Brussels 16 October 2003

Remarks by Kris Janowski, Spokesman, UNHCR. Ladies and Gentlemen, First of all let me thank Lord Robertson and the North Atlantic Alliance for inviting me to speak here in Brussels. I am both thrilled and honored to do it. A mere twenty two years ago, I was a conscript in the Polish army. We were training to fight a war against NATO. My apologies to our Danish friends but if I recall correctly, my unit was supposed to fight them. I have to say that we found the idea somewhat bizarre even then. I have said this to show how much the world has changed in just 20 years. Some of these changes no pundit would have been able to foresee and no novelist with self-respect would have written for fear of being called too fictional for fiction. Thank God the war that we prepared for on both sides of the Iron Curtain never happened. Rather than confronting NATO on the battle field I eventually ended up working together with NATO colleagues in Bosnia in the aftermath of the Dayton Peace Agreement. We happened to be involved in a joint marathon exercise in public diplomacy. It was not easy, as the international press were often critical of what they saw as a flawed peace effort and the local press were rather skeptical and wary of our intentions, some were openly hostile to everything Dayton stood for. The traditionally uneasy relationship between the military and the humanitarians was an additional complication. But we somehow managed to make it work. We came to respect each other and learn from each other. And even though there were moments when we agreed to disagree, one can speak of an unprecedented joint public diplomacy effort. Today despite all problems Bosnia is a different place. And yet when I look back at that time I believe that we worked in a particularly favorable atmosphere. I would describe the last decade of the 20th century, or to be more precise, the last 11 years of the century as the decade of compassion. The 90s saw an unprecedented advance in live broadcast technology which coincided with some of the most dramatic events of the century, from the fall of the Berlin Wall top the 1991 Gulf crisis to the Balkan wars, to the Rwanda genocide and the 1999 Kosovo crisis – you name them . These dramatic images were beamed in real time into the living rooms of millions around the world. Some of them – the unforgettable scenes of Berliners pouring through holes in the wall in cool November sunshine -- were heartening. Others, like the footage of the Balkan carnage or the Rwanda genocidal killings were shocking and devastating. What they had in common, though, was the power to arouse compassion and get the world interested. This coincided with a major change in the way we in the UN handled the media. The traditionally cautious approach gave way to a new policy of openness that re-enforced the already strong public interests in humanitarian issues. Real quotes from real people replaced the wooden language of bureaucracy. It was a time when the UN began to discover the value of public diplomacy. The once camera-shy UN officials became available for talk shows and interviews with UN agencies almost competing for media attention. The 1990s became a decade of unprecedented financial and moral support for humanitarian causes – the aid workers’ golden age of public diplomacy. Cynics would say that the outpouring of financial support for humanitarian involvement in the Balkans was a mere “fig leaf” masking lack of political or military action. Perhaps, but it was also a result of public diplomacy. I would go even further – the eventual decision by the West to step in and end the war in Bosnia and later in Kosovo was to some extent a result of intense public diplomacy that simply would not allow the Balkan quagmire to disappear from the radar screen. I represent here the humanitarian point of view but I also think that the 1990 were in many ways a turning point for NATO. The alliance’s largest deployment ever – the 1996 deployment in Bosnia -- was primarily a peace-keeping mission rather than a combat mission. NATO’s first “hot” war – the 1999 air war against Yugoslavia – regardless of how controversial it might have been at the time– was ultimately an effort to stop the Kosovo crisis from becoming another Bosnia. True, the Kosovo war was sharply criticized by some. But the previous Balkan experience softened the edge of the criticism, since even the purists in the humanitarian community understood that humanitarian involvement alone cannot put an end to carnage and that a credible threat of military force or even the use of military force is at times necessary. Today, partly because of its role in the Balkans, NATO is no longer perceived as exclusively a military alliance. It has successfully managed to shed its reputation as Russia’s potential adversary, despite expanding beyond the borders of the former Soviet Union. One reason for this is that the alliance succeeded in including its former Warsaw pact foes in the peace-keeping efforts in the Balkans of the 1990s. Today, many countries want to join NATO as what I would describe a “stability club” – an organisation that can ensure a degree of stability for its members. NATO’s future role in Afghanistan and eventually elsewhere in the world will be crucial in solidifying that new image. Perhaps in a few years’ time the words “North Atlantic” will only have a historical meaning. Stability and security are becoming hot commodities in today’s world. The era of compassion ended on September 11, 2001 with the terrorist attacks against the United States. This does not mean of course that all compassion evaporated on that day. But September 11 ushered in a new era dominated by security concerns and overshadowed by the war on terror. My agency whose job it is to look after refugees and to make sure that doors remain open to those fleeing violence, despotism and persecution has felt the chill that emanated from the September 11th attacks. The attacks have frightened many even in countries traditionally friendly toward refugees. Xenophobes have used the terror attacks to sew fear and undermine support for asylum seekers and foreigners. This has made our advocacy effort much more challenging. In UNHCR we are now trying to walk a tightrope. On the one had, we are advocating for open doors and continued compassion toward the needy and the persecuted and on the other hand we are trying to make sure that we do not dismiss the legitimate security concerns stemming from September 11 and the efforts to prevent more such attacks. At stake here is the entire institution of asylum and the democratic world’s commitment to it. Without that commitment we would not be able to do our job. In the humanitarian milieu, we are often a wary of working with the military. My organisation’s collaboration with NATO during the 1999 Kosovo crisis drew sharp criticism from some in the NGO community. But those of us who have worked in volatile areas know perfectly well that often a large and well trained military force is needed to provide a framework of stability in highly volatile and tense situations. For the sake of intellectual honesty one has to say that it took military interventions to reverse, at least partially, three of the largest refugee crises of the past decade: Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Despite major problems in Iraq today there is also a chance that eventually uprooted Iraqis will also go home. I think that we do have a heartening message even in today’s seemingly unstable world. But we have to stress in our public diplomacy work in the future that terrible things take time to undo. All too often we are confronted with the “terror” of instant gratification. If success does not arrive within weeks or months, our efforts, be it in peace-keeping, confidence building or nation building are quickly labeled a failure, no matter how absurd this kind of labeling may be. We have to be prepared to say that it will take a long, long time. I know how difficult it is to win the hearts and minds of desperate people abused and brain-washed by decades of propaganda and seduced by various brands of fanaticism and extremism. It is a public diplomacy effort that is time-consuming, full of setbacks and fraught with danger. In my view, though it is worth trying as it would be disastrously arrogant to assume that only some of us deserve and appreciate freedom, decent governance and normality. No organisation no matter how capable can achieve this on its own. But together we have a pretty good chance even in places that seem to be without much hope today. Thank you