Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency conference report, numbered RTT 95-10039 and dated October 1995, presents the proceedings of a conference held 30 September to 1 October 1993. The CIA's Geographic Resources Division sponsored the conference. In it, academic geographers, anthropologists and US Government officials examined ethnic conflict by region, covering Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and South Asia. The report also discusses what these conflicts mean for US policy. It does not deal with UFOs or unidentified aerial phenomena.
“Nevers”25 pages
‘Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268 Forced Migration and Ethnicity Lee Schwartz Office of the Geographer Department’ of State Introduction The main reason for deciding to speak on forced migration and ethnicity is because I recently addressed that topic at a conference——organized by the International Geographical Union's Commission on Population Geography in Ljubljana, Slovenia-— which focused on the topic of ethnicity and geogra- phy. Obviously this is a topic that is of current concem not just in the United States but also in other areas of the world; indeed, one of the major causal factors— and consequences—of forced migration in the world today is ethnic conflict. When I found out that Dr. Kenzer was going to speak on a similar topic, I thoughtl would attempt to organize my comments today more broadly in order to address also some related humanitarian issues; after all, this session is titled, “Perspectives on Demographic and Humanitar- ian Issues.” I think my role here today, therefore, will be to highlight a few of these perspectives, some of which have already been mentioned and others of which may be new. ' When dealing with the topic of forced migration- particularly in trying to understand its ethnic compo- nents--three themes come to mind. These are some- what in line with what the current administration probably considers its priorities: ' Human rights. From a global perspective, human rights with respect to migration are severely limited because little freedom of movement exists on an intemational scale. Both refugee movement and “free,” or economic, migration are heavily con- trolled by increasingly stringent regimes and quotas. ~ Democracy. We have heard about a lot of geo- graphic concepts——such as national territoriality, regionalism, homeland, and_frontier—-at this confer- ence. It is instructive to see how these might mani- fest themselves in terms of democratic principles, particularly concerning the right of self-determina- tion in a world where the traditional state system is admittedly breaking up (if not down). Where do you draw boundaries? Which people get to determine on which territory lies the future of their own ethnic communities? Another factor to consider is access to power; when people are eliminated from access to power, it often is a causal factor of warfare, which tends to produce forced migrations. ' Conflict resolution. I think Wade Hinkle yesterday raised a good point. Hindsight is 20/20, and geogra- phers have been strong in terms of trying to under- stand regions and relationships between ethnicity and territoriality, but geographic knowledge is not necessarily sufficient in terms of trying to come to a resolution of some conflict that has already begun. Most geographic analysis has not been predictive in terms of where conflict will break out. I think that geography and geographers can best contribute to an understanding of ethnic conflict by focusing not on conflict resolution but on preventing conflict exacer- bation. Typology of Forced Migration My office director, Bill Wood, has developed a typol- ogy of forced migration that we have applied to differ- ent regions to help understand different causal components of forced migration (see figure 15). It is not necessarily important in this model to draw dis- tinctions between refugees, forced migrants, and inter- nally displaced persons, although when it comes to providing humanitarian aid or support, refugees are favored over both internally displaced persons and illegal immigrants, who tend to “disappear” and are not accorded rights in the countries in which they live. There is also an ethnic component to each of the three subsets shown on figure 15. It is strongest in the cate- gory of political instability and civil unrest—largely govemmental persecution. That is because this perse- cution is often directed toward a particular ethnic group or may have consequences for specific ethnic groups. Ethnicity is a factor when looking at forced 157 Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 205 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.