Population transfer
Population transfer is the permanent movement of a large group of people, often defined by their ethnicity or religion, from one region to another. Sometimes two groups are transfered in opposite directions at about the same time, in which case the whole process is often called population exchange.
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2 Central Europe 3 South Asia 4 Middle East 5 Changing Legal Opinions 6 External links 7 Other sources |
Population transfer was used in 1922 to resolve the Greco-Turkish War. The Greeks suffer a decisive defeat in Asia Minor. The Greek army fled from Asia Minor back into Europe and abandoned the area of Thrace. Greek families that had for lived for generations in Asia Minor and Thrace accompanied the Greek army as refugees. A significant portion of the Turkish population of Greece at the time felt significant level of fear for their peace and security. Fridtjen Nansen, a Norwegian diplomat working with the League of Nations proposed the idea of population transfer -- moving the Turkish inhabitants of Greece to Turkey and absorbing the Greek inhabitants of Turkey into Greece.
The plan met with fierce opposition in both countries and was condemned vigously by a large number of countries. Undeterred, Nansen worked with both Greece and Turkey to gain their acceptance of the proposed population exchange. Over one million Greeks and half a million Turks were moved from one side of the international border to the other.
Prior to population transfer in 1922, during the interval from 1914 to 1922, Greeks suffered to Pontian Genocide [1] following the model of the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Young Turk government several years earlier. Population transfer prevented further genocide of the Pontian Greeks.
As a result Greece was spared the disruptions caused by having a significant minority population. Turkey was not so fortunate. Turkey still has significant, Kurd and Armenian minorites. The Kurdish minority in particular has engaged in civil conflict within Turkey.
Cyprus was not included in the Greco-Turkish population transfer of 1922. In the interim, Cyprus has experienced significant ethnic conflict supported by both Greece and Turkey and the occupation of approximately half the island by Turkey in 1975. Today the island remains divided.
After World War II, many ethnic Germans were expelled from territories such as the Sudetenland, as well as areas annexed by the Soviet Union and Poland.
During the Partition of British India into India and Pakistan in 1947, more than 5 million Hindus moved from present-day Pakistan into present-day India, and more than 6 million Muslims moved in the other direction. A large number of people (than a million by some estimates) died in the accompanying violence.
In the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict, some form population transfer has been advocated by both sides of the conflict. The proposals cover the gamut: the deporation of all Jews from Israel to Europe; the expulsion of all Israelis from the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the deportation of all Arabs from Israel and the expulsion of all Arabs west of the Jordan River.
Some amount of forced population movement has already occurred. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, a portion of the Arab population fled the area of the State of Israel. After that war, the Jews of many Arabs contries fled to Israel. The role of govenments and official institutions as instigators or in support of these population is movements is hotly contested.
In the 2003 Knesset, transfer as an official policy was represented by the seven members of the National Union block, which includes the three small parties Molodet, Tkuma and Yisrael Beitenu. The National Union's official position is that transfer should be accomplished by agreement between Israel and the Arab nations which will be willing to give home to the relocated people. The result of an inability to achieve a voluntary agreement are not spelt out, but observers note the Molodet policy to use force in at least some circumstances.
Support for transfer of Arabs amongst the Israeli public has increased since the Oslo Accords, the establisment of the Palestinian Authority and the conflicts that have come in their wake, but support for the transfer of Arabs remains a minority opinion. According to a survey conducted by the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University in 2003, 46 percent of Israel's Jewish citizens favor transferring Palestinians out of the territories, while 31 percent favor transferring Israeli Arabs out of the country. These numbers have increased from 38 percent and 24 percent, respectively, in 1991.
There is now little debate about the general legal status of involuntary population transfers: Where population transfers used to be accepted as a means to settle ethnic conflict, today, forced population transfers are considered violations of international law. (Denver Journal of International Law and Policy, Spring 2001, p116). This shift in law reflects the general trend to assign rights to individuals, which limits the rights of states to make agreements which adversely affect them. For the same reason, no legal distinction is made between one-way and two-way population transfers.
An interim report of the United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities (1993) says:
The final report of the Sub-Commission invoked a large number of legal conventions and treaties to support the position that population transfers contravened international law unless they had the consent of both the moved population and the host population; moreover, that consent had to be given free of direct or indirect negative pressure.
"Deportation or forcible transfer of population" is defined as a Crime Against Humanity by the Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court (Article 7).
See also: ethnic cleansing deportation.
A. De Zayas, International Law and Mass Population Transfers, Harvard International Law Journal 207 (1975).Greece
Central Europe
South Asia
Middle East
Changing Legal Opinions
The same report warned of the difficulty of ensuring true voluntariness : some historical transfers did not call for forced or compulsory transfers, but included options for the affected populations. Nonetheless, the conditions attending the relevant treaties created strong moral, psychological and economic pressures to move.External links
Other sources