1995-10-01a- CIA Conference Report: THE CHALLENGE OF ETHNIC CONFLICT TO NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL ORDER IN THE 1990S GEOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVES 01-Oct-95

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migration, not just at the source but also at the destina- Another important point to raise, which Dr. Kenzer
tion as well. Whether a group is territorially concen- touched on earlier, is that internally displaced people
trated or not, if its members move from one territory are not being accorded sufficient attention by the
into another, they are changing the ethnic balance in international community. With regard to humanitarian
two regions; it is a source-anti-destination dynamic. concerns, the internally displaced are often the most
problematic. In these cases, many of the geographic
During periods of economic decline, a high percent- concepts mentioned at this conference can be applied:
age of forcibly displaced persons are members of cer- the question of core and periphery relations, for
tain ethnic groups that are underprivileged or in the instance-most of the internally displaced are located
worst poverty-stricken regions. These are also often at the peripheries of states and are often the first to
the first ones who are susceptible to famine or ecolog- cross borders and become refugees.
ical disasters. So the way to look at the ethnic dimen-
sion of people who have fled and need to be
supported-whether they be forcibly displaced refu- Crossing Boundaries
gees or internally displaced persons or illegal
migrants-is in a typology such as that in figure 15, in In fact, many refugees were first internally displaced
which an ethnic component can be identified in each people before crossing an international border. What
of the three subsets. made them refugees is that they managed to cross
such a border and were thereby accorded official refu-
Forced migration has traditionally been thought of as gee status. Many internally displaced people can be
a process that produces refugees, who are defined as ; considered to function as refugees, particularly
such because they cross international boundaries. It is because internecine conflict often leads to situations
quite clear, and every speaker has touched on the facts where borders within states begin to function more as
that increasing mobility and decentralization, devolu- international borders. Look at the situation in the Cau-
tion of political power, the breakdown of one-party casus or with Gorno-Badakhshan in Tajikistan, where
state systems, and the rise of territoriality-be it the internal borders are functioning virtually as inter-
regional or national-make it incumbent on us to national ones with regard to population movements. In
increasingly think of forced migration processes at the many cases, therefore, whether someone being forced
intrastate level. It is a question of scale, I think, in to move is called an internally displaced person or a
terms of how we do our analysis. refugee is a moot point in terms of how the interna-
tional community needs to support them or deliver aid
From the humanitarian perspective, the different cate- to them.
gories and classifications for migrants not only tend to
lose their importance but also can often infringe upon We should also be thinking more about the changing
the civil rights of certain groups that are mobile. In nature of political boundaries. The international com-
many cases, those accorded refugee status are privi- munity is increasingly recognizing that the sacrosanct
leged forced migrants. The new restrictive definitions nature of these boundaries is not as strong as it once
and laws being imposed in Europe, for instance, have was. Although many members of the international
produced an upsurge in illegal migrants-many of community considered Serb and Croat discussions
whom are disenfranchised in the country in which about territorial exchanges to be an anathema, there is
they reside-most of whom are not counted. There are nothing sacrosanct about these boundaries justreports out of Bosnia that tens~of thousands of Bos- because they have been in existence and have been
nian Muslims are still moving into the rest of Europe. fairly permanent for so long. We are definitely seeing
Now that the European refugee regime has become grudging change in this direction. At the same time,
stricter, however, they have found ways to enter as we should not underestimate the state boundaries in
illegal immigrants and never get counted.
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