Gil Loescher is Senior Fellow for Forced Displacement and International Security for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, and author of The UNHCR and World Politics: A Perilous Path (OUP, 2001).

Recent articles

A year after the bomb attack on the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, Gil Loescher pays tribute to the victims, including his close colleague and openDemocracy partner Arthur C. Helton, and reflects on the implications of the tragedy for the UN’s humanitarian work in Iraq and beyond.

We welcome back Gil Loescher. He describes how he and Arthur C. Helton, his fellow openDemocracy columnist, went to meet their friend Sergio Vieira de Mello, the United Nations special envoy in Baghdad, on a fatal day in August 2003.

This column was written by Arthur Helton and Gil Loescher on the eve of their research and evaluation visit to Iraq, from where they were to report for openDemocracy on the challenges of reconstruction facing Iraq’s new governors. On 19 August, they were victims of the bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad. Arthur Helton was killed and Gil Loescher severely injured in the blast.

Are non-governmental organisations (NGOs) at risk of becoming a tool of governments’ foreign policies? The US’s increasing engagement in ‘small wars’ and nation-building is challenging NGOs’ sense of their core mission and degree of independence. A decisive period is opening where the very meaning of humanitarian action is being explored and redefined.

Some governments and analysts of migration propose ‘international transit centres’ and ‘protected zones’ close to refugees’ countries of origin, as a way to control and limit their movement as well as guaranteeing their basic rights. But research into the human rights environment in the regions immediately affected by refugees and asylum-seekers indicates that a consistent, holistic policy to protect people in movement would be a far more effective and humane solution to current problems.