CIAO DATE: 03/05/07
Volume 18, Number 1, February 2006
Contributors
Saving refugees or saving borders? Southeast Asian States and the Indochinese refugee crisis by Sara E. Davies
This article charts the response of Southeast Asian states to the Indochinese refugee crisis between 1975 and the 1979 Geneva conference. The purpose of this article is to understand why the outbreak of Southeast Asia's largest refugee crisis since World War II did not prompt the region's states to accede to international refugee law. It is argued that most Southeast Asian states continued to reject international refugee law during this period because they believed that their interests were best served by this policy. That is, Southeast Asian states conducted a form of refugee manipulation because their persistent refusal to sign the instruments compelled Western states (the United States in particular) to provide material assistance to the refugees and offer resettlement places. Thus, the Southeast Asian states' strategy placed the onus for responding to the crisis on international institutions and Western states. Furthermore, many Southeast Asian states justified their refusal to sign the instruments by referring to the latter's Eurocentric character. Ultimately, this argument allowed many of the region's states to absolve themselves of responsibility for taking the lead in responding to the crisis.
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction: A case of intelligence following policy by Ron Huisken
In the second half of 2002, US intelligence was catching up with policy on Iraq, and doing so in circumstances where the Bush administration's stake in this policy had become extraordinarily high. The intelligence community succumbed, and glossed over the fact that it had too few dots to make confident judgments on WMD in Iraq.
Humanitarian intervention: Human rights versus humanitarian assistance by Sarah Kernot
In the post-Cold-War era, intervention to alleviate humanitarian crises and protect human rights has gained wide legal and moral acceptance. This article examines whether humanitarian interventions achieve their aim of protecting human rights. Through the examination of two post-Cold-War interventions, in Somalia and Kosovo, it will be argued that the linkage between humanitarian assistance and the protection of human rights is tenuous. In both cases, the methods employed to provide humanitarian assistance were not consistent with those required to protect human rights.
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