Aid is not enough.

SADAKO OGATA, President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and former UN High Commissioner for Refugees, spoke of the need for a 'seamless harmony' between 'humanitarian action' and 'development assistance'.

Humanitarian action and development assistance had to be seen as complementary, she insisted, working on common principles of humanity, neutrality and impartiality.

But there were tragic ambiguities. Bringing together refugees in camps in order to feed and care for them had also provided soft targets for killer groups--as, recently, on the border between Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo--but agencies' absence from such conflict regions likewise condemned refugees to certain death.

She expressed the hope that more effort could be made towards tackling the root causes of conflicts--and she had already taken pioneering steps in this direction, as head of the UNHCR. All too often there was 'unbearable frustration amid the lack of political solutions', and even worse, 'humanitarian assistance became a fig-leaf for political inaction'. There needed to be 'a commitment to a long-term healing process,' she said. In the aftermath of ethnic, religious or tribal wars, 'fought door to door, between neighbours', the trust between people was destroyed, the social fabric torn. Refugees could return home, but their social relations with the communities where they live had to be rebuilt.