Crimes of War

A seminar for editors sponsored by The Crimes of War Project and The Freedom Forum

Day Two, Panel Two: War Crimes: The Elusive Story/How do You Use the Law?

Moderator/Discussant: Eugene Roberts, University of Maryland, School of Journalism

b) The Silent Guardian: The ICRC
Urs Boegli, Head of Media Division, ICRC, Geneva Headquarters

EUGENE ROBERTS: Thank you. We'll now go to Mr. Boegli.

URS BOEGLI: Thank you. I will use my nine minutes or so not so much on telling you how we tried to apply international humanitarian law. The answer to this is, of course, we do it directly, confidentially with the combatants whoever they are, governments, liberation movements, whatever kind you can imagine.

I'm trying to tell you why we are not what most of you would probably like most. We are not your favorite source, emotional, shrill and at the same time competent. We have a measured communication policy and I'll try to show you why.

On the ICRC itself I would simply say that we are direct across conflict situations or potential conflict situations. You have heard the law yesterday and now you will hear more about the operation of the ICRC. It's fairly large. It's around $600 million per year getting cheaper by the day with the European currencies plunging against the dollar. 10,000 people and 1,000 in the field, a large number of national staff and some 7 or 800 if you count the consultants in headquarters.

Our specialty is that we do not have one clientele like UNICEF for children. We look at all kinds of war victims and we are ready to provide whatever answer is appropriate; food, water, medicine, surgery and so on. What we always have, and it's important because it's difficult, what we always have is an interesting protection. That might be the prisoners of war. That's how it all started, by the political prisoners.

But also increasingly civilians exposed to hostilities. We are part of the Red Cross network, the movement as we call it, 177 national societies, their federation and each of them are independent, at times even very much so.

My boss surprised me with a bouquet of flowers. And it signaled that I had spent 20 years, virtually my entire professional life, with the ICRC. I must say it did not feel like one employer. The situation has changed massively over the 20 years and I have been in a situation of war and of war victims. I think I have had a new employer since '89 and I think this one the post cold war ICRC.

After the cold war the ICRC has lost a number of coping mechanisms. And I'm going to spend a couple of minutes on those. Of course, we have to deal increasingly with non-state actors or if there's still states, very weak states, we all know that the role of power seems to have replaced ideology in many of nowadays wars.

What does it mean for the agency trying to protect and assist conflict victims? In the field it means that increasingly the waring parties no longer have much of an international agenda. Guerrilla leaders dreaming of becoming the next government and dreaming to make their speech at UN seem to get increasingly rare.

I agree with Olara Otunnu, who said yesterday that guerrilla leaders are still much concerned about their image. But I think it's no longer linked -- I think it's at times much more vanity than still being linked to wanting to play an international role.

What does it mean for us? It means for us that when war erupted the ICRC had strings to pull. ICRC from its very birth has always had dialogue with governments. And it was quite obvious to talk to those governments who had interests in far-away conflicts to make sure that their friends in the field would adhere to minimal standards.

It has actually worked quite well. It worked obviously better with western states, but our reckoning is that even Najibula at the end under Gorbachev got some kind of signal saying, "We are not villains." And it helped a lot to introduce the ICRC into the conflicts even as long as the Russians were still there.

Well, no longer. It's no longer the same international kind of fixed context which allowed an organization like the ICRC to pull strings.

There's also the wish to govern by liberation movements which was very, very strong when there was an ideology. Remember their little red book on how they should be nice to the civilian population so that they would be liked and accepted? I'm not so sure how much of this fish-in-the-water image is still, for instance, sincerely or active today. I think that we deal with a lot of actors who no longer have the ambition to be the next and better government.

Now, when they wanted to be the next and better government it made much sense to them that some outsiders like the ICRC would come in and bring some food let's say. Now that they don't care so much about their civilian populations ICRC lost another mechanism which I think in the past we have been able to play.

My feeling also is that the liberation movements tend to get awfully rich nowadays. Of course, when you're poor you look differently at the truck full of food that comes in and you see the interest of the truck coming back. When you're rich food at least for the leaders I don't think is much of a problem any more. It's not unusual that they're more interested in the truck and less interested in its return trips.

Internationally I don't have to dwell on this for a long time. With a few exceptions far-away conflicts are let to run their course. The two things are, of course, related. I mean, a far-away conflict can no longer, and I exaggerate, bring World War III. It can no longer spoil the relation between the super powers to begin with for lack of super powers. So there are two things. In conflict we find ourselves at times in very messy surrounding. And I must say for the ICRC and certainly for many of you people, we find ourselves a bit abandoned.

We feel abandoned at a time when we have become more important because whether we like it or not aren't we a bit the tool box of the '90s? Aren't humanitarians a bit like those who are sent into those messy conflicts because it's the easiest and the most obvious thing to do and because a political response would be so much more complicated than helping the Red Cross to get in.

Most people involved in the Bosnian operation, and I had the privilege of being there myself, had very much the feeling that they were perceived as the token internationals. People who received our assistance they were smart. They were smart enough to see that they were trapped in a kind of situation that they couldn't get out. Numerous were those that said the agenda of the international community is; A, to keep the conflict confined within the borders of former Yugoslavia; B, to avoid too many refugees in Europe.

Now, if this is your agenda what better tool than sending food in and protecting if necessary, unprotected like ICRS is not necessary. The feeling of just being the token presence is something which is not what we felt too obviously but our victims, the civilians in Bosnia, felt very strongly. They did not receive us in a very friendly way because of that.

The same is valid in many of the African theaters that are very important to the ICRC. At normal times half of ICRC's money is spent in Africa. In Africa there is, too, from the little I've seen and from talking to my colleagues, a massive sense of abandon of bitterness.

In Africa there is another phenomenon which I could call the far ends of globalization. Due to the media, due to MTV, to satellite TV everybody knows how the country would look. Anybody knows to well surprised by the number of Rambo posters that you can see in far and away villages in let's say southern Sudan.

You'd be surprised how many people know that you're running shoes should be Nikes except that they don't get it. This whole rich world which is on their TV screens or on their cable TV's screens, there's always a TV somewhere, they know how it looks but they never get it. What do they get from this rich world?

Some who come if they're faced with very basic and not very tasty food rations at worst -- and that's the case of the ICRC -- with demands on prisoners, on protection, with its request to assess the needs before giving food, to distribute it to them by itself or with the local Red Cross to assess the distribution of what's pretty much a pain, pretty much a source of frustration. We are never the well-doers that get applauded as some of you might think.

Neutrality is interesting. In things like here we get criticized at times, wrongly in my view but I'm not going to challenge this now, as sitting on the fence. And we make our point that while we have no opinions on greater Serbia and on greater Croatia, we have very strong opinions on what happens to the people inside Serbia and the people inside Croatia.

You're always accused of being on the wrong side of the fence. Never are you seen as sitting on the fence. It's almost a relief to be a bit attacked sitting on the fence compared to what happens.

Still, the ICRC maintains the function along the lines which are its own. It wants to remain on the ground. We do not want just to dispatch relief to conflict areas and stay on safe ground. We want to remain independent, of course. We want increasingly to work with local Red Cross societies which at times are quite amazing maybe not so much on the capital level but the volunteers that you can find in a place like Condor is really I would say a great beam of hope in our work.

Now the result of this, and here I'm coming back to communication, the result of all this is that in many operations we are just hanging in by the skin of our teeth. And many of my colleagues in the field at times justifiably think that if we add a public image of media policy to the mess we are already in, that it might simply be the straw that breaks the ass' back.

And for this reason I'm now head of press for the time being in the ICRC for this reason, it's extremely difficult to convince ICRC protagonists in the field to try to be more open to the media. We, of course, do it and I'm going to tell you how.

Denunciation is not going to be one of our main tools. That doesn't mean that we don't go public at times. I'm coming to that. With my Bosnian experience I would say that denunciation, including the one done by relief people, by visiting politicians flying in and flying out, is one of the more over-rated tools.

Denunciation is also very easy to do. It's very popular because it gives you a good feeling. I think it is a good way to manage one's own stress if you are in the filed. I'm probably not the only one in this room who has done both.

Journalism has become a job as competitive as hardly any other. And while when I started the ICRC journalists were very much interested in what I knew from the Thai/Cambodian conflict because they could not go there. Nowadays with the pressure being on your journalists in the field, journalists tend to get much more into the thick than relief people including the ICRC delegates.

So rare are the situations where we are really sitting on a treasure of knowledge which nobody else has. I think this is important for our restrictive policy. If the reverse was the case we might have to think differently.

At the same time there is, of course, a bottom line. I mean, to use discretion and confidentiality as a tool is one thing and I have no problem with it even having the media services of the ICRC.

I think there is a line where even the ICRC has to speak out and at times basically when all else fails, when talking to the villains directly fails and when ICRC's effort provided by the Geneva Conventions to mobilize the international community or otherwise go and complain to the diplomats. When this fails as well there is room for the ICRC to speak out.

World War II is an example. ICRC is still criticized for its silence regarding the concentration camps in World War II. There too it was not sitting on the treasure of information. It had very little from it's own sources. But it was part of a small group being alerted in Geneva, a small group in numbers, not in importance because they were the allies and probably most of the diplomatic nations.

We only got the fourth convention in 1949 as a result of the massive hand-over of the international community after World War II. We pay the price today but today it is still a source not of attack because one can explain, but it can be a bone of contention. At the same time, and that's probably more important than the public pressure, it is also an internal yardstick. While we do not think that in the beginning of World War II an ICRC declaration would have made a big difference, it still leaves us with the feeling that there have been some stones unturned. And I think it is this feeling which makes us not ruling out snobbishly public declarations even, as I said, even as they are not part of our main principle approach.

So how then, and I'm getting to the end, how then do we think we would best organize media relations? I think our unique selling point is still knowledge.

Roy himself has spent a few days at the ICRC not so much with the press people here, just meandered from one desk office to the other simply to find out this conflict work with us and which one would make a page in his book and which one was not. He has, I hope, at least I take it he has had enough time for that. He has met people who were competent who were ready to give him insight knowing, of course, that it would not be translated into an embarrassing sound byte that then in the field could lead to repercussions.

Where I think we are needed is to convey the complexity of the situations that we face. I think too many of our conflict situations are dying babies and nurses. I think the term "humanitarian disaster" is greatly overrated. And because dying babies and nurses give you -- especially on TV, what they need.

We have too much of them, people tend to forget for instance that southern Sudan is a lot of human terror and disaster and it's going on way too long and these are the actors and so on.

And while I still see pure politics, what I still see does not have any complete role to play. I think in talking to the media it should help to uncover the complexity of all of the situations. Again, in dialogue, I'm coming back to journalists going much further than regular stuff, not lecture the journalists on what it is but to really have a dialogue from which we too can learn a lot.

I would say we are pretty much in transition. Your colleagues in the field can encounter ICRC delegates who are very open and to spend hours in interesting discussions. Other more conservative ones or probably those who are up really in such difficulties that they just do not dare to increase complexity a little bit might still be difficult, difficult contacts. I hope, of course, that the first group is growing and the second is shrinking.

Are we doing it in the right place? Doing it in a place like here is definitely a right place. But one thing we still have to wake up to is that we have to get much more familiar with local media. It is, of course, easier in a room like this. There's not much preparation required, same language, same experience, everything is easy.

It's a bit more difficult with a radio station that doesn't even think of broadcasting in English, it's all in the local language. But in this situation the way I've described it where soldiers will no longer get into a classroom and listen to what we call dissemination on how they should behave in war, but they do maybe listen to their local FM station. It is probably even more important than making ICRC's case in a group like this.

There, I think, we could still do much more in the future. Why should we do more? I mentioned the soldiers, which cannot be otherwise reached. Let me mention something else and it is my concluding remark. ICRC has been talking to states as of the century before last when the whole thing started. ICRC has been quite good at talking to non-state actors especially at times where there was a bit more of an international order than today.

Are we as good or will we be as good when it comes to talking to civil society? The land mine issue which has had a big impact, countries banning land mines or other countries like these where they're starting a massive effort on the mining, on mine awareness, the land mine campaign is a success of civil society. Nobody really found it very important among the government sector the military weapons dealers. It's a minor weapon. There's no real industry behind it. There are no real amounts of money to be made with land mines. It was an overlooked issue until a ground swell was created in society which gave the feeling that this cannot go on and something must be done. The result was remarkable.

Now, if we have been the humanitarians, the NGOs who started it, if we have been so successful on this issue isn't there room for working with civil societies maybe in conflict countries where if you don't go and look closely where there doesn't seem to be one but if you do look closely maybe you'll find one.

Now, in this context if you really integrate civil society as a power factor of society the media becomes, of course, of even more importance. And it's also in this context, Roy, where not only I but where the ICRC feels that this is of essence truly.

Thank you.

Urs Boegli,Bio.
Head of Media Services, ICRC Geneva