Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency conference report, dated October 1995, contains the proceedings of a conference on ethnic conflict held 30 September to 1 October 1993. The CIA's Geographic Resources Division sponsored it. Academic geographers, anthropologists and US Government officials presented papers on ethnic and territorial conflict in Eastern Europe, Western Europe, the former Soviet Union, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and South Asia. They also discussed what these conflicts mean for US policy. The document contains no UFO material.
“Terry”12 pages
C00123268 Forced Migration and Ethnicity 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 Lee Schwartz draw boundaries? Which people get to determine on Office of the Geographer which territory lies the future of their own ethnic Department of State 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 Introduction tends to produce forced migrations. The main reason for deciding to speak on forced - Conflict resolution. I think Wade Hinkle yesterday migration and ethnicity is because I recently raised a good point. Hindsight is 20/20, and geogra- addressed that topic at a conference-organized by phers have been strong in terms of trying to under- the International Geographical Union's Commission stand regions and relationships between ethnicity on Population Geography in Ljubljana, Slovenia- and territoriality, but geographic knowledge is not which focused on the topic of ethnicity and geogra- necessarily sufficient in terms of trying to come to a phy. Obviously this is a topic that is of current concern resolution of some conflict that has already begun. not just in the United States but also in other areas of Most geographic analysis has not been predictive in the world; indeed, one of the major causal factors- terms of where conflict will break out. I think that and consequences-of forced migration in the world geography and geographers can best contribute to an today is ethnic conflict. When I found out that Dr. understanding of ethnic conflict by focusing not on Kenzer was going to speak on a similar topic, I conflict resolution but on preventing conflict exacer- thought I would attempt to organize my comments bation. today more broadly in order to address also some related humanitarian issues; after all, this session is titled, "Perspectives on Demographic and Humanitar- Typology of Forced Migration ian Issues." I think my role here today, therefore, will be to highlight a few of these perspectives, some of My office director, Bill Wood, has developed a typol- which have already been mentioned and others of ogy of forced migration that we have applied to differ- which may be new. ent regions to help understand different causal components of forced migration (see figure 15). It is When dealing with the topic of forced migration- not necessarily important in this model to draw dis- particularly in trying to understand its ethnic compo- tinctions between refugees, forced migrants, and inter- nents-three themes come to mind. These are some- nally displaced persons, although when it comes to what in line with what the current administration providing humanitarian aid or support, refugees are probably considers its priorities: favored over both internally displaced persons and illegal immigrants, who tend to "disappear" and are - Human rights. From a global perspective, human not accorded rights in the countries in which they live. rights with respect to migration are severely limited because little freedom of movement exists on an There is also an ethnic component to each of the three international scale. Both refugee movement and subsets shown on figure 15. It is strongest in the cate- "free," or economic, migration are heavily con- gory of political instability and civil unrest-largely trolled by increasingly stringent regimes and quotas. governmental persecution. That is because this perse- cution is often directed toward a particular ethnic - Democracy. We have heard about a lot of geo- group or may have consequences for specific ethnic graphic concepts-such as national territoriality, groups. Ethnicity is a factor when looking at forced regionalism, homeland, andfrontier-at this confer- ence. It is instructive to see how these might mani- fest themselves in terms of democratic principles, 157
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 205 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.