The Rise and Decline of a Global Security Actor: UNHCR, Refugee Protection and Security. By Anne Hammerstad

Abstract

Anne Hammerstad’s new book charts the tumultuous and triumphant journey of this unique UN entity, an entity that is simultaneously an international organization working to promote co-operation between member states, and a quasi-state providing the frontline services for multitudes residing in legal limbo outside their sovereign domiciles. The book is thus an attempt to comprehend ‘the processes through which UNHCR responds and adapts to new pressures and changing circumstances, and how the ideational level of perceptions, beliefs and discourse is crucial to understanding such processes’ (p. 3). The book is divided into three parts. The first sets the stage through an explanation of the conceptual lenses employed, with a discussion on the importance of discourse and the power of ideas. The second section details the intellectual history of UNHCR from its creation to the present. The third examines the high profile global interventions in Iraq, Bosnia, Zaire and Afghanistan that either shaped, tested, or bolstered UNHCR. The author’s main thesis is that UNHCR’s rise and decline was grounded in its ability to construct and utilize the discourse of security in four distinct international contexts. The book presents a credible account that goes beyond the simple recounting of events to a courageous deconstruction of the language and narratives that the organization has employed to establish, reinvent, and perpetuate itself. It furthermore explicates the significance of these processes for refugees, states and international politics.