De Facto Safe Areas. An Ignored Approach to Humanitarian Intervention

The collapsed “safe areas” in Srebrenica and five other Bosnian cities in 1995 mark one of the climaxes of humanitarian interventionism in the 1990s. However, they also represent the last official and intentional use of the safe area concept. With its earlier applications in Iraq, (post-genocide) Rwanda and other countries, the concept seemed to be on a promising path into the practical toolbox of humanitarian intervention. Yet, despite the formal disappearance of the concept, several current examples demonstrate that the idea of a physically protected space for civilians remains part of recent cases of possible humanitarian interventions – be it in the form of UN Peacekeeping (e.g. the “Protection of Civilians (PoC)-Sites” in South Sudan) or unilateral intervention (e.g. “Internally Displaced Persons (IDP)-Camp” at Bangui airport during France’s Opération Sangaris in the Central African Republic). Ignored by scholars of humanitarian intervention since Srebrenica, other disciplines have dealt with the phenomenon from different angles. This paper aims at providing a comprehensive and inclusive overview of these distinct theoretical approaches. International humanitarian law, for instance, provides different terms framed in the Geneva Conventions like hospitalized or neutral zones - an approach highly relevant for today’s activities of organisations like the ICRC or MSF. Furthermore, refugee and migration studies have transferred the “refugee camp” concept into the conflict domestic, by framing the term “IDP-Camp”. In reality some of these camps are militarily protected by intervenors and seem to be very similar to the safe area idea. Other relevant approaches are coming from the military or UN PoC concepts. Based on this comprehensive overview, the paper concludes with an outlook on the importance of (de facto) safe areas as a practical tool of humanitarian intervention.