In its 2000 World Refugee Survey, the U.S. Committee for Refugees estimates that as of December 31, 1999, there were over 14 million refugees and asylum seekers worldwide and at least 21 million internally displaced people. (1) The vast majority – as high as 75 percent – are women and young children. (2, 3, 4) In addition to experiencing the same hardships and security concerns as adult male refugees, women and children have special protection needs because of their gender and age. In particular, they need protection from sexual violence and exploitation, as well as physical violence and discrimination. (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) Sexual violence can encompass anything ranging from rape and other sexual physical assaults or attempts to offers of food, protection, documents or other assistance in exchange for sexual favors. (2, 3, 4, 6, 8) This article focuses on protecting women and children in refugee camps from all forms of sexual violence committed by male offenders. Here, the term “refugee” includes refugees, internally displaced people, asylum seekers, and returnees. Similarly, a “refugee camp” refers to a temporary living arrangement where refugees, internally displaced people, asylum seekers, and returnees may reside, but does not include detention facilities. By focusing on women and children, the authors do not suggest that men are not targets of sexual violence or that women cannot be offenders. (4, 8, 9) However, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 1995 guidelines, Sexual Violence against Refugees: Guidelines on Prevention and Response (Guidelines on Sexual Violence), the majority of reported cases of sexual violence involve female targets and male perpetrators. (6) Likewise, by limiting the environment of concern to refugee camps, we do not imply that sexual violence against refugees does not take place elsewhere. It is widely accepted, for example, that sexual violence occurs during flight from and return to the country of origin, as well as in the country of asylum. (2, 5, 6) Refugee camps, however, offer an environment where some practical and commonsense measures based on injury-control models can be implemented fairly easily to reduce the risk of sexual violence for these vulnerable groups. Accordingly, although the assessment and planning tool introduced here is in pilot form and does not address all aspects of sexual or physical violence, exploitation, and discrimination among refugees, it is one step in what must be a coordinated effort to resolve this multi-faceted international problem.

In recent years, many international lawyers and scholars have noted a substantial convergence between international human rights law (“IHRL”) and international humanitarian law (“IHL”).[1] This convergence is due in large measure to the distressing proliferation of violent internal armed conflicts in many parts of the world.[2] Whether in Cambodia, El Salvador or Sierra Leone, these conflicts have served to highlight the chief inadequacies of IHRL and IHL and have, as a consequence, provoked discussion about how such inadequacies ought to be remedied so as to afford better protection to the millions of victims of such conflicts.[3] Among the chief concerns in this debate is the prevailing confusion about the proper application of IHRL and IHL in the context of such conflicts, since many people continue to think that IHRL only applies in times of peace, and that only IHL applies in times of war. This confusion is compounded by the seeming absence in contemporary international law literature of any straightforward analysis of the interplay between the norms and institutions relevant to IHL and IHRL protections in the context of such conflicts.

Accordingly, this paper attempts to tackle this issue and begin to fill the gap in the legal literature by providing a modest but cogent account of the normative and institutional interplay between IHRL and IHL in the context of internal armed conflicts. The paper itself will be divided into three main sections: (i.) an analysis of the different types of conflict that are recognized under international law; (ii.) an examination of the applicable norms of IHL and IHRL in the context of internal armed conflicts; and (iii.) a brief review of the principal institutions with competency to provide redress for violations of IHL and IHRL committed in the course of such conflicts.

However, before proceeding, a few brief remarks must be made about the scope and design of the paper. First, this paper focuses exclusively on the provisions of IHL that relate to the protection of victims of internal armed conflicts, and does not examine the provisions of IHL that relate to the conduct of hostilities in such conflicts. Second, this paper deals with treaty-based sources of IHL and IHRL, and does not generally examine customary international law or jus cogens norms. Third, this paper focuses exclusively on international legal norms, and does not deal with any comparable protections under regional or national laws. Lastly, as an aid to the reader, this paper contains an appendix that sets out the principal acronyms and abbreviations used throughout the paper, together with their definitions.[4]

In the mid-nineties the relief and development communities were able to draw on a series of examples to highlight the misgivings and the successes of their involvement in complex political emergencies. Especially the war in Bosnia and Hercegovina, the intervention in Somalia and the genocide in Rwanda, and, to a less visible extent, the ongoing war in Afghanistan, have determined the way humanitarian operations are perceived as performing a political function. Virtually all major humanitarian and development institutions have reflected on these experiences and therefore developed guidelines that should govern the approach to relief and development assistance in complex political emergencies as well as in a post-conflict context.[1] They have thereby reacted and contributed to the emergence of a new paradigm in which relief and development are seen as tools not only to save lives and to reduce poverty but "in so doing to prevent the renewal of conflict. In other words, it is an explicit strategy to influence the course of political violence, one based on a particular analysis of its causes and on the assumption that aid can effectively address them."[2] This paper argues that the paradigm of aid as a form of conflict prevention and resolution is closely related to, if not determined by another new paradigm: preventing migration through eliminating its root causes. The recent Action Plans of the European Union High Level Working Group on Asylum and Migration have to be seen in the wider context of these two paradigms and their misgivings in order to understand the meaning of its policies for both refugee protection and development cooperation.

The author worked in Albania between April and July 1999. He can be contacted at tobyporter@hotmail.com
Introduction
When faced with a humanitarian crisis, we have a responsibility to help reduce human suffering where we can…DfID will seek to promote a more universal approach in addressing humanitarian needs. People in need – wherever they are – should have [...]

Globalization, understood by critics to result in the homogenization of difference through gradual economic (and thus political) assimilation, is neither as ubiquitous nor as omnipotent as those who decry it believe. Indeed, as if countering one generalization with another somehow resolved the issue, globalization is often declared as one of, if not the greatest threat [...]

This paper will discuss the advisory services and technical assistance programme in the field of human rights available in the United Nations Centre for Human Rights/Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).[1] It will also discuss in detail the major components of the programme of advisory services and technical assistance in the field of human rights. It will examine in brief the situation of human rights in Nigeria from 1995 to 1998, at the peak of the regime of General Sani Abacha, the Head of State and Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria (November 1993 – June 1998), from the perspective of the UN alone. The sudden death of General Abacha in June 1998 brought to power another military ruler, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, who eventually handed over power on 29 May 1999 to an elected President, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo (rtd), thereby ending a 15-year continuous rule of Nigeria by the military.

During the four decades of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia, the state regularly provided developmental and humanitarian assistance to friendly regimes. As with all government functions, this aid was tightly controlled by the Communist Party apparatus and managed according to its political and ideological dictates, with no accountability to common citizens for whom "donations" to aid initiatives were often mandatory.

The advent of democracy in 1989 brought profound changes to this system. Foreign aid (non-trade) was suspended altogether for five years while government ministries were reorganized and the country underwent economic restructuring and privatization. The Czech Republic re-instituted a foreign aid program in 1995 – the first formerly Communist nation in Central Europe to do so – with an annual budget appropriated by an elected parliament set to have reached $20 million in 1999. At the same time, a number of Czech NGOs (i.e. ADRA, Caritas, People in Need Foundation) have also established their own fundraising and operational capacities in this area and provided millions of dollars in direct relief aid to crisis-stricken countries in Eastern Europe, particularly former Yugoslavia, as well as territories of the former Soviet Union. Volunteer programs are flourishing, especially among university students. These developments are indicative of a strong civil society with a sense of global responsibility, and have figured prominently in the Czech Republic’s acceptance into the OSCE and NATO and its pending membership in the European Union.