Anatomy of A Crisis: Relations Between the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the Federal Republic of Germany from the 1970s to the 1980s
* Research Assistant at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.
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Abstract |
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This analysis takes for its starting point an internal United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) memorandum, which criticized West German asylum practices in rather strong terms, leaked, and generated considerable controversy in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), internationally and within UNHCR. The article inscribes these events within the broader evolution of the relationship between UNHCR and the FRG to present them as one of several initiatives envisaged within the refugee agency in order to bend West Germany's increasingly restrictive stance on asylum issues. In this sense, UNHCR's attempts to use confrontation as a diplomatic tool shed light on an international organization's avenues for influence and their limits. Tracing the emergence of the UNHCR's chosen course of action and attempting to assess its repercussions, the study emphasizes the interaction between various members of UNHCR staff in the organization's branch office in Bonn and its headquarters in Geneva, as well as between political factions within the FRG. Calling to mind that neither UNHCR nor the FRG are unitary actors, this opens the way for an analysis of the role individual agency may play within larger collective actors.