Grudging Rescue: the history of humanitarian evacuations

Venue: Room 553, Arts West

Presenters: Dr Ben White

EU Centre Visiting Fellow Dr Ben White examines the history of humanitarian evacuation. This practice is well known today: in Spring 2011, for example, the International Organization for Migration oversaw the evacuation of some 140,000 ‘third-country nationals’ from Libya as that country descended into violence. But it is recent – as an articulated policy, it only really dates back to the Kosovo crisis in the 1990s – and its history is not well understood. Humanitarian practitioners and researchers both refer to precedents like the Kindertransport, but usually in passing.

This public talk introduces the history of evacuations by presenting a very early example: the evacuation of well over 20,000 Armenians from Cilicia (now part of Turkey) by the French military, in little more than two weeks at the end of December 1921. It uses this case to think through the politics and diplomacy of evacuation – how pressure from a public informed by a modern humanitarian consciousness, and the international diplomacy, force policymakers to take responsibility for a threatened population. It discusses the logistical techniques that made possible the rapid relocation of tens of thousands of people. Above all, it highlights the role of evacuees themselves in shaping their own destiny. Thinking about history raises some important questions for humanitarian evacuations today.

Dr Ben White teaches history at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, where he is also a member of the Glasgow Refugee, Asylum, and Migration Network (GRAMNet).

from
https://events.unimelb.edu.au/events/9250-grudging-rescue-the-history-of-humanitarian-evacuations