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• Proposed Structural and Systematic Design for Refugee Camp Security and Civil Freedom
• UN and International Security Mid-Term Response
• UPCOMING PRESENTATIONS - UN & International Security
• TOOLS OF WAR - SUDAN, Darfur Genocide
• USEFUL LINKS

Towards Allaying Camp Coma
Proposed Structural and Systematic Design for Refugee Camp Security and Civil Freedom

Abstract
In the contemporary warfare environment offensive aggression has been and will continue to be directed towards non-combatants driving many to flee a crisis area. Non-combatants have become targets by government militias, rebels and even civilian neighbors seeking limited resources. Humanitarian space has also been dishonored making both the relief workers and civilian refugees a target of belligerent forces. The issues of security are complex and the melding of military and humanitarian action has had negative consequences adding to insecurity, which could escalate the violence against both NGO, UN mission actors, Refugees and IDP members, causing stagnation in international engagement. Something must be done. In addition, many refugee and IDP camps were originally created, as only temporary relief centers have become long term encampments where children are born, elderly die, and the most effective components of society have been wiped out. The fragmented war-torn society have become disconnected from their original social framework, society at large, and the security of a sovereign nation-state with little or no opportunity for rehabilitation of human or economic development, thereby being reduced in their human dignity and wallowing in an unending comatose state. One solution I am proposing is for a fourth actor – private enterprise - to utilize the concepts of industrial design and urban planning to consider a non-violent defensive strategy based on ancient fortification practices that maximizes a space to force ratio creating an environment that ensures equitable distribution of services and resources while providing a natural barrier against human rights abuses. Its design would intend to provide the necessary framework for relief, rehabilitation, development and ultimately communal freedom from the social, political, and economic doldrums of camp coma.

NOTE: Final Paper will be presented online in January

UN and International Security Fall 2005

Question: Does the international community, and/or individual states, have a duty and responsibility, as well as a right, to step in and intervene in the affairs of another sovereign state for the purposes of humanitarian protection, particularly if the lives, liberty, and basic human rights of the citizens of that sovereign state are not being protected?
Does such intervention require the endorsement / authorization of the UN, in particular the Security Council? Must such intervention be exercised collectively? Can / should such intervention be pre-emptive?

Answer: Humanity as a whole has the right to protect the rights of all members of global society especially if those rights are being neglected or abused by a failed, irresponsible or belligerent nation-state. If the citizens of a nation-state are experiencing humanitarian abuses then there is an implicit demand for international concern for the affairs of sovereign nation-state, and should at least become a candidate for international intervention.

Assuming that the international society has no interest or business in intervening in the affairs of another peaceful sovereign state, where the local state is practicing good governance ensuring internal peace and order, it can be assured that the international community has a duty and responsibility to intervene in territories where the basics of human rights are not being protected.

If the lives, liberty, and basic human rights of the citizens of that sovereign state are not being protected, the justified course of action of the international society is to intervene in order to allay suffering, restore law and order, and to rebuild the failed nation-state along popular political lines.

The international community must remain steadfast and resolute in its duty and responsibility to step in and intervene in countries that have been hampered by local terrorist organizations, corrupt governments or warlords, especially if the abuses and its collateral consequences present an regional and international threat to peace and security, such as the exodus of refugees or the growth of terrorist groups.

The international community must seek out an administrative body under the authorization of the authority of the UN that independently monitors and directs collective action based on the consensus of the Security Council and members beyond the P-5.

The international community must maintain the hierarchy between any administration and the international authority to which it is accountable to ensure the administration remains responsible for its externally assigned tasks of intervention. The UN Security Council must present a clear mandate by which the any administration must be authorized to carry out its responsibilities in a framework of terms that sets the conditions of engagement, whether through military action or collective sanctions to provide the necessary relief from humanitarian abuse.

Any military action authorized by the international authority should be collective, to both balance the burden and ensure consensus, though the majority of the deciding power should lie in the hands of the strongest nations. Awareness of the imbalance of world power can lead to responsible use of it by the international community advocating for human rights. The authority behind a foreign policy of intervention in every case is based upon the leading world power of the day including the international organizations controlled by those powers for example the U.S. budget for the UN, and NGO’s dependence on funding such as USAID.

Since 1945 only a few nations have had the ability to act on issues of war and peace, and the United States has been and will continue to be considered the primary actor, with the ability to intervene in humanitarian crisis. Members of the P-5 are the only states that should authorize action that calls for intervention in a sovereign nation-state simply by the fact that they have the military credibility to do so.

The imbalance in world power means that a U.S. domestic agenda concerning an active international administration in humanitarian crisis is expected to carry more weight. The character of the administration intervening in a humanitarian crisis is affected by the distinct authority of the each sovereign jurisdiction that is involved, which should remain in local control, yet in the case of international intervention, significant political and military control should be place in the hands of the international community, though the international community should be selective of what actors are involved. The administration must comprise willing nations with orderly, bureaucratic, good governance practices that in pure form provide clear-cut rational and legal structures.

Deciding on pre-emptive intervention in a humanitarian crisis clearly acknowledges the existence of belligerents that have yet to be destroyed, surrender or lay down arms, which cannot be achieved unless armed conflict is brought to an end through military operations, presence or negotiations.

With the aim to restore peace to a region and establish law and order in the occupied territory, the administration may set up an interim government, whose political nature reflects the purposes of the international administration. If the international communities aim is political reconstruction, it’s likely to be influenced by the theories of the administration and its definition of what a legitimate and acceptable governments should be.

Failed nation-states with chronic humanitarian abuses must be fixed, and like a sick patient pre-emptive care is greater than going in for invasive surgery after the damage is done. The international community under the authority of the UN should organize collective action in reforming chronically failed states before they become a greater threat to regional and international security, as well as for the well being of its member citizens.

UPCOMING PRESENTATIONS - UN & International Security

The UN Security Council requires cooperation from UN Member States in imposing arms embargos, and state actors require private actors in the small arms industry to conduct their business accordingly. Maintaining peace and security requires certain nations or private actors to stave off supplies of arms to nations or actors in conflict zones in times when intra and inter-national security precedes trans-national economic profit, and/or the desire to maximize power.

Nation states have a responsibility to other nation states, and the UN Security Council has tried to provide the necessary framework to strengthen local and international legal structures to create the necessary oversight for arms embargos to remain strong. Though customary law against illicit arms trafficking is beginning to take hold across all member states, there are still a remaining few that continue to profit and undermine embargos, slipping between the legal and structural discrepancies between borders; only to fuel the conflict creating more confusion as to the actual military force of embargoed zones, and number of illicit arms.

The problem is ultimately the lack of oversight of both UN Security Council and Member States over private actors on the international level and domestic level who are involved in the global black market. Regional security systems in that monitor transportation routes between states continue to lack the necessary reach and capacity to engage every offender of international embargos. I intend to research the weaknesses of international and domestic enforcement capabilities and gaps, in which private offenders continue their economic relations via land, sea & air with illegitimate actors, militias, insurgent groups and member UN Member States under a UN Security Council embargo; and present my findings to my colleges, painting a realistic picture of the international game that the UN Security Council and Member States must deal with in terms of enforcing arms embargos.

S/1998/1220 –Paragraph 4. Liberia The Committee (Security Council) does not have any specific monitoring mechanism to ensure the effective implementation of the arms embargo, and would like to recall its past observations that it relies solely on the cooperation of States and organizations in a position to provide pertinent information.

Weak legal structures
Corrupt political structures
Capacity Issues

1965 – Rhodesia
1977 – South Africa
1990 – Iraq
1991 – Yugoslavia
1992 – Somalia, Libya, Liberia
1993 – Haiti and UNITA forces within Angola
1994 – Rwanda & Bosnian Serbs
1995 – Neighboring States in Rwanda
1997 – Sierra Leone
1998 – Kosovo
2000 – Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Iraq and Liberia; against all parties in Somalia; and against non-governmental forces in Angola, Rwanda and Sierra Leone.

State control of known small arms weapons – Authorization to transport
Problem of holes Global Market Transports

Un accounted for circulating small arms

Secondary Responsibility of State due to Independent actors

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