The Turbulent Decade: Confronting the Refugee Crises of the 1990s [Hardcover]

Sadako Ogata (Author), Kofi Annan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2005 | ISBN-10: 0393057739 | ISBN-13: 978-0393057737

In this, the definitive story of the twentieth century's greatest refugee crises, the woman who led the international response recounts her experiences and the lessons she has learned. A tireless advocate for the victims of war, Sadako Ogata tells the story at the scene of four crises in which she directed relief: Iraq, the Balkans, the African Great Lakes region and Afghanistan. She explores issues of refugee protection and humanitarian assistance; coordination between humanitarian organisations, NATO and other military forces; and the global political and strategic climate in which these crises occurred. She asks the world community to assess the limits of humanitarian action and to work towards real political solutions when conflicts arise. No one is in a better position to tell this essential post-Cold War story than Ogata, who travelled to crisis spots to lead the world in confronting the tragedy of the displaced.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As United Nations high commissioner for refugees during the 1990s, Ogata faced multiple instances of protracted civil war, with refugee groups often remaining politically embroiled in the conflicts they fled. This memoir of four refugee crises during her tenure—in Iraqi Kurdistan after the first Gulf War, in the Balkans, in the countries surrounding Rwanda and in Afghanistan—details the frustrating limitations of humanitarian action in situations where the safety of refugees and U.N. staffers is threatened, and ongoing turmoil stymies repatriation. The African tragedy in the wake of the Rwandan genocide was the most extreme: Rwandan refugee camps in Zaire, dominated by Hutu military leaders plotting an invasion of their homeland, became the flash point for a much wider war. Only in northern Iraq, where an American military umbrella allowed the Kurds to return home, does Ogata think that a satisfactory outcome was achieved. Ogata's advocacy of military intervention to help settle the conflicts underlying humanitarian crises has been controversial, but she makes a compelling case for it. Her stiffly written book reads like what it is: a report to the international relief and diplomatic communities. But anyone with an interest in how those communities serve the world will find it compelling. (Mar.)
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About the Author

SADAKO OGATA was the UN High Commissioner for refugees from 1990 to 2000 and is currently president of the Japan International Co-operation Agency.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (March 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393057739
• ISBN-13: 978-0393057737
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,473,273 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Diplomatic and a Well Organized Book by the UNHCR Chief, December 18, 2005

By 

J. E. Robinson - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Turbulent Decade: Confronting the Refugee Crises of the 1990s (Hardcover)

My main impression of this book is that it is well organized and well written. Saying that, it would have been nice to see a longer book. The book is an insider's view of the refugee problems as described by the chief of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), all written by the former commisioner Ogata Sadako. She gained some prominance in Japanese politics and academic circles, and at the UN, and then became better known as the UN's face for a decade dealing with the refugee problem from 1991 to 2000.

The Japanese press still refer to her with some amazement because she has a PhD and was the UNHCR commissioner for many years but - did it as a woman. I would say that being a woman was less important in the US, and especially at the UN where diversity is a goal. In any case she was well connected in Japan and came from a family with long political roots. Her grandfather was a former minister and her great grandfather a former PM. In Japan she had a very successful academic career and was the Dean of the Faculty of Foreign Studies at Sophia University in Tokyo. She is now living in New York, in her seventies, and still active in the US and Japan. She has written about a half dozen prior books on refugee problems.

The book is not really biographical, although it does descibe some of the things that she did over the decade or so at the UN. The book is better characterized as an analysis of the four main refugee problems in the 1990s. Right at the front she has a two page long four column matrix or spread sheet that shows year by year - starting around 1988 - the major refugee problems of the world and its four crisis spots - each being one of four vertical columns of the matrix: Iraq and the Kurds column 1, the Balkans column 2, the Great Lakes region of central Africa column 3, and Afghanistan column 4. The matrix has horiizontal divisions, year by year scrolling down from 1988, and each matrix square has a brief desciption of what important event took place in one of those four areas, and desribes very briefly the refugee crisis. For example, under Iraq and on row 1991, there is a note that 1.8 millions Kurds were displaced in Iraq and mainly fled north, etc. Many areas in that matrix are blank, about half the squares are blank.

I describe this matrix in detail since it serves as the outline for the book. The main part of the book is essentially four chapter one on each of the four crisis areas. So, along with this matrix or spread sheet at the front of the book, we have a very short forward by Kofi Annan, then an introduction by the author, also relatively short. This introduction is followed by the four long chapters, each dealing with one of the four refugee problem areas of the matrix, and in the same order, i.e.: one chapter on Iraq, one on the Balkans, etc. Each chapter has an analysis, maps, some references to photographs, local politics and history, UN help, refugee movements, casualties, money spent, the timelines, etc.

She tries to explain the reasons for each of the four major crisis, and she descibes the flow of refugees and what help was provided by the UN. Some of these problems are almost unsolveable and can last years or decades. She likens the UN role to that of a fire department, just responding to one crisis after another, usually after the crisis is well underway. For example, the African Great Lakes problems involving the Burundi- Rywanda counties and its crisis actually goes back decades of fighting betweem the Hutu and the Tutsi. The countries are land locked and difficult to reach, and had a high level of chaos and fighting, making the situation difficult to deal with effectively.

The author includes maps showing the politics and the movement of the refugees, other more general maps, and some photographs. A few of the latter are with various UN workers or other well known public figures. She ends the book with a short chapter on her thoughts about US-Japanese cooperation, and some diplomatic remarks about the negative role of nationalism in both countries as a barrier to helping the world's poor.

She follows this with copies of two short speaches: A Brief to the Security Council in 2000, and her 1999 Mansfield Lecture. The latter is a bit longer and more revealing. The appendix contains a number of tables and notes on the refugee aid and similar items.

The book has a definite feel of being reserved, but well organised, and limited in what she says. She is very proper and diplomatic, and makes no strong demands or appeals. The book is educational, very well organised, and an interesting read, but a little short, 5 stars.

2.0 out of 5 stars The Turbulent Decade, June 22, 2011

By 

Casper Denck (United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Turbulent Decade: Confronting the Refugee Crises of the 1990s (Hardcover)

From 1990 through to 2000 Sadako Ogata was the head of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Before that Ogata held a professorship in International Politics in Japan. The reason I mention the latter point is, to be honest, coming into the subject with a significant academic pedigree (Ogata, not me - mine is less impressive) I was hoping for a more substantial analysis of the UNHCR as a political institution as the UNHCR substantially changed during Ogata's term.

It would have been helpful for a more nuanced history of the organisation. Formed in 1950 the UNHCR is, with the exception of Palestinian refugees (which comes under the remit of the UNRWA), responsible for managing the international cooperation on UN member states and plays a key role in monitoring refugee movements and providing initial humanitarian relief. The UNHCR, together with the 1951 Refugee Convention itself, began life dealing overwhelmingly with European refugees, most notably the Jewish displaced after WWII. Thereafter the Cold War ensured that refugees were predominately European and (in the case of the US), South American. However, in the 1990s there were a number of changes. The end of the Cold War put an end to the often overtly political recognition of refugees from the eastern bloc and the UNHCR focused its attention on the developing world to a far greater extent.

In this book Ogata basically offers an extended survey of the UNHCR operations within the key refugee causing crises of the 1990s, namely the first Gulf War, Afghanistan, the Balkan Crisis and the Great Lakes region. As a memoir this is at times an interesting account but I must say as a professor of international politics i was really hoping for a lot more from Ogata. For example, much is made of the reasons why in the First Gulf war the UNHCR made the very significant move from managing refugee flows (which, by definition, requires the extra-territoriality of the refugee) to creating camps of Internally Displaced Persons. Not only is this an extension of UNHCR's traditional mandate but it represented a positive collaboration of UNHCR operations with alien (that is non-iraqi) military forces - this is a theme that Ogata reiterates as a key part of her approach in various fields of operation; yet there is very little critical comment on this highly significant trend of making the military a pivotal agent of humanitarian relief.

This could have been an excellent book; her position, together with expertise at a time of immense change in humanitarian operations over the decade in question should have made this a significant text - as it is, however, it's more suitable as a coffee table book for the more discerning reader. One to avoid.

2 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A one-woman eulogy to herself, December 1, 2005

By 

SG Fontana - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Turbulent Decade: Confronting the Refugee Crises of the 1990s (Hardcover)

The word one reads most in this book is 'I' and the 'I' in question is the irritating author of this pedestrian and badly written book.

As someone who works in this field and who has worked for the UN in the past I was looking for an insightful analysis of the role UNHCR has played in the unfolding of some of the worse humanitarian disasters of the past 50 years.

I was (naively) hoping that I would get something balanced, self-critical and, above all READABLE.

What you get instead is a prosaic list of world events in which UNHCR had some, naturally exemplary, role to play. The energetic 'I' of Ms Ogata leaps aimlessly round the dry pages of this awful book claiming to save the planet and the world's dispossessed.

It is not an anlysis on UNHCR. In fact UNHCR does not even get a look in. Ms Ogata IS UNHCR.

Besides being poorly written, Ms Ogata's egomanic antics are just irritating most of the time - Immagine a whiny mosquit buzz as you try to decipher between the lines. However, the book loses all credibility and becomes laughable when she manages to describe the conflict in the Balkans and totally skip over the inconvenient hiccough of Srebenica.

Im now finishing this book for amusement's sake. Im looking forwards to getting to the "Great Lakes" section just to see how Ogata manages to skirt around 800,000 dead!

If you want an insight into the problems of the UN, read this book. When you realise what the egos of the people leading the various agencies are like, all falls quickly into place.

However, dont bother to buy it, get it second hand. Even better, borrow it from the library.