Dividing Divided States. Gregory F. Treverton

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СКАЧАТЬ in a patchwork of de facto local policies, a pattern that played out in BiH. Many displaced people returned before the ink was dry on the DPA. However, in the first two years returnees were predominantly “majority returns”—that is, displaced people who returned to areas in which they belonged to the ethnic majority. Minority returns followed later once additional guarantees were in place.

      Not until the early 2000s did minority and other returns gather momentum again. Several factors are credited with this development, including improved security, reconstruction, and property restitution. With the coordinated efforts of the OSCE, UNHCR, and OHR, ethnic violence declined, and many felt comfortable returning to the areas they had fled. Massive housing projects rebuilt at least some of the housing that was destroyed during the war. Perhaps the most important factor in these later flows of returnees was the provisions to reclaim or receive compensation for property abandoned during the war.⁶⁶

      The DPA affirmed that all refugees have the right to reclaim their homes or be compensated for lost or destroyed property. To accomplish this goal, the DPA created the Commission for Real Property Claims of Displaced Persons and Refugees (CRPC). The CRPC’s mandate called for the commission to “receive and decide any claims for real property in BiH, where the property has not voluntarily been sold or otherwise transferred since April 1, 1992, and where the claimant does not now enjoy possession of that property.”⁶⁷ Although the CRPC’s decisions were final, it was not vested with the power to directly enforce its decisions, and the domestic institutions that did have such power lacked the will to enforce the rulings.

      The commission remained largely ineffective and was ultimately replaced by Property Law Implementation Plan (PLIP) in 1999. The PLIP was organized by the OHR, NATO, and the UNHCR to enforce new legislation governing the resolution of property claims. Compared to its predecessor, the PLIP was well funded and supported by the international community. It was also more flexible and capable of handling emerging needs, such as the claims to occupancy rights in socially owned apartment properties. It has been very effective. Of the 200,000 claims received, 93 percent had been resolved by mid-2005, making this the first successful case of large-scale property restitution in a postconflict setting.⁶⁸

      As time has passed, the MHRR has come to recognize that return is not the universally appropriate solution to displacement. Many of those who remain as registered IDPs within BiH are vulnerable—the elderly, the mentally and physically handicapped, individuals traumatized by war, all of whom are unable or unwilling to return to the communities they fled. Thus, the MHRR and the international community have increased funding for efforts to support IDPs where they have now settled. In addition, the MHRR’s 2008 revision of the National Strategy for Implementation of Annex VII acknowledged the need to provide means for compensating the displaced for their lost property, in addition to enabling restitution for those who want to return to their homes.⁶⁹

      Assessment and Possible Lessons

      Perhaps the most obvious means of assessing the success of dealing with displaced people is by measuring the extent to which they have returned to the areas they fled. According to UNHCR and MHRR estimates, more than one million refugees and IDPs combined (slightly more IDPs than refugees) had returned to their prewar residence in BiH by June 2008. However, this estimate may undercount those who have returned to the area but not the residence in which they lived and overcount IDPs who returned only to leave again.⁷⁰

      Returning has proven to be difficult for a number of reasons. Rural areas, in particular, have had high unemployment rates following the war. Thus, many young IDPs and refugees from the countryside have chosen to remain in larger cities and towns or indeed abroad, where they have greater access to education and jobs. Some return only to reclaim their property and subsequently sell or rent it while continuing to live elsewhere. Still others return with plans to resettle permanently but find it daunting to do so. There are fewer economic opportunities after the devastation. In addition, those who returned to their former communities as ethnic minorities have experienced discrimination in employment and access to health services and ethnocentric curricula in local schools.⁷¹ Thus, while significant progress has been made, the goal of returning the displaced to their homes amid safety, security, and dignity remains only partially fulfilled.

      Officially the armed conflict between ethnic groups in BiH ended many years ago, and while a stable unified government has yet to be achieved, the government has held together. Yet ethnicity continues to cleave BiH society. So long as that is the case, the issue of displaced people cannot fully be put to rest, though many may have found a place to settle. The following are several lessons from the experience of BiH that may have broader relevance:

      When ethnic conflict is the direct cause of displacement, it can be naïve to think that returning displaced persons to their homes undoes the ethnic divides created by war. While multiethnic communities may be desired in principle by national (and international) entities, the rights of displaced persons, including the right not to return to their place of origin, should be respected.

      IDPs have frequently been used as political capital to establish or maintain a majority population in an area where political clout falls along ethnic lines. To combat this, durable solutions for the displaced must be viewed first in humanitarian terms.⁷²

      The protection of displaced persons’ right to return should not be construed by policy makers as a mandate to enforce their return. The freedom of movement—and therefore local integration in a new area—must simultaneously be respected.

      Even activities to ensure the protection of human rights will be construed as political. The UNHCR protected Bosnian Muslims fleeing their homes and so was later accused of being an accomplice to ethnic cleansing. When the UNHCR protected communities that remained in their place of residence, it was criticized for sparing neighboring countries from receiving floods of refugees.⁷³

      Without peace and security, and without the establishment of power-sharing politics that defend the rights of minority communities, return is not a durable solution, regardless of the humanitarian aid that is provided. As one UNHCR report put it, “Providing material aid while ignoring the fact that the displaced are being beaten, raped or killed too often leads to the tragic description of the victims as the ‘well-fed dead.’”⁷⁴ Premature resettlement of the displaced in BiH and other conflict-affected areas has led to the reemergence of violence even after the ceasefire takes effect. Addressing the root cause of the conflict that caused displacement is essential.

      The contrast with the Russian case underscores the point. While Russians in the other NIS were subject to various forms of discrimination and while Russian regions varied is their eagerness to host returnees, the ethnic tensions between Russians and other groups in the FSU were mild by comparison to tensions in Georgia and Bosnia. Politicians in many of the NIS sought to increase the weight of their titular nationality, but none resorted to violence and ethnic cleansing.

      CHAPTER 3

      Pastoralists

      The third of the people issues in secessions—how to deal with pastoralist populations who migrate seasonally in search of pasture and water but who, with secession, will now have to cross international borders—probably will be an issue only in African secessions. But it is likely to be an issue there, all the more so as global warming and desertification increase the length of seasonal migrations. It was crucial issue for Sudan. Indeed, the cycle of the civil war often turned on the migration cycle: when the pastoralists, especially the Misseriyya, were in the south, there was no war, and war came only after they returned with their cattle to the north. However, other secession cases will also have to deal with migration cycles, internal to the original state but international once secession occurs.

      This СКАЧАТЬ