The Turbulent Decade: Confronting the Refugee Crises of the 1990s FROM THE PUBLISHER
In this important, engaging memoir Sadako Ogata recounts the experiences and lessons of her tenure as United Nations high commissioner for refugees during the "turbulent decade" of the 1990s. A tireless advocate for the victims of war, Ogata tells the on-the-ground story of four volatile regions in which she directed relief: Iraq, the Balkans, the African Great Lakes region, and Afghanistan. She explores issues of refugee protection and humanitarian assistance; coordination between humanitarian organizations, NATO, and other militaries; and the global political and strategic climate in which these crises occurred. With an eye to the future, she asks the world community to assess the limits of humanitarian action, and to work toward real political solutions when conflicts arise.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
As United Nations high commissioner for refugees during the 1990s, Ogata faced multiple instances of protracted civil war, with refugee groups often remaining politically embroiled in the conflicts they fled. This memoir of four refugee crises during her tenure-in Iraqi Kurdistan after the first Gulf War, in the Balkans, in the countries surrounding Rwanda and in Afghanistan-details the frustrating limitations of humanitarian action in situations where the safety of refugees and U.N. staffers is threatened, and ongoing turmoil stymies repatriation. The African tragedy in the wake of the Rwandan genocide was the most extreme: Rwandan refugee camps in Zaire, dominated by Hutu military leaders plotting an invasion of their homeland, became the flash point for a much wider war. Only in northern Iraq, where an American military umbrella allowed the Kurds to return home, does Ogata think that a satisfactory outcome was achieved. Ogata's advocacy of military intervention to help settle the conflicts underlying humanitarian crises has been controversial, but she makes a compelling case for it. Her stiffly written book reads like what it is: a report to the international relief and diplomatic communities. But anyone with an interest in how those communities serve the world will find it compelling. (Mar.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Who better to show us the truth of the refugee crisis, from the Balkans to Africa to Iraq, than the UN high commissioner for refugees in the Nineties? Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
The former United Nations high commissioner for refugees looks back on a decade's work. From 1990 to 2000, Ogata served as "the first woman, the first Japanese, and the first academic" to head the politically sensitive UNHCR, landing the job just at a time when the Cold War was giving way to more open borders for good and increasing ethnic nationalism for ill. The commission was charged with two big tasks: "one to protect refugees in the midst of internal wars and communal conflicts and the other to carry out the large-scale repatriation of refugees to still-insecure and unstable home countries." UNHCR was severely tested early on when, following defeat in the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein turned against the Kurds and forced a major refugee crisis, compounded both by the unwillingness of neighboring Turkey to provide assistance and by UN sanctions against Iraq, which made it difficult for food, fuel, and other necessities to be brought overland to Kurdish-controlled areas. Within a single week, Ogata writes, 1.75 million Kurds fled from northern Iraq; when the crisis abated, "the pace of return was equally rapid, requiring emergency rehabilitation." Refugee crises of similar proportions soon emerged in the Balkans, then Rwanda, then the Balkans again, with UNHCR involved in relief efforts that often included military partnerships, a consequence of the evolving use of militaries as peacekeeping forces. Ogata acknowledges that the commission often faced shortages of money, staff, and other essentials; but, unlike former UN field commander Romeo Dallaire, who charges in Shake Hands with the Devil (Jan. 2005) that the UN response in Rwanda was thoroughly insufficient, Ogata maintains that thecommission did what it could with what it had and was especially successful in establishing "partnerships with a wide range of actors to meet the critical lifesaving challenges of conflicts and violence."Such bureaucratic language does little to explain the human dimension of these crises, and Ogata's book is bloody but rather bloodless. Still, it makes a useful insider account of the complex politics of humanitarian enterprise.
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