ABSTRACT

According to the Royal Institute of International Affairs, there are an estimated 125 ethnic or minority disputes in the former Soviet Union alone, about 25 of them are classified as armed. Similar ethnic conflicts smoulder amid the chaos of Somalia, in the townships of South Africa, in India, in Sri Lanka, in the Middle East, in Central and South East Asia. Civil wars, internal strife, and ethnic tensions have caused an estimated twenty to thirty million people to become displaced in their own countries. The existing refugee system developed largely in the context of superpower tensions and ideological disputes. The principal international accords defining responsibilities for victims of humanitarian crises—the UN Convention on the status of refugees and the Geneva Protocols—were adopted as the Cold War was taking shape. But the numbers of internally displaced persons—the people who haven’t been able to make it across an international border—are increasing at a much faster pace than that of convention refugees.