Who invented refugee protection? Eurocentrism and the history of the humanitarian movement

The first modern refugee institution

Between 1774 and the First World War, more than four million Muslims from Crimea and the Caucasus were expelled from their homes, finding refuge in the Ottoman empire. Of these, close to 2 million left their homes in the Caucasus in the aftermath of the 1877-1878 Russo-Ottoman war, expelled from territory newly acquired by the Russian empire. These refugees travelled on foot, in ox-driven carts or by sea, under terrible conditions. Eyewitness recount how during the worst days of the influx, 50 refugees a day were dying in the Black Sea port city of Samsun. Others froze to death in the Bulgarian winter. It is estimated that 500,000 died from disease and starvation during the exodus, in what has been dubbed the first massive ethnic cleansing of the modern era.

In her new book, Syria: the Making and Unmaking of a Refuge State, Professor Dawn Chatty provides an historial account of these forced migration movements, as well as the reaction of the Ottoman empire. It is noteworthy that already in 1857, the Sublime Porte enacted an Immigration Code, and in 1860 created an independent agency to manage the integration of these refugees and exiles, the Muhacirin Komisyonu or migrants comission.

The origin and objectives of these initiatives remain, of course, controversial. In later years, the Komisyonu proved also instrumental in settling refugees at the agricultural frontier in Arab states, providing security for the Empire against nomadic incursions. At the same time, humanitarian aid, land grants and agricultural subsidies were provided, allowing for the survival and local integration of hundreds of thousands of refugees.

Scholarly biases

These initiatives are, arguably, the first organized response to a mass influx of refugees in modern history. At the same time, they have been systematically ignored by the standard histories of humanitarianism and refugee protection published in the last years.

The period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 2008 economic crises saw a surge of historical studies of refugee protection, human rights, humanitarianism and humanitarian intervention. They were spurred by the exponential growth of the humanitarian industry and, perhaps, a sense of definitive triumph of globalization and Western-style liberal democracy.

All of the publications sampled for this blog post share one characteristic: they tend to adopt a uniformly Western perspective, focusing on protection and assistance institutions born in the Western world or – more worringly – on refugee influx into Europe and the US, often of populations seen as close to the West for ethnic, religious or ideological reasons.

Let us analyze some of these publications. We will start by a book outside of the current period – it is, however, one of the first histories of refugees and refugee protection and a major reference in the field. In his 1953 book, Les réfugiés dans l’après-guerre, Jacques Vernant provides a short account of refugee influxes previous to Second World War. He includes Russians, Armenians, Spaniards and victims of nazi and fascist regimes. No mention to other refugee influxes is made.

This somehow restrictive view has, arguably, a basis in history. The first High Comissioner for Refugees, Fridtjof Nansen, was given at the beginning of the 1920s a restricted mandate by the League of Nations. It included, first, Russian refugees fleeing the civil war between the Bolsheviks and the White Russians, and only later Armenians fleeing the genocide. Upon his own insistence, he also occupied himself with Greeks, Bulgarians, Assyrians, Assyro-Chaldeans, Syrian, Kurds and other refugees from the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic.

It is true that Nansen, a Nobel peace prize, also made efforts to settle Muslim refugees from Greece in Turkey, following agreed-upon population exchanges, and to settle Armenian refugees in the Soviet Union. However, the League of Nations prioritized assistance to ethnic Greek refugees from Turkey, and frowned upon his efforts to engage with the Soviet Union.

In his 2001 article On the history of the international protection of refugees, Gilbert Jaeger provides a similarly unilateral view of events linked to the Ottoman Empire – all but forgetting refugees expelled from Europe and settling in the Empire:

Well before World War I tragic events in the Ottoman Empire had affected various ethno-religious communities – the Armenians, who are the victims most frequently mentioned, as well as Assyrians (Nestorians), Chaldeans (Uniate Nestorians) and Jacobite Syrians. Turks, Kurds and other Muslim groups also suffered.

Political theorist Micheline Ishay published in 2004 The History of Human Rights: from ancient times to the globalization era, frequently quoted as a reference book. In her chapter about globalization, she dedicates a few pages to Global Migration and the Question of Citizen’s Rights. She does mention Palestinian refugees and the exodus linked to partition in the Indian subcontinent. However, more than half of the text is dedicated to refugees in Europe and the US. Not a single mention is made of refugee influxes in Africa, Asia and Latin America, let alone to legal or institutional initiatives in these continents – with the exception of a succint mention to the 1969 OAU Convention.

The last years have also witnessed a new breed of books on humanitarianism: focusing on its history since the XIX century, adopting a wider view of humanitarianism (including humanitarian intervention) and closely linking the origins of modern humanitarianism to the protection of minorities or downtrodden populations, often Christian, during the Age of Empire. The most well-known of these books are Freedom’s battle: the Origins of Humanitarian Intervention, by Gary J. Bass, and Empire of Humanity: a History of Humanitarianism, by Michael Barnett.

The first book, perhaps the most nuanced, focuses on the convergence of the Age of Empire, the birth of Western liberalism, national liberation movements in Eastern Europe and a romantic mindset which sparked a wave of compassion and interventionism of European liberals towards minorities in faraway lands. A chapter is dedicated to the 1877 Bulgarian uprising against the Ottoman Empire, tsarist Russia intervention and reactions in England. Atrocities by both Ottoman and Russian troops are mentioned. However, the chapter, otherwise quite balanced, focuses on reactions in England – no mention is made to massive refugee influxes into Anatolia, let alone of the humanitarian response by the Ottoman Empire.

More restrictively, the second book focuses its XIX century chapter on the anti-slavery movement in Europe as well as the humanitarian motivations of colonizers and missionaries in the Age of Empire. Its viewpoint is, avowedly, rooted on Western history. Particular attention is given to the UNHCR, the ICRC, Oxfam, MSF, Catholic Relief Services, WVI and Lutheran World Federation. Thus, three out of eight organizations in which particular focus is put are faith (Christian) – based organizations.

The problem with biases

It is striking how a quick sample of recent books about humanitarianism, in particular from a historical perspective, does not reveal any substantial interest in initiatives for refugee protection, or wider humanitarian initiatives, not arising in the Western World.

It is important, here, to make a caveat. The history of laws and institutions is inextricably linked to the history of ideas – and it is difficult not to argue that the ideas, laws and institutions which made up today’s humanitarian system have deep roots in the cultural history of the Western World. It is interesting that of the books quoted above, the one with the strongest Western bias is also the one more honestly avowing it:

[…] Western bias ahead. This is not a book on the history of all forms of humanitarianism around the world. It ignores the long tradition of Islamic charitable activities as well as forms of organized compassion in other cultures, traditions and regions. This book does not pretend to be a complete history of charity, philantropy and compassion but instead is a history of the emergence and evolution of the international humanitarian order. That order is akin to the global economic and security orders: it is rooted in Western history and globalized in ways that were largely responsive to interests and ideas emanating from the West.

However, even if one were to accept this viewpoint, this does not absolve scholars for ignoring the history of humanitarian and refugee protection efforts in the non- Western world. There are several reasons for it.

There is a subtle difference to be made between where ideas originate, and where they evolve into laws and institutions. Even if we accepted that the Enlightement is at the basis of modern humanitarian and refugee protection institutions (which, in itself, is a problematic proposition), this does not mean that they necessarily evolved in the West.

There are many examples of the contrary. The first case in point is, as mentioned above, the Immigration Code and the Immigration Commission of the Ottoman Empire – arguably the first modern initiative for refugee assistance, and moreover deeply rooted in the Tanzimat or the wide-ranging modernization reform undertaken by the Ottoman Empire.

Another important example concerns refugee protection. The first modern regional instrument covering asylum is the 1889 Montevideo Convention on International Criminal Law, ratified by Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay and acceded to by Colombia. The Convention states:

Article 15

No offender who has taken refuge in the territory of a State shall be surrendered to the authorities of any other State except in compliance with the rules governing extradition.

Article 16

Political refugees shall be afforded an inviolable asylum; but it is the duty of the nation of refuge to prevent asylees of this kind from committing within its territory any acts which may endanger the public peace of the nation against which the offense was committed.

As regards the protection of war refugees, or mass movements caused by generalized conflict rather than persecution, the 1969 OAU Convention in Africa and later the 1984 Cartagena declaration in Latin America are the pioneers. It was not until 2001 that the Temporary Protection Directive allowed for a common EU protection mechanisms for mass influxes of displaced persons unable to return to their country of origin.

Last but not least, eurocentric regards have undoubtedly contributed to our sorry state of affairs whereby the arrival of less than two million refugees to Europe in 2015 is dubbed a refugee crises or, even worse, a global refugee crises. A simple image, reflecting the spread of refugees today, will reveal the inadequacy of such expressions.

The bias of political leaders, the media and social media continues to dehumanize refugees in Africa, Asia and Latin America in a way that would be ridiculous if it wasn’t unconscionable. They also vastly exaggerate the challenges that refugee influxes pose in Europe and  unjustly belittle the massive efforts of Governments and civil society in other parts of the world to protect and assist refugees.

Unfortunately, historians and scholars of humanitarianism and refugee protection may also contribute to these views, when not taking enough precautions to avoid an Eurocentric perspective. But there is also hope in the growing body of scholars and journalists covering not only humanitarian crises outside of Europe but also local efforts to respond to them, from a current but also from a historical perspective. Let us hope that they will never tire of swimming against the tide.