Les camps de réfugiés et la guerre : Du sanctuaire à l'enfermement humanitaire ?
Refugee and IDP camps, intended to protect civilians affected by conflicts and natural disasters, have an undeniable strategic importance, and their management can be critical for the resolution of crises.
During the Cold War, camps - often located on the border between two states in conflict with each other - made ideal grounds for recruitment, resupply and propaganda. The strategic function of refugee camps has evolved in the past twenty years: although they still play a part in the prolongation of conflicts, they shelter fewer refugees and play a less prominent military role. While they used to be administered by guerillas, camps are now managed by humanitarian organizations - a change that raises a number of issues as regards their judicial and social responsibility for the organization and supplying of war economies.
This paper is published in French only: Les camps de réfugiés et la guerre : Du sanctuaire à l'enfermement humanitaire ?
Security Studies Center
Heir to a tradition dating back to the founding of Ifri, the Security Studies Center provides public and private decision-makers as well as the general public with the keys to understanding power relations and contemporary modes of conflict as well as those to come. Through its positioning at the juncture of politics and operations, the credibility of its civil-military team and the wide distribution of its publications in French and English, the Center for Security Studies constitutes in the French landscape of think tanks a unique center of research and influence on the national and international defense debate.
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