Safe Havens

Safe havens, or safe areas, is a term used to cover a wide variety of attempts to declare certain areas off limits so far as military targeting is concerned. The establishment of safe havens, mainly by the United Nations (UN), in war-torn areas involves a combination of humanitarian and military action, and has been one of the central features of international responses to conflicts in the 1990s. As discussed in this entry, the UN’s decision to establish safe havens has been controversial, mainly because the resolutions were unclear and there was an apparent lack of willingness to take the necessary steps to ensure the security of the safe areas, as it was demonstrated in Rwanda in 1994 and Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995.