ABSTRACT
Closed borders, the reestablishment of visa requirements and the refusal to evacuate civilians prevented populations from seeking safety abroad. This chapter addresses the construction of international action regarding displaced persons in northern Iraq, Bosnia and Rwanda. It argues that policies were justified and constructed so as to anticipate, stop or reverse an on-going exodus. In Bosnia however, the international community displayed early signs of understanding. In August 1992, George Kenney resigned from the US State Department, denouncing the hypocrisy of the US government which, according to him, used rhetoric on ethnic wars in order to avoid facing evidence of planned massacres. In the first months of the Bosnian war, the international community's attention was focused on Sarajevo. The protection of displaced persons in northern Iraq was debated first on 5 April 1991 after around one million Iraqi Kurds had crossed the Iranian and Turkish borders.
