The Dangers of "Safe Havens" for Kosovo

Abstract

Safe havens have heen suggested as a means of providing protection and humanitarian assistance inside Kosovo. The track record on safe havens, however, suggests that they might not be as effective as they are touted to be. In fact, safe havens in Northern Iraq, Bosnia, and Rwanda lured displaced people into areas with a false sense of security, without actually keeping them from harm's way. Thus, the author concludes that in the absence of truly neutral safe havens created with the consent of all parties to a conflict, so called safe havens represent a half-measure that serve to preclude would-be refugees from seeking asylum outside their country, while holding them in areas where the sovereignty of the government seeking to persecute them has not fundamentally been challenged.