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4 U. C. Davis J. Int'l L. & Pol'y 73 (1998)
Refoulement of Rwandan Refugees: The UNHCR's Lost Opportunity to Ground Temporary Refuge in Human Rights Law

handle is hein.journals/ucdl4 and id is 77 raw text is: REFOULEMENT OF RWANDAN REFUGEES: THE UNHCR's LOST OPPORTUNITY TO GROUND TEMPORARY REFUGE IN HuMAN RIGHTS LAW Todd Howland' I. INTRODUCTION There are many reasons to be critical of the international response to the 1994 outflow of more than two million refuge-seekers from Rwanda and the international community's role in the bizarre, partially voluntary, partially assisted, and mainly coerced return of the refuge-seekers a little over two years after they had fled.' The response highlighted the limitations, if not inappropriate nature, of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' (HCR) approach to mass movements.' While controversy has developed in regard to the international community's response to the Rwandan refugee crisis, little attention has been drawn to the failure of the HCR, and the many international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working with it, to base their actions on human rights law.' * The author would like to thank Armineh Arakelian, Richard Garcia, Monica Giambonini, Tania Podliska, and Anje Van Berckelaer for comments on earlier versions of the article. The author would also like to thank the Human Rights Program at the Harvard Law School for its administrative support. I. See UNITEDNATIONS,THE UNITEDNATIONS AND RWANDA 1993-1996, 7, 78 (1996) [hereinafter U.N.]. Rwanda's most recent census indicated that the population was close to 7 million people, in a territory of 26,338 square kilometers. Thus, it is slightly larger than the state of Vermont, but with about 10 times its population. See id. (noting that over one-third of Rwanda's population sought refuge in 1994). The return of the refluge-seekers was motivated by various internal and external factors, and has been seen as a positive and negative development. See, e.g., Gtrard Prunier, The Great Lakes Crisis, 96 CURRENT HIST. 193, 195 (1997); Alan Zarembo, Rwanda's Genocide Witnesses Are KilledAs Wheels of Justice Slowly Begin Turning, CHRISTIAN SCI. MONITOR, Jan. 23, 1997, at 7. 2. See Saving the World: The Limits of Humanitarianism, 264 NATION, May 19, 1997, at 11, 17 (noting humanitarianism provides modalities that have certain uses, but these uses cannot be stretched to fit every situation); Bonaventure Rutinwa, Beyond Durable Solutions: An Appraisal of the Newr Proposals for Prevention and Solution of the Refugee Crisis in the Great Lakes Region, 9 J. REFUGEE STUD. 312, 323 (1996) (describing how humanitarian action, regardless of its appropriateness, is often substituted for needed political action). See also Charles B. Keely & Sharon Stanton Russell, Responses of Industrial Countries to Asylum-Seekers, 47 J. INT'LAFF. 399,416 (1994) (noting that attempts to harmonize asylum policy must consider issue of sovereignty). While there is some material published by the HCR and scholars on mass movements, the current theoretical discourse in the area of refugee law is focused on the changing application of the principle of asylum in developed countries. The trend toward restricting the provision of asylum is ominous. See id. at 401. 3. See, e.g., John Yusufu Munyakazi, The Killer Behind the Refugee, in WITNESS TO GENOCIDE. June 1997, at 1, 6. Two important criticisms have emerged. The first is that the refuge-seekers were not defacto worthy of international support and that efforts to assist them were guided by little more than self- interest of the institutions that came to assist the refuge-seekers. African Rights, among others, has called for the establishment of an NGO code of conduct to address this problem. The second and related point is that assistance to refugees cannot simply be driven by humanitarian concerns; foreign policy and