Problems of Protection: The UNHCR, Refugees, and Human Rights

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has been around for over 60 years, and its missions and instruments have changed dramatically in that time period.  Maintaining the perilous balance between refugee protection and the interest of states is a difficult role to play, and is often political.  Though it was conceived as a non-political arm of the Secretary General, Problems of Protection: The UNHCR, Refugees, and Human Rights points out that the mere existence of refugees is the result of political upheaval and asks a refugee organization would be hard-pressed to be apolitical while dealing with governments.  Through the various chapters put forward by this book’s contributors, the average reader learns a lot of new information about the UNHCR and its role in international politics and the assistance it has provided in various humanitarian crises.  For instance, 94% of funding comes from only a few industrialized countries – illustrating that the UNHCR could be perceived as the international arm of a group of nations with their own norms and solutions being imposed on refugee situations.  With that in mind, almost 80% of the funding provided to the UNHCR is earmarked for particular operations or places, thus reducing the flexibility and independence of the organization carrying out the help.  At the same time, the international clout of the UNHCR is increasing on some fronts and decreasing on some fronts: as more Latin American nations sought legitimacy in the international system, they conformed to the rules set forth by the UNHCR as a standard bearer of legitimization; however, the 1980s brought the demise of the UNHCR as the nidus of international law experts, especially as other nations started their own immigration and refugee programs.

That aside, while reading the book, the obvious confirmation bias within the authors’ research design is troubling to me.  There is a liberal viewpoint – both from the political and international relations theory viewpoints – that pervade the work, from start to finish.  The authors readily acknowledge the public criticism of the UNHCR as ineffective, bureaucratic, and overly politicized, and thus attempt to preempt such points throughout the chapters. However, it is unconvincing, and the political bias prevalent here prevents true critical analysis I would expect and demand when reading about a sensitive and political topic such as refugees.  For instance, in the very first chapter, Gil Loescher writes, “…it seems clear that the autonomy and authority of UNHCR has grown over the years and the Office has become a purposive actor in its own right with independent interests and capabilities.” (p6)  Now, never mind that this comes directly after the paragraph in which he talks about how the contributing nations earmark 80% of the funding (what independence?), but how does one prove his statement?  It comes off as a fait accompli of “Well, of course, the UNHCR is independent!” without putting forward real facts of how many lives it potential saved and in what conflicts/situations it showed the most leadership.  Instead, paragraphs later, Loescher, after describing how the United States withheld funding from the UNHCR, proves UNHCR’s independence and organizational fortitude by writing that “a grant from the Ford Foundation enabled UNHCR to take the lead role in responding to a refugee crisis in West Berlin in early 1953.” (p8)  End of paragraph.  Again, where is the evidence for such a conclusion?  What refugee processing centers did it open?  What authorities – German or otherwise – asked for UNHCR assistance, and why did they believe UNHCR had the tools an experience necessary even though it was only 2 years old at the time?  What was the take-away from UNHCR’s experiences of being the lead of a European refugee crisis?  These questions were woefully ignored and all that remains are superficial generalizations.

While all of Problems of Protection is not as haphazard, the strain of pro-UN and pro-UNHCR bias weaves through the whole book without dutifully looking into contrary evidence.  Other authors present criticism or evidence of negative results by the UNHCR, but dismiss it just as easily as Loescher does regarding the High Commission’s independence.  I am not saying that such conclusions are false, just that they, as with the book as a whole, are not proven.  At the end of the day, this work provides an inside look at the UNHCR and its involvements – superficial or otherwise – in humanitarian crises near and far, ending with refugee protection in Europe and Africa after 9/11.  A reader will either let this book confirm his or her viewpoint as it relates to the effective and important role of the United Nations in world affairs, or reject this book as biased and poorly sourced in the face of mounting criticism of the UNHCR.

*4/10*

Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light

Our lives as we know it have never been dark.  Working into the late evening hours, navigating home on the highway, watching late night TV – all of our nighttime activities rely on affordable, abundant light.  But only two or three centuries ago, such a phenomenon as 24/7 light did not exist outside of expensive candelabras in only the most expensive homes.  In Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light, Jane Brox examines our (relatively short) relationship with light, the social history of technology, and the challenges in bringing electrification to all over the past 200 years.  As Brox herself says, “The democratic distribution of light in the United States depended upon the decades-long struggle by rural Americans to have the same access to electricity as those in the cities and suburbs.”  Brilliant is not a technical and diagram-heavy tome, but rather focuses on the effects that artificial and electrical lighting has had on the progress of society and the individual.

This is a light and topical book, but where Brox veers off-course is her over-emphasis on the electric light in the U.S.  A better subtitle of her book would draw such a distinction, since, after her discussion of Edison’s light bulb, the further electrification of the United States is the only substantive topic.  While the struggle of 20th century rural Americans to gain the same level of access to electricity as those in the cities and suburbs is an interesting topic, is it only rural Americans who fought for access, or did other industrialized nations have the same issue?  Did the popular adoption of the light bulb in everyday life make headway in other countries at the same time as in the United States?  What is the status of electrification in developing economies now, and is that a potential factor holding them back?  Besides these unanswered questions I had, this book is a tad rambling.  She covers everything from the 1960s New York blackouts to the discovery of the Lascaux Paleolithic cave paintings and Jimmy Carter’s non-electrified childhood in Georgia.  While I understand Brox is trying to be pithy and interesting, this book – for me – did not live up to its promise as an “evolution” of artificial light, even though an evolution of this subject would most likely become unwieldy in its complete form.  (However, to be fair, the author tackles more of the social impact of the light revolution as opposed to the specific technical details of how light and electricity is created, which makes this book a lot less dry than it could have been!)

Nonetheless, this book serves its purpose of educating the reader on electrification topics and its history, albeit superficially.  Brilliant does serve as an introduction to discovering other more scholarly works like Thomas Parke Hughes’ Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930 or David Nye’s Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880-1940 for a reader more interested in the effect and importance of the electrification of the globe.

*6/10*

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

At its core, this is the story of scientific discovery and its human consequences.  The multi-faceted portrayal of a poor Southern tobacco farmer by the name Henrietta Lacks who posthumously became one of the most important tools in modern medicine is a stark reminder of where medical research has come from and where it has progressed. We follow the story of Henrietta’s cells, unknowingly taken from her cervical cancer cultures months before her untimely death, which were named HeLa and are currently alive and propagating in medical labs around the world.  The famous and widespread cells were instrumental in major scientific breakthroughs in the 20th century, such as developing the polio vaccine; testing chemotherapy drugs; finding techniques for in vitro fertilization; uncovering the secrets of the atom bomb's effects; and mapping genes onto human chromosomes.  Yet even with all this, Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown and is buried in an unmarked grave.

Now, with The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the "colored" ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta's small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia to present-day East Baltimore, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells. Even 20 years after her death, Henrietta’s own family didn't know that her doctor had taken the cells and proceeded to share and trade them with other researchers. While such an occurrence was standard medical practice in the 1950s, the family was especially surprised to learn that those cells were eventually being sold for a profit among labs and medical companies. Was this a case of racial exploitation or simply how science progresses?  Skloot found Henrietta’s family living in poverty, struggling to understand how their loved one could have saved so many lives while her own could not be saved. For them, it was particularly hard to come to grips with the fact that their mother or grandmother had done so much for the medical community and biological companies, yet they cannot even afford good medical care themselves.  The story of the Lacks family—past and present—is inextricably connected to the troubled history of experimentation on African Americans and the birth of bioethics in the decades after Henrietta’s death.

As for the scholarship contained within the book, Skloot’s research and presentation of her facts is cogent and balanced.  She effectively navigated the difficult terrain of respecting the memory of Henrietta Lacks and her family, while at the same time telling this story in a very intimate, meticulous, and honest manner – not an easy task.  I’d point specifically to the sections dealing with Henrietta's daughter, Deborah, who clearly gained a real sense of healing, deliverance, and understanding that she had been searching for her whole life as it pertains to her mother’s unacknowledged contributions to science.  Outside of the human interest portion of this book, Skloot also managed to effectively explain the complex scientific information in a way that anyone can comprehend and be interested by.  The multiple stories told here weave through each other as the pages turn: the story of Henrietta; the story of the Lacks family and their history; the story of experimentation on African Americans in the 1950s; the story about science and ethics; and finally, the story of the legal battles over whether we ourselves control the science contained in our own bodies.  In the end, the family declared “God chose Henrietta as an angel who would be reborn as immortal cells"…and that’s exactly where I would leave it.

Highly readable and a riveting account is one I would recommend for pretty much anyone!

*10/10*

Operation Mincemeat: Fooling the Nazis, One Dead Body at a Time

Though they say that truth is stranger the fiction, there are situations such as those portrayed in Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory when the story told has greater appeal and more enduring impact precisely because it is essentially true, at least to the extent that facts can be verified.

With regard to Operation Mincemeat, Ben Macintyre The object of this rouse was to fool Germany about where Allied forces would choose to land coming from the southern Mediterranean. Eccentric minds of Allied intelligence got to thinking and decided to float a body -- containing secret documents -- on a Spanish beach fully assuming that the ostensibly neutral Spanish fascists would share the information they found with the Germans and that the Germans would believe it. To make the Operation work, Hitler had to be persuaded that the push from Africa would not be towards the obvious choice -- Sicily, but rather Sardinia to the west and Greece to the east. Charles Cholmondeley, the MI5 agent responsible for this rouse, as well as his superior, Ewan Montagu, and a host of minor players (including the creator of James Bond, Ian Fleming) make this one of the best international spy thrillers I’ve read in some time.

The intricate details of the Operation recounted by Macintyre are on display throughout the book, and make this book a page-turner.  For instance, Cholmondeley thought that a new uniform on the body would look suspect, so he put on Marine battle dress and wore it every day for three months while the decoy body was on ice. Once the body was loaded with faked documents from Churchill and Eisenhower, it was clandestinely transported by submarine and washed up on the Spanish coast as planned. What follows is intrigue of the highest order.  Whether it’s the Spanish attempting to fool the Germans that they didn’t look at the documents before handing them over or the head of Nazi intelligence in Berlin creating a fanciful story of how he obtained the documents, the resultant dance between all the characters in this story ends Hitler ordering the fortification of Greece and Sardinia, with Sicily dropped from precedence.  But as so often in war, the devil is in the details, and Macintyre tells the story of the Abwehr officer in Berlin who was the ultimate authority on the authenticity of the Mincemeat documents and was Hitler's favorite intelligence analyst; he easily detected the phoniness of the recovered papers but chose to reassure Hitler because he was a dedicated anti-Nazi and was prepared to do anything to help the Allies win the war.  The success – or potential failure – of Operation Mincemeat relies on “violent emotion, chance, and rational calculation,” according to Clausewitz.

All of the key factors of the intelligence craft are on display in Operation Mincemeat: personal antagonisms, petty arguments and bureaucratic entanglements, the unpredictability of human behavior, and the requirement for secrecy.  This detailed and interesting book lays bare the potential for self-delusion as well as the potential to achieve significant goals outside of traditional military mechanisms.  Highly recommended for history buffs and those who enjoy a good – and true! – thriller!

*9/10*