It comes down to saving lives.

Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.

- Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Articles 13 and 14 (1)

When, in June 1945, fifty sovereign nations convened in San Francisco to create the United Nations and sign the world Charter, John McCloy - one of America's "Wise Men" and architects of the American Century - was surprised by "the growing sense of Russia vs. the United States" he found at the Conference. A cold war was on the verge of breaking out. Thus, right from its beginning the United Nations has had to face a problem that paralyzes - and sometimes upsets - its daily work. The Organization remains to this day an international body composed of independent sovereign States, with a few States - the five permanent members of the Security Council (China, France, Great Britain, Russia and the United States) - assuming particular responsibilities.

In essence and in practice, the United Nations can only fulfil its role within this yet-to-be established "international community", if its Member States respect the covenant they signed and, in particular, commit themselves to fulfilling their "overriding duty to preserve international peace", as Secretary-General Kofi Annan reminded us in a recent speech. Mr Annan further recalled that "the UN is prohibited by its own Charter from intervening in the domestic affairs of its Member States", but [that] the Charter also says that "national sovereignty can be set aside if it stands in the way of the overriding duty to preserve international peace".

Striking a proper balance between national sovereignty and international obligations has become a gruelling task for the United Nations leadership and its agencies in the field. One area where this responsibility is given high priority is refugee protection and assistance, an obligation explicitly devolved upon the States - "The High Contracting Parties" - that signed the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol. The world was then in the midst of the cold war. A "refugee" was defined as a displaced individual who had crossed internationally recognized borders, seeking asylum "outside the country of his nationality", often fleeing political persecution.

With the end of the cold war, not only has the international scene changed, but also the nature of war itself, turning civilian non-combatants into targets caught between the new front-lines. Civilians are today the main victims of wars that are mostly fought within countries; and they are increasingly used as instruments to further indiscriminate political goals. This dramatic shift has had a profound implication on the nature of displacement itself.

This shift also reminds us that the Charter was, after all, issued in the name of "the peoples" of the United Nations, not their Governments. According to Mr. Annan, the time has come to reassert that "the Charter protects the sovereignty of peoples. It was never meant as a license for Governments to trample on human rights and human dignity. The fact that a conflict is 'internal' does not give the parties any right to disregard the most basic rules of human conduct".

In the light of this new reality, both Member States and the United Nations have decided to review the world Organization's modus operandi. This tremendous task is currently underway, led by its Secretary-General. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) likewise has had to adapt to this new environment - an environment marked by growing numbers of civilians who are forcibly displaced "at home" - and is devising a humanitarian agenda of action for the future. Under the mandate of the current High Commissioner, the number of people of concern to the UN refugee agency has risen to a staggering 26 million.

At the same time, the very definition of a "refugee" has been expanded to include persons displaced by internal conflicts. While the main responsibility of the United Nations remains to protect and save lives, today that challenge is even more difficult because Member States have abandoned their treaty obligations. "It is Governments that are responsible for the security and protection of people displaced on their territory", stresses High Commissioner Sadako Ogata.

But what happens when the outside world witnesses a total breakdown of the State, leading to anarchy and chaos? How does one protect internally displaced persons from their own Governments? Is then not "international intervention" the only possible way to save lives?

The mandate of the Secretary-General seems quite clear: United Nations intervention is possible and desirable. During the recent Iraqi crisis, Secretary-General Annan invoked a prerogative only used once in the past. Under articles 98 and 99 of the UN charter, he has the option to take action in accordance with the general principles set out in the Charter. When international peace is at risk, the Secretary-General can initiate preventive diplomacy by offering his "good offices" and alerting the Security Council.

However, the key players - the Member States' Governments - are no longer willing to fulfil their basic obligations towards ever-increasing displaced populations. Under these circumstances, the UNHCR was bound to be thrust to the forefront of mass relief operations in very difficult and dangerous environments. This trend, exposing Member States' cowardice, or worse, their complete lack of strategic thinking, has turned humanitarian intervention into a substitute for political action; the former Yugoslavia or the Great Lakes region of Africa come vividly to mind as recent failures in our immediate past.

And today, Afghanistan and Kosovo: "Once again, we find ourselves deploying desperate humanitarian efforts to deal with consequences, when we should be addressing the political roots of conflicts", the Secretary-General recently stressed in his opening speech to the fifty-third session of the United Nations General Assembly.

To my great dismay, even highly developed countries, which were once seen at the forefront of refugee protection, increasingly feel today that, in the face of enormous migratory pressures, the 1951 Refugee Convention should no longer be understood to be an individual right, but a political offer on the part of the host country! Thus, in the European Union there is an increasing confusion between the root causes of refugee movements and those of migration. We must continue to uphold "asylum" as a basic human right. Persons fleeing persecution by non-State agents fall likewise under the Refugee Convention: once again, what counts is the failure of national protection, not the nature of persecution.

In such a confusing context in which politics, legal considerations, urgency, social breakdown and civil war create near-unmanageable conditions for international intervention to save lives, how can the United Nations - and in particular the UNHCR - protect ever-larger populations under immediate threat of extinction?

The problem is not one of "mandate". What is required is a political response that must also encompass new issues such as access to displaced persons. But we must also confront the dilemma of endorsing forced displacement and address the relation between assisting these people and defending their traditional right to seek asylum elsewhere. In order to fulfil its duty, the UNHCR has to devise a policy that is guided by realism. A first task would be to understand the root causes of displacement.

The specifics of displacement do not germinate in a closed laboratory test-tube: "globalization" has also affected the masses in flight. Before being overwhelmed by the magnitude of the challenge, one needs to review some basic principles. Member States can be guided toward a renewed international commitment to and support for the Geneva Convention, which will help them formulate a consistent and comprehensive refugee policy. What better occasion than the forthcoming fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights!

The challenge for the United Nations is to continue to focus on protecting and assisting refugees so that UNHCR's mandate is not weakened.

Today's disasters will shape the role of the United Nations humanitarian agency well into the next century. Economic development, environmental protection, technological change and access to resources are now part of the "refugee debate", under the broad label of the worldwide eradication of poverty. Furthermore, the positive impact of globalization will not be universal, and extremism, both ethnic and religious, may sweep through vast areas of the world.

In this multifaceted world in which conflicting priorities have to be negotiated - a task requiring political leadership - the challenge to the UNHCR will be to stand firm to its original commitment: protecting and saving lives. The refugee agency must not be swamped by an ever-increasing mandate which Member States are no longer willing to fulfil. In short, the UNHCR has taken upon itself, under Sadako Ogata's mandate, to dramatically increase the number of "persons of concern", i.e., assist a much wider range of people living in refugee-like situations. We are impressed by this policy, but how much longer can this trend be sustained? It may lead to the formation of a new "Displaced Persons Development Agency", but it will surely make UNHCR's original task impossible.

Standing up to Member States' Governments and reminding them of their obligations while remaining true to the UN Covenant - and the people in whose name the Charter was signed - will be a difficult balancing act for the United Nations.

With civilians now more and more at the front-lines of conflicts, saving lives is no longer a mere humanitarian goal: it must be part of each and every Member State's long-term objectives. Far from being a humanitarian alibi, saving lives must become a political priority for countries trying to establish a world order. This also clearly corresponds to the Secretary-General's overall ambition for the global organization, "... to identify a select few of the world's most pressing problems, and set ourselves a precise achievable programme for dealing with them". This two-year task will be reviewed at the 2000 "Millenium General Assembly", which will also be the defining moment when the UNHCR receives its new twenty-first-century mandate.

Dr. Otto Graf Lambsdorff is a member of the German Bundestag, former Federal Minister of Economics, and European chairman of the Trilateral Commission. He contributed this article at the invitation of the UN chronicle.