Book Review: Anne Hammerstad, The Rise and Decline of a Global Security Actor: UNHCR, Refugee Protection and Security
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929916653045 |
| Author | Janosch Neil Kullenberg |
| Date | 01 August 2016 |
| Published date | 01 August 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Book ReviewsInternational Relations |
432 Political Studies Review 14 (3)
the contributions provide a reader-friendly
guide, which is not always present in collected
volumes and is potentially helpful for the less-
initiated. Among the main goals set out in the
Introduction is to provide common ground
between the disciplines concerned with cyber
warfare, and this has certainly been achieved by
the book.
Still, a word of caution is needed. One
should not expect the individual contributions
to be groundbreaking. Instead, for the most
part, they work on the basis of conventional
wisdom within particular disciplines. Certainly,
there are several notable additions to the com-
mon debates – for example, attempts at defin-
ing cyber warfare by Green and Stiennen, and
Green’s defence of the state’s duty to prevent
as being a solution to the jus ad bellum aporiae
of cyber warfare – but these remain a minority.
However, the volume is of high value as the
sum of its constituent parts. What the book is
likely to do is to expand the breadth of readers’
knowledge by increasing their familiarity with
debates across disciplinary boundaries. Hence,
this is a worthwhile read both for those looking
for a comprehensive introduction to cyber war-
fare and for those with deeper knowledge in a
particular field who seek to acquire a more
multi-faceted perspective.
Julija Kalpokiene
(Independent Scholar)
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929916653044
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The Rise and Decline of a Global Security
Actor: UNHCR, Refugee Protection and
Security by Anne Hammerstad. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2014. 345pp., £55.00
(h/b), ISBN 9780199213085
In this compelling book, Anne Hammerstad
builds on her earlier work to argue that after the
Cold War, the Office of the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
has securitised forced migration to consolidate
and expand its role within the international sys-
tem. Methodologically, Hammerstad applies a
‘cautious constructivism of the English School
kind’, meaning that she studies ideas and
discourse alongside, not instead of, material
interests and power (p. 8). With the case of the
UNHCR, she successfully shows that inter-
national organisations matter through their
shaping of ideas and therefore action. From its
humble beginnings as an office with a non-
operational mandate and an annual budget of
US$300,000 to becoming one of the world’s
biggest humanitarian organisations with a
budget of US$7 billion (see http://www.unhcr.
org/pages/49c3646cbc.html) and well over
7700 staff in 125 countries (p. 4), the UN’s
refugee agency has been very successful in
appealing to the interests of states. Particularly,
during the critical juncture of the early 1990s,
the UNHCR was able to take advantage of the
drastic geopolitical and ideational changes by
depicting refugees as a security threat that has
to be addressed proactively.
However, as the second and new part of
Hammerstad’s argument states, the power of
persuasion is limited. After an enthusiastic
beginning to its in-country operations in Iraq
and Bosnia, the UNHCR eventually recog-
nised the risks of defining displacement in
terms of security. In the mid-1990s, the lack
of international interest in Rwandan refugees
and the subsequent disaster in eastern Zaire
brought home the point that states’ security
interests do not necessarily prioritise the well-
being of forced migrants. The following trau-
matising experiences in Kosovo, Afghanistan
and, most painfully, the Canal Hotel Bombing
in Baghdad, all made the UNHCR recognise
that by broadening its original mandate, the
organisation might have lost its identity,
autonomy and credibility. As a result, the
UNHCR has gradually reduced its use of
security language and refocused on its role of
protecting refugees.
With over 15 years of experience in
researching the UNHCR, and with close con-
nections to Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre,
Hammerstad is incredibly well qualified to
write this book. She extensively studied the
organisation’s official documents and publi-
cations to reconstruct the UNHCR’s public
discourse over the last six decades. This
approach allowed her to treat the organisation
convincingly as a unitary actor, despite the
divisions that exist within it. The author also
pre-empts the most obvious criticism of the
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