion was the addition of a protocol similar to the 1967 treaty. "States got extremely nervous about that," one participant said. Like their predecessors at the original Convention negotiations, governments were "not ready to go into new, legally binding texts," the source said. From the opposite end of the spectrum, there was concern that wide ranging discussions could end up "unravelling and fatally weakening the Convention," she said. "It was a path down which no one wanted to travel."

Instead, Lubbers proposed a project he called Convention Plus, effectively a series of flexible special agreements, either binding or non binding, between states and/or humanitarian organizations. They would address problems such as more equitable burden sharing, tackling the erratic flow of refugees and asylum seekers and targetting increased development aid to the world's poorest countries which either host huge numbers of refugees or where the displaced persons come from in the first place.

The Comprehensive Plan of Action (CPA) covering Indochinese refugees was a forerunner of the type of agreement the High Commissioner proposed under his new initiative.

At the recent inaugural meeting of a special forum to debate Convention Plus attended by government and non-governmental representatives, Lubbers underlined a theme that has dominated many of his speeches: that giving assistance in the field, providing legal help and involvement in asylum issues is only half the battle. Ultimately, refugees must be helped to restart their lives, either by returning home or starting afresh in a new country. Or as he said in one recent speech: "Protection is not protection if there are no solutions." He added in another presentation that "2002 was the year UNHCR started to portray itself as part of the solution." But there was still a long way to go and finding permanent solutions "was (still) not functioning well enough."

The agency encouraged states to accept more refugees for permanent resettlement (see Somali Bantu story page 10) or to integrate them locally in countries where they had first sought asylum (Development through Local Integration –DLI).

Pilot projects were undertaken in Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Eritrea to ensure the successful homecoming of refugees by creating a seamless operation during the four major phases of return – namely repatriation, reintegration, rehabilitation and reconstruction. Lubbers dubbed this the 4Rs initiative intended to eliminate one of the most problematic and persistent faultlines in humanitarian operations – the gap in many operations between emergency assistance provided by organizations such as UNHCR and funds to launch and sustain long-term development.

High-level protection officials also insisted that a widespread change of attitude and of tone was necessary to successfully push the protection agenda forward in such troubled times. "If we don't show more flexibility, if we do not move away from the 'purist' line that protection claims are always paramount and governments' actions are always tinged with suspicion, we are going to make ourselves and the Convention irrelevant," said one.

Another added, "Our approach has already changed. We used to tell states 'You can't do that ... unless.' Now we're saying, 'Yes we can do that ... but let's also examine the problems.' It is a far more positive and productive approach."

Some critics disagree, viewing this approach as a dangerous path to tread, a short step from handing over the protection mantle to the very governments that should be closely monitored.

CONVENTION MINUS

Improvements in protection do face ferocious barriers, a mountain of obstacles dubbed by some as 'Convention Minus.'

In Europe, the Pacific and North America the interception of people trying to reach countries where they might claim asylum has increased.

The refugee agency will present a draft conclusion later in the year to its governing Executive Committee for approval, insisting that intercepting countries must take all measures to identify genuine refugees and asylum seekers before they can be turned back.

The number of 'unacceptable' detentions also rose, though UNHCR has long recognized the right of countries to hold people in certain circumstances for a limited amount of time, optimally for no more than one month.

On the ground, a recent protection report noted: "The lack of security remains endemic, camps and settlements have been infiltrated by armed elements, refugees are intercepted, denied entry or forcibly returned, are unable to gain access to effective asylum procedures, are not given papers, increasing the risk of arbitrary detention and deportation, face hostility from host populations and frequently risk attack, rape and death."

Though the fallout and anticipated backlash against refugees and asylum seekers in the wake of the attacks in the United States and war on terrorism was not as widespread as anticipated, there was still cause for concern.

"In taking counter-terrorism measures, we must ensure that governments avoid making unwarranted linkages between refugees and terrorism," Lubbers said. "Genuine refugees themselves are the victims of persecution and terrorism, not its perpetrators." And in another speech: "There is a risk these people may become convenient scapegoats and may be unfairly victimized. We must not allow this to happen."

But in the United States, thousands of people targetted for resettlement – a major plank in the agency's search for permanent solutions – did feel the backlash, at least temporarily. Though the 2002 admission quota to that country was set at 70,000, only 26,300 people were admitted. UNHCR reported a plunge of 56 percent in resettlement cases directly under its auspices in other parts of the world.

The refugee agency, the only U.N. organization with an official mandate to protect refugees, also worried that in an already complex environment where it was increasingly difficult to separate genuine refugees from other 'migrants' the roles of humanitarian agencies themselves were becoming fuzzy.

Officials expressed concern at the increasing number of agencies describing their work as 'protection' related which could lead to a dilution of expertise ultimately detrimental to the very people everyone was trying to help.

One protection official described the problem colourfully: "UNHCR is sometimes like the ugly bride who arrives at church with a small dowry. We often deliver messages governments don't want to hear and we are not very welcome." Other agencies, however, "are trying to be the beautiful bride with the large dowry, ready to please."

HIGH STAKES AND SPIN

Recent events in Europe underscore the high stakes, spin, misunderstandings and even a cloak-and-dagger atmosphere which can arise anytime immigration and protection are on the international agenda.

Britain earlier this year floated a controversial proposal which would essentially 'export' Europe's asylum problem by establishing a series of processing centres in countries on the outskirts of the Union, or as London described it "within wider Europe" where people seeking sanctuary would be vetted.

The Observer newspaper quickly reported a "Secret Balkan camp built to hold UK asylum seekers." The story was subsequently debunked.

As the intrigue mounted, other newspapers allegedly spotted the British ambassador in Albania skulking around remote mountain areas inspecting potential detention facilities.

Faced with ferocious criticism from human rights groups and some fellow European states, London dropped that idea but then suggested the establishment of 'zones of protection' further afield in areas such as the Horn of Africa from where many refugees originated and where they would be assisted and vetted under the British proposal.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw insisted that this second project had the "full support of UNHCR." Recognizing both the delicacy and urgency of the issue, the refugee agency issued what it called a "three-pronged approach to improving the global asylum system." One called for the strengthening of the asylum systems of individual states. A second would transform Europe into a single asylum regime, crucially with any central processing centres inside the Union rather than outside as the British had suggested, and therefore subject to direct European oversight.

A third 'regional' prong urged traditional donors to significantly bolster their aid both to refugees and host countries in poor areas of the world, thereby reducing the pressure to seek asylum further afield. It included special arrangements tailored for specific refugee groups.

The two approaches were fundamentally different. As a UNHCR spokesman, Rupert Colville, later insisted: "We are concerned with making more concerted and imaginative efforts to grapple with specific situations in regions of origin, not with creating new geographical or physical entities. We want to remove the pressures on refugees to move, not somehow trying to contain them. UNHCR is not talking about 'zones of protection.' We're not sure what this concept means."

The devil was in the nuance but Amnesty International, in a 37-page report, further muddied the waters by suggesting the British and UNHCR proposals were one and the same. The report's very title: "UK/EU/UNHCR: Unlawful and unworkable extraterritorial processing of asylum claims" set the tone.

The riposte was unprecedented. "The Amnesty report clearly misrepresents UNHCR's position," Volker Turk insisted. "It is flawed in its legal and policy arguments. It does a disservice to what we are trying to do by linking all the proposals together. It has fed into, and badly misled, the public debate."

Lubbers said the agency's position had been "widely misinterpreted and misrepresented." Its regional proposals were "not about burden shifting, it's about burden sharing."

The damage nevertheless had been done. Experts, government officials and the media, let alone the general public, seemed hopelessly confused about who had proposed what. The Guardian newspaper, normally an informed journal on asylum issues, reported in one story that Prime Minister Blair had "failed to win agreement for EU funding of the U.N.'s plan to set up 'zones of protection' when the story was a clear reference to the British, not the UNHCR plan.

The same article reported 12 British organizations protesting to Blair that British backing for this so-called U.N. (in reality British) plan: "These proposals will be seen as shifting responsibility for asylum seekers and refugees to some of the poorest countries in the world and send a dangerous signal about the UK's commitment to human rights."

There were few winners amid the wreckage.

SOVEREIGNTY AND IDPS

On the larger global stage, debate continued to swirl around the fundamental issues of sovereignty, the right to intervene during humanitarian crises and the responsibility for helping anywhere between 20-25 million people who are internally displaced within their own countries, a group bureaucratically referred to as IDPs.

In one of the most controversial speeches by any U.N. Secretary-General, Kofi Annan three years ago urged member states to put aside their most jealously guarded powers – sovereignty and the sanctity of national borders – in the higher interest of protecting civilians caught in the crossfire of war.

In a radical set of recommendations, Annan suggested the Security Council could intervene indirectly in internal conflicts, authorizing preventive peacekeeping missions, creating 'safe corridors' in war zones to enable aid agencies to reach beleaguered populations, enforcing existing international humanitarian and human rights law and imposing sanctions such as arms embargoes against recalcitrant states.

In a more recent report entitled "The Responsibility to Protect," Gareth Evans, president of the International Crisis Group and Mohamed Sahnoun, special advisor to Annan on Africa, concluded that in the last decade the international community had "made a mess" of humanitarian intervention in places like Kosovo, Rwanda and Bosnia.

Debate had degenerated into "cantankerous exchanges in which fervent supporters of intervention on human rights groups, opposed by anxious defenders of state sovereignty, dug themselves deeper and deeper into opposing trenches."

The authors argued that military intervention should be used on occasion – but sparingly and following strict guidelines. The issue itself should be reframed from 'the right to intervene' to 'responsibility to protect.' In itself this responsibility to protect would be an umbrella concept embracing not just a 'responsibility to react' but also a 'responsibility to prevent' and a 'responsibility to rebuild.'

While governments and policy experts slugged it out, the debate over the care of victims of internal conflict bogged down.

Though it does not have a general mandate for IDPs, UNHCR currently cares for around six million people from this group. Their plight is similar to refugees, they are often in the same geographical locations as ongoing refugee operations and it is common sense that the agency should care for specific populations.

But each new crisis produces the same political and operational dilemmas, the latest example being the war in Iraq.

Both within UNHCR and within the greater U.N. and humanitarian families there were familiar questions: since IDPs are not covered by UNHCR's mandate why should the organization become involved? Did it, anyway, have the resources at the time of financial retrenchment, to take on additional responsibilities? If it did not become involved would it cede part of its patch and its importance to other eager players in an increasingly competitive and crowded humanitarian environment?

There were unlikely to be clear-cut answers to any of these questions on IDPs and sovereignty for years to come.

INVISIBLE PROTECTION

Away from glamorous crises such as Iraq, the television cameras and media headlines and the high-profile conference circuit, what one report described as the 'largely invisible work of protection' continued, unheralded and unremarked, a myriad of daily programmes and projects, large and small.

Proper documentation and refugee registration helps to prevent arbitrary detention or refoulement (the forcible return of refugees). In Ecuador a database developed jointly by the government and UNHCR now provides documentation assistance to Colombian refugees. In Côte d'Ivoire, Georgia, Guinea and Yemen, ID cards were distributed for the first time not only to men but also to women.

Canadian police officers were deployed to Guinea early in the year to help improve refugee camp layout and alleviate the threat of physical attacks, especially against women.

Recognizing the particular vulnerability of females, a range of other protection programmes were initiated.

These were closely linked to efforts to increase the access to education, which not only prepares young people for the future, but also helps protect them from sexual abuse, military recruitment and trafficking.

In Sri Lanka teach-ins were organized to educate returning civilians about the dangers of unexploded military ordnance.

In Sierra Leone, guerrillas, especially child soldiers, were helped through the painful process of demobilizing and reintegrating into societies which they had terrorized for years.

A review of the protection capacities in 11 African countries was recently completed, part of ongoing legal efforts to help countries worldwide, but especially poor and developing states, to put into place effective legal and physical asylum and immigration structures.

In recent months, El Salvador, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Moldova, Paraguay and Peru all approved refugee legislation for the first time. Ukraine and Timor-Leste acceded to the 1951 Convention and/or the 1967 Protocol, bringing to 145 the number of states to have done so.

In Croatia, Bosnia and Burundi, efforts to resolve property and land disputes continue, though such processes can take years to complete.

The refugee agency encouraged the integration of refugees in host countries. In one successful example, more than 7,600 civilians originally from Guatemala were naturalized since 1996 in Mexico. A similar large-scale project is currently underway in Zambia.

Stateless civilians in the central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan have been awarded citizenship and UNHCR has expanded its efforts to help an estimated nine million stateless persons around the world to 'come in from the cold' and find homes (see page 12).

The agency sponsored CDs by local artists, a television soap opera and radio and television adverts in an effort to combat xenophobia in Côte d'Ivoire.

In Yemen's capital, Sana'a, a law course on refugee and human rights reached nearly 500 staff, an initial springboard to countrywide dissemination of the information.

Encouraging though all of those projects were, there was still a long way to go to reach Lubbers ultimate protection objective.

As he said in one recent speech: "It is better to bring safety to people, not people to safety." But he added: "When the international community fails to do this, as it frequently does, we must uphold the right of people to seek and enjoy asylum."