The Concerned Women of Buduburam: Refugee Activists and Humanitarian Dilemmas 9781501701214

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The Concerned Women of Buduburam

The Concerned Women of Buduburam Refugee Activists and Humanitarian Dilemmas

Elizabeth Holzer

Cornell University Press Ithaca and London

Copyright © 2015 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 2015 by Cornell University Press First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2015 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Holzer, Elizabeth, author. The Concerned Women of Buduburam : refugee activists and humanitarian dilemmas / Elizabeth Holzer. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8014-5408-0 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8014-5690-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Refugees—Liberia. 2. Refugee camps—Ghana. 3. Refugees— Political activity—Ghana. 4. Humanitarian assistance—Ghana. I. Title. HV640.4.G45H65 2015 362.87′809667—dc23 2015010543 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu. Cloth printing Paperback printing

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Cover photograph: Refugee women and Ghanaian police, Buduburam refugee camp, March 2008. Photograph by Elizabeth Holzer.

Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction: “The Midnight Hour in This Refugee Crisis”

vii 1

Part I. Everyday Politics in Crisis

23

1. Achieving Everyday Life in Humanitarian Crisis

25

2. Civic Engagement in the Refugee Camp

40

3. Bifurcated Governmentality

73

Part II. Contentious Politics in Crisis

91

4. The Concerned Women Protests

93

5. Refugee Dissent as a Social Problem

128

6. Legitimacy in Repression’s Aftermath

148

Conclusion: Compassionate Authoritarianism

161

Methodological Appendix: Public Sociology and Private Compromise

177

References

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Index

193

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the people who took the time to share their stories with me in difficult circumstances, especially the members of the Concerned Women, the Stakeholders, and the Vision, whose grace and public-spiritedness in the face of crisis continue to inspire me. I am grateful also to my fellow researchers who worked in Ghana and Liberia and generously shared their insights: Anthony Nimley and Jelbeh Johnson, who contributed valued research assistance; and Samuel Agblorti, Susanne Tete, Jeff Crisp, Kaisa Akvist, Akosua Darkwah, Dörte Rompel, Guy Threlfo, and Tehila Sagy. This book owes much to the support of my colleagues and friends at the University of Connecticut’s Research Program on Humanitarianism, Human Rights Institute, and Department of Sociology. Cathy Schlund-Vials read the entire manuscript at a crucial juncture and gave valuable guidance. Eleni Coundouriotis, Kathy Libal, Richard Wilson, Emma Gilligan, Gaye Tuchman, Manisha Desai, and Davita Glasberg read and offered insights on several selections. Susan Silbey, Sandy Levitsky, Bandana Purkayastha and Nancy Naples offered practical and professional support throughout. Chapters 2 and 3 benefited greatly from exchanges with Claudio Benzecry, Hallie Liberto, Jeremy Pais, Mike Wallace, Shauna Morimoto, Alice Kang, and Kristy Kelly. I presented earlier versions of Chapter 5 at the University of Mary Washington and the Law and Society Conference and received valuable feedback from Hui-Jung Kim and Mark Massoud. An earlier version of Chapter 6 received valuable feedback from Andreas Wimmer, Ann Swidler, Silvia Pasquetti, and others at the 2010 Junior Theorists Symposium. The conclusion benefited enormously from debates on the alternatives

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to refugee camps that I have participated in with Galya Ruffer, Zachary Lomo, Michael Kagan, Paula Banerjee, and others on the Sanctuary without Refugee Camps panel series at the Human Rights Institute 10th Anniversary Conference and the 2014 International Association for the Study of Forced Migration Conference. An earlier version of the Methodological Appendix received valuable feedback from Anna-Marie Marshall, Mark Suchman, Elizabeth Mertz, and others at the 2008 Midwest Law and Society Retreat. In its earlier life, this project benefited greatly from the support of my mentors, Myra Marx Ferree, Erik Wright, AiIi Tripp, Dave Trubek, Pam Oliver, and Ivan Ermakoff. Now, as it nears completion, I benefited greatly from advice and feedback from Roger Haydon, my editor at Cornell University Press, and the anonymous reviewers. This work was supported by the Charlotte Newcombe Foundation, the National Science Foundation (0719733), the University of Connecticut’s Large Faculty Grant, and the Human Rights Institute’s Faculty Fellowship and Faculty Research Grant. Portions of the introduction and Chapter 2 were published in Sociological Forum 29 (2014): 774–800. Portions of Chapter 4 were published in Journal of Refugee Studies 25 (2012): 257–281.

Introduction “The Midnight Hour in This Refugee Crisis”

‘Jayboy go inside!’1 My neighbor shouted to her thirteen-year-old son. Startled by the panic in her voice, I stumbled outside to see her. It was a Saturday morning in the Buduburam Refugee Camp in Ghana, West Africa. I had been here for eight months studying camp politics, living with about thirty-five thousand refugees from the Liberian civil war, a few hundred refugees from Sierra Leone and Côte D’Ivoire, and their Ghanaian neighbors. Across a dirt field where the kids usually played football, behind an evangelical church at the edge of the camp, I could see three men, running. ‘What’s happening?’ I asked my neighbors crowded in the compound yard. Police had come for men, they told me. I noticed that no men stood among my neighbors. The police had come to end protests by refugee women that had started five months ago. It was a gut-wrenching shock—they were peaceful protests, I thought. And what men? There were no men on the protest field. I left the compound and headed to the field near the entrance of the camp where the protesters had been gathering for the past month and a half. I witnessed 1. I use the following convention to convey the varying degrees of accuracy in quotes. Double quotation (“) marks signify a written or recorded phrase. Sometimes I edit the quotes slightly for clarity or conciseness. When I cut text within a quote, I indicate it like this (. . .). Single quotation marks (‘) signify a phrase recorded in field notes at the time or shortly enough afterward that I am extremely confident about the word choice. A quote without any marks indicates field notes where I am confident about the substance but not the word choice. Italicized phrases indicate commonplace utterances, not necessarily from any single transcript or field note but regularly enough said that even casual visitors to Buduburam should recognize them. I will use this convention throughout the text, even in the block quotes. All names are pseudonyms except for public officials.

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The Concerned Women of Buduburam

the confusion and disorder of the raid through a lightheaded haze of disbelief. Not far from my compound, I stopped to talk with a woman crying in her yard. “We locked the door and they bust the door, they break our door,” she said, pointing to the thin wooden door now propped in a corner of the room. “Then he went in the bathroom, and they bust the bathroom door, and they went, and they got him from there with force, no slipper on his feet, we were here crying; they were carrying him.” “Beating him,” a neighbor interjected. Why this man? The makeshift house was not near the protest field. Did he go near there? I asked. “He was here,” the woman said emphatically. “He always here selling the water.” It was not uncommon to see people selling buckets of water for washing or small sachets of drinking water in camp. “It’s because of the noise—that what cause him to come in,” the neighbor clarified. “There was noise around, people were running, so he got afraid. That how he took it upon himself to come in. And before coming in, I think they spotted him coming in.” Near the camp’s entrance, police buses still stood in the field, and an armored truck and dark police jeeps were parked across the road. The officers were wearing riot gear or nondescript white shirts and black pants, so I knew they must have come from the capital. ‘Why are the men being arrested?’ I asked a young policewoman. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Who is in charge?’ I asked, and she waved vaguely toward the taxi stand. I approached a man holding a megaphone, dressed in black. ‘What are these men being arrested for?’ He kept walking, acknowledging my question with a sharp downward cut of his hand. On the field, it was chaos—a few vivid images amid a blur of movement and noise. A young woman ran, dragging a toddler away from the protest field by the arm. The tiny girl glided through the air like a ballet dancer, her feet barely skimming across the ground. ‘Wait!’ the girl cried in a teary voice, her sandal slipping off as she stumbled. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ the woman said, pausing to pick up the sandal and slide it on the girl’s foot before taking off again. A small group of police officers dragged a middle-aged man, women swarming around them, entreating the police to release him. The officers huddled around the man they carried. They walked past the buses, crossing the road at the end of the field, cars passing on the heavily trafficked highway. A woman bolted from the crowd, sobbing as she threw herself to her knees on the road. A fast-approaching truck halted a few feet from her, and another woman dragged her from the road. She broke from the arms of her friend, grabbed a stone from the road, and chucked it at the rear officer; an adolescent girl standing with a group of children at the roadside threw another stone, and the other children followed. Stones bouncing off his riot gear, the officer fumbled with a canister on his belt, turned to the woman and the girls, paused, and then set the canister back down and continued walking to the dark SUV. ‘Where are you taking him?’ I asked. ‘What is he charged with?’ You can

Introduction

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inquire in the Accra central office, an officer told me. ‘This is not a safe place,’ my friend said to me, nodding to the group of women and children who were growing progressively more enraged. Her own husband had been taken as he left the house to brush his teeth that morning. There was no running water in the camp, so most people washed their faces and spat out the toothpaste in their yards.

Conflict over “Durable Solutions” in the Buduburam Refugee Camp Kwamena Bartels, the interior minister of Ghana, had sent security forces from the capital to end protests over what the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the leading refugee aid agency, called durable solutions—a lasting end to refuge. Humanitarian aid conjures images of medical tents or bags of rice, but durable solutions programs are actually the most powerful form of humanitarian aid in the agency’s arsenal: migration programs that help people return to the country from which they originally fled (repatriation), travel to a third country to find asylum (resettlement), or permanently join the country currently hosting them (local integration). No one ever intended to leave people in the refugee camp forever, but seventeen years had passed since the UNHCR and the Ghanaian government established Buduburam, and people desperately needed those migration programs. The Liberian civil war had ended in 2003, but few camp residents believed that they could make a home for themselves in the fragile peace of their decimated country. The UNHCR had ended the unpopular repatriation program in June 2007, but faced with pressure from the United States and other donor countries, the agency had closed its highly desired resettlement programs as well. The UNHCR had yet to reach an agreement with the Ghanaian government on local integration. After seventeen years, Ghana no longer wanted to host the foreigners. Concerns were rising that Ghana would invoke the cessation clause, stripping all Liberians of refugee status and forcing them to return to Liberia. No policy for the naturalization of Liberians or even the granting of residence permits had been created, but the UNHCR had nonetheless begun to create local integration programs. Most people in Buduburam opposed local integration. In November 2007, that opposition to local integration crystallized in a social movement led by a newly formed group, the Liberian Refugee Women with Refugee Concerns (hereafter, the Concerned Women). I followed the Concerned Women as they tried through demonstrations, letter writing, hunger strikes, and boycotts to convince the UNHCR to support them in what they called “the midnight hour in this refugee crisis in our lifetime.”

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The Concerned Women of Buduburam

I had not once taken seriously the possibility of violent repression. For the organizers, it had always been a calculated risk. They told me that the UNHCR would try to protect them but that demonstrations risked provoking a crackdown from Ghanaian authorities. They call you rebel, people would say, unable to escape the taint of the civil war that spilled over to three neighboring countries. I did not share their distrust of Ghanaian authorities or confidence in the UNHCR. As it turned out, we were both wrong. The Ghanaian government did suppress the movement, but it acted at the behest of the UNHCR.

The Puzzle: A Place for Ordinary Politics in Humanitarian Crisis? This is a story about conflict over humanitarian aid. It is an attempt to understand how and with what consequences people engage with ordinary political concerns in extraordinary circumstances. Disaster may seem like a fleeting moment— colloquially, we say “the world stood still” or “everything changed in a blink”— but in refugee camps, people experience calamitous tragedy for years and sometimes decades in cumulated daily struggles to find food, water, schooling, jobs, family, and belonging. They may remain politically, economically, and socially out of place, but as the years pass, camp residents construct buildings, roads, and markets. They establish new social understandings of how good people ought to act in inhumane circumstances. We often unintentionally treat refugees as passive figures adrift in a tumultuous world. This book attempts to recapture some of the efficacy and autonomy of people living as refugees, but in the subdued, sociological vision of agency that C. Wright Mills (2000, 3) expresses so powerfully in his book The Sociological Imagination: “Nowadays men often feel that their private lives are a series of traps. They sense that within their everyday worlds, they cannot overcome their troubles, and in this feeling, they are often quite correct.” This book attempts to balance people’s autonomy and responsibility and the wider structural and cultural forces that constrain life in crisis. What is the place of ordinary political acts in humanitarian crisis? How do constituents understand and relate to the authorities who govern them in crisis? Why do some mundane political activities become viewed as dangerous politics rather than civil society in action? What happens after repression? This book asks ordinary political questions of humanitarian crisis to encourage a deeper and more precise interrogation of the dilemmas that confront humanitarian officials, hosts, and refugees. In so doing, it allows us to grasp more tightly and thoroughly the uneasy relationship between humanitarian action and political activism. It

Introduction

5

opens a window onto the relationship between compassion, human rights, and politics more broadly. Humanitarianism mobilizes compassion for people who suffer, cutting across social and geographical distance (Wilson and Brown 2009). Didier Fassin (2012, xii) calls it the “morally driven, politically ambiguous, and deeply paradoxical strength of the weak.” For Michael Barnett (2011, 7), humanitarianism is a “flawed hero defined by the passions, politics, and power of its times.” With the rise of humanitarianism, compassion became institutionalized in the seemingly heartless world of international security. But of the more than 4,400 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and 274,000 humanitarian aid workers that compose the contemporary humanitarian system, a small handful of organizations dominate (Taylor et al. 2012, 9); the UNHCR is the most powerful actor among them all (Loescher 2001). How the agency responds to the people who live in crisis sets the standard that other humanitarian organizations follow or struggle to reform. The emergence of this humanitarian system has had dramatic consequences not just for these organizations and their staff but for the people living in crisis. It is sometimes hard for well-intentioned aid workers to recognize that they are accumulating “power over the vulnerable” (Barnett 2011, 170). But the large humanitarian actors have done just that, and their successes raise moral and political questions for the relationships engendered. To deserve compassion, must one always respond with gratitude? Must gratitude come without question? Do people who challenge a system still deserve support from that system? These are not questions that humanitarian actors or refugees ask out loud, but one can witness them grappling with their implications in action. That the UNHCR would act harshly against activists still shocks many people, but for those who live and work in refugee camps, this is a well-documented quandary. Barbara Harrell-Bond’s Imposing Aid (1986), David Rieff ’s A Bed for the Night (2002), Jennifer Hyndman’s Managing Displacement (2000), Michel Agier’s Managing the Undesirables (2011), and other works have shown that humanitarian interventions chronically fall short of their human rights principles. What this book contributes to that discussion is an account of how people living as refugees experience this quandary. In the first part of the book, I chronicle everyday life in the refugee camp. Most strikingly, I illustrate the extent to which humanitarian administration actually relies on the civic engagement of refugees. It is easy to imagine civic engagement as a luxury, a bastion of well-to-do communities, but in the absence of consistent public goods, civic engagement becomes more, not less, necessary. In the second part of the book, I explore the dynamics of contentious politics to understand what camp residents did when they disagreed with the administration of public goods and how camp administration responded to these disagreements.

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The Concerned Women of Buduburam

With the Concerned Women at the center of the story, we witness how camp politics transforms civic debate into social protest and protest into a social problem. For social movement scholars, the case raises questions about women’s organizing, transnational authority, and the dynamics of repression. Women are at the forefront of organizing around the world, and scholars have shown that the autonomy of women’s movements is a key determinant in movement outcomes (Tripp, Casimiro, and Kwesiga 2009, xiv). What the experiences of the Concerned Women contribute so vividly to this line of inquiry is insight into the micropolitical challenges of sustaining autonomy not just against authorities but from “the men” who may seem natural allies. The experiences of the Concerned Women also encourage us to take a closer look at the authorities at the center of movement struggles. Social movements organize not only against the state but against a wide range of powerful actors, including transnational actors. This means that a surprisingly wide range of actors have the potential to become repressive authorities. Because our interest lies primarily in activists, social movement scholars often fail to give repressive actors due consideration. We interrogate the interests, emotions, structural positions, cognitive maps, and social ties of activists while treating repression as an intervention into the lives of activists. This book examines repression as an act committed by actors with their own good intentions and structural constraints. In tracing the ill-fated trajectory from compassionate politics to repression, the story starts from and expands upon three propositions. The humanitarian administration of refugee camps creates inescapable dilemmas for all parties. Transnational actors can become quasi-government authority figures. And caregiving can serve as an act of government. In the remainder of this introduction, I situate the case more thoroughly in the social and political space of Liberia and Ghana, flesh out the three underlying propositions, and then present my argument.

War, Development, and the Limits of a “Model” Refugee Camp Frequently visited by the international press, dignitaries, and volunteers, the Buduburam Refugee Camp had assumed the mantle of a “model” refugee camp by the time that I started fieldwork in 2006 (Apeadu 1991; Dzeamesi 2008; Kpatinde 2006; Zongolowicz 2003). What exactly it meant to be a “model” refugee camp was never wholly clear, but I think it is fair to say that Buduburam was a moderate version of a harsh form of social life. Between the horrors of war and wearying drain of a stingily meted sanctuary, most camp residents had slid into the ranks of the dispossessed alongside the slum dwellers, street hawkers, and other members

Introduction

7

of the urban underclass in Ghana. But if few people knew where their next meal was coming from, no one starved in the refugee camp. Not many people felt safe walking in the street late at night, but the camp had few murders. Rarely would a Ghanaian citizen hire a Liberian employee or buy goods in the market from a Liberian refugee, but the locals did not generally harass or beat them, either. Ghana did not integrate refugees into their land, but the hosts participated so actively in the administration of refugee policy that the UNHCR implemented the programs for food, health, education, and women and children through Ghanaian organizations rather than international organizations. This may not sound like glowing praise, but the people living in Buduburam experienced the best-case scenario for camp residents. Elsewhere, refugees have faced warfare, imprisonment, and xenophobic violence in refugee camps (Lischer 2005; Milner 2005; Verdirame and Harrell-Bond 2005). Three historical-institutional forces converged to bring the Buduburam Refugee Camp into its particular state of being: the war and exodus from Liberia; Ghana’s slow, unsteady climb to the ranks of lower-middle-income democracies; and the cycles of expansion and contraction at UNHCR-Ghana. It began in 1989, when Liberia descended into a civil war that would rage for more than a decade and displace more than half of the country’s population (Johnson 2007; Moran 2008). The civil war was an ignominious fall for a country that had stood as a political and intellectual beacon in West Africa for decades. And yet Liberia had embodied the contradictions of the eras from its inception. Founded in 1822 by black settlers from the United States, for more than a hundred years, descendants of the original settlers had subjugated the local people’s quelling, although not wholly destroying indigenous forms of political participation (Moran 2008). Their dominance ended in 1980, when noncommissioned officers led by Samuel Doe overthrew the regime. The coup d’état replaced one oppressor with another, as Doe proceeded to give every advantage to his allies. In 1985, a failed coup prompted harsh reprisals from Doe, who transformed that act of political opposition into a purported “ethnic” conflict between his own Krahn people and the Gio and Mano people. In 1989, Charles Taylor, as leader of a newly formed rebel group called the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), mobilized Gio and Mano opposition in a large-scale attack against Doe. The NPFL soon splintered, and as the war intensified, nearly a dozen different rebel groups emerged. Ghana and Anglophone West Africa intervened in 1990 in the first peacekeeping mission of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS; Howe 1997). The peace-keepers proved unable to stop the capture and execution of President Doe. Doe’s regime waned, but he had succeeded in redefining the conflict in ethnic terms, and the Krahn and Mandingo people found themselves increasingly threatened. When Ghana evacuated their nationals via

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The Concerned Women of Buduburam

the Monrovian port patrolled by ECOWAS peace-keepers, thousands of Liberians gained passage to Ghana through kindness, bribery, or trickery. These refugees, predominately lower-middle-class urban dwellers and high school and university students of Krahn and Mandingo heritage, credited Ghanaian ECOWAS soldiers for their rescue. Although many groups would eventually come to coexist in the Buduburam Refugee Camp, the camp population retained this distinctively urban lower-middleclass composition over the ensuing years. Poorer families could not win passage on the ships, and wealthier families departed by plane to the United States or other prosperous sanctuaries. Liberians from the countryside fled to closer sanctuaries in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Côte d’Ivoire. Ethnic conflict did not come to define camp politics, but the Krahn remained the largest ethnic group in the camp. When they arrived in Ghana in 1990, the refugees found a host on the cusp of major political and economic transformations. The authoritarian Provisional National Defence Council had ruled Ghana for almost a decade, but the regime had begun to transition to electoral democracy with district-level elections in 1988. Inflation and unemployment were high (39 percent and 26 percent, respectively), but the economy was rising. Ghana had the political will to offer sanctuary, but the government lacked the resources to sustain refugee aid (Addo 2008, 64), so it turned to the UNHCR for resources and guidance. The UNHCR had no experience in Ghana prior to 1990 but agreed to organize aid for the Liberian and the subsequent Togolese and Ivorian refugee crises. Over the two decades that Liberian refugees lived in Ghana, the local UNHCR offices would go through several cycles of expansion and contraction. But it started in 1990 by establishing Buduburam on twenty acres of land in the Gomoa District (Apeadu 1991). Over the next several years, as the Liberian civil war continued to rage, witnesses in Buduburam observed the slow rise of Ghana into the ranks of lowermiddle-income democracies. By 1993, the authoritarian Provisional National Defence Council regime ceded power, returning Ghana to constitutional rule (Gyimah-Boadi 1994; Oquaye 1995). Paralleling these political developments, the economy grew consistently in the 1990s. If the benefits of economic development proved highly uneven (Konadu-Agyemang 2000), the greatest growth occurred in the urban centers on the coast—the part of the country near Buduburam. In time, a newly renovated highway ran through the refugee camp to link the capital city of Accra with the critical port city of Cape Coast. This development project increased the value of the land occupied by refugees immensely. What had started as a rural backwater became part of the urban sprawl of Accra. In the middle of these transformations in Ghana, the war in Liberia began to show signs of ending—an illusion, but one with lasting consequences for camp

Introduction

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residents. In 1996, the warring parties signed the Abuja II peace agreement, the fourteenth peace accord since 1989. The 1996 peace accord was the first agreement to have a significant influence on the course of the war. Per the terms of the peace agreement, in 1997, Liberia held national elections. Few refugees voted in the 1997 elections, because they had to return to Liberia to cast their votes (Kumar et al. 1997). Taylor was elected president after a campaign that included the slogan, “He killed my ma, he killed my pa, I will vote for him” (Polgreen 2006). It was widely understood that Taylor would not honor the election of a rival; what’s more, he controlled a substantial portion of the mass media resources, including the only countrywide radio station. An international election committee, which was unable to monitor voting in rural Liberia, deemed the elections “free and fair.” In the Buduburam Refugee Camp, the UNHCR followed the international consensus to declare that it was time for the refugees to go home. In its largest period of contraction in Ghana, the UNHCR departed, technically closing the refugee camp in 2000. But few camp residents agreed to return to Liberia. Some feared the possibility of renewed violence, while others hoped for resettlement, but in the meantime, most camp residents continued their makeshift lives in Buduburam. Community-based organizations proliferated, some successful in forging independent ties with international development organizations; local telecommunication businesses helped refugees preserve ties and remittances with family and friends resettled in the United States; and a market created in 1993 remained active (Dick 2002). Later, during the Concerned Women protests, some camp residents may have looked back on this time as evidence of their own efficacy and capacity to renew defunct humanitarian programs. The peace proved short-lived. In 2000, rebel forces not reconciled to Taylor’s regime launched a major offensive. The Liberian United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), which was dominated by the Mandingos, invaded from Guinea, and the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), which was dominated by the Krahn, invaded from Côte d’Ivoire. The cross-border military tactics complicated the lives of refugees. The refugee camps surrounding Liberia became fertile grounds for recruitment, consolidation, and retribution (Henry 2000; Lischer 2005; Milner 2005). Buduburam never became militarized like the refugee camps in the bordering countries, but even in Buduburam, some people feared military incursion (Amnesty International 2002). For others, the contrast between the sanctuary of Ghana and the unstable refuge of Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Côte d’Ivoire made them more strongly appreciate Ghana’s relative security. Tens of thousands of newcomers inundated Buduburam. The UNHCR entered its largest period of expansion in Ghana, returned with extensive programming, and established a regional office for West Africa in Accra.

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The Concerned Women of Buduburam

By 2003, Taylor’s regime had begun to crumble under the combined military offensive. In August 2003, with Liberian women protesting for peace through the Women in Peacebuilding Network, the parties signed a new peace agreement in Accra, Ghana, ending the war (Gbowee 2011). That peace movement would serve as an organizational template for women’s activism in Buduburam for years to follow. Under the peace accords, Taylor resigned from power and departed for Nigeria in exile. He was later convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court and sentenced to fifty years in prison. After an interim government, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, an Americaneducated former ally of Taylor, was elected president in 2005. She assumed power over a country whose infrastructure had been destroyed in the long civil war. A UN peace-keeping force, UNMIL, replaced ECOWAS as the international peacekeepers. The UNHCR-Ghana began once again to contract, closing programs and beginning steps to close the refugee camp. In Buduburam, residents waited to see what the new era would bring. As an empirical case, Buduburam in 2007–8 captures the limits of the refugee camp model. A demilitarized refugee camp with extensive host involvement, well-educated residents accustomed to urban life, and a war that ended, Buduburam represented the best-case scenario for this form of humanitarian action. The dilemmas of humanitarian rule, the unequal relationship between host states and transnational authorities, and the dark side of administrative caregiving that the camp witnessed did not stem from a flaw in humanitarian action in Ghana. If anything, humanitarian action worked better here than in other areas, and the lessons learned in Ghana will apply with even harsher consequences elsewhere.

The Dilemmas of Humanitarian Rule Political dilemmas color people’s outlook on compassionate possibilities in humanitarian settings. Dilemmas exist for all parties. Acknowledging these two truths does not excuse unethical or unreasonable behavior, but it clarifies the constraints that underlie the actions of humanitarians and refugees. Would-be activists who are living as refugees confront the same dilemma as all activists: to act within channels, they risk being ignored; to act outside channels, they risk repression. But unlike many activists, people in refugee camps live unmoored by the protections of citizenship. They cannot vote the UNHCR or host government out of office or take their patronage elsewhere. Other than appealing to the humanity of the authorities, they have few means of putting pressure on camp authorities, and the reality is that if camp authorities had the resources and political will to easily do things like offer resettlement to all comers, they would already be doing so. On the other hand, demonstrations, riots,

Introduction

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boycotts, hunger strikes, and even independent fund-raising campaigns conducted on a large scale disrupt refugee camp administration in ways likely to alienate humanitarian and host administrators. All this means that camp politics creates a severe version of the activist’s dilemma. The UNHCR confronts a different set of dilemmas, all of which follow from the first and most fundamental dilemma of contemporary refugee aid: whether to support the encampment of refugees or refuse to operate in states that deny refugees other forms of protection. Refugee camps have become so commonplace that it’s easy to forget that camps are a deviation from the intended norm, the original sin of humanitarian action that has so thoroughly altered the UNHCR’s political and moral character. The 1951 Refugee Convention, the foundational treatise on international refugee protection, guarantees resources and protection for refugees via existing state institutions through access to labor markets, education, social services, and police and courts. When states and humanitarian actors establish refugee camps, they create parallel institutions outside normal host institutions. Explicitly or tacitly, refugee camps exclude refugees from existing state institutions in violation of the Convention. But the host states that are most likely to insist on confining refugee aid to camps are also the most likely to treat refugees poorly in the absence of pressure and resources from the UNHCR. So to refuse to intervene in states that require camps is to refuse to support the most vulnerable refugees. That is the first and most fundamental dilemma of contemporary refugee aid. The UNHCR has made two serious efforts to circumvent this dilemma and eliminate the use of refugee camps. Its first attempt succeeded. The reform targeted the refugee camps housing residual World War II refugees and Hungarian refugees in Europe. By playing off U.S. fears of communism and with some strategic fund-raising to convince governments to invest in a UN Refugee Fund, the agency successfully shut down European refugee camps in the 1960s (Loescher 2001, 66–75). But this proved a temporary victory. As time passed and the agency shifted its focus away from Europe to the global South, the UNHCR returned to encampment as the primary means of administering aid, in part because of limitations in state capacity. But still, the UNHCR made a second serious attempt to end the use of refugee camps in the 1980s. At that time, the agency saw voluntary repatriation as the main alternative to camps, so it turned its attention to ending wars in refugee home countries through peace negotiations and international appeals. This strategy proved unsuccessful (248–64). In the aftermath, the UNHCR chose to continue to operate refugee camps rather than abandon refugees in hostile states. Camp inhabitants soon constituted the overwhelming majority of UNHCR cases in the global South. Not surprisingly, humanitarian officials regularly confront political and moral dilemmas in the everyday administration of refugee camps. Most commonly, they must decide given the scarcity of resources whether to offer sufficient aid to a

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The Concerned Women of Buduburam

few or insufficient aid to all in need. Does the food program, for example, target the full caloric needs of the “most vulnerable persons” or give enough food for a day or so to the entire camp population? Relations with hosts also pose dilemmas. Given the high likelihood of graft by host officials in poor states, the UNHCR must decide whether to subcontract with host organizations to facilitate their “buy-in” and logistical help with humanitarian programs, thereby losing resources to corruption, or refuse to operate through host organizations and, in so doing, marginalize hosts within their own territories. The UNHCR must also decide how far to acquiesce to the national security concerns of the hosts, which invariably come at the expense of refugees. Too far obviates its protective mandate; not far enough alienates hosts and exacerbates host concerns about refugees. Hosts, for example, may decide that refugees who travel freely in the country are collecting intelligence or recruiting combatants and for that reason imprison refugees in camps rather than permit open entrance and exit from camp sites. For the UNHCR to prevent free movement in the country is a violation of international refugee law. For the agency to ignore entrance and exit permits may make the hosts more likely to launch security raids against refugee communities. The UNHCR’s relationship with refugees also creates dilemmas. The most difficult dilemmas relate to power sharing. Agency control over programs decreases the risk of exploitation between refugees but also decreases their responsiveness to actual refugee needs. Once protests or other disruptive forms of civic debate emerge, UNHCR officials confront another set of dilemmas. If the agency negotiates with refugee activists or acquiesces to their demands, it gives the disruptive elements of the refugee community power and legitimacy. If it refuses to engage with refugee activists, it marginalizes refugee voices and risks escalating the disturbance. The administrative practicalities of suppressing a social protest also present dilemmas. Sometimes it is enough to ignore or ridicule refugee activists—to repress protests through “soft” means. But often to repress a social movement requires forcibly preventing people from occupying protest grounds, and the use of force requires security personnel. The UNHCR does not have the personnel to quell large-scale collective action directly; it must rely on an external party like the host state to access security forces. The dilemma is that if the UNHCR requests security intervention from the host state, it loses control over the situation to the security forces; if it does not, it loses control over the situation to the refugee activists.

Host States and Transnational Government Humanitarian officials often think of themselves as underdogs fighting to defend vulnerable people from the powers that be, and there is a lot of truth to that selfconcept. Compared with U.S. military expenditures alone of more than $700 billion,

Introduction

13

the UNHCR’s annual budget of $3 billion seems paltry. Need among the displaced far outstrips the UNHCR’s budget, and the budget itself relies largely on voluntary contributions earmarked to specific projects, which makes it even harder for the UNHCR to respond to unpopular humanitarian crises (Loescher, Betts, and Milner 2008, 105). What’s more, other agencies and organizations, like the International Organization for Migration (IOM), compete with the UNHCR for these limited funds (Friesendorf 2007; Loescher 2001). States control where the agency operates and which refugees become permanent members of their polities, and the UNHCR has few enforcement mechanisms to pressure uncooperative states to protect refugees. All of this is true, and yet the picture that these cumulated facts paint of UNHCR is incomplete. The UNHCR is not building refugee camps in the United States or other postindustrial countries; the UNHCR creates and administers refugee camps in host states where the agency’s budget, expertise, and established ties to wealthy states become attractive resources. There, the UNHCR is a nonstate actor that acts in statelike ways, one of a distinctive breed of transnational actors whose activities in host states challenge our assumptions about government. Popular democratic ideals imagine a government “of the people, by the people, for the people,” but the practical enactment of government in most parts of the world is “of the state, by the state, and for the state.” The nation-state has become the hegemonic form of rule—so much so that polities with multiple, fragmented sovereignties have slipped from the sights of the scholars who sought to create general theories of government (Gorski 2003; Levi 1989; Poggi 1978; Skocpol 1979). By and large, state theorists have been permitted to ignore the remnants of colonial state structures, competing local authorities, and transnational actors. This is unfortunate, because the presence of multiple autonomous authorities has clear consequences for the political relationships between rulers and subjects; it raises challenges for theories of political legitimacy, citizenship, and resistance, among other central concerns in the social sciences. When powerful transnational actors operate as quasi-governmental authorities in a host state, they fundamentally reshape the social and political world they inhabit—and this is not a rare phenomenon. Research in postcolonial settings has already shown that the mutual obligations between subjects and rulers have always been more complex than Western models of citizenship imply, because these obligations emerged in a context of multiple, fragmented sovereignties and complex interpersonal ties (Hansen and Stepputat 2006; Reno 1998; Sawyer 1992). No state-making project is ever complete (Engel 1984; Greenhouse 1982; Merry 1992). But where people struggle more graphically with remnants of colonial state structures, competing local authorities, and transnational actors, this point may be easier to see. In humanitarian settings, the presence of multiple autonomous authorities has serious consequences for the

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The Concerned Women of Buduburam

political relationships between the governed and those who govern (Adam 2009; Barnett 2001; Gazit 2009). The 1990s and early 2000s witnessed an explosion of innovative scholarship and practice on transnational and global processes, a rising trend that made it harder to ignore these more complex sovereignties. Transnational scholars crafted or refined conceptual tools that made it easier to understand the actors and processes that operate between national boundaries. Ideas like “international regime,” “transnational governance,” and “transnational advocacy networks” helped explain how states policed one another’s actions across borders and how nonstate actors exerted influence in global politics (Keck and Sikkink 1998; Keohane 1984; Risse-Kappen 1995). The very concept of “transnational” helped draw attention to the explanatory power of border-crossing in a range of social institutions.2 At the same time, transnational scholars, like all scholars who promote new explanations for social phenomena, needed to reconcile their arguments with preexisting knowledge. Most scholars reached to the metaphor of “civil society” to understand the nature of transnational actors and their place in the social world. This metaphor worked well for many cases (Florini, Sentā, and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 2000; Price 1998; Smith 1998). Some transnational actors are associations of voluntary members. Many perform civic duties, such as providing for the poor, mobilizing opposition, or bringing like-minded people together. But the civilsociety metaphor does not encompass all cases. It does not explain the workings of the UNHCR or the other transnational actors that perform quasi-governmental functions during humanitarian crises, postconflict reconstruction, and international development. For that, one needs to think about transnational government. The UNHCR’s activities in refugee camps exemplify transnational government. In Ghana, the UNHCR divided the government of the refugee camp with the state in a productively incomplete manner rather than become subordinated to the host government. The Ghanaian authorities (mostly) oversaw security, and the UNHCR (mostly) controlled social services, infrastructure, and migration programs. As such, the camp administration offered refugees two distinct authority figures. As one might imagine, the triadic nature of their political relationships (transnationals–hosts–refugees) had important consequences for camp politics, fostering tacit accountability struggles in camp administration. Rather than assessing humanitarian actions on their own merits, both refugees and humanitarian officials weighed humanitarian administration against the activities of the host state. 2. The field of transnational and global processes is an exceptionally creative and engaging one. For a transnational spin on social movements and advocacy, see Keck and Sikkink 1998; Naples and Desai 2002; Smith and Johnston 2002; and Tsing 2005; on citizenship and identity, see Balibar 2004 and Bosniak 2008; on law, see Dezalay and Garth 1998 and Weiler 1999; for work on transnational authority, see Ferguson and Gupta 2002, which introduces the concept of “transnational governmentality.”

Introduction

15

It was no longer a question of whether the agency met the goals advocated in the headquarters in Geneva or enshrined in the 1951 Convention but whether the UNHCR served the interests of refugees better than the host government served refugees. That the UNHCR controlled the most tangible benefits of government (i.e., the food or seats on the airplane to the United States) while the hosts controlled the visibly coercive side of government (i.e., the police, prisons, and military) was only the beginning of the agency’s advantages in these accountability struggles.

Framing and Caregiving as an Act of Government We live in a nontransparent world. Rumor, uncertainty, and ambiguity are not simply errors in understanding but inescapable and powerful facts of life. None of us can fully witness our situations. Instead, we construct frames, cognitive maps that help us reduce the “seemingly infinite number of concrete occurrences” into an intelligible story for ourselves and our listeners (Goffman 1986, 21). Frames bring some aspects of our experiences to the fore and encourage us to forget or overlook other aspects, and for that reason they can have enormous consequences. Being the imperfect creatures that we are, any one of us can profess multiple contradictory frames in a single conversation. But one of the most interesting facts of the social world is that the existing political landscape constrains the likelihood that we will adopt any given frame and its capacity to produce a desired outcome (Diani 1996; Ferree 2003; Koopmans and Olzak 2004). Thus, one of the key questions is: what frames did the political landscape of the refugee camp encourage? Framing mattered, because the UNHCR and Ghanaian authorities intersected in so many places that the basic division of administrative tasks, such as Ghanaian security versus UNHCR social services, could not possibly explain all of the UNHCR’s advantages in the accountability struggles. Hosts, for example, played an important role in the food distribution program. Likewise, the UNHCR had substantial influence over policing in the camp. These intersections of authority offered structural pathways to more equal footing in accountability struggles. But other dimensions of humanitarian administration strengthened the agency’s legitimacy in these struggles. Some were tangible resources, but most were subjective and deeply tied to framing. Chief among the UNHCR’s props was the commonplace practice of administrative caregiving, those acts whereby an authority figure seemingly governs to protect and nurture people. I say “seemingly,” because, like all forms of contemporary government, administrative caregiving is as much about controlling populations and quelling disruption as promoting an individual’s actual well-being. This point

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The Concerned Women of Buduburam

has been well made by feminist scholars of social-welfare policy (Cruikshank 1999; Fraser 1989). Hyndman (2000), Harrell-Bond (1986), and other critical refugee-studies scholars have argued this to be the case for the UNHCR’s administration of refugee camps as well (see also Agier 2011; R. Lippert 1999; Turner 2010). But protection and nurturing remain important dimensions of this practice, and the coercive elements should not overshadow their significance. The power of administrative caregiving lies in the frames that authorities and constituents construct to make sense of those activities. When the UNHCR gave someone a seat on a plane back to Liberia, it became framed as an act of caregiving. But when the interior minister started deporting people, he gave them plane seats, too, and that was not. How the UNHCR and the Liberian refugees reached agreement on the agency’s caregiving—and where those frames diverged—is a major piece of the puzzle of humanitarian rule, which I lay out in subsequent chapters. Here, I wish to introduce the main concept and underlying logic upon which this argument will build. To understand what administrative caregiving and the division of authority did for camp politics, I draw on Michel Foucault’s theory of government as “governmentality.” Writing in the 1970s, Foucault described a profound historical shift in punishment and social control. While some of his contemporaries had concluded that our world was becoming safer and gentler, Foucault with characteristic cynicism wrote of a historical shift from controlling people through the threat of harm to controlling people through the promise to protect life. Now government and social control could be found not only in ostensibly political institutions, such as the judiciary and the head of state, but also in the procedures, analyses, reflections, calculations, and tactics by which the knowledge economy organized people into “populations” (1991, 103). He highlighted the coercive dimensions of seemingly benign technical practices, such as collecting population statistics. In a particularly evocative metaphor, Foucault described the power of the modern liberal government as “capillaries” flowing through a “body politic” (1979, 28, 198). He called this system “governmentality” to emphasize the importance of mental processes in contrast to most earlier theories, which had focused on the material dimensions of government. These insights help make sense of the UNHCR’s activities in refugee camps, but it’s also worth stopping to consider how the humanitarian case might advance the theory of governmentality. Like most generalists, Foucault worked from the European case, which allowed him to take a lot for granted, including the presence of a presumptively unified body politic. He bracketed questions of sovereignty to focus on the decentralized forms of power that ran through this unified body politic. The humanitarian case shows emphatically that sovereignty cannot be taken for granted. The division of sovereign authority seen in refugee camps

Introduction

17

is a critical part of transnational authority outside camps as well. There exists in sites of transnational intervention—during humanitarian crisis, postconflict reconstruction, international development, and sometimes even in multinational resource extraction—the potential for bifurcated governmentality, a situation in which sovereigns divide what Foucault called the “art of government” not in an ad hoc fashion but systematically, into two wholly separate arts. This branching will likely follow the structural division of sovereign authority, but one of the most interesting insights from Buduburam is that it need not— imagined redivisions of authority can be even more powerful. Transnational actors can subcontract with host government offices or vice versa—both scenarios would constitute structural intersections of authority—but the art of government would not necessarily converge at these structural intersections. They did not converge in Buduburam. The fact that this was largely a subjective division—that the UNHCR did participate in policing and the Ghanaian authorities did participate in social service provision—made the outcome no less real. What happened in Buduburam amid the bifurcated governmentality of humanitarian rule challenged Foucault’s straightforward story of a historical transformation in the techniques of governmental control. In the neighboring town of Kasoa, the Ghanaian government administered the public works, statistical offices, schools, and elected bodies through modern liberal governmentality. But in the refugee camp, it did not. Instead, host authorities who controlled people through the threat of harm stood apart from transnational authorities who controlled people through the promise to protect and nurture life. This is not to say that the UNHCR was a more effective or just ruler than the state or that administrative caregiving quelled refugee dissent; rather, humanitarian rule resonated longer and more deeply in unworkable circumstances.

Studying Government in a Transnational World In my first visit to Buduburam for two months in 2006, I came to think of the refugee camp as an “anti-politics” technology akin to the development apparatus that James Ferguson (1994) explored in Lesotho. I wanted to recapture the political nature of refugee camps by exploring the mundane ways people chose to reengage in politics—or avoid politics—in critical areas of life. When I returned to Buduburam in 2007, I didn’t ask people what they thought about politics or whether they felt safe or fairly treated or what they thought about the UNHCR or the various Ghanaian and Liberian authorities; I waited for instances of grievance, engagement, disengagement, or dispute and looked for the takenfor-granted understandings of authorities that worked their way into everyday

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The Concerned Women of Buduburam

conversations. The subsequent fieldwork for the study would ultimately span eight years and include four visits. I lived in Buduburam for ten months (March– April 2006; October 2007–May 2008), commuted to the camp for three months (June–July 2008; June 2011, June 2014), lived in Accra for two months (September 2007; August 2008; July 2011), and Liberia for one month (July 2014). In the camp, I took part in basic household and social activities, such as preparing meals, washing clothes, and socializing with neighbors and friends; volunteered for several months with a refugee-run newspaper; attended meetings, social gatherings, and church services; and had impromptu conversations on the street and elsewhere. I also conducted forty-nine semistructured interviews, ten focus groups, and archival research in the UNHCR online archives. I worked for several months with three Liberian research assistants whom I trained: a woman with two years of college education, a man who had almost completed a master’s in political science before the war interrupted his studies, and a woman with a bachelor’s degree. The first two assistants, with whom I am still in touch and can acknowledge by name now—Jelbeh Johnson and Anthony Nimley—recorded interviews with an additional twenty-eight people using the same interview protocol. I sought to discover the ways in which Liberians answered questions posed by fellow Liberians differently than the ways in which they responded to me. My third assistant, with whom I have lost contact, conducted informal conversations and observations on the relationships between Liberians and “white people” in Buduburam. In analyzing data with my three Liberian research assistants, I learned that most silences and inconsistencies were related to two domestic issues. First, people were reluctant to speak of acts that I would consider domestic violence: physical “disciplining” of children and women. There were also silences about the ways that people talked about requesting gifts and sometimes aid more broadly. Many people felt the need to tell a good story when they asked for money or other forms of sponsorship, and people would talk more freely in this manner with their fellow Liberians than with outsiders. Why study government in a refugee camp? If we want to challenge our assumptions about the nature of government, we need to go where government is disrupted and watch and listen to those being governed. What talking to camp residents can teach us most forcefully about government is that the model of government found in a unitary nation-state applies only to some. In sites of large-scale transnational interventions where transnational actors carry out “state” activities people confront very different political dynamics. I am not the first to make this observation (Callaghy, Kassimir, and Latham 2001; Ferguson and Gupta 2002; Gazit 2009; Pandolfi 2003). My contribution to this line of inquiry is to shift the focus from how the transnational actors act in these settings to how the people living in these settings help constitute transnational government.

Introduction

19

What do we learn about transnational government from the Buduburam Refugee Camp? The constituents of transnational government are likely to be more highly engaged in government, not less so. Residents feel more encouraged to engage in civic and political acts than in other sites, because these transnational actors regularly promote community participation and human rights. Women often find particularly strong encouragement because of the dual emphasis on women’s rights and the protection of women and children in many transnational mandates. But at the same time, transnational authorities are likely to see themselves—and be trained—as administrators, not rulers, and consequently discourage routine grievance practices even when they are committed in principle to human rights. So although residents are likely to frame transnational actors as caring for them and regard them more highly than state authorities, in the absence of routine grievance procedures, ordinary disagreements about public goods are still likely to metastasize and transform what could be considered civic debate into a social problem.

A Theory of Humanitarian Crisis as Everyday Life So how and with what consequences do people engage with ordinary political concerns in extraordinary circumstances? In the refugee camp, I found that people regularly engaged in political activities, from formal representative politics to social protests to small acts of sharing resources. Even after their original society collapsed in war, camp residents enmeshed themselves in webs of social and political affiliation, some carrying over from Liberia and others newly forged in an amalgam of Western humanitarian, Liberian, and Ghanaian political influences. Humanitarian intervention profoundly influenced this newly created political world, but often in unintentional ways. In the refugee camp, refugees found encouragement to pursue political concerns in the UNHCR’s commitment to human rights and refugee protection. Yet the UNHCR regularly acted in an authoritarian manner when confronted with political engagement. Humanitarian repression had unexpected effects: camp residents tended to blame host authorities for repressive acts even when the UNHCR participated, and, consequently, residents considered the UNHCR to be the legitimate authority figure in the camp and developed very strained relations with their hosts. Fund-raising appeals, popular culture, and even scholarship surrounding humanitarian crises are regularly built upon a vision of crisis as unrelenting violence. This anarchic theory of humanitarian crisis is not innocuous. When the Ghanaian interior minister reframed the Concerned Women protests from a “seemingly innocent demonstration embarked upon by the women and children

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The Concerned Women of Buduburam

at the refugees’ camp” to part of a wider national security threat (Koranteng 2008), he drew upon those assumptions of humanitarian crisis as chaotic and without moral order. The stereotypes about humanitarian crises make stories of their menace more plausible, with disastrous consequences. In reality, what Buduburam teaches us is that even in crisis, residents develop mundane civic routines to enact a shared moral and political order.

How the Story Unfolds In this book, I document the ordinary and extraordinary politics of the Buduburam Refugee Camp. I explore themes of civic engagement, transnational government, administrative caregiving, political legitimacy, contentious politics, and repression. Ultimately, I identify a form of rule that I call compassionate authoritarianism. This authority is compassionate in that refugees and authorities frame authorities as striving to relieve the suffering of refugees. It is authoritarian in that refugees have little or no access to grievance procedures and authorities face little or no accountability for political failures. In analyzing the consequences of compassionate authoritarianism, this book maps a trajectory from compassionate politics to repression. The story begins in chapter 1 with a walk through the Buduburam Refugee Camp on the eve of the protests, in October 2007. The chapter’s intent is to establish the setting where the events played out. It offers some relevant details about the inner workings of the camp, introducing some of the major concerns and key players. The overarching goal is to convey a basic but critical fact: the existence of everyday life in the camp. Chapter 2 sketches the civic and political landscape of Buduburam, from the formal structure of camp administration to people’s mundane engagement in political life. People often assume that refugees have more pressing concerns than politics. Host governments often assume that the violence of war taints refugee political activism. But in the absence of effective food security, water and sanitation, free access to schooling, and other collective goods, residents often worked together to meet basic needs. Chapter 3 introduces a key mechanism in the transition from compassionate politics to authoritarian practices: the divided camp administration. As Buduburam developed, the UNHCR drew from its own organizational scripts to create the new administrative order rather than using the administrative model of other municipal governments in Ghana. At the same time, progressive reforms at the UNHCR headquarters, which sought to reengage host countries in refugee aid, created institutional pressures to incorporate hosts into refugee administration

Introduction

21

in visible ways. The practical compromise reached in the local offices left the UNCHR’s administrative scripts and financing in place but brought in Ghanaian nationals to actually enact many of these transnational administrative scripts. Within the subsequent context of partially integrated government, three mechanisms emerged that encouraged people to frame the UNHCR but not Ghanaian authorities as caring for refugees. First, by relying on host subcontracting, camp administration fell prey to middleman effects that offloaded blame for chronic shortages and political failures to the Ghanaian middlemen—the host NGO subcontractors. Second, the agency itself framed its administrative activities as caring for refugees, which both downplayed the political dimensions of its policies and encouraged refugees to think that the UNHCR would respond more favorably to appeals couched as caregiving. Third, people living as refugees regularly treated national identity as though it trumped other potential loyalties—even to employers—a practice that divested Ghanaian nationals who worked for the UNHCR from their humanitarian organizational ties. Together, these mechanisms encouraged political talk that framed the camp as divided between host threat and humanitarian compassion. Chapter 4 covers the events of the protest. This account situates the Concerned Women movement as one of several tributaries of civic engagement and the sit-down protest as a confluence of multiple streams of discontentment and optimism about the administration of humanitarian aid. The most important point to take from this analysis is the normality of the Concerned Women protests. Recognizing this normality allows us, in turn, to evaluate the suppression of the protests as ordinary political decision making rather than an unavoidable defense against the forces of chaos, as a choice that had to be reconciled with other political and moral beliefs. Chapter 5 asks why humanitarian officials decided to endorse the suppression of the protests in this context. When scholars study social movements, they tend to treat repression as an intervention into the lives of protesters. But repression is a meaningful act in its own right, a complex subjective as well as material process. In real life, few “repressive actors” go home feeling good about their day’s work, particularly when they are committed to human rights and compassionate action. But, ultimately, people and institutions can reconcile such normative commitments with repression, and this chapter explores how that happened in Buduburam. Chapter 6 shifts to the perspectives to the aftermath of the repression to ask how refugees responded to humanitarian rule in the face of repression. Elaborating on the concepts of accountability struggles, administrative caregiving, and bifurcated governmentality just introduced, the chapter lays out the structural and subjective bases for political legitimacy in the refugee camp and shows how

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The Concerned Women of Buduburam

these legitimation processes served humanitarians—but not hosts—during the repression. The conclusion returns to the broader themes of human rights, compassionate politics, and humanitarianism to ask what it means for a human rights actor to be both compassionate and authoritarian. Humanitarian officials could have treated refugees as people who, despite their unfortunate circumstances, were able to contribute to their own self-organization. Instead, they treated politically active people as rebels. This chapter seeks to make clear that this is an ethical choice for humanitarian action—one with profound consequences for refugee activism.

PART I 56

EVERYDAY POLITICS IN CRISIS

Chapter 1

Achieving Everyday Life in Humanitarian Crisis

The heavily trafficked highway from the capital city of Accra to Cape Coast bisected the Buduburam Refugee Camp twenty-seven miles west of Accra in Gomoa, a rural district in the Central region. A few feet from the highway, the only paved road in Buduburam petered out in a dirt expanse populated by taxis, small transports called “tro-tros,” and peddlers. Deep concrete gutters ran beside the highway, and between the gutters and the dirt expanse, green scrub plants grew in a hilly swath strewn with black plastic bags, clear water bags, and other garbage. But the ground beyond that gulley and throughout most of the camp was golden-brown dirt with small stones pressed solidly into the surface, uneven with ridges and potholes with no weeds or leaves or brush. It was akin to a country fairground after the crowds have left, with all the grass and weeds trammeled under too many feet, just dirt and plastic left. More than any other feature of the refugee camp, the barren ground impressed upon me the sheer density of people who had crowded this refuge in the last seventeen years. According to the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), when the camp was founded in 1990, the original chief of the area offered twenty acres of land for the roughly seven thousand refugees to use (Apeadu 1991). More commonly, camp residents told me that the national government created Buduburam out of land confiscated from a charismatic charlatan who had run a faith-healing camp for the mentally ill. However it began, by the early 2000s, the camp environs had grown to encompass 140 acres and more than forty thousand registered refugees, with many more unregistered refugees and Ghanaian citizens. As the Liberian civil war receded in the mid-2000s, the camp population slowly began to dwindle. On the eve of the

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The Concerned Women of Buduburam

Concerned Women protests in 2007, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that around thirty-five thousand Liberian refugees lived in Ghana, with the vast majority residing in Buduburam. That estimate did not include the unregistered refugees, refugees from other countries, and Ghanaian nationals in the camp. My sense was that the full camp population—beyond just the registered Liberian refugees—was closer to forty-five thousand, based on the ratio of registered to unregistered refugees and other nationals I met living in Buduburam. But accurate population estimates in refugee camps are notoriously difficult to produce. The people living as refugees in Buduburam never really escaped the instability and poverty that accompany humanitarian crisis. The camp never became a normal part of the economic, political, or social world of Ghana—it was always “Liberia camp” to the Ghanaian public. But despite the myriad destabilizing forces, a richly varied everyday life emerged in Buduburam. This chapter provides a tour through the refugee camp. It attempts to convey in broad strokes the existence of everyday life, the camp’s major physical features, and the residents’ regular concerns.1

A Walk through Buduburam Shortly before the Protests Began On a Sunday in October 2007, a strong wind cooled the usually pressing sun, blowing fine-grained dust that gathered under fingernails. Still, it was a languid day, and people walked slowly across the grounds. The wind brought a hint of brine to dispel the ordinary stomach-turning smells of raw sewage and burning plastic (a smell like marijuana but acrid and dizzying). But even on Sunday, sounds assaulted: traffic sounds from passing cars, tro-tros, trucks, and buses with rumbling engines and poorly maintained mufflers, honking not in anger but to announce their presence to pedestrians, passing vehicles, and potential customers; stereo music with pounding bass and loudly competing melodies from three sources, mostly American rap, hip-hop, and 1980s’ pop, with some competition from African hip-hop and Ghanaian gospel. ‘Kasou! Kasou! Kasou!’ a man standing beside a taxi yelled, calling out the destination of the shared taxi, a neighboring town. A child shrieked; echoing shrieks suggested children at play out of sight. A baby screamed. Adults conversed in fast-paced, rhythmic intonations

1. I crafted most of the walk I share below from a field note taken on October 14, 2007, but I combine that day’s walk with a few stories from some other walks. I date these other encounters in the footnotes.

Achieving Everyday Life in Humanitarian Crisis

27

(high-low-high-low), the accents of Liberian and Ghanaian English. A rooster crowed inexplicably—it was nearly 3:00 p.m. Buduburam was a cacophony of noises, and the resemblance between sounds put me on edge. A chip moved forcefully on the board of a popular game made the same slapping noise—sharp, staccato, high pitch—as a hand slapping a cheek. When a charcoal stove sparked, it crackled at the same pitch as a switch breaking against a child’s back. Seven cars were parked in rows to the left of the expanse—the yellow and red paint signaled taxis. Young men, likely Ghanaian, in nondescript, slightly grungy pants and shirts milled about singly by the cars or in small groups. A stand advertised “fast food,” and a middle-aged man with a Ghanaian accent offered fried rice for 10,000, 12,000, or 16,000 cedis (about US$1, $1.20, or $1.60), which in this case meant vegetable fried rice, a little raw cabbage with mayonnaise as dressing, a small bone with a scrap of fried chicken, and a hard-boiled egg with a smear of pepper sauce. Just past the stand, a preadolescent girl sat beside a white Styrofoam cooler selling chilled water bags. Foreign African nationals found it hard to penetrate the labor market in Ghana. Even in the camp, Ghanaian citizens owned many of the businesses. The labor market for the majority of Liberians in Ghana was a mix of work that no one in Ghana would want to do, nongovernmental organization (NGO) “volunteer” opportunities, and small trade. To the right lay the field (pronounced “fee” in Liberian English). The field was the largest gathering ground in the camp—the site of the Concerned Women sit-down protest in February–March 2008. Before the protests, the field hosted an expansive interdenominational Prayer Festival, a week of nightly public prayer; at other times, men and boys played football with netted goals but no field lines; the UNHCR celebrated World AIDS Day there, hosting children in brightly colored T-shirts with messages of HIV/AIDS awareness; and on February 23, 2003, the Ghanaian military rounded up all the men and boys over fifteen years old, roughly sixteen thousand people, and made them stand in that field all day as the soldiers searched the camp for weapons. It became one of stories told and retold, and it went something like this. After many hours of standing, the men saw a helicopter land in the field, and a general exited the aircraft. He gave the refugees a parable. Once upon a time, there was a hunter who decided to go and hunt. While hunting, he saw a bird flying above him, chirping. The hunter shot the bird, and it fell to the ground dead beside a turtle. The hunter took the bird and the turtle home, where he and his family had a great feast. I was stumped as to its meaning when I first heard it, not accustomed to speaking in parable. But the general’s listeners had no such difficulties. The moral of the story: if one refugee causes problems, all will be punished. On this Sunday in October 2007, the field was occupied by footballers and a few dozen people strolling in Sunday finery. A woman in an ornate fitted skirt

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and matching short-sleeved shirt (West African garb) turned to gesture at a small girl wearing a white dress (Western garb) a few steps behind her. A gaunt, longlimbed man with wild hair and a grimy, torn shirt crawled in the embankment next to the field among the garbage. He was a striking figure (a Ghanaian man the refugees consider crazy); he was out of place here. People in the camp valued a good front, a source of misunderstanding to some outsiders. It was hard to imagine someone in a nice outfit and elaborately braided hair with a sunny demeanor who ate once daily, a late-afternoon dinner of rice, oil, and whatever else could be found. And it frustrated many outsiders: why “waste” money on fine clothes and ask us to please give me . . . ? Between the taxi stand and the field, on a road that led to the main entrance to the camp, I passed a small, unprepossessing bulletin board, which gave the first indication that this was a refugee camp. It posted exhortations from the UNHCR, repatriation schedules, and two pictures, one of a man and the other a woman. In October, it was unclear to me why the two people had their pictures posted. Now I can tell you that the pictures identified a man and a woman convicted of repatriation fraud. They had gone to Liberia using the UNHCR’s repatriation program and then had come back to Ghana and tried to do the same again—a crime, probably done for small trade. As the refugee crisis provoked by the Liberian civil war continued over the years, eventually becoming, in UNHCR parlance, a protracted refugee situation, the UNHCR began to support more extensive interventions. The interventions that refugees felt most deeply were those tied to migration—what the UNHCR calls durable solutions programs. Most powerfully, once it became clear that people would not be able to return to Liberia in the near future, the possibility of resettlement to a third country of asylum arose. The other durable solutions were to return to the country they had originally fled—in this case, Liberia (repatriation)—or become permanent members, although not necessarily citizens, of the country where they initially found refuge—in this case, Ghana (local integration). According to international law, a durable solution is a personal choice that an individual refugee makes. In practice, durable solutions are migration policies that the UNHCR creates through difficult negotiations with multiple authorities that possess limited resources and complex motives. In most contexts, including Buduburam, the policy making surrounding durable solutions leaves a very narrow range of personal choice for a refugee. Even host governments, like Ghana, may have little control over resettlement or repatriation programs that affect the refugees they shelter. In May 2007, the repatriation choice for Liberian refugees in Buduburam included a flight to Monrovia, a luggage allowance, some food and basic household goods, and US$5 for transportation in Liberia. It did not include housing,

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although the long war had crippled the housing market in Monrovia to the point where even those with money found it hard to get adequate housing. So the real choice that most potential returnees faced given this limited repatriation package would be to stay in a refugee camp in Ghana or to live in a camp in Liberia for the internally displaced. Only at the policy-making stage could people find—that is to say, create—a more meaningful personal choice by, for example, championing housing subsidies for returnees. But camp inhabitants held little sway in these negotiations. Partly for these reasons, the repatriation program had officially closed in June 2007 because of lack of interest. The 1990s’ introduction of programs to resettle Liberian refugees to third countries of asylum marked a watershed event in camp history. The United States soon overtook other postindustrial nations as the primary receiving country because of its historical ties to Liberia and relatively generous asylum policies. Although Ghana hosted a tiny portion of the Liberian refugees in West Africa, Buduburam gained a reputation in the region as the place for people to go if they wanted to be resettled, an impression that U.S. resettlement figures support.2 Most TABLE 1 Office of Admissions, Refugee Processing Center Arrivals by Country Location for Liberians Fiscal Years 1990–2009 (as of August 6, 2009) Country Location

Totals

Benin Egypt Gabon Ghana Guinea Guinea–Bissau India Ivory Coast Kenya Mali Nigeria Russia Senegal Sierra Leone Syria The Gambia Togo Uganda Zimbabwe Totals

1 36 1 13,120 5,196 7 4 11,513 8 32 204 7 166 2,102 1 97 5 14 3 32,517

2. I am indebted to Lea (Buffalini) Kollar at the Refugee Processing Center (RPC) for producing this table for me and to Charlie C. Kao for facilitating my request. The original table included a breakdown of figures per year. Kollar notes that the RPC assumed the Refugee Data Center’s role in 2001, so although they migrated the data, they have the most confidence in data from fiscal year (FY) 2001 to present.

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The Concerned Women of Buduburam

resettlement cases from Buduburam brought Liberians to the United States under the P-3 Family Re-Unification asylum category. In contrast to the P-1 Political Asylum category, this meant that a refugee had to demonstrate that he or she had family living in the United States with whom to be reunited. Here historical ties to the United States, which had been maintained by frequent immigration, helped Liberians. These subtleties were not lost on the politically minded camp residents. One of the protest organizers told me that the UNHCR chose to focus on family reunification cases because it could resettle a large numbers of Liberians without “wasting” P-1 Political Asylum spots on Liberians. The truth was that the UNHCR’s role in the resettlement programs in Buduburam had become that of a dreadfully constrained gatekeeper. This situation was not unique to Ghana—it represented a common outcome for the agency. For some observers, the UNHCR’s partial control over resettlement migration represents an unwanted burden offloaded to the agency by nation-states. For others, it constitutes a major success for the agency. But the critical consequence for good or ill is that the UNHCR now stands between camp residents and receiving countries, and, at the behest of receiving countries, the UNHCR office in Ghana had officially closed the resettlement programs in Buduburam. With the closing of the resettlement and repatriation programs, the agency intensified its local integration programming, but despite the UNHCR’s best efforts, Ghana remained the only country in the region that would not formally support local integration for Liberian refugees (Salducci 2008). Many Ghanaian officials felt their own people had more urgent needs. ‘Go take a taxi to Makola market at night—you will see our own people sleeping on the street,’ one official told me when I asked him about local integration. Such scarcities undeniably existed (Aikins and Ofori-Atta 2007; Overå 2007; Sackey and Osei 2006). And yet stories from the early years of sanctuary reveal a more complicated dynamic. “We are moved almost to tears,” Mogama (2012, 123–29) writes of his first days of refuge in Ghana: Just before the pangs of hunger overcome us, Ghanaian women flow into the dormitory with baskets and bowls of food. “Eat whatever you wish,” our Ghanaian hostesses urge, like cheerleaders at an eating contest.

Later, he describes a news report on television: The TV report shows a Ghanaian farmer donating food to Liberian refugees. He calls upon fellow citizens to contribute one cedi each for Liberian refugee relief. He says the financial contribution would amount to millions of cedis and this in turn would reduce the burden on the government, which is doing all it can to feed and shelter Liberians.

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I do not know what soured the compassion that Mogama and others described, but by 2007, the Ghana government had become a familiar character from the humanitarian playbook—the reluctant host. Following its regular best practices, the UNHCR endeavored to encourage Ghanaian officials with public works projects that benefited hosts as well as refugees—schools, government offices, roads— but to no avail. Not only did Ghanaian officials and much of the public oppose local integration; most camp inhabitants did, too. Some people feared that they would be driven from Buduburam, spread across the less developed northern region of Ghana or forcibly returned to Liberia when the UNHCR no longer stood by to protect them. Others had more mundane concerns about economic discrimination and barriers to schooling. Indeed, Novin Mesbah’s interview with the Ghana Refugee Board (GRB) program officer suggests that these fears were not unfounded: “The refugees would have had to prove that they could support themselves in order to be able to be considered for local integration” (2008, 17). As I walked away from the UNHCR bulletin board, I passed an enormous metal container in a fenced area, a new and highly valued storage unit for water. Except during the rainy season, getting water was one of the most wearying challenges in Buduburam. The camp had created a population explosion that exhausted nearby water sources, and the close proximity to the coastline undermined efforts to dig deep wells. Twice, humanitarian organizations installed water tanks and neighborhood pumps to offer free water (first the UNHCR and later Point Hope, a U.S.-based NGO), but both initiatives failed because of maintenance issues and dwindling budgets. Market-based strategies became the most enduring response to the water problems. Businessmen drove water trucks into camp, snaking long extendable pipes along the narrow alleyways to fill black tanks called “polytanks” spread throughout the area. But even this free-market solution required a collective struggle to achieve—convincing the first truckers to come to Buduburam was an early victory for community organizers. Many polytank owners were refugees who used remittances as investment capital to buy the tanks and made a living by charging customers around 10 cents for a bucket of water. But at the height of the dry season, truckers could not always find an adequate water supply to restock the polytanks. Then people paid more money if they were fortunate to find a polytank that still had water. The polytank water was not treated for drinking, though some people drank it anyway. Filtered water suitable for drinking was sold in 500-milliliter plastic bags for 5 cents. Behind the reservoir stood a newly painted blue trailer with large white lettering that read, “UNHCR Voluntary Repatriation Office.” Next was a walled-in basketball court; one exterior wall sported an advertisement for milk, and the

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The Concerned Women of Buduburam

other displayed a hanging cloth advertising events at a local venue. A single blue garbage bin, “Donated by CBW,” stood in front of the wall. Garbage was strewn in and around the bin. Past the court was the Buduburam Police Station, clearly distinguished from neighboring buildings by a slender pole barrier used to close off traffic into camp. It was manned by a Ghanaian police officer and raised high in the air, although no cars were in the vicinity. The policeman in a black uniform with white accents sat beside other middle-aged men in civilian garb on the far side—not the side with the police station—and had no weapon in sight. I walked underneath the raised barrier for the first time; walk around the barrier or police will get angry was one of the first warnings I received in the camp, but other walkers strolled leisurely through, so I followed their lead. The Ghana Police Service created a permanent police station in Buduburam in 2003, although officers still sent cases to trial in the neighboring town of Kasoa. A common refrain among Liberians is: the police don’t serve our interests. They complain that the officers charged money for Liberians to file cases and that any time an incident involved a Ghanaian, they speak their Twi together and come to an agreement to the detriment of the Liberian claimant. Liberians put a nationalist spin on police corruption, which is in fact endemic to Ghana (Ayee 2000). In reality, the police presence was so small in Buduburam that I’m not sure how much harm or security they could offer in any case; I never saw a police officer beyond the camp’s entranceway except during the March police raids. A few wooden stalls lined the road just past the police station, all but one closed for Sunday. Next came the commandant’s office, a yellow building with a walled courtyard, also empty on a Sunday. The titular head of the refugee camp, the commandant straddles the sometimes conflicting administrative worlds of the UNHCR and Ghana’s Interior Ministry. Ghanaian regulations governing refugees postdate the Liberian refugee crisis and were, in fact, spurred by the country’s experiences with Liberian refugees. These include a 1992 Refugee Law championed by the UNHCR and a 1994 agreement signed by the UNHCR and Ghana. In the 1994 agreement, Ghana agrees to follow UNHCR protocols in all administrative activities involving refugees.3 The agreement also grants the UNHCR a status comparable to that of a foreign government; for example, the UNHCR offices are inviolable, and its assets are immune from executive, administrative, judicial, 3. “Co-operation between the Government and UNHCR in the field of international protection of and humanitarian assistance to refugees and other persons of concern to UNHCR shall be carried out on the basis of the Statute of UNHCR, of other relevant decisions and resolutions relating to UNHCR adopted by United Nations organs and of Article 35 of the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees of 19511 and Article 2 of the Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees of 1967” (UN 1994, Art. 3.1, emphasis added).

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or legislative actions (Art. VIII). The 1992 Refugee Law includes the creation of a designated bureau, the Ghana Refugee Board (before that the National Disaster Management Organisation coordinated refugee aid), but even by 2007 the board remained a small and underfunded institution within the Interior Ministry. Most tangible resources for the commandant (which were few) came from the UNHCR, and most regulations governing that position drew from UNHCR administrative guidelines. But the practice of staffing the position of commandant with a Ghanaian government official brought administrative routines nearer to the Interior Ministry, so most camp residents used the title “commandant” rather than the UNHCR’s official term “settlement manager.” (A few years earlier, the UNHCR changed the title of Buduburam from “refugee camp” to “refugee settlement”—part of the local integration policy making.) Between 1990 and 2008, six people served as commandant in Buduburam; the commandant who served during the Concerned Women protests had come to office in 2006. After passing the commandant’s compound, I had the sense of having entered camp, but I knew that in reality, Buduburam had long since spread across the highway, and a wide road allowed cars and trucks to enter the camp just a little farther west without checkpoints. Many months later, I drove in a taxi past a new state-sponsored housing development marketed toward middle-income Ghanaian commuters (part of the urban sprawl of Accra) to enter Buduburam eastward along a bumpy, narrow dirt road that hinted of innumerable side roads into camp. Buduburam was an open refugee camp. One of the main reasons that Ghana earned a reputation for fair and generous refugee policies was that refugees did not need to request permission to enter or leave the camp or to live elsewhere; they could travel as their funds permitted. This was in stark contrast to some of the other large refugee camps in the world that are fenced and monitored by soldiers, the Dadaab refugee camps in Kenya being the most infamous example. It also contrasted favorably in some residents’ minds with the militarized Côte d’Ivoire towns, which required all citizens and visitors to carry correct ID cards, which few refugees possessed. Living on the highway to Accra, camp residents had more transportation options than many people in Ghana did, a fact that supported small traders in the camp. But these choices were all constrained by people’s ability to pay—not an easy thing for refugees who confronted economic discrimination on a regular basis. The main road opened into another wide, sloping expanse of trampled dirt and pockmarked rivets—the top of camp. The commercial and political hub of Buduburam, this area housed offices for the Liberian Refugee Welfare Council (the representative body for refugees in the camp), the Neighborhood Watch Team (the Liberian community police force recognized by the police, funded a little

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The Concerned Women of Buduburam

by the UNHCR, and popularly known as the Vigilantes), and the health clinic administered by the National Catholic Secretariat with a small amount of funds from the UNHCR (in general, camp residents paid for health care). Stores lined the outskirts: a closet-sized space for braiding hair, a stand selling phones, a midsized restaurant and nightclub, a stand selling units and phone calls by the minute, another restaurant, a tea shop (the Hatai club) where a popular intellectual club met, and many other commercial enterprises. A large open-air market partially covered with a patchy roof stood just behind the buildings, lined by another row of stores—clothes, hardware, jewelry, food—with an Internet café and a church. The buildings were mostly single-story concrete structures, but some were two stories, and others were mud-brick structures or tiny unstable wood structures. Three arterial roads extended from the top of camp to its other sections, which, like municipal districts in Ghana, were organized in subunits called zones. Lacking drainage, the roads became extremely bumpy and partially washed out but remained wide enough to fit a car. Many more footpaths extended like veins from the top of camp to its nether regions, slender and circuitous and lined with small stores and homes. After a winding jaunt along one such path, I came to another expanse framed by a large high school, a church, more storefronts, and another Internet café. Two boys struggled across the field as they pushed a wheelbarrow laden with metal poles, one boy leaning on each handle, both ill attired in dirt brown shirts with patches of discoloration like sweat dried over and over again and dusty blue jeans rolled to keep from sliding off their narrow frames. The long metallic poles were at least twice as long as the wheelbarrow and alighted precariously on it. The boys moved a few steps, stopped to readjust the load, soon working up a consistent speed, but the poles suddenly dipped down, jabbing into the ground and throwing the boys forward. As they struggled unsuccessfully to lift the poles, a middle-aged man in a bright white T-shirt and long pants hurried forward and grabbed the poles in his arms. He sent the boys to throw their weight against the handles of the wheelbarrow, and they righted it together. They all continued walking, and after a moment, the man went left, and the wheelbarrow boys kept going straight.4 Shortly afterward, I walked past our water seller, a lanky middle-aged man everyone in that extensive neighboring compound called Papa. He sat on a stool beside the polytank, rubbing soapy jeans in a plastic tub. ‘Doing my laundry,’ he said, smiling, as I greeted him. Households spilled out into public spaces throughout the camp for reasons ranging from chores to leisure to conflict. I 4. Field note from December 6, 2007.

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noticed multicolored plastic pails and black tubs strewn around the courtyard, assorted sizes and shapes for all kinds of washing: dishes, clothes, shoes, small children.5 I continued on to my temporary home. People lived in compounds, apartments that shared walls, yards, and possibly shower or toilet facilities but had their own front doors. The compound was not just a group of apartments sharing space; it was a social unit housing mismatched families, fragmented by war and Byzantine resettlement policies, but once so arranged, regularly attaining a high degree of social cohesion. In the last compound in which I lived in Buduburam, one of my neighbors was a woman who lived with her two adolescent children, while her eldest child was a student at a U.S. university; he had been resettled several years earlier with his grandmother. The grandmother couldn’t take her two oldest children (my neighbor and her brother) because of U.S. family reunification regulations but could take her grandson by declaring him to be her son. Another apartment housed two brothers, one married and living with his wife and his wife’s dead sister’s two children. A third apartment held a single woman living with a Sierra Leonean man. The final row held cousins with four young children, one by birth and the others related through various blood ties. It took me a long time to figure out whose children belonged where, because all the children ate on the porch of the two brothers. ‘The others are not fortunate to eat every day,’ the elder brother once told me to explain why they fed all the children in the compound. Because the buildings in camp grew as newcomers added rooms, most had a piecemeal look. I could trace the development of my own apartment from the doorways and windows. If you walked through the front door, you entered our narrow eating space. The table rested against a concrete wall with a window that opened onto my housemate’s bedroom; the window had four metal bars, which, now that it was inside the house, seemed excessive. My room lay further inside, divided from the larger room by a wall made of unprocessed wood, which the hardworking termites were gradually reducing to a fine dust. My door had a lock, but because the wall did not extend to the ceiling, I could climb over it, so the lock seemed superfluous. A wooden door that once connected my bedroom to my housemate’s was sealed to people, although the mice had gnawed a hole in the corner and passed as they saw fit. Just beyond my room stood a doorway with the remnants of a solid outdoor lock, although no longer with a door; a tiny bedroom had been added to the doorframe. To the right, we had our own private bathroom: a raised space for us to shower and a toilet with a handle to flush but not, alas, the plumbing to do so, as the camp did not have running water. It was 5. Field note from December 12, 2007.

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The Concerned Women of Buduburam

a mixed blessing, because cockroaches were attracted to the piping, but I was grateful. Beauty, a daughter of the local water seller, once remarked of Buduburam, ‘Some people do very well. Some people suffer.’ Over the years, it had become a highly stratified community. My living space resembled that of other relatively well-off camp residents, but it differed from the homes of most residents in how few people made use of it. Although Buduburam was no longer as densely inhabited as it had been in 2003 when a mass influx of new people drove the registration rates to more than forty thousand people—with even less housing than exists now—the camp was still overcrowded. Most people shared rooms with three to six people. Toilets were even scarcer than rooms. The few public toilets created by the UNHCR and administered by the Welfare Council cost a small fee and were not cleaned regularly enough for sanitary use. Many people made arrangements with neighbors—a compound might invest in a toilet together, or a family might agree to clean a nearby church in exchange for the use of the toilet. But it was not uncommon for people to defecate in black plastic bags, particularly at night when the alternative was a long walk. They would discard the bag in the drainage ditches or on the outskirts of the camp (the Gulf), or they would burn it, contributing to the near-constant smell of burning plastic in the camp. When I reached my compound, I found Joy, a teenage neighbor, whose father was a violent bully whom I despised. She stood in the yard with two mutual neighbors from the compound, Cissy and Dorothea, preparing a meal on a makeshift table. Joy held a fish above a plastic bowl with bloody water, slicing the fish lengthwise, leaving the heads and tails but pulling out the innards to discard as black flies swarmed around her hands. Cissy picked tiny round green and orange things off a vine. ‘What is it?’ I asked. Joy said something like, ‘KA-ta-lee.’ ‘How do you spell it?’ I asked. She and Cissy laughed, and Joy said, ‘You don’t spell it.’ But she tried anyway and came up with something I can’t remember that Cissy laughingly approved. ‘What will you do with it?’ They told me they will mix it with rice and oil and peppers. ‘The peppers are too hot for me,’ I said. ‘They hurt.’ ‘She said the peppers hurt her,’ Cissy said to Dorothea, laughing. They had one of the small charcoal stoves out, the coals already heating. Dorothea sat beside the table, filing the soles of her feet with a homemade pedicure kit. Later, Joy gave me a large helping on a plastic plate with another plate on top to keep the flies off. I ate some; the fish was delicious, but the rest was excruciatingly spicy. ‘The food is very fine, but it’s too hot for me!’ I said with exaggerated pain. They laughed at me as we ate dinner in the yard.

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The Transnationalism of Humanitarian Crisis The Buduburam Refugee Camp possessed an atmosphere of makeshift living, but also an enduring ordinariness that jarred with expectations about humanitarian crisis. This peculiar amalgam was not unique to Buduburam. Observers often remark on the unexpected stolidity of refugee camps. Kwok Chan and David Loveridge (1987, 747) write that a refugee camp in Hong Kong where they worked “has a feeling of semi-permanence about it . . . full-time schooling, two kindergartens, a crèche, youth center, clinic, a sheltered care center, library shops and foodstalls.” For Bulent Diken (2004, 93), “everywhere the refugee camp has today become a ‘permanent’ location.” But this sense of enduring ordinariness was only ever half the story. Other writers are attuned to the incompleteness and transience of refugee camps. Dwight Conquergood (1988, 180) sees refugee camps as “liminal zones where people displaced by trauma and crisis . . . must try to regroup and salvage what is left of their lives.” Michel Agier (2002, 337) concludes, “It is the liminality of all situations of exodus that gives a frustrated, unfinished character to this type of ‘urbanization.’ . . . Nothing can ever be brought to completion.” Barbara Harrell-Bond (1986) warns that people who work with refugees often fall prey to two insidious myths: imagining all people living as refugees to be hapless victims who are incapable of making decisions for themselves or idealizing them as people who always respond to adversity with selfless nobility. We should distrust such simple versions of social life. Most people who lived in Buduburam had friends, neighbors, and families, but there were bullies and troublemakers, too. Camp inhabitants partook in commerce, sports, schooling, and religion but with constricted trajectories that thrust former nurses, teachers, civil servants, shopkeepers, and their children into poverty alongside former farmers and small traders. People created buildings, roads, and public spaces, but most remained ill constructed, inadequate, and poorly maintained. One could say—and many people have—that Buduburam was just like “any town in Ghana”: its poverty the commonplace and interchangeable “poverty of the Third World”; its inhabitants “poor Africans”; their aspirations for a safer and more prosperous sanctuary the same as any migrant’s dream of “coming to America.” This reflex—to reduce novel experiences until they fit into monotone understandings—does everyone a disservice: the people living as refugees, their hosts, and the observers alike. Victor Shklovsky (1991) once remarked that a writer’s task is to make the easily overlooked appear unfamiliar—to “enstrange” what the reader takes for granted. Certainly Buduburam was similar to other towns in Ghana in its inadequate infrastructure and in its residents’ creative hustle

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The Concerned Women of Buduburam

for work in the face of limited economic opportunities. But the camp differed in two noticeable ways: the precariousness of its inhabitants’ ties to Ghana and the intensity of its transnationalism. Ghana was by no means insular. Many citizens worked outside the country as economic migrants while maintaining ties with their homelands (Coe 2011). But when compared to Kasoa, for example, which is an even larger town with a history of Nigerian migrants, Buduburam had a greater proportion of foreignborn inhabitants, visitors, and administrators. It also had more Internet cafés and telecommunication kiosks, as well as its own Western Union and MoneyGram outposts.6 These tools of transnational communication and economic transfer flourished despite the poverty of the refugee camp because so many camp residents relied on transnational social networks enlarged through resettlement programs. Previous resettlement programs connected Buduburam to the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, and other postindustrial nations financially as well as socially. Between 2006 and 2008, the Western Union in Buduburam brought in an astounding $800,000 per month (Omata 2010, 13).7 The resettlement programs produced many of the same consequences as transnational economic migration: an economy fueled by remittances and aspirations yoked to migration to a postindustrial nation. But although economic migrants and refugees shared similar migratory fates, how they arrived at these social and geographical outcomes differed substantially. Through the resettlement programs, aid workers sorted camp inhabitants to distinguish the category of “refugees” from other aspiring migrants according to measures of vulnerability, not earnings potential. Thus camp residents confronted evaluators schooled in very different migration logics. Often the elderly, the ill, and the weak benefited from these logics, leaving young men and women behind. Transnationalism took a second form in Buduburam, too. Perhaps surprisingly, many people maintained ties with Liberia, the “homeland” that they or their parents had fled. Phone calls, money transfers, radio broadcasts, public holidays, food, and gossip with other Liberians preserved these ties to the homeland in everyday life. Like economic migrants, many people viewed these transnational

6. Kate Hampshire et al. (2011, 88) note a generational twist on a similar observation: “Young people were often pivotal in maintaining links with family abroad, through mobile phones and the Internet. Many young people spent a lot of time in the many Internet cafés in the camp, soliciting new sponsors from abroad and keeping in contact with existing ones. . . . [Y]oung Liberian refugees embodied cosmopolitan, transnational forms of identity.” 7. Naohiko Omata (2010, 14) finds that these financial resources were used primarily for daily needs rather than investment: “According to one of the refugee community leaders, ‘Ghana is a “transit point” for most of Liberians. This is not a place where we invest.’” Getting these official figures is an extraordinary research feat; I had no such success in my efforts with Western Union.

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ties as another resource to mobilize—former neighbors with whom to exchange mutual aid, a daydream of homecoming to provide solace and inspiration. But for others, the homeland inflicted grievous social ties. The loved ones who had died, gone missing, or been abandoned in flight could cling as tightly to one’s mind as the living. Remembered enemies and assailants could evoke greater fear than immediate threats in the camp. The discrimination that inhibited assimilation helped intensify this transnationalism. Most Ghanaian citizens would not hire or work for foreign African nationals over fellow citizens, and good jobs were scarce in Ghana (Porter et al. 2008). Political incorporation met even greater resistance (Agblorti 2011). Nationalist rhetoric, which Ghanaian leaders cultivated to strengthen the state against the threat of ethnic cleavages, had long since supplanted the pan-Africanism of Kwame Nkrumah, the country’s founder. That nation-building project did not obviate the deep-seated norms of hospitality to foreigners that characterized Ghanaian culture, but it left no space for outsiders to “become” Ghanaian. Scholars of refugee camps often observe a liminality among camp inhabitants, a sense of in-betweenness that stymies growth. For most camp inhabitants, marginalized from Ghana and lured by the prospect of resettlement to a postindustrial country, a future in Buduburam deserved little consideration. In short, Buduburam’s transnationalism was the transnationalism of humanitarian crisis. It closely resembled that of other transnational communities but differed in two important ways: its regulation through the international refugee protection regime and its coalescence with violence and death. This form of transnationalism deeply shaped everyday life, and it molded the Concerned Women’s protest tactics and mobilization efforts. As such, the contours and consequences of these transnational processes are a recurrent theme in subsequent chapters. The next chapters consider in more detail the political and civic life that characterized Buduburam on the eve of the protests. The story situates the Concerned Women movement as one of several tributaries of civic engagement and the sit-down protest as a confluence of multiple streams of discontentment and optimism about the administration of humanitarian aid.

Chapter 2

Civic Engagement in the Refugee Camp

Every social setting has its own stereotypes. When we talk about humanitarian crises, listeners often picture unrelenting chaotic violence—for example, Karen Jacobsen (2000, 11) writes that the “anomic, alienated environment of camps coupled with the absence or breakdown of the rule of law in the camps often creates a climate of violence and intimidation.” Try typing “humanitarian crisis” into Google Images—you will find photos of rows upon rows of tents; crowds of people sitting and waiting in barren, windswept locales; bombedout cities; guns; tanks; and bloodied bodies. This model of refugee camps as a Hobbesian state of nature seriously understates the power and resilience of civic engagement in crisis. Civic engagement in Buduburam was not a luxury; it was a necessity. Like inhabitants of other poor municipalities, camp residents could not depend on public administration to meet all of their collective needs. Public administration did exist—and authorities engaged in a surprisingly wide range of activities in the camp—but resource scarcities and chronic breakdowns in routine left even formal administrative tasks dependent on the public-spiritedness, generosity, or enlightened self-interest of camp residents. The Concerned Women protests must be evaluated not as an isolated series of events in an anarchic land but as part of an established template of civic engagement in a poor quasi-township.

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The Formal Administration of the Buduburam Refugee Camp For simplicity’s sake, scholars often portray refugee camp administration as comprising three actors: the host government, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and refugee leaders. I sometimes use that shorthand to describe Buduburam, but I wish to first make clear the messy reality. A loose conglomerate of national, regional, district, and local government offices; UNHCR officials; international, Ghanaian, and Liberian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); and community leaders administered the refugee camp. For example, the Buduburam Police, the Vigilantes, and the Welfare Council arbitration committee handled most policing and criminal justice matters. But the Kasoa district commander also took some cases, and a special police unit from Accra came to the camp at least twice in 2007–8. People could also take grievances to the Elders Council and county associations or to one of the two claimants to the local chieftaincy. The convoluted administrative system bore some resemblance to Ghanaian municipal government, some to UNHCR’s “camp management” system, and a little to Liberian customary authorities, but it ultimately became an amalgam of all three. The main institutional actors in Buduburam included the following (formally designated by the UNHCR as a partner): UNHCR UNHCR-Ghana Executive Office (Country Representative) UNHCR-Ghana Protection Office UNHCR-Ghana Durable Solutions Office UNHCR-Ghana Community Services Office UNHCR Regional Office (“Senegal”) Headquarters (“Geneva”) Ghanaian Government Institutions National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO)∗ Ghana Refugee Board (GRB)∗ Settlement Manager (“commandant” or “manager”) Ghana Police Service Ghana Education Service∗ Ghana Health Service∗ Ghana Immigration Service∗ Ghana National Fire Service Department of Social Welfare Kasoa Township

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The Concerned Women of Buduburam

Gomoa District Assembly Area Council, Buduburam Unit Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) Ghana AIDS Commission Gomoa Fetteh Chieftancy (Nana Koranteng and Nana Kojo Essel) Ghanaian NGOs National Catholic Secretariat (NCS)∗ Christian Council∗ Women’s Initiative for Self-Empowerment (WISE)∗ International NGOs World Food Programme (WFP)∗ International Organization for Migration (IOM)∗ United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)∗ Point Hope Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) Liberian Institutions Liberian Refugee Welfare Council (“Welfare Council”) Neighborhood Watch Team (“Vigilantes”) By 2007, the administrative system in the camp had come to rely heavily on NGO subcontracting, government “hand-overs,” and refugee volunteerism. These three practices linked institutional actors in gossamer webs of administrative allegiance that left officials without clearly delineated roles or firmly institutionalized command chains. The transfer of key personnel, a new budget, or a simple lapse in interest could end a program, shut down a construction project, deflate a reform, or arbitrarily deprive a camp inhabitant of services offered to a similarly situated compatriot. Overt acts of oppression, such as the March 2008 police raids, rarely occurred. Struggles to abdicate responsibility for refugee problems had more bearing on daily camp administration than power grabs. Ultimately, the convoluted administrative chains diffused responsibility for poor outcomes and exacerbated the rumors that pervaded camp politics.

A Brief Survey of Administrative Tasks in the Refugee Camp Authorities administered the camp in a piecemeal fashion with bursts of innovative programming and sporadic acts of repression that reached few residents and fizzled out quickly. The UNHCR Global Reports for 2007 and 2008 offer an

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excellent glimpse of the hodgepodge of public and targeted interventions that characterized the UNHCR’s administrative activities in Buduburam. As in other refugee camps, NGO subcontractors carried out most UNHCR programs, but unlike in many settings, these subcontractors were usually Ghanaian NGOs rather than international NGOs. National Catholic Secretariat (NCS), a Ghanaian NGO, covered health, primary education, and construction. The UNHCR did not select a lead implementing partner to run the camp, but NCS ran the largest number of UNHCR-sponsored programs. Working through NCS, the UNHCR subsidized health care for four thousand people at the Buduburam clinic, implemented the New Malaria Protocol, and instituted a supplemental feeding program for malnourished children (UNHCR 2007a, 251). It provided food to seven thousand people (25 percent of the population) in 2007 (251) and eight thousand people (38 percent of the population) in 2008 (UNHCR 2008, 93). It repaired eightynine flood-damaged homes (UNHCR 2007a, 251) and the next year relocated sixty-seven homes from flood-prone areas (UNHCR 2008, 94). Working with NCS, a Liberian group called Liberian Refugees United against HIV (LIBRUAH), the Ghana AIDS Commission, and UNAIDS, the UNHCR promoted HIV/AIDS prevention education in ten primary schools, HIV/AIDS testing and treatment (UNHCR 2007a, 251), and HIV/AIDS sensitization programs (UNHCR 2008, 94). The Women’s Initiative for Self-Empowerment (WISE), another Ghanaian NGO, covered women’s and children’s issues. Through WISE, the UNHCR offered “social counseling, psychological support and treatment to nearly 1,000 individuals (84 per cent female)” and distributed sanitary napkins (UNHCR 2007a, 250). WISE also ran a rehabilitation program for 180 sex workers (UNHCR 2008, 93). With UNIDO and the National Vocational Training Institute, the UNHCR offered vocational training for 780 people (94) and certified twenty-five people in computer skills (UNHCR 2007a, 251). In addition, the UNHCR paid operational, management, and staffing costs for its implementing partners (UNHCR 2007a, 251; UNHCR 2008, 94). For example, the UNHCR purchased tractors and trailers for the NCS to dispose of waste (UNHCR 2007a, 251). But the agency also gave funds separately to the police force for such activities as training sessions on child protection, sexual and gender-based violence, and narcotics (251) and the purchase of a police car and fire engine for the Gomoa East District Police and Fire Department (UNHCR 2008, 94). In 2007–8, the UNHCR successfully handed over a number of administrative activities to the Ghanaian government. The UNHCR convinced the Ghana Education Service to accept nineteen schools into the national school system (UNHCR 2007a, 251), certified the health clinic under Ghana Health Service (UNHCR 2008, 92), and enrolled 2,500 people in the national health insurance

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program (93). With the District Assembly, it built ten family latrines for refugees and twenty for hosts, installed six hundred meters of drainage system, and regraveled some major roads in Buduburam (94). The UNHCR also repatriated 2,300 in 2007 by air and sea (UNHCR 2007a, 251) and 8,800 in 2008 (UNHCR 2008, 92). It ran “Go and See” visits to encourage people to return to Liberia; screened returnees for medical conditions; issued birth, educational, and health certificates for returnees; and provided meals and water for people in transit (UNHCR 2007a, 251). The agency also resettled twenty-nine people in third countries of asylum (251), continued “advocating for the Liberians’ gradual local integration” (250), and negotiated a new tripartite agreement with Ghana and Liberia to promote repatriation to Liberia. The Liberian Refugee Welfare Council, the formal representative body for camp residents, engaged in a diverse range of administrative tasks as well. The Welfare Council disseminated information to the public from the UNHCR, Ghanaian government, and others who wished to make announcements via a loudspeaker located at the top of camp and bulletin boards in each zone. It organized small meetings at the Welfare Council conference room and a large residents’ meeting at the Catholic church and selected participants for UNHCR participatory planning sessions. It ran the mail system (Liberian Refugee Welfare Council 2007, 1); recorded new arrivals, deaths, and births (Liberian Refugee Welfare Council 2002, 1); mobilized refugees in development projects; selected recipients for the food distribution program; and arbitrated civil disputes. It registered schools and Liberian NGOs; advocated for Liberian interests with the electricity company, the UNHCR, local chiefs, and other interested parties; and provided funds in the event of the serious illness or death of a staff member (Liberian Refugee Welfare Council 2007, 7). It also collected rent money for ten reservoirs, several public toilets, the basketball court, and the large field near the road (Liberian Refugee Welfare Council 2007, 1). Other parties engaged in administrative activities during this period as well. The Gomoa District Assembly Area Council and Buduburam Unit Committee instituted market and lorry park tolls of 10 to 30 cents in October 2007, declaring that 50 percent of the revenue raised would support sanitation, water security, and development activities in Buduburam.1 Point Hope, an American NGO, installed two kilometers of pipes from the Ojobi reservoir and a water tank at Kasoa to bring pipe-borne water to stand pipes in several zones in 2007. On February 7, 2008, the national Nurses and Midwives Council shut down the two health sciences 1. The debate over the new taxes became an excellent example of conflict over administrative roles. One person remarked to me that the Welfare Council should be taking a lead on taxes issues but didn’t because it was afraid of losing its position. Council members were appointed; ‘they don’t help us’ (field note, November 12, 2007).

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schools in Buduburam over accreditation issues in a widely publicized police raid that brought officers in riot gear and a television news crew to the camp. In short, administrative activities in the camp extended beyond those found in other precarious settings to which camps are often compared, such as squatter settlements. They included activities like interstate negotiations, migration programs, food distribution, and HIV/AIDS treatment. But this survey alone gives an incomplete portrait of such programs, fostering an impression of greater resources, efficacy, and consistency than actually existed. Next, I offer a vignette about the formal administration of camp that provides a deeper view of how camp administration worked in this setting. Crafted from field notes and semistructured interviews, the vignette illustrates a system of government characterized by scarcity, rumor, and chronic breakdowns in routine. It also reveals the key mechanism that allowed administration to proceed in the face of these limitations: strong civic engagement.

Vignette 1: Fixing the Transformer In the mid-2000s, the UNHCR asked the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) to install a transformer to bring electricity to the camp. One of two electricity companies owned by the government of Ghana, ECG supplies power to southern Ghana and maintains and repairs electrical installations. ECG chronically ran at a deficit and offered poor service; even by 2005, less than half of the Ghanaian public had access to electricity (Williams and Ghanadan 2006), which constituted a miniscule 9 percent of energy use in Ghana (Amissah-Arthur and Amonoo 2004, 3). Still, most townships as large as Buduburam did have at least some electricity, and thanks to the UNHCR’s intervention, by 2007 electricity had become a part of life in Buduburam as well. Most camp residents used it for light and to charge cell phones; some people had refrigerators, computers, televisions, stereos, and other equipment. The UNHCR did not fully subsidize electricity, so camp inhabitants bought electricity meters from ECG by the compound or in groups of compounds. Only the person in charge of the meter dealt directly with ECG, while the other households gave fees to the meter owner. As in any community, some meter owners treated neighbors fairly, and others did not. In September 2007, electricity became a public concern when the transformers that supplied electricity to the camp blew; a three-month blackout ensued. This vignette recounts the final stage of an ultimately successful effort to fix the transformers in the camp, and I include it because it offers a particularly good view of the near-ordinary political acts in Buduburam. Note the diversity of opinions that people formed about the causes of and solutions to collective problems. Consider also how the distrust of Ghanaian officials molded rumors, and contrast that attitude with the evidence of at least partial cooperation between

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Ghanaian officials and camp residents to fix the problem. Note as well how heavily formal administrative acts relied on volunteerism and how ultimately limited even this administrative victory was. The account begins with five quotes that reflect a cross-section of different perspectives about the electricity crisis. In semistructured interviews and informal conversations, I asked people to explain what happened during the crisis. I did not ask to find out what happened but rather to listen to how people made sense of their often-confusing social world. I drew from this sensemaking the frames that people constructed.2 The frames varied, and people could offer multiple contradictory explanations in a single conversation, but these five quotes represent the most common accounts (listed in order of prevalence): • The UNHCR had to pay them—“In December now then according to them, there was a problem at the transformer. (. . .) So we say, ‘Ah but how can we provide this, but we pay our normal bills since you guys bring the current back.’ He say, ‘No, but the transformer blow off and there is nothing we can do. The only thing we need to change are two of the transformers. That’s the only way the camp can get current.’ So, they were like taking their own time to bring the transformer back to us [laughs]. (. . .) UNHCR have to pay them before they bring it back.” (SSI 2) • They cut the lights—“They cut the light off, (. . .) what they explain to me, they said that they cut their wires, they cut their light off, because they said that they were not paying the money that they supposed to pay.” (SSI 39) • They kept refugees in darkness—“I felt that it was the deliberate action from the government, because most of time when you use to stand on the hill, you will see the current in Kasoa. So for me, I felt that they just wanted to keep the refugees in darkness. That was my personal feeling. I don’t know what was the reason for that.” (SSI 41) • People started paying bills—“They brought it back because people were paying bill. (. . .) People took meter and pay for it, other people took current from their place, that how they started doing. (. . .) They decided to pay money the people put together—refugee on the camp, those that make the business, those that have schools, and those that have money.” (SSI 24) • The hydropower dam was out—“Ghana only have one hydro operating (. . .) and it can’t [be] able to supply to whole of Ghana, so they will share the current. So if this side has, the next side will not have. That what happened.” (SSI 5) 2. Frames are cognitive maps that helped a person reduce the “seemingly infinite number of concrete occurrences” into an intelligible story for themselves and their listeners (Goffman 1986, 21). Frames bring some aspects of people’s experiences to the fore and encourage them to forget or overlook other aspects.

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Popular political sentiment often credited the UNHCR with fixing the crisis but sometimes gave credit to fellow camp inhabitants instead. No one credited the Ghanaian authorities. People often framed the crisis as a deliberate act as opposed to an accident, and they varied in the extent to which they blamed Ghanaian officials for the act. No one blamed the UNHCR. Taken together, the diversity of accounts demonstrates widespread confusion over the administration of a basic public good in the camp—a common theme in the transcripts and field notes, which I return to later in this chapter. For now, I want to highlight two important frames that people used to make sense of the electricity crisis. These two frames resonated strongly with residents not just in this crisis but in a wide range of administrative activities, and they are an important part of the story of the Concerned Women protests. The first frames the UNHCR as a powerful and supportive figure that helps refugees. I call this the UNHCR-as-caregiver frame. The second frames Ghanaian actors as malevolent figures that make life harder for refugees. I call this the Ghanaiansas-threat frame. A critical part of camp life, these frames surfaced in most political talk in Buduburam. They are by no means unique to Buduburam; they matched what Simon Turner (2010, 46) and Liisa Malkki (1995, 129, 141) observed among Burundian refugees in Tanzania. In fact, later I argue that they aren’t even unique to refugee crises—they represent a kind of transnational vulnerability of host states. I devote Chapter 4 to exploring the mechanisms that promoted these frames over other potential interpretations of camp authorities. Chapter 6 illustrates their consequences for the conflict over humanitarian aid in Buduburam. These frames did not wholly match the administrative practices that I witnessed. What my field notes, which I share below, illustrate are administrative activities limited by resource scarcities and neglect, not active ill intent. These limitations were partially overcome not by the active intervention of the UNHCR but by small acts of generosity and public-spiritedness from some camp residents and Ghanaian officials. My field notes suggest a more productive relationship between Ghanaian officials and camp inhabitants than indicated by most refugee accounts. They also present a more distant role for the UNHCR than indicated by most refugee accounts: December 11, 2007. I am sitting in the commandant’s office when a man from ECG, the Ghanaian electricity company, walks in. The commandant welcomes him and begins as though midway through a conversation already. Commandant: When will it be finished? ECG Employee: Depends on how fast they dig. Commandant: It will be finished tomorrow. I will dig it myself. My head will be on the table if the current isn’t restored tomorrow. ECG Employee: It will break again if they continue to steal current.

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Commandant:

We have established a committee to patrol. But I must have the wire, or they will be used again.

I hear a loud commotion outside the office and the Welfare Council chairman comes in, followed by a large group of men and one woman. Not everyone can fit in the room. The chairman says he has found the men. He and the commandant talk about what will be done. Then the commandant says, ‘Afterward the chairman will look deep into his coffers and buy you soft drink,’ at which the others laugh. They joke good-humoredly about who will buy the drinks. ‘I want you all to treat the man well,’ the commandant says, motioning to the ECG employee. Someone replies, ‘We will guard him,’ and then an older man at the door jokes, ‘We will bring him woman.’ Much laughter at that quip. Then the conversation between the chairman and commandant grows more technical and serious: Commandant: WC Chairman: Commandant: WC Chairman: Commandant: WC Chairman: Commandant: WC Chairman: Commandant:

What do you have? We need to rent diggers. How much? I don’t know. We only use the two we have. How much? Six thousand cedis. I will pay. How many? Two.

The commandant turns to speak to the others and says, ‘When he gives money, it’s out of his budget. When I give money, it’s out of my pocket.’ The chairman ripostes, ‘You should have a budget for these things.’ The chairman shifts the talk to rallying the troops, using the term “community development,” but his cell phone rings, and he picks it up. People start to leave, and the meeting fizzles out. December 12, 2007. About fifteen men and a few boys crowd around a flatbed truck in front of the generator, digging a long ditch. Several other people sit on sloops in front of houses, watching the men dig. ‘Will it work today?’ I ask, speaking of the electricity. ‘Pray God,’ one man replies. Another man turns to a young boy and says, ‘Move from here. The men at work here, not boys.’ The sun comes out from behind the clouds, and it soon grows blindingly, dizzyingly hot. I ask a man what is happening and he explains, ‘The electricity guy approached chairman and asked for men.’ ‘You work for the Welfare Council?’ I ask, assuming he is talking about the chairman of the Welfare Council. He reaches into a knee pocket in his pants and pulls out an ID card for an answer. He tells me, gesturing to the other men, that some residents came to ‘help the community—because it’s

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a community problem.’ I wonder if they pay them. He says, ‘Some people buy us water because we are helping the community.’ But then he frowns and in an irritated tone says, ‘No soft drink.’

Electricity returned to camp a few weeks later. Over the remaining eight months of my stay, the electricity still shut down intermittently, sometimes for weeks at a time, but the problem largely faded from public debate for a few months. After the Concerned Women protests ended in April, people started talking about electricity again, but in a new way. One afternoon in May, a neighbor stopped by to inform me that he was going to take down the wire. I agreed distractedly at the time, but afterward I wondered what I had agreed to. I went to chat with him, and he explained that ECG and the Welfare Council had implemented periodic sweeps of the camp to remove illegal wiring. Apparently, although my neighbors and I paid for electricity, it was still illegal. That I was stealing electricity was news to me—I paid as much to light my two bulbs and charge my computer and cell phone as I paid for a whole slew of appliances in Wisconsin. Only five or six households were supposed to connect to a single meter, but in the camp, they regularly put twenty or thirty households on a single meter. All the other apartments, including mine, had jury-rigged wiring that used inferior cables and increased demand for electricity beyond the capacity of the transformers. If they caught us, they confiscated the wire, so before each sweep, one of my neighbors would take down all the wires and hide them in his apartment. I never found out how he knew the sweeps were coming, but he always got them down in time. The electricity vignette conveys five noteworthy features of formal camp administration that help provide the context within which to judge the conflict over humanitarian aid that emerged during the Concerned Women protests. THE ORDINARINESS OF SOME CAMP ADMINISTRATION

The electricity vignette exemplifies the ordinariness of some camp administration. When people think about refugee camps, they often imagine chaos and transience—authorities with more pressing concerns than providing electricity, and traumatized residents too buried beneath daily struggles to think of community needs. Yet figure 1 shows Buduburam on the eve of the protest. A search of Google Images for photographs of the Dadaab, Kakuma, Lukole, and Mae La or any number of other refugee camps will produce a comparable picture. As years pass, refugee camps become enduring quasi-townships. If we imagine life in Buduburam as a state of chaotic refuge, where only by selfless acts of courage and sacrifice can people keep crisis at bay, one might dismiss the regular political act of expressing grievances as frivolous or unsafe. Thus the electricity vignette illustrates an important social fact about refugee

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The Concerned Women of Buduburam

Figure 1. Buduburam, 2006 (author’s collection).

camps: although not the same as a municipal government, camp authorities do administer some basic public goods. The existence of ordinary administrative activities raises comparable ordinary questions about the dynamics of camp politics. What do camp inhabitants do when they disagree with the administration of public goods? How does camp administration respond to disagreements over public goods? Ordinary questions about everyday political and civic engagement—yet deceptively difficult to ask about a humanitarian setting. Two dynamics of humanitarian aid complicate even seemingly simple questions about politics in refugee camps. Barbara Harrell-Bond exposes the first dynamic in her seminal critique of Ugandan refugee relief programs in Sudan. She contrasts humanitarian programs to development programs, writing, “Humanitarian assistance is governed by compassion and compassion has its own mode of reasoning. . . . Technical assistance which is the aim of development programmes can be evaluated, but compassion is a moral virtue which cannot be measured.” Ultimately, she concludes, “It is the moral loading of humanitarian assistance which denies the need for review and which prevents scrutiny. . . . Compassion expects everyone to agree on the method” (1986, 26). What Harrell-Bond describes here as “the need for review” is that essential political act of holding authorities accountable to their constituents. What Harrell-Bond found was that the assumption that humanitarian actors had good intentions undermined regular acts of accountability. Turner explores a second depoliticizing tendency in his study of Burundian refugees in Tanzania. He finds that the UNHCR promoted an understanding of

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camp inhabitants as “innocent victims” to protect refugees from other potentially harmful labels that hosts could attach to camp inhabitants—perpetrators or rebels. But this exercise tarred all refugee political activities as selfish and destructive acts. The UNHCR encouraged “good” community engagement but viewed the political competition that often arose surrounding these initiatives as potential threats to the “neediest refugees” (2010, 56). Once again, the humanitarian system undermined the legitimacy of regular acts of political contestation. But the political challenges that people encounter in administering refuge do not obviate critical social scientific investigation. If anything, they create chronic weaknesses that require even greater care and attention. THE INTIMATE ADMINISTRATIVE RELATIONS BETWEEN REFUGEES AND HOSTS

The electricity vignette exemplifies the intimate administrative relationships between refugees and hosts—connections that persisted despite the many sociospatial divisions between the refugee camp and the rest of Ghana. In some ways, this point may be even harder for fellow refugee studies scholars to recognize, because the degree of interconnectedness between hosts and refugees does differ across cases. Some refugee camps are more isolated than Buduburam, both geographically and administratively. Because much of the best scholarship on refugee camps is based on highly segregated cases, such as the Dadaab refugee camps in Kenya, many of the most sophisticated theories of refugee camps hinge on the fact of sociospatial isolation. Michel Agier (2002, 320) presents refugee camps as “a life kept at a distance from the ordinary social and political world, and the experimentation of the largescale segregations that are being established on a planetary scale.” Malkki (1995, 3) makes the question of “how the spatial and social isolation of refugees” shaped the construction of identity among refugees her central concern. She concludes that “spatial isolation and concentration had become a positive technique of power, a technique helping to produce mythico-historical knowledge” (140). Jennifer Hyndman (2000, 183) emphasizes a “geographical isolation and social segregation” that made refugees into “subcitizens” (111). Even in Buduburam, it would be easy to understate the role of the hosts in the administrative system of the refugee camp— especially if one listened only to the critical political talk among camp residents. Yet hosts served as important—and diverse—institutional actors in camp administration. Camp residents encountered not just a unitary, distant Ghanaian government but a web of governmental and quasi-governmental Ghanaian agencies and officials that worked together with varying degrees of cooperation and commitment. CYCLES OF SCARCITY AND RELATIVE WEALTH

Compared to other administrative units in Ghana, Buduburam suffered from a distinctive kind of resource scarcity. Sometimes the UNHCR subsidized electricity to

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the point where camp inhabitants had greater access—and paid less money—than Ghanaian citizens. But at other times, such as during the electricity crisis recounted in the vignette, camp inhabitants faced lapses in public goods that would never have withstood the concerted opposition of citizens. Water is another example. At some points in camp history, residents had access to free pipe-borne water. Other times, they faced inflated prices and erratic supply well beyond what was present in Kasoa. Likewise with the food staples of rice and oil: sometimes large numbers of camp inhabitants received free monthly rations, and other times they had to rely on markets where they paid twice as much or more than Ghanaian citizens. Buduburam experienced highly variable resource constraints. This system fostered even greater breakdowns in routine than settings of absolute squalor, because the periods of relative prosperity raised residents’ and administrators’ expectations for public goods. In periods of relative wealth, administrators would create more administrative programs—more routines, which would break down in the inevitable cycles of scarcity. Policy makers and commentators who observed this facet of camp administration in other countries often put a different spin on it. They focus only on the raised expectations of refugees and conceptualized it as a “problem of dependency.” The dependency paradigm reframes the raised expectations of residents as a permanent psychological injury that deprives people of the capacity to live self-sufficiently. Critical refugee studies scholars have amassed evidence of refugee economic initiatives like small trade in camps to refute the assertion of permanent damage to refugee psyches (Jacobsen 2005; Kibreab 1993). But in correcting the initial error, they overlook the fact that something is actually happening here—that these raised expectations do actually exist. But what I found was that the consequence is harm to the political relationship between administrators and residents, not to anyone’s psyche. The electricity vignette offers evidence of this relational dynamic: intermittent resources affect administrators as much as residents with political, not psychological, consequences. THE OVERSTATEMENT OF UNHCR BENEVOLENCE AND HOST THREAT IN RUMORS

The electricity vignette illustrates that, although people formed diverse opinions about what happens in the formal administration of public goods in camp, important frames existed that overstated the power and helpfulness of the UNHCR and the power and malevolence of the Ghanaian authorities. With little access to concrete information about how public administration worked, camp residents attributed power and agency where little existed, transforming structural inequalities and accidents into choices that authorities consciously enacted. The Ghanaian government wanted to keep refugees in darkness; the electricity company deliberately sabotaged equipment to force inhabitants to pay more for services; the UNHCR decided to restore electricity to camp by paying for repairs. Yet

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the electricity vignette is in truth a story about administrators with few resources who sporadically tried to resolve a problem that stemmed from poor infrastructure. Despite the public rhetoric, camp administration functioned only because Ghanaian officials and camp residents frequently cooperated to fix collective problems. The concept of the “reluctant host,” although not wholly inaccurate, understates the continuing acts of cooperation that made camp administration possible—albeit unreliable and inadequate. THE RELIANCE ON PUBLIC-SPIRITEDNESS AND GENEROSITY

Finally, the electricity vignette illustrates the extent to which formal administrative acts relied on volunteerism in the camp. This is a point often made by refugee camp observers, but usually presented critically. For example, when Guglielmo Verdirame and Barbara Harrell-Bond (2005, 152) describe cuts to the Ifo camp budget in Kenya that led CARE, the humanitarian organization, to rely on quasivoluntary labor from refugees to carry out its programs, the authors frame it as an example of the overreliance on volunteerism that is “not only against human rights law but also ill-advised” (221). This critique is important, because it draws attention to the economic exploitation of refugees in refugee camps, which is both widespread (including in Buduburam) and accepted as normal by humanitarian officials. But I want to draw attention to another side of these acts, not because I disbelieve the exploitation charge but because I consider it incomplete. In the electricity vignette, no one forced the people who dug the ditches to do so—each digger could have waited for another person to step up and fix the problem. And if they did not act because they were forced to do so, then these people acted out of kindness toward their fellow residents or out of enlightened self-interest. I want to draw attention to the generosity and public-spiritedness that underlay most formal administration of public goods in the camp. These acts were not uncommon and were, in fact, a necessary component of camp administration in the resource-poor setting. Less well-recognized, but not wholly surprisingly, camp administration relied on the generosity of officials themselves. The commandant gave money out of his own pocket to pay for equipment to dig ditches. I witnessed an UNHCR official use her own money for another administrative task, although she let the recipients believe that the support came from the UNHCR budget, not her own money, because she didn’t want to ‘raise expectations.’ The fact that administrators sometimes acted with personal generosity does not preclude exploitation. ECG offered poor services to residents and no compensation for the labor that the company ought rightly to have supplied itself. Likewise, personal generosity and public-spiritedness do not obviate resistance to unfavorable policies. Residents still did what they could to circumvent burdensome regulations: taking down illegal wires during inspections and tipping off peers when they saw inspectors. But the presence of widespread exploitation

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and resistance should not overshadow the strong civic engagement also present in the refugee camp. In fact, these public-spirited acts were what allowed camp administration to persist in the face of resource scarcities, disenfranchisement, and nonexistent administrative accountability.

Other Forms of Civic Life Formal administrative activities were not the only or even the most common form of civic and political action in the camp. Myriad informal acts emerged as well. Some informal acts were fleeting. At other times, civic engagement created lasting organizations, norms, and coalitions (such as the Concerned Women). Some new organizations even became part of the formal administrative system of the camp (although the Concerned Women did not). Next I explore two other forms of civic and political life: local volunteering and small acts of helping. These forms exemplify the most visible (local NGOs) and invisible (small acts of helping) forms of informal civic life. Together, they capture some of the key mechanisms that allowed people to survive despite the absence of consistent public goods. They also help drive home the point that collective action for public goods was not an exceptional practice but an essential part of camp life.

Local Volunteering Few civic initiatives became institutionalized in formal organizations, but when they did, they generally took the form of a local NGO. An NGO is a formal organization whose explicit aim is to promote the common good (not to make profits) and whose personnel and executive officers operate in a private capacity (not as public officials or government employees). In Buduburam, a local NGO differed from an international or host NGO in that it was run and staffed by people living as refugees. Geographically, the term “local NGO” is misleading, because the largest local NGOs actually operated in Liberia as well as Ghana and coordinated with donors in New Zealand, the United States, Denmark, and elsewhere. The local NGO system played an important role in the Concerned Women protests. Several long-standing NGOs united to become one of the most solid blocs of opposition to the Concerned Women—an outcome that deeply influenced the UNHCR’s response to the protesters. But at the same time, three of the five protest organizers worked at local NGOs, and they often drew upon social networks cultivated by local NGOs to mobilize participants and resources. Below, I explore some of the ways that local NGOs operated and share a few of their most notable consequences for wider camp politics. This section is by no means an exhaustive discussion of

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local NGOs—a system so complex and important to camp life that it deserves its own book—but it does introduce a few of its most powerful features. The local NGOs in Buduburam shared an organizational script. Crafted in large part by donors, the local NGO organizational script encouraged altruistic, community-oriented action and rhetoric and proscribed capital accumulation and profit-seeking behavior. Following Northern ideals, this organizational script promoted an understanding of professionalism as bureaucratic transparency in budgets, licensing, contracts, statements of purpose, grant proposals, and job titles. But the script also incorporated some Liberian political values that conflicted with those notions of professionalism: taking care of one’s own people (kin, friends, coethnics, and so forth) and putting on a good show. By 2007, NGOs had become the dominant organizational form in the camp. Not just quasi-governmental employees and nonprofit and advocacy officials but even some small businessmen, schoolteachers, and church leaders became—under NGO organizational scripts—local volunteers. As an organizational form, the local NGO had serious limitations, and in Buduburam, it could not sustain such a burden. The local NGOs proved highly susceptible to corruption, inefficiencies, and exploitation. VIGNETTE 2: BUYING A CAR

Money did not fit neatly into the organizational script of local NGOs. On the one hand, the script espoused self-sacrifice, commitment to others, and transparent accounting practices. But on the other hand, the script legitimated the neopatrimonial “big-man” practices common in both Liberia and Ghana—in the minds of most fellow Liberians, if not donors. At the material level, local NGOs faced serious challenges of ownership, compensation, redistribution, and capital accumulation. Local NGOs had no legitimate means to accumulate or store capital beyond donations for immediate use. Because the local NGO model lacked commitment to serious wages or profit sharing, executives and staff at the NGO could not draw significant funds from the organization for legitimate personal gain. Instead, many executives resorted to other practices—manipulating the books to steal money, using staff for personal services, commandeering office equipment, and distributing organizational resources to family, friends, or allies. Donors usually interpreted this behavior as corruption. Fellow Liberians tended to accept some degree of embezzlement and favoritism, but only up to a point. A metaphor one person gave me—from the perspective of a recipient of NGO aid, not an NGO executive—was if you keep the fork, fine, if you keep the knife, fine, but at least give us the spoon. A dispute over whether a large local NGO in the camp should buy a new car exemplifies the disjuncture between the donors’ normative ideals of how NGOs use resources and the regular practices by which NGO executives seek benefits.

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The quotes that follow come from an e-mail exchange between former “international volunteers”—individuals from the United States, Sweden, and elsewhere who had both volunteered at and donated to the organization. I have grouped comments by the major themes and present a few examples below. The first theme highlights the competing demands for money in local NGOs and frames this competition as a tension between money for “the community,” the staff, and the executive. One donor writes: “We had absolutely no wish to see the money we had paid to the organisation in the belief they would be to the benefit of the children, being spend on a van. (. . .) We try to be the change we want to see in the world, which by no means include a Land Rover for an organisation like [NAME].”

Another person agrees: “I hear that the second vehicle is a large SUV, the cost of filling up the tank would be astronomical by local standards. These funds should be used to pay for children.”

For the donors, the community interests—conceptualized in the first two quotes as “the children”—ought to trump the “personal” interest of the NGO executive to have the perceived luxury of a second car. A third person amplifies that criticism and ties it explicitly to illicit personal gain: “And at the end of the day there is still no money for the food program, still no money for the HIV program, still no money for the sanitation team, still no money for anything. Because [first name of NGO executive] is, quite literally, sitting on top of it.”

Another commentator agrees: “A promised stipend increase has been ignored. The peanuts that we worked so hard to get increased have now been completely eliminated leaving the children with only water. And [first name of NGO executive] enters the camp late in the night with another vehicle awakening some in our house with his celebrating. His lack of concern for the very people that he proposes to help hurts [international volunteers] but more importantly hurts and discourages so many in this community.”

According to these donors, the car represents not a choice between different community needs but a choice between community needs and personal benefits for the NGO executive. The executive wants the car not to help others but to serve himself. He is “sitting on top of it” and “celebrating” his luxuries. An important

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subtext throughout these accounts is the personal ownership of the organization by the NGO executive; that interpretation of personal ownership is also commonly expressed by camp residents, who tend to talk about a local NGO as “his” or “her” NGO. In this case, the basic details of the criticism are accurate—the NGO executive did use the car (and an earlier car) for personal transportation, and I did hear other camp inhabitants cite the car as evidence that this NGO executive was a “big man” in the camp. But the interpretation of these details can and did differ—not between donors but within the refugee community. Some said that this purchase represented corruption, while others saw it as a legitimate means for an executive to accumulate resources. Another theme that emerges in the e-mails is the exploitation of the regular employees. One person criticizes the “lack of equity between [first name of NGO executive]’s salary and the local employees.” Another person frames the purchase of the car in terms of her unsuccessful efforts to get local volunteers a raise: “Also, so that you know, [another volunteer] and I worked to increase stipends. [First name of NGO executive] refused to meet with me to discuss this, saying that the money wasn’t available. (In my last five weeks, [first name of NGO executive] refused to meet with me at all.) [Another volunteer] and I found sufficient funding, and even raised over $2,000 to assist, and still [first name of NGO executive] refused to discuss the matter. [First name of NGO executive] also stated that the board was the one to make these final decisions, but the board found that the idea was not sustainable. According to several board members, the issue was never taken to them.”

She interprets the problem as deliberate exploitation by the NGO executive, arguing that he refused to negotiate over the wages even in the face of successful fundraising and misled the board. Local NGO scripts organized the major economic relationships of the NGOs in ways that exploited most employees and made it difficult to achieve the trappings of successful professionals without corruption. Those who provided capital to the organization became “donors” and “international volunteers.” People who worked for the organization became “local volunteers.” The NGO executive became not just any employee but the owner of the local NGO. This designation mattered, because local volunteering became one of the most widely recognized civic activities in the camp. For all the positive consequences, it also became one of the most dysfunctional activities in the camp, a euphemism for poorly compensated employment at an NGO. In truth, it was easier and required less corruption to make a living as a small trader in Buduburam than as an NGO employee. Some people who had been part of the professional class left their white-collar lifestyle behind for that reason. But a prominent class of NGO executives and employees remained, and as a whole,

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this group had disproportionate voice in the camp, having more direct experience and greater legitimacy with camp authorities than other residents. They did not constitute a monolithic bloc, but against the “upstart” organizers of the Concerned Women protests, they maintained an almost universal conservative opposition.

Small Acts of Helping In their extensive comparative study of small-scale societies, Joseph Henrich and his colleagues (2004, 1) conclude that “there is no society in which experimental behaviour is even roughly consistent with the canonical model of purely self-interested actors.” Buduburam was no exception. People helped others—and relied on help from others—to such an extent that small acts of cooperation became as ordinary and forgettable as air. Next I use two vignettes to present some interesting dimensions of the small acts of helping, which I tie to broader civic engagement. In the first vignette, I explore the critical issue of water, capturing three different types of helping. In the second vignette, I share an example of domestic violence to explore a darker side of this phenomenon. VIGNETTE 3: HELPING WITH WATER

Water scarcities plagued camp residents. The expense, unhealthiness, and scarcity of water in the camp constituted a daily threat.3 But I also regularly witnessed people sharing water. So when I wanted to explore how, if at all, people came to see personal troubles as collective challenges (my original research question), water was an obvious choice. I wanted to identify the underlying logics that people used to shift from personal troubles to collective solutions—to see how people made sense of helping others—so in semistructured interviews, I asked respondents to tell me about a time when they needed help with water and a time when they helped others with water. Most people recounted fleeting acts of generosity; a few times, the prompt drew stories about more organized forms of helping. These stories varied in how central the formal administrative bodies, such as the UNHCR, became to the intervention. Because we have already talked extensively about the formal camp administration, here I share one story from the less formal side of the spectrum. Betty was raised by her uncle, a civil servant in Monrovia, but she did not have a good relationship with his family—they treated her like a servant and would not pay for her schooling after seventh grade. Despite this difficult childhood, she managed to secure a comfortable lower-middle-class life working as a tailor and was married to a military officer. The war destroyed that life. She fled Liberia in 3. It was also a new challenge for most Liberians. The average annual rainfall in Liberia is 3,213 millimeters; in Buduburam, it is 811 millimeters. See http://www.climatedata.eu/climate.php?loc= ghxx0001&lang=en.

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1996, living in Cote d’Ivoire briefly before settling in Ghana when that sanctuary collapsed. Divorced from her husband and unable to make enough money to survive as a tailor, she makes a precarious living by cooking food to sell in the market. She has managed to send her three children to the comparatively superior schools in the neighboring town of Kasoa, but she often ends up relying on informal networks of support for daily sustenance. Reluctant to take part in the more formal side of camp politics, because it “involves a lot of writing,” she nevertheless volunteers extensively in her church and serves her county association as a chaplain. In talking about the water situation in Buduburam, she said: SSI 34: “The last time it rained it was last month (. . .) one woman was not in the area, she left her house and she went to go visit, before she came the rain already finish. So the next morning, she never had water to take bath, neither to cook, so I had to give her one barrel. Q: Did she come ask you? SSI 34: I myself just see her and give her the water. She didn’t ask. She was complaining that she didn’t have water to cook, even water to take bath, and I call her and gave her. Q: What did she say? SSI 34: Thank you. God will bless you. Q: So why did you decide to give her the water? SSI 34: Because sometime as a mother, you have children, you see your friend suffering from certain thing, like myself, I passed through it, so if I see somebody suffering for water, I know what it mean.” For Betty, getting water is a regular challenge. She knows what “suffering for water” means. That experience has so thoroughly cultivated empathy for this kind of discomfort that she doesn’t need to be asked—she hears a friend complaining of troubles, knows herself to be in a rare time of abundance, and shares accordingly. Her neighbor did not force her; her neighbor was not desperate for water, only uncomfortable. Yet Betty had to share the water. It was—quite simply—what people did. In Buduburam, if you had extra water and someone expressed a need for water, you shared it. It was common decency. That is to say, sharing water in this manner was ultimately—and importantly—not an idiosyncratic act but a normal part of life in Buduburam. Sarah, a forty-three-year-old woman, likewise offered a story of helping others: “[My neighbor] asks me for drinking water, she asks me for bathing water, I give it to her.” But Sarah also unselfconsciously recounted a story of others helping her: “When I don’t have water I go to my friends there and ask them for 500 or 1,000 cedis and they give it to me and I buy water” (SSI 10). Sando, a thirty-three-year-old man, succinctly stated the common sentiment: “If I have it, I give it” (SSI 8).

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As the months passed, I learned nuances. Rainwater “came from God” and thus should be shared as freely; in contrast, hoarding water purchased from the polytank was rude but not unacceptable. One could offer a child an open sachet of water, but to offer one partially drunk to an adult was insulting. Certain small acts of helping became rule-bound social behavior—another example of the emergence of everyday moral life amid humanitarian crisis. VIGNETTE

4: A PROBLEM FOR NEIGHBORS

What constitutes “help”—help for whom and to what end? I sometimes heard international visitors complain when they saw their peers give water to a refugee, particularly a child who approached them on the street. It just makes them dependent, critics would say. I once heard a man living as a refugee complain about the resettlement of the elderly or infirm. He said, why send people to die in another country when you could send the young men and women who could make something of the opportunity to work in the United States? Like all social action, small acts of helping exist within a normative framework that makes some acts “right” and others “wrong.” Needless to say, I had my own normative framework, and I came into conflict most seriously with others over what I saw as domestic violence. So I end this discussion of small acts of helping with what was—for me—a more difficult example of helping. Like the other examples, the vignette highlights weaknesses in the formal administration of public goods and instances of collective action to cope with poor services. But the story also highlights the fact that even acts of helping operate according to existing power structures that leave some people more vulnerable than others: Sunday, October 22, 2007. A woman screaming woke me after midnight. I stumbled out of bed, getting tangled in the mosquito netting, put some clothes on, and fumbled to unlock the door. By the time I got outside, a congregation of people from the neighboring compound stood in the road between our compounds. A woman sat on the ground against the broken tro-tro someone left in front of my compound months ago. A man stood a few feet away yelling and waving his hands. She mostly wailed, but sometimes would scream something at him. The congregation made its own comments. I couldn’t decipher most of it and can’t remember any of it. The man stormed away down the road towards the Gulf. The woman continued to wail. Francis, a man from the neighboring compound whom I knew, came up to me: Me: Francis:

What happened? The girl thought her fiancé was cheating on her, so she came to see, and that’s why he was beating her. We told her not to come, to go home, but she’s very stubborn.

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What can I do? You feel for the girl? Yes. I know what I would do in America, but I don’t know what to do here. Francis: This is Africa. Nothing you can do except go and comfort her. But she is very stubborn. Me: Francis Me:

His brother Paul joined us. “What do you do in New York when you hear a noise? You come outside?” he scolded me: Me: Paul: Me: Paul:

No, not in New York, I wouldn’t come outside, but in Madison where I live, yes. No, not in New York, they shoot you. But I would call the police. Call the police! Police don’t serve our needs.

“Call the police on the girl.” I heard an old woman from the neighboring compound repeating my comment. “No, not on the girl,” I said loudly. I walked back to the compound, the woman still wailing intermittently. Much arguing still, among each other and at the girl. All that I could catch was they were upbraiding her for coming and she was saying it was not her fault that he was beating her. It seemed to me that the brothers were trying to comfort and distract me. I can’t live well without social services. I felt better that the crowd was there, but it’s not like they are on her team. But, then again, he stopped beating her.

That was the last time that I went outside when I heard screaming at night, although it was not for lack of opportunity. I remember one incident from about nine months later with particular clarity. By that point, I had been in Buduburam for close to a year. The protests had already ended badly. I was exhausted. When a woman screaming woke me in the dead of night, I felt a surge of fury at her—why did she have to go outside at night?—followed by a stabbing sense of shock and embarrassment. Of course, it is not her fault, I reminded myself, and God knows, she probably hadn’t even left her house. Yet that moment gave me a new perspective on the incident with my neighbors from October. All this time, I had thought of that incident solely as a reflection of a gender-inequality regime that led people to blame women victimized by domestic violence. Certainly that was part of it, but there was something else happening, too, which I could finally grasp all these months later. When someone cried for help at night in Buduburam, they left bystanders with three choices: ignore it, go outside and risk attack, or try to gather neighbors, potentially putting others at risk but lessening the risk of personal attack. In Wisconsin, I had a fourth option—I could call the police. This pattern was woven into everyday life in the camp. When people asked for food, in Wisconsin, I could refer them to a

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food pantry; in Buduburam, it was a personal burden. If people asked me to support their schooling, in Wisconsin, I could shift the responsibility to the public school system, but here I could not. This is an old insight, but it bears repeating, not because a refugee camp is the only place where this happens but because it happens in the United States, too: it is hard to be a good person in a bad place. I found it harder to be a decent human being in the refugee camp than anywhere else I have ever lived or traveled. The many years since I returned have not rid me of the shame accumulated over those long months. When people ask me what it is like in a refugee camp, the best answer I have found is that it is a place of hard choices. There is no force that compels people to respond to adversity with courage and generosity. There was a lot of cruelty in Buduburam. If anything, that fact made the small acts of helping that became part of daily life even more powerful.

Mundane Factionalism Scholars cast factionalism in refugee camps in a dire light, raising concerns about warring parties from the original conflict or destabilizing forays into host politics, factionalized politics that threaten people’s well-being (Lischer 2005; Milner 2005; Turner 2010). In this final section, I examine factionalism on the eve of the Concerned Women protests. My objective here as elsewhere in this chapter is to give the reader sufficient context to judge the events of the Concerned Women protests—in this case, by providing some background information to consider when we explore the UNHCR’s fear that the Concerned Women threatened other camp residents (see Chapter 5). If other research on refugee camps highlights the devastating factionalism of refugee crisis—warring parties and interventions in host politics—my account from the Buduburam Refugee Camp draws attention to the mundane factionalism. I wish to convey four basic insights about factionalism in Buduburam. First, there was no neutral “refugee voice” for the camp administrators to survey in participatory needs assessments, only competing factions with different agendas. Second, different factions had unequal access to decision makers. The faction that the UNHCR respected—the Welfare Council—struggled to preserve its place by shutting out other groups, while new groups sought to gain more authority by delegitimating the Welfare Council. This dynamic surfaced in important ways during the Concerned Women protests, but it had existed for many years prior to that movement, just part of the regular rough-and-tumble of camp politics. Third, ethnic ties and political party affiliation had surprisingly weak roles in factionalism in Buduburam, where small-town politics prevailed—everybody knew everybody, and ethnic loyalties did not segregate community leaders. The factions that I saw were issue-oriented, interpersonal, and everchanging—much less rigid than ethnic or political party allegiance. Lastly, people

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often used discourses about peace and reconciliation and the dangers of the Liberian civil war to diffuse tensions when disputes between factions became heated. In other words, refugee leaders policed themselves and their peers to mitigate the potential for mundane factionalism to spawn riots or other destructive outcomes. Below I offer three vignettes that represent a wide range of types of factional activities to illustrate these points. The first vignettes examine how the Welfare Council engaged in factional disputes with other refugee groups. The second vignette illustrates factionalism in social movement activism. The final vignette examines factionalism in relation with the UNHCR.

Vignette 5: Welfare Council versus Elders Council In November 2007, the chairman of the Grand Kru elders rejected the election results for the Elders Council chairmanship. The commandant subsequently nullified the elections, an act that supporters of the original winner blamed on the Welfare Council chairman. Several weeks later, the commandant reversed his decision and let the original elections results stand. I have reconstructed that dispute using interviews collected by reporters from The Vision, the refugee-run newspaper that I was volunteering with at the time.4 The contested 2007 elections were both an internal power struggle between two groups of elders and a glimpse into factionalism between two major refugee representative bodies in Buduburam. My focus is the conflict between representative bodies. What the vignette reveals is two major frames in factionalism in camp politics. The first frame juxtaposes true Liberian representatives against entrenched Liberian representatives who serve only Ghanaian interests. The underlying premise for this frame is that Liberian refugees constitute a cohesive body that deserves to manage its own affairs. A second frame appeals to the need to maintain peace and protect against the sort of conflict that destroyed Liberia. Any faction or bystander could use this frame to try to quell dispute. Both of these frames surfaced during the Concerned Women protests. BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Originally established as a forum for arbitrating disputes between camp residents, the Elders Council became another platform for community leaders seeking authority in camp politics. It comprised representatives from the different counties of Liberia.5 The camp did not host refugees from every county in Liberia, but 4. I attended most of the interviews, but Abednego David, Zanoe Roberts, and Leon Toe did the actual work of conducting them. Their article was subsequently published in the November edition of the newspaper under the title “Grand Kru County Rejects Kanneo Chairmanship” (by Abednego David and Zanoe Roberts). I use some quotes from that article, but mostly I rely on the interview transcripts. 5. Liberia is divided administratively and socially into counties, which are one of the primary signifiers of social position. People whose parents or grandparents left their counties and moved to the capital

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the most widely represented counties, including Grand Gedeh, Bong, Lofa, and others, established county associations in the 1990s and early 2000s. These associations sometimes cooperated to run programming, such as football competitions, and the head of Heads of County became a prominent leader during the Concerned Women protests. County associations chose elders to send to the Elders Council, but other people of suitable age could join the Elders Council, too. For our purposes, what matters here is that people could gain political authority through the Elders Council without having allegiances with the camp administration or the Welfare Council; it represented a separate power base in the camp. The Elders Council was closely affiliated with Population Caring Organization (PCO), a prominent local NGO. But its members were generally less professionalized than Welfare Council members—that is, they were more likely to come from rural Liberia, have less formal schooling, and be part of an older generation than Welfare Council members. But at the same time, the camp administration often chose Welfare Council leaders based on their successful leadership in county associations (for example, the Welfare Council chairman during the Concerned Women protests had previously been head of his county association). Over the years, the Elders Council frequently vied with the Welfare Council for prominence. By 2007, the organization had been formally incorporated into the administrative structure of the Welfare Council as a subordinate branch. But underneath the umbrella of formal cooperation, the groups remained factions that competed for legitimacy and voice in camp politics. THE WELFARE COUNCIL PERSPECTIVE

When my colleague and I came to interview the Welfare Council chairman about grievance procedures in the refugee camp, it unexpectedly became a window into the competition with the Elders Council. The chairman launches into an unprompted diatribe against the Elders Council, which he frames as corrupt and overly ambitious (he uses an alternate name for the Elders Council: the tribal reconciliation forum). First the chairman states that the Elders Council sought—incorrectly, in his view—to set up a court independent from the Welfare Council: “The tribal reconciliation forum was not intended to open another office, another court, you know, like going to judge a matter, and so on and so forth. But out of ignorance, they were doing that.”

The subtext here is a dispute over whether the Elders Council or the Welfare Council should provide the forum for arbitrating disagreements in the community. city of Monrovia would still identify as a member of that county, even if they have never visited there. Some counties have only one ethnic group, while others have more than one. Some ethnic groups are found in more than one county. Notwithstanding, “county” is sometimes used interchangeably with “tribe,” so a county association is often (but not always) a co-ethnic association.

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From the Welfare Council chairman’s perspective, the answer is clear: it is a task for the Welfare Council. Next, the chairman criticizes the Elders Council for corruption and general ineptitude: “They were not intended to take money from one another to say, “We are going to make ID cards.” You know if you engage into that, you engaging into problems. So instead of having the very delegates of the Elder Council to have been identified, they decided to identify every old person, that, which made the whole situation to look very, very ridiculous. So every old person was a member of the Elder Council, and that is not it. So that brought about a complete chaos, so in that sense, that’s why I was saying that, (. . .) it was not intended for you to take all the old people and cause them to pay money for you to say, “Oh, I want to identify them” when you are not even able to give all of them identity.”

As he finishes, he distances himself from the electoral dispute, framing it as an “internal problem” that he is sure “they are trying to improve”: “And it is an internal problem. But take it as I have said. That the exposition initially was not meant. And I’m sure they are trying to improve upon it.”6

Several days later, when journalists interview him about the conflict over the elections, the Welfare Council chairman reiterates his earlier criticisms but also seeks to downplay even more so his role in the dispute: Reporter:

WC chairman:

Reporter:

“Another issue that has been raised is that the Elders Council is an autonomous body that does not take decisions from camp authorities. Well, how responsible is that that a certain body will be on the camp that they do not take instruction from camp authorities? This camp is being managed by a management. Well, like any other government, any establishment, the Elder Council should be a group of people—a group of wise people—that will be on and off advising the Welfare Council, and even the camp management of situation that will affect the camp, you know. They are like advisory board. They are a group of people with wisdom—presume they have wisdom—and they are able to advise the institutions on this camp, so that we can have peace and tranquility and progress. That’s it. So what would be your final word with respect to the Elders Council?

6. Welfare Council chairman, interview by Leon Toe and Elizabeth Holzer, November 1, 2007.

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WC chairman:

Well, I want them to know that I did not nullify that election, and I’m not [the one] with the authority to nullify it. Okay. Good. So there was just a mere allegation against me like one can have allegation against any leader. So I just want you to understand that. Yeah, I got no fish to fry in that oil. And let him tell you who lifted the ban, whether it was me or it was the manager.”7

Unlike the Elders Council members, whom we hear from next, the Welfare Council chairman embraces the position of his organization within the broader administrative system of Buduburam. “Camp authorities,” for the Welfare Council chairman, constitute a legitimate body to whom the refugee representative bodies must defer. Indeed, by 2007, the Welfare Council had come to rely more heavily on the camp administration than popular sentiment to maintain its power. The council had not held elections since the mid-1990s; the camp administration appointed the members. THE ELDERS COUNCIL PERSPECTIVE

An interview with members of the Elders Council provides an equally rich account of the dispute between the two representative bodies.8 The discussion begins with a reporter asking the Elders Councilmen to comment on the commandant’s statement that he did not nullify the elections. The speaker responds with disbelief—“The camp manager doesn’t nullify any election—that what he said?”—and then segues into an impassioned defense of the election protocol: [Speaker unknown]:

“The timetable of the election was presented to the camp manager and to the Welfare Committee. The members of the Elder Council came together in accordance with the bylaws and constitution to run an election. That information we passed on to them. They accepted, they gave us the time, and he asked us to have it at his office.”

The speaker tacitly recognizes the superior position of the Welfare Council, saying that he had presented the council as well as the commandant with a timetable for the elections. Later in the interview, the Election Commission chairman says: “We agree, he is the chairman for the whole camp, that was sent here by Ghana government. He is here as an eye for Ghana government.” But he turns that very legitimacy into a criticism: “Well, I don’t think he is here to make decisions for us. And if we make our decisions, for we the Liberians, we ourselves, we know how to handle our things, our own problems.” 7. Welfare Council chairman, interview by Abednego David, November 13, 2007. 8. Members of the Elders Council, interview by Abednego David and Leon Toe, November 14, 2007.

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The Liberians constitute a separate group from the Ghanaian citizens—they have the right to handle their own issues, in the speaker’s mind. This is a major frame in factionalism in camp politics—the “true” Liberian representative taking a stand against the entrenched Liberian representatives who serve only Ghanaian interests. The dispute between the Welfare Council and the Elders Council hinged on this dynamic—as did the Concerned Women protests. A second frame emerges as well—the need to guard against the sort of conflict that brought war to Liberia: Election Commission chairman:

“If we are not careful, we will mislead one another, conflict will come on the camp, and this is what we don’t want. (. . .) We sat together and we said we want to put our differences aside. We should be one. We should reconcile. Whatsoever has happened to you in Liberia, whether it was my son who did it, it was my brother who did it, we should forget it. So we all are putting together and having our election. This is Liberia’s own problem. Our problem. It’s not Ghana who select leader for us. (. . .) So we are asking you people, if you want to know those things, if you want to get all those stories, you meet us at [location] at four o’clock. You people are our children. We cannot hide from you people. We are not stealing, we are not doing anything to harm somebody.”

The violence of war lies not far below the surface of any public endeavor in Buduburam, but speakers can use that rhetoric strategically—to defend any position and silence any opposition. For the chairman of the Elders Council Election Commission, the war-torn past provides reason not to overturn election results favorable to his candidate. But the reporter, well-versed in this rhetorical strategy, redirects the discussion to the concrete allegations that the commandant made to justify nullifying the elections. He says, “[Commandant] said you people went and charged 100,000 [cedis], and it didn’t go well with him.” The Elders Council representative responds not by refuting that act but by returning to the first frame to deny that it is corruption and that the camp administration has the authority to condemn that practice: Election Commission chairman:

“Even if we charge 1 million, that’s not his business, that’s our business. (. . .) The 1.5 hundred thousand we are paying for wire, the school

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Audience: Election Commission chairman: Audience: Election Commission chairman:

Audience member: Election Commission chairman: Audience member: Election Commission chairman: Audience: Election Commission chairman:

fee we are paying, the toilet fee we are paying here— The hospital. The hospital fee that we are paying here— Market. The market tax that we are paying here. Why that don’t go down well with him? Why he can’t go to UN, and talk to UN that the money that refugee are paying, that we not supposed to be paying that amount! But we are paying it to Ghanaians [so he does not object]. But we Liberians, we tax ourselves! Did you refuse to pay? No. Did you refuse to pay? No. Who refused here to pay the 10,000, the 100,000? Nobody! Nobody! We all volunteer to pay it.”

Like other disputes in Buduburam, the conflict over the Elders Council elections soon faded. The Grand Kru elder withdrew his claim, and the longstanding competition between the Elders Council and the Welfare Council once again subsided. It remained in abeyance until the Welfare Council chairman’s public misstep during the Concerned Women protests raised an outcry against the Welfare Council. At that point, the Elders Council, which had no real internal agreement over the legitimacy of the protests, joined a group of community leaders in public support of the Concerned Women (a story I share in the next chapter).

Vignette 6: Protesting for Schoolchildren . . . or Electricity? Factionalism also surfaced in efforts to reform camp policies. The following account comes from Tomah, one of the Concerned Women organizers. Tomah had also participated in an earlier social movement to increase children’s access to schools. The movement succeeded (temporarily) in convincing surrounding schools to enroll Liberians with the promise that the UNHCR would eventually be willing to pay their school fees. Here, she describes how they took advantage of an UNHCR official’s visit to the refugee camp to plead their case. It is an

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interesting example of factionalism, because the visit was actually intended as an advocacy effort to bring electricity to the camp: January 14, 2008. Tomah: They told me that the UNHCR was coming to camp late, around 5:30, so that people would be just going about their business. They were coming about electricity. We printed placards against electricity, in support of education. We kept the children late and gave them placards. I had someone in the office who called me when they came, and we went, and they ran to them with cameras [laughing]. The camp commandant took one, and the UNHCR protection officer took one, but there was one more, and the sign holder put it in the electricity man’s hand.

Refugee activists confronted a sea of concerns. Electricity, water, food, crime, migration, housing, sanitation, health, education—the list of collective problems went on and on, far beyond what any single movement could achieve. Refugee activists made choices between needs. Tomah’s group chose children’s education. They saw advocacy for electricity as neither an allied cause nor even a neutral campaign but as a project that redirected scarce UNHCR resources away from what they saw as a more fundamental collective need. They crafted protest tactics that deliberately disrupted that campaign—the signs against electricity deployed at a ceremonial visit of the UNHCR officials and the representative of the electricity company. Even in social movements—or perhaps especially in social movements—factionalism became a regular part of affairs.

Vignette 7: Organizing for a Participatory Planning Session The last example of factionalism that I share is the most subtle. The vignette recounts a meeting that the Welfare Council held in anticipation of a UNHCRmandated focus group discussion. Officially, the UNHCR uses focus groups called “participatory planning sessions” to solicit input in their planning. These sessions target vulnerable subpopulations in the community—they might hold one for old women and another for disabled people. The participatory planning sessions played a central role both in the emergence of the Concerned Women movement and in the February–March 2008 sit-down protest (a story that appears in the next chapter). This vignette shows how the Welfare Council members understood participatory planning sessions as an opportunity and a risk. The data come from field notes collected in November 2007 before I had heard of the Concerned Women. I had gone to the Welfare Council to try to meet with a member and accidentally got myself invited to a meeting where the Welfare Council chairman

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organized a committee to plan for the upcoming participatory planning session. In their planning, council members sought to draft well-informed questions and answers and coach participants to follow a prepared script. A Welfare Council member explained the backstory to me as we walked into the room: ‘Two weeks ago we decided to have a brainstorming session in preparation to meet the Ghana Refugee Board, the UNHCR, and Ghana immigration services. The consensus was to create a committee of people from the zones to streamline the questioning, so that we don’t have anybody say anything. So we can come about with our own position.’ We sat down in the Welfare Council meeting room, where I counted about thirty-eight people present—including, surprisingly to me, twelve women. The speaker began with a roll call by zone, checking the names off as she called. She finished, and the chairman took over, saying, ‘At this stage we had better to put our heads together.’ He explained that the UNHCR was planning durable solutions and read some passages from a UNHCR manual about resettlement, local integration, and repatriation. His main point was that nothing said that resettlement programs must end when local integration begins—that they needed to make sure that the UNHCR continued with resettlement and repatriation, even if they did decide to begin local integration. Then he explained what he wanted from the people in the audience: it is ‘not for one person to do. They decided to put us in groups.’ He explained that this grouping was by age, gender, and other categories: ‘We decided we will all of us meet together to find those who know how to ask questions. We know plenty things about UNHCR business.’ For the UNHCR, participatory planning sessions were an opportunity to hear refugee voices. For the Welfare Council members, it was not a matter of refugee voice but of presenting “our own position”—a position in a policy debate that the UNHCR hardly even recognized as a debate. The danger was that “anybody say anything,” but the Welfare Council could avert that danger by careful preparation. For the UNHCR, this would probably have looked like an example of refugee manipulation, but for our purposes, the event serves as another piece of evidence that civic and political activities constituted a normal part of camp life. But it is also worth noting that a serious gap existed between how politically active camp residents understood participatory planning sessions and how the UNHCR sought to use them. This gap gave the seemingly innocuous administrative act explosive potential.

Civic Engagement in Refugee Crises After her fieldwork in the Dadaab refugee camps in Kenya, Hyndman concluded that a refugee camp is not a community. It is a means of containing foreigners, not a voluntary association of people united by meaningful social ties (2000, 139, 149).

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But Buduburam was a community. I don’t take this as evidence that refugee camps naturally foster meaningful social ties, but Buduburam is not unique in this outcome: the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria (A. Lippert 1992), the Hutu refugee camps in Tanzania (Malkki 1995, 16), and the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon (Peteet 2005, 122) and Jordan (Rosenfeld 2004) all became communities. If community is neither intrinsic nor anathema to refugee camps, then it is incumbent upon the observer to ask how people living as refugees engage with one another in this time and place. To answer this question requires attention to both the formal camp administration and to informal civic acts that define camp life. Researchers need to be asking this question, because strong civic engagement is all that allows camp administration to persist in the face of the scarcities endemic to refugee crises. Evidence from a wide range of humanitarian settings shows that people living as refugees organize themselves in social, political, and economic groups. Some of these examples are firsthand accounts from memoirs. Louise Barton (2011, 160), for example, recounts a small collective act after her near death from an angry mob in Sierra Leone: “I was asked to speak at a meeting held under a tent that was used for large gatherings [in the Waterloo refugee camp] . . . a few of us penned a letter to the UNHCR.” Likewise, Marie Umutesi (2004) describes her civic efforts in the refugee camps in Zaire/DRC. Many refugee camps had committees; the Kaleah and Forecariah camps in Guinea and Liberia closely resembled Buduburam’s Welfare Council (O’Neill 2000). Others operated as governmentsin-exile, like the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea in the Cambodian camps in Thailand (Robinson 2000) and the Polisario in the Sahrawi camps in Algeria (A. Lippert 1992). Even when people living as refugees integrate into the host community without camps, representative groups emerge; the Liberian refugees in Côte d’Ivoire followed this pattern (Kuhlman 2002). Civic engagement and collective action are an ordinary part of humanitarian crisis. In Buduburam, residents confronted an amalgam of Ghanaian municipal government, UNHCR camp management, and Liberian customary institutions. This administrative system promoted some forms of civic engagement, particularly local volunteering and public-spirited acts organized by the Welfare Council. It treated other activities as deviant: militarism and riots, but also client-patron politics, elections, factionalism, and disruptive protest tactics. Some deviant civic acts—namely, the client-patron politics, factionalism, and disruptive protest tactics—still remained common practice in the camp. What this meant for the Concerned Women protests was that reasonable people could disagree about how best to pursue grievances about the administration of public goods. It also meant that a disjuncture had developed between the civic acts that the camp authorities had established procedures to respond to and the repertoire of contention that camp residents considered available to pursue grievances.

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The relationships among civic-minded residents were fraught with complexities that camp administrators had no real means of resolving. There was no neutral refugee voice for the UNHCR to identify as representative of the Buduburam community. There were only competing factions with different agendas and unequal access to decision makers, such as the UNHCR. At the same time, refugee leaders made concerted efforts to keep conflicts in the camp from escalating into violence with a great deal of success. Like civic engagement, mundane factionalism is a part of life in humanitarian crisis. This may take the form of political maneuvering between traditional leaders and young leaders fluent in development talk, as was the case among Ethiopian refugees in Qoryoley and Jalalaqsi refugee camps in Somalia (Kibreab 1993) and Hutu refugees in the Lukole refugee camp in Tanzania (Turner 2006). It may mobilize and exacerbate social fissures like ethnicity or war party affiliation. But often, factionalism emerges through ordinary differences of opinion over complex collective problems, like how to make a home for oneself after war. In Buduburam, it was not the destructive factionalism of some refugee camps but a mundane factionalism that rarely reflected permanent loyalties. Civic engagement is not always selfless; it is not always effectual. A refugee camp is not a community of saints any more than it is a community of rebels. But to properly understand the political activism in refugee crisis and to clearheadedly examine the UNHCR’s response to the protesters, it is critical to first grasp this basic point: camp residents commonly engage in benign ways with the formal administration of the refugee camp. There is nothing new—or inherently destructive—about a refugee group’s seeking to influence the administration of public goods in refugee crises.

Chapter 3

Bifurcated Governmentality

When I met Patricia in 2008, she had been living in the Buduburam Refugee Camp for six years. A petite woman with a soft voice and dark expressive eyes, Patricia embodied the truncated middle-class trajectory so common among camp residents. She grew up in Monrovia, fostered by an elder sister who owned a successful business in the capital. But when she was seventeen, the war forced her high school to close, and she never again found consistent schooling. At thirtyfive and living as a refugee, her intelligence and urban, middle-class background offered few advantages. She made an erratic living selling ice water. Before the protests, she had little direct contact with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) or camp authorities; she told me once that she preferred to live quietly. Nevertheless, she proved to be a cogent observer of civic and political life in the camp. When I asked her to tell me about the camp authorities, she began by reaffirming the (to her) obvious: “Everybody knows that the Liberian refugees are under the umbrella of the UN” (SSI 49). That framework gave Patricia a sense of security. Speaking of the activities of the Ghanaian authorities during the protests, she said, “It’s because of the UN and internationally all eyes were on [the Ghanaian authorities], they couldn’t have gone to the extent of the degree of evil that they wanted to do to us” (SSI 49). Patricia framed the UNHCR as a powerful defender in an insecure world. Patricia’s Uncle Martin had come to the Buduburam Refugee Camp in 1993 after a circuitous two-year journey through Guinea and Côte D’Ivoire. A broad-shouldered, compact man who exuded vitality, Martin spoke firmly and

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knowledgeably about camp life and refugee politics. He had studied at the University of Liberia, where he became a prominent member of the influential student branch of a major political party. Forced to flee before he finished his degree, Martin won a coveted scholarship to continue his university studies in Ghana and eventually earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees. In Buduburam, where he lived with his wife and children, Martin was fortunate to possess an extensive social network of kin, former classmates, and friends that included not only fellow Liberians but also Ghanaian citizens. But even with these social ties and credentials, he found it impossible to find professional work in Ghana. Among his fellow refugees, he served as a community leader, widely respected for his educational achievements, wisdom, and warm-heartedness. Unlike his niece, Martin had extensive experience with the UNHCR both as a recipient of aid and as an advocate for community projects. He framed the organization quite differently than she did: “People will think that when it comes to the UNHCR, they are in charge of the refugees” (SSI 46), he told me. “And other places that I know, that I’ve heard about, the UNHCR is autonomous. But, here in Ghana, the UNHCR is not actually autonomous.” He saw the organization as a largely powerless figure. “The local UNHCR is not doing anything,” he said. Martin framed the UNHCR as a marginal figure in a heartless sanctuary. Patricia and Martin present two separate visions of the refugee camp and of a new and increasingly common form of politics in the global South: transnational government. Transnational government is the quasi-governmental authority that nonstate actors sometimes assume over constituents in their forays across borders—for example, the UN Transitional Administration, as it pays civil servants and commissions new bridges in postconflict East Timor (Harland 2005); CARE, as it administers basic services in the Dadaab refugee camps in Kenya (Agier 2002); and the Firestone Corporation, as it creates schools and circumvents labor and environmental regulations in Harbel, Liberia (Rizvi 2005). Transnational organizations have become major players in poor and middle-income countries, but scholars—and the constituencies, government officials, and the organizational staff members themselves—are still struggling to figure out where they fit in the larger scheme of things. Are they part of civil society? The government? The economy? Do they belong to the host state? To the “international community?” These transnational organizations that act in statelike ways raise new questions about political life in poor countries. What critical refugee scholars have concluded about the UNHCR’s activities in refugee camps is that the agency operates as a quasi-governmental authority figure (Agier 2011; Barnett 2001; Hyndman 2000; Slaughter and Crisp 2008; Voutira and Harrell-Bond 1995). But this conclusion raises as many questions as it answers. Refugees still live in a nation-state, don’t they? Isn’t that nation-state

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supposed to retain sovereign authority over the entirety of its territory? Then what is the relationship between refugees, transnationals, and hosts in that context? This chapter explores transnational political arrangements from the perspectives of constituents while exposing the material conditions that have promoted some ways of talking about the UNHCR over others. The chief mystery is why Patricia’s vision of the transnational social world rather than her uncle’s became the dominant frame for the UNHCR among camp residents.

What Is a Frame, and How Does It Differ from a Belief? When we talk about the world around us, we simultaneously construct frames that bring some aspects of that environment to the forefront and obscure other parts of it. Frames work by “making some ideas ‘unthinkable’ and others ‘common sense’” (Ferree 2003, 309). Sometimes, we deliberately cultivate desired meanings for strategic ends, actively choosing one frame over another—social movement scholars frequently write about this phenomenon (Benford and Snow 2000; Oliver and Johnston 2000; Steinberg 1998, 19). Other times, we do it unselfconsciously. To say that Patricia and most camp residents framed the UNHCR as a caregiver does not mean that they truly believed in their private hearts that the UNHCR cared for refugees—but it does not deny that possibility either. As a conceptual tool, frames help us analyze the power of interpretive processes even when beliefs and meaning are uncertain. A frame may reflect a deep-seated personal belief or a momentary platitude. But in either case, frames have consequences. Existing political landscapes constrain the effectiveness of frames, so if we want to understand the nature and limits of any given frame, we need to explore it in relation to the wider political landscape. That is what I am doing in this chapter—situating the UNHCR-as-caregiver frame in the wider context of humanitarian intervention. But it is also important to recognize that the frames themselves are not forced on us. People can oppose a dominant frame, as Martin did. “[Frames] are never fully freely chosen, but also not institutionally dictated” (Ferree 2003, 309). In this chapter, my interest lies in the dominant frame. When I say that Patricia’s vision of the transnational social world became the dominant frame in Buduburam, I mean that when people talked about the UNHCR, they tended to present the UNHCR as a separate authority figure that, unlike Ghanaian authorities, actually cared for refugees. The UNHCR-as-caregiver frame influenced the way that people criticized the UNHCR just as much as how they praised the agency. But in the UNHCR-as-caregiver frame, the UNHCR’s shortcomings

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derived not from ill intent or lack of resources but from misunderstanding or Ghanaian malfeasance.

The Emergence of Divided Camp Government: Global Trends and Local History In chapter 2 I showed how the actual practice of camp government belied an easy dichotomy between caring UNHCR authorities and coercive Ghanaian authorities. But how did camp government come to assume this incomplete division?

Transnational Scripts and the Growth of Distance between Hosts and Refugees By the time I arrived at Buduburam, the camp had existed for more than a decade without ever fully integrating into the Ghanaian administrative system. Kasoa, the neighboring town, had a district chief executive and a district assembly, the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice heard grievances about local administration, and an auditor general administered an annual audit of the district assembly to report to Parliament. But Buduburam was run by a “settlement manager,” while other officials held such titles as “protection officer” and “nutrition program coordinator.” Buduburam followed a different administrative template, one that created a political and administrative distance from the host state. In Ghana, this administrative distance was all the more striking because it was not matched by a social distance: Ghanaian nationals lived in and around Buduburam in ever-increasing numbers as years passed (Agblorti 2011). Accounts of refugee camps often take for granted the sociopolitical isolation between refugees and hosts that differentiates refugee camps from other forms of sanctuary from war, such as urban refuge or rural integration. How this sociopolitical isolation actually happens remains something of a mystery in other accounts of refugee camps, but that historical process matters for contemporary camp politics. In Ghana, the UNHCR drew on a transnational administrative template whose main elements were visible in the Camp Management Toolkit, Community-Based Approach in UNHCR Operations, and other manuals it disseminated. These documents included samples of forms and agreements that managers were invited to adapt to their own settings to conduct a registration exercise, submit a social work form for an unaccompanied minor, or draft a voluntary repatriation tripartite agreement. In two manuals, I found copies of the statute for the community policing force in Buduburam—a local initiative marked as a success and now included as a “best practice” in the transnational template.

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The overarching thrust of the UNHCR’s camp management template was to make the camp and its inhabitants governable by the techniques of modern liberal government. For example, every unit must be given numeric identifiers by authorities. Toward this end, in Buduburam, the UNHCR carried out a registration exercise in which everyone was asked such questions as “Why did you leave your home country?” At the top of the form, a space was provided for a sevendigit “Individual Registration Number.” The bottom corner noted that this was version 5 of the questionnaire. These questions were not crafted locally for Liberian refugees—the form used the phrase “home country” rather than “Liberia.” Instead, the form was part of a transnational script for governing refugee camps. Likewise, buildings were units to be made governable. Houses in Buduburam were makeshift structures with cracking walls and lopsided windows, but each had a number painted on the side; a UNHCR map of one zone of the camp listed each numbered unit. What this meant was that as Buduburam grew, it became institutionalized as both a separate and a different type of political unit from the rest of Ghana. But this basic trajectory was far from uniform, because other global pressures pushed the local UNHCR offices in different directions. During the 1990s, progressive reforms at the UNHCR headquarters in Geneva created institutional pressures to incorporate hosts into refugee administration in visible ways. The practical compromise reached in the local offices left the UNCHR’s administrative scripts and financing in place but brought in Ghanaian citizens and organizations to actually carry out these transnational administrative scripts either as employees or as subcontractors for the UNHCR. This account, which places the UNHCR on the side of modern liberal government, was not a natural division but a contrived one. In both Ghana and Liberia, authorities governed with many of the same techniques. Warren D’Azevedo (1962, 514) notes the tendency toward bureaucratization and secularization in government in northwestern Liberian in the 1950s and 1960s; chiefs “construct around themselves a bureaucratic administrative apparatus staffed with nonkin clients who serve to insulate them from the elders of their descent groups.” Conversely, patron-client relations remain a part of the otherwise bureaucratized political system in postindustrial contexts, too; Michael Johnston (1979) analyzes ethnic ties in the Connecticut Democratic political machine in 1974. The point is that as camp authorities used these identification techniques and other parts of a transnational script to make Buduburam governable, they made the camp into a separate political unit from the rest of Ghana. One can imagine an alternative script that would have channeled humanitarian aid through Ghanaian institutions relying on, for example, the national census that hosts used to make their own political units. When one stops to think about how the system could have been

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structured differently, it becomes easier to recognize the administrative choices that authorities made. Kasoa, for example, had been a small village until it was transformed by an influx of Nigerian migrants in the 1960s and 1970s, many of whom were refugees from the Nigerian-Biafran War. The Nigerian refugees found their way to Ghana before the UNHCR had a strong foothold in Ghana and integrated inasmuch as they were permitted into the existing sociopolitical system of the district. Their welcome was by no means seamless—mass deportations in 1969 had serious repercussions for Nigerian-Ghanaian relations (Agadjanian 2008)—but it did represent a different set of political relationships than those established through humanitarian intervention. There is no evidence that the UNHCR usurped authority over Buduburam; the Ghanaian government may have abdicated authority over refugees, forcing the UNHCR to step in. But the consequences remain irrespective of the intent: these transnational scripts created a separate quasi-township and carved out a quasigovernmental role for the UNHCR.

A Poor, Unstable Quasi-Town Although the UNHCR occupied a quasi-governmental position in Ghana, the resource constraints of the international refugee protection regime combined with the poverty in Ghana to severely circumscribe the agency. Donors tend to direct funds to immediate, high-profile crises rather than assistance programs in protracted refugee situations (Loescher, Betts, and Milner 2008, 105). The UNHCR-Ghana was chronically underfunded. Nowhere in Buduburam were these resource constraints more deeply felt than in the agency’s migration programs. The UNHCR needs the voluntary cooperation of states to grant asylum, but states in the global North and South are increasingly struggling to keep refugees away from their borders. One consequence is that UNHCR can permanently resettle only a small fraction of refugees (Mertus 1998, 339). But global resource pressures have affected migration programs in other ways, too. Communications between UNHCR-Ghana and the main offices and between UNHCR and donors show that the Ghana office was frequently too understaffed to even process resettlement cases. A 2004 UNHCR report concludes, “In 2005, absent increased human and financial resources, it is anticipated that UNHCR-Ghana will only have the capacity to process approximately 300 persons versus a need of at least 4300” (UNHCR 2004a, 40). Buduburam also lacked basic infrastructure. The shallow, open-air drains that ran across the camp were used as sewers and garbage dumps, as were the patches of land at the outskirts of the camp. Water was scarce—except in the rainy season, when some areas of the camp flooded. People complained of insecurity,

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hunger, poor health, and steep barriers to economic and educational opportunities, and the UNHCR frequently agreed with these assessments: “[B]asic facilities in Buduburam Refugee Settlement . . . [have] fallen to a level far below accepted international standards—due to the pressures exerted by a huge increase in population” (UNHCR 2004b, 160). Buduburam may have become a quasi-town with the UNHCR its quasi-governmental authority, but the global resource constraints on asylum and funding left a straitened authority governing a poor, unstable quasi-township.

The Place of Hosts and the Structural Intersections of Authorities In this setting, the UNHCR was left to administer social services and certain migration programs as best it could, but security remained under host authority. The Camp Management Toolkit states: “Unquestionably, the state has the primary responsibility for protecting IDP, refugee and host communities, and ensuring public order and security from internal and external threats” (Norwegian Refugee Council et al. 2004, 154). Other ethnographies conclude with similar pictures of humanitarians devoted to social services and hosts focused on security (Hyndman 2000; Malkki 1995; Turner 2005; Voutira and Harrell-Bond 1995). My earliest field notes record that the UNHCR administered the food, education, health, infrastructure, and migration programs, while the Ghanaian authorities policed the camp. But gradually, inconsistencies began to emerge in this simple picture. I found evidence that hosts regularly intervened in social services and humanitarians were involved in security affairs. For example, in Buduburam, the National Catholic Secretariat (NCS), a host nongovernmental organization (NGO), administered the food program; the Christian Council, another host NGO, administered the UNHCR’s scholarship program. The NCS reported to the Ghanaian Social Welfare Office, which had a branch in the camp, as well as to the UNHCR. In addition, the UNHCR often intervened in security affairs—for example, by giving communication equipment to the Buduburam police, supporting a community policing force by providing flashlights and boots (Zongolowicz 2003), and maintaining a direct line of communication with the force.1 Also, the UNHCR would sometimes formally designate administrative activities as a “joint program” or “joint exercise” with hosts while retaining control behind the scenes. The registration form labeled the refugee census as a “joint exercise” with Ghana, even though the form followed the transnational script. 1. Statute of the Neighborhood Watch Team, Art. 10, on file with the author.

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These administrative overlaps linked the UNHCR and Ghanaian authorities and thus created structural grounds for people to imagine that humanitarian and host authorities composed a single authority figure—“camp authorities”—rather than two distinct entities. But as people tried to make sense of these administrative overlaps, most people drew a different conclusion.

The Subjective Redivision of Authorities When camp residents talked about camp government, they almost always perceived this incomplete division of camp authority as a complete division between the UNHCR and “the Ghanaians”—and not a neutral division at that. People commonly used caregiving discourses to describe interactions with the UNHCR or characterize the agency. This frame surfaced in almost all political talk in Buduburam. People deployed this frame to criticize the UNHCR as well as praise it. They used it in strategic appeals to the agency as well as in offhand comments to fellow residents. A person could virulently reject that frame at one point in an interview and then unthinkingly deploy it a few minutes later. But this frame, far from being an unremarkable feature of the political landscape, seriously influenced camp politics. I explore the consequences in Chapter 6. For now, the task at hand is to document and explain its presence. In this context of partially integrated government, three mechanisms emerged that made it easier for people to imagine that the UNHCR, not Ghanaian authorities, truly cared for refugees. First, by relying on host subcontracting, camp administration fell prey to middleman effects that offloaded blame for chronic shortages and political failures to the Ghanaian middlemen: the NGO subcontractors. Second, when the UNHCR used administrative caregiving, it depoliticized its quasi-governmental activities. Third, people living as refugees often assumed that national identity trumped other potential loyalties—even to employers—a practice that divested Ghanaian nationals who worked for the UNHCR of their humanitarian ties. Together, these three mechanisms created a vision of the transnational social world as comprising host threat and humanitarian compassion.

The Popular Manifestations of the UNHCR-as-Caregiver Frame The UNHCR-as-caregiver frame manifested in three main ways in refugee discourses. First, people described programs as nurturing. Second, people used familial metaphors. And third, people focused on interpersonal, emotional connections to the UNHCR. Other frames also resonated in camp politics, including understandings about incorrupt “white people,” a benevolent international community,

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a refugee’s right to protection, the grace of God, the power and wealth of the UNHCR, Ghanaian discrimination against foreigners, and corrupt Ghanaian officials. But most of these frames complemented rather than supplanted the understanding of the UNHCR as a caregiver fundamentally committed to refugees’ well-being. Many UNHCR activities, such as providing food, could easily be interpreted as caregiving, but the true strength of this frame becomes evident in the broad range of programs that people interpreted as nurturing. When Patricia told me about a UNHCR-supported workshop aimed at encouraging economic self-reliance among women, she described it by saying: “UN [has] provided school for us to attend to empower ourselves” (SSI 49). She understood this economic activity as an act of care to “empower” her. She could have seen it as a profit-driven endeavor meant to extract the most efficient labor through job training. Or, more feasibly, she could have understood it (as some critical refugee studies scholars do) as a way of off-loading economic responsibility onto refugees, who, at least in Ghana, were unlikely to overcome job discrimination even with the added training (Porter et al. 2008). But she did not. She took the UNHCR’s discourse of empowerment and linked it to her own assessment of good treatment and care from the UNHCR. Likewise, camp inhabitants often interpreted the UNHCR’s migration policies through the lens of administrative caregiving. Quentin, another refugee, explained the resettlement program: “If you say I can’t return back to my home . . . and so fear of persecution, I need to be resettled, as a [UNHCR] Protection Officer, you have to see that case keenly and make sure the brother or sister be resettled to the third country of asylum” (SSI 6). Quentin never received resettlement, nor had he even heard of resettlement before coming to the refugee camp. But over the years in Buduburam, he constructed an explanation for how the practice worked. He melded the UNHCR’s discourse about resettlement—“fear of persecution,” “third country of asylum,” “Protection Officer”—with familial political discourses to make sense of this novel administrative practice. Likewise, Patience understood the resettlement program as a form of help from the UNHCR: “It’s my prayers, for UN to help me because I don’t want to go back” (SSI 13). From the people who actively sought out resettlement, I rarely heard the bureaucratic logic that I found in UNHCR accounts of the program. Instead, people described their experiences with “Karen” or “Paul.” They talked about emotions and other elements of interpersonal connections. Fatu offered an effective example when she told me about her efforts to get resettled: April 11, 2008. I went to talk to the protection officer, Karen, who told me there is no resettlement again. ‘They don’t have anybody in America who will file in

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for you.’ Because I carried my children, my dead sister’s children, and she pitied my condition [she said], ‘You are welcome any time to come to me.’ I met her Tuesday, I was supposed to come back Thursday, but I was busy, and it’s hard to see her, you know it’s a process to see her. Simon is the one you can tell so that you want to see the protection officer then Simon will have your name on record, and he will put it on the [announcement] board. Because there are so many people who want to see her! Without your name being on the board, you will not see her. [Emphasis added.]

Fatu believed that she may get UNHCR assistance not because she had the right to it or met some list of criteria but because she was “pitied.” In her view, pity was not a negative word—it did not demean but signified a correct emotional connection with her based on her difficult position. Fatu saw this emotional connection as the driving force behind her subsequent relationship with the authority figure. Residents could have interpreted their relationships with the UNHCR in resettlement administration differently. The UNHCR occupied the middleman position in the multistage process, acting as the gatekeeper who could rarely convince a receiving state to accept a refugee but could and frequently did convince states to reject an applicant. Most resettlement administration by the UNHCR involved rejecting people, yet refugees’ dominant interpretation of the UNHCR’s role in the resettlement program was that of a caregiver committed to their well-being. When Thomas told me about his unsuccessful attempts to continue his tertiary schooling in Ghana, the UNHCR featured prominently in his accounts: “When I came here, I was told by some friends that sometime you seek help from the UNHCR for education” (SSI 7). His friends told him—for it was commonly understood—that the UNHCR could help people with education. Although he did not ultimately receive the support he had hoped to gain, he still supported this assessment. It is striking the extent to which people’s discussions of the UNHCR as a caregiver came not in response to concrete services that they had received from the agency but in response to stories about services that they had heard from peers and hoped to benefit from as well. But the fact that the UNHCR surfaced at all in that conversation demonstrates a clear assessment in the speaker’s mind of the agency’s broad-ranging commitment to the well-being of refugees—and not a commitment from the host government or Liberian government. Even though resettlement, education, and food distribution became the ultimate exemplars of the agency’s commitment to caring for refugees, the camp was plagued with scarcities. So it was not surprising that people would also criticize the agency for failing to provide sufficient services. This criticism was an important part of political talk in the camp, but criticism can be part of legitimation

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processes, too; for authority to become resilient, people must be able to express dissatisfaction without rejecting the authority figure entirely. Most criticisms in camp also operated through the frame of caregiving. Frederick, a refugee leader who believed his service in the camp was not being adequately compensated by the UNHCR, recounted how he told a UN official (paraphrased): ‘I am asking you to hear me as a mother’ (informal interview, June 2011). Likewise, Patience criticized the agency for excluding her from the food distribution program: “I swear UN don’t come in no support, as I’m telling you, no support for me and I don’t receive no food” (SSI 13). Her criticism of the UNHCR operated within the framework of caregiving—the expectation that the UNHCR, not the Liberian government or Ghanaian hosts, ought to be supporting people like her. Her criticism did not challenge the place of the UNHCR to govern her but rather reaffirmed the agency’s authority even as she deplored its shortcomings.

The Ghanaians-as-Threat Frame Pregnant with a second child, Patricia fled Liberia with her young son, but her husband died and didn’t make it. In Buduburam, she met a new man and fell in love. Later, she realized that she had mistaken his character, but not before she had borne a daughter—a rare joy that brightened her life in the refugee camp. Four years later, the little girl’s father decided he wanted her. One night, he came and took her: “He told me that I cannot afford her, I don’t have means to send her to school, his, his baby’s life is wasting and he took her. He took my daughter from me.” It was an appalling revelation tearfully shared in the middle of a previously desultory conversation about children. But what did you do? I asked with concern. “I am alone,” she replied. Did you talk to the police? I asked. “Some friends were saying, my neighbors were saying that we are all Liberians and the Ghanaians, normally they don’t like us.” I teetered ineptly between social scientific investigation and worry for the next several minutes, trying to find something she could do before resorting (as she did) to vague, religiously infused words of hope. But afterward, this appalling story lingered in my mind, a vivid example of a general alienation from Ghanaian authorities. When people talked about their Ghanaian hosts, they tended to focus on threatening and harmful activities. Patricia’s Uncle Martin told me how the authorities shut down his organization for licensing issues by sending heavily armed police officers from the capital. He decried this overzealous enforcement: “Somebody informed [the police] that most of the students and the teachers were rebels. (. . .) [I]f I was caught, maybe I would die” (SSI 46). Joseph explained the reason behind the frequent, sometimes months-long electricity outages: “UN pay for all those transformer and the [Ghanaian electricity company] came and put old transformer

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there” (SSI 5). Likewise, Thomas told me emphatically that “the Ghanaians” were stealing not just electricity but also water that the UNHCR had bought for refugees: “We saw a document proving that every year [the UNHCR] pay money attending to water that is being used by refugees in the camp” (SSI 7). Amid the rumors that abounded in the camp—neither the UNHCR nor the national electricity company nor the national water company offered camp residents clear information about their policies—Ghanaian malfeasance appeared more plausible than UNHCR neglect or lack of resources. The NCS and the Christian Council, the two major implementing partners often singled out for blame, had long histories of progressive activism in Ghana; during the 1996 election, the Ghanaian government objected to the presence of these two organizations in election monitoring because of their earlier human rights activism (Gyimah-Boadi 1999, 424). But in Buduburam, they were simply “the Ghanaians.” Yet this distrust is not primordial; one can still hear echoes of the original feeling of support. Benjamin told a story of a Ghanaian woman who gave him an old machine that he could use to start a business in 2001. I remarked that I had heard sympathetic stories from the past but not the present. Had things changed, or had I simply not heard the stories? He said: “The interior minister [has] blackmailed all their people. If you want to see or if you get in a car, you talk [like a Liberian], they want to beat you. (. . .) 2001 was different. They were kind with us, because there are so many Ghanaian Muslims in Accra, over 500,000 Ghanaian Muslims in Accra. But anything you want to do here, you had to pull Ghanaian first, if for your own business. And they are saying if you want to stay to get resident permit, even if you apply for the resident permit, they won’t give you, yes. They are told we should go back. June 30 will be the final for Liberians born in Ghana. If you stay here, you stay here on your own and you’ll be [illegal] according to the law of Ghana. (. . .) They used to come on the camp, they sell, some will buy from here, and they give someone credit. You do one or two business; you pay them back, yes. But for now there’s a big difference between [the Liberian] and Ghanaian.” (SSI 9)

Benjamin’s vision was not idealized. For him, there were always economic inequalities, even in the early days, but one could at least trade fairly with each other in the past. As a Muslim, he experienced not just fairness but kindness from other Muslims in Ghana. But this situation had changed over time to the point where he believed that Ghanaians were a threat to him. In sum, even politically active people who publicly criticized the UNHCR used the caregiver frame at times, as did those who never directly benefited from the agency. Even when a person rejected this frame at some point in a conversation,

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he or she would use the frame at another point in an interview or in another conversation—even Patricia’s Uncle Martin. In a later chapter, we see that this frame’s resiliency made it all the more consequential as conflict over humanitarian aid escalated during the Concerned Women protests. But for now, the question at hand is: what made this frame and the Ghanaians-as-threat frame so resilient? This question has two sides. First, what downplays the protective dimensions of host governance to keep host activities from being interpreted as caregiving? Second, what downplays the threatening dimensions of humanitarian governance? The next two subsections explore each of these processes in turn. PROCESSES THAT DOWNPLAY THE PROTECTIVE DIMENSIONS OF HOST AUTHORITY

Associating host authority with security does not inevitably tie hosts to the threat of harm; the official objectives of the Ghanaian Police Services included “the protection of life.”2 But in Buduburam, policing lost many care-based elements that typically accompany this institution, emphasizing public order and national security; this special mandate was anchored in the 1992 Ghana Refugee Law, which states: “A refugee may be detained or expelled for reasons of national security or public order.” Nevertheless, many Ghanaian nationals worked in social services or migration programs in the camp not security. Why did the frame meld these diverse actors—government, NGOs, and private nationals—into a single group: “Ghanaians?” Middlemen Effects of Host Subcontracting and Employment: When hosts administered aid, they often relied on the UNHCR’s resources; the UNHCR subcontracted with host actors or employed host nationals to carry out programs. Food distribution offers a particularly clear example of these dynamics. The World Food Programme (WFP) contracted with the UNHCR to choose the food content; WFP contracted with local freight forwarders to deliver food from the Tema port and local markets to the main warehouse in Accra. The NCS, a Ghanaian NGO, contracted with the UNHCR to transport food to Buduburam one day prior to distributions. The NCS oversaw the monthly implementation of the program and delivered monthly reports on distribution and remaining stock. Liberian refugees appointed by the camp management assisted the NCS in the implementation (UNHCR/WFP Joint Assessment Mission 2006, 19). Hosts held a critical contract in the food-distribution chain, serving as a middleman in the position closest to the people living as refugees. The middleman position can offer substantial advantages, but the position is also highly susceptible 2. http://www.ghanapolice.info/objectives.htm.

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to blame for programmatic failures; crucially, actors who occupy brokerage positions, such as this middleman position, accrue power only when they are seen as neutral to the outcomes (Fernandez and Gould 1994, 1473). Hosts rarely benefit from this dynamic because of the perceptions of rent-seeking behavior in this context. For example, a man speaking during a focus group expressed the commonly held belief that Ghanaians prevented the UNHCR from giving refugees rice (their staple food): “The Ghanaians actually, they have been ill treating us. (. . .) In fact UN give them good, good food to bring to the camp here. They take the food, for themselves. And then they bring corn. We don’t eat corn! (. . .) I don’t think that in the UN law [refugees should have to eat corn (said sarcastically)].” (FG 10)

By this popular account, the UNHCR provided good food, but “the Ghanaians” took it. Like most accounts, this one did not distinguish between the Ghanaian state and the Ghanaian NGO that actually administered the program; it did not give “the Ghanaians” credit for administrative caregiving. How accurately this frame reflected lived experiences I cannot say, but the Ghanaian NGO does not formally choose food content—this task is left to the WFP to manage within the constraints of the market. More to the point, middlemen do extract rents during exchanges (Fernandez-Mateo 2007), but whether those rents provoke anger, are accepted as legitimate, or go unnoticed varies by setting. One defining characteristic of the humanitarian setting is a massive economic disparity between humanitarian authorities and host subcontractors that can foster the impression among both humanitarians and refugees that hosts are competing with refugees for scarce material resources in extracting rents from humanitarian aid. Few people expressed any knowledge of the UNHCR’s dependence on annual donors for food aid; few had access to the policy documents that would give them accurate information about the capacities and legal obligations of authorities. Camp residents instead blamed shortfalls in aid on host corruption. Barbara Harrell-Bond (1986, 88) finds the same dynamic among Ugandan refugees, who blamed Sudanese hosts after impassable roads in Kenya disrupted the WFP distribution of supplies. In short, the lack of information about humanitarian limitations coupled with perceptions (sometimes accurate) of host need for humanitarian supplies creates a situation in which host subcontractors receive little or no credit for administrative acts of caregiving. At the same time, hosts absorb blame for programmatic failures of care, which the UNHCR may otherwise have had to shoulder under the circumstances of hyperscarcity. Thus, the presence of hosts

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as middlemen does not produce a neutral outcome for humanitarians but actually shields humanitarians from some types of blame under difficult conditions. This was not the intent; host subcontracting was a progressive reform meant to reengage hosts in humanitarian intervention. But the consequences remain, regardless of the intent. PROCESSES THAT DOWNPLAY CONTROLLING DIMENSIONS OF HUMANITARIAN AUTHORITY

When the UNHCR relied on population technologies to distribute food and other resources, the controlling dimensions of administration were often invisible. Once again, the food program offers a particularly clear example of these dynamics. Rather than using a lottery or patronage strategies for allocating scarce aid, humanitarian authorities grouped people into a category of need and deservedness based on demographic variables that they identified as predictive of special vulnerabilities, such as breastfeeding mothers or unaccompanied minors, labeling it “most vulnerable persons” (UNHCR et al. 2003). But camp residents commonly argued that the UNHCR should distribute meager rations to all comers rather than potentially sufficient rations to “most vulnerable persons”— we are all vulnerable, they would say. Cindy Horst (2007, 99–105) finds a similar frustration among camp inhabitants in Dadaab, Kenya, as does Michel Agier (2011, 158) in the Tobanda refugee camp in Sierra Leone. Without making an explicit decision to exclude camp residents from public debate on this issue, the UNHCR couched political decisions about distributing scarce resources in technocratic discourses that delegitimized public debate over their allocation— an unobtrusively controlling act. Similarly, decisions that would involve public debate among citizens in an ordinary town (e.g., a school budget) were reformulated as technical decisions in the refugee camp: the UNHCR assessed the educational needs through other means and allocated the scarce resources as it thought best. When people criticized education or food policy, they did not question the underlying organizing processes—nor did the UNHCR officials. The agency looked to these liberal technologies as tools for administering aid as effectively as possible in the face of instability, poverty, and violence. But the consequences remain, regardless of the intent. The Nationalization of Identity: A second process also came into play: the perception that nationality outstripped other markers of identity—including employer. People often saw Ghanaian nationals as host authorities even when they worked for the UNHCR. For example, when Momolu described his unsuccessful attempts to get resettled, he blamed the “Ghana Representative”—a UNHCR official of Ghanaian descent—and presented the “American guy”—a U.S. national working for UNHCR—as a source of support.

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“There was a guy, an American guy who use[d] to be there [at the UNHCR]. (. . .) My story actually interest[ed] him. (. . .) He tell me that ‘you can apply [for resettlement], you can write to UNHCR.’ (. . .) When I went to Accra to present my letter there to UNHCR, I talked to [first name] (. . .) the Ghana eh Ghana Representative there. (. . .) She only tell me, ‘Okay we accept, we hold your story, we get your story. We will get back to you.’ That’s all she tell me: ‘we will get back to you—we will get back to you.’ You see, she could never get back to me again.” (SSI 2)

The UNHCR official of Ghanaian descent is not the “UNHCR representative” but the “Ghana representative.” The American man at the UNHCR gave encouragement, but the Ghanaian woman “could never get back to me again.” The situation became in Momolu’s mind an example of Ghanaian authority. Similarly, when Quentin told me about how he pursued resettlement, he said: “At the time [name of UNHCR official] was in that office, one Ghana guy [NAME], but now he’s not there. That guy, because you know the P1 [political asylum] program (. . .)—because as for me, I don’t have relatives in America for P3 program which will apply for me—so it was the P1 case I was most interest[ed] in (. . .) but [name of UNHCR official of Ghanaian descent], those cases he always frustrating the refugees.” (SSI 6)

Like Momolu, Quentin sought resettlement but found that his appeals went nowhere. But the reason he gave was that the “Ghana guy”—the UNHCR employee of Ghanaian descent—was deliberately undermining the political asylum cases. In fact, the UNHCR did not pursue P1 political asylum cases as actively for Liberian refugees as the agency did the P3 family reunification cases; recognizing that the United States would take substantially more Liberian cases under the family reunification program, the UNHCR chose to focus on them and use the political asylum resources for refugee populations without such ties to a receiving country. This decision was made at a high organizational level in the context of hyperscarcity. The host government had no authority over this decision, but people living as refugees cited UNHCR officials of Ghanaian nationality as “evidence” that hosts destroyed political asylum cases. Camp residents could have blamed the UNCHR for hiring Ghanaian nationals, but instead this process redirected blame onto hosts for unpopular policies made under difficult circumstances. There was no history of ethnonational conflict between Ghana and Liberia prior to 1990, nor had most camp residents heard of the UNHCR. These frames

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emerged from the social order forged over the years of refuge, and they were not unique to Buduburam. In the Waterloo refugee camp in Sierra Leone, a former camp resident, Louise Barton (2011, 169), rationalizes the UNHCR’s limitations by shifting blame to the hosts: “Although [the UNHCR’s] primary purpose is to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees, they were often hampered, even forced into total ineffectiveness by the bureaucracy and obscure policies put in place by the host countries.” Looking beyond West Africa, a summary of cross-national perception studies of humanitarian actors by Antonio Donini and his coauthors (2015, 7) found, “Often, foreigners are seen as more neutral and impartial, less corrupt, and therefore more acceptable than locals.” The link between the UNHCR-as-caregiver frame and the local familial rhetoric was also not unique to Buduburam. Refugees in other settings regularly draw on familial metaphors to express a sense of the special commitment of the UNHCR. Writing of the Sierra Leonean refugees in the Sembakounya and Boreah refugee camps in Guinea, Lacey Gale (2007, 371) says, “For many camp inhabitants, UNHCR adopts the role of ‘husband’ and ‘father’”; one refugee is quoted as saying, “I don’t have mother or father in Guinea. UNHCR is my father and mother and have helped me to get my child. I am very much happy and grateful for that” (373). The caption on a UNHCR publicity photo for the crisis in the Central African Republic includes a refugee woman quoted as saying, “UNHCR is my mother and my father. When I see them I feel safe.”3 Even beyond refugee camps, we see evidence for this dynamic in humanitarian interventions (ICRC and IPSOS 2009, 7, 25; Ong 2003, 145).

A Theory of Bifurcated Governmentality When Patricia said the UNHCR offered protection against the Ghanaian authorities, she made a clear analytic distinction between those two actors. Like Patience, I also made an analytic distinction between the humanitarian authorities and host authorities, but over time I came to see that camp government was divided in a less complete way than I had originally thought. I began to see mechanisms— host subcontracting, liberal administrative caregiving, and the nationalization of identity—that made it easier for people to frame the UNHCR as a separate entity that, unlike “the Ghanaians,” truly cared for refugees. But these mechanisms, it soon became clear, were only partially grounded in the material dimensions of humanitarian crises, an incompleteness that made these subjective processes no less concrete in their consequences. 3. UNHCR / F. Noy / October 2009, “Silent Success: Mbororo Refugees in Cameroon,” https:// www.flickr.com/photos/unhcr/4723215093/.

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Reasonable people could have understood their relationship to the UNHCR and Ghanaian hosts differently, just as Patricia and her uncle did. That complexity makes it all the more interesting that the dominant frame in Buduburam presented the intersecting camp authorities as administratively and morally separate authority figures. It tells us something worth knowing about the resiliency of legitimate authority for humanitarians that was not matched by that of hosts. That differential legitimacy has not yet been acknowledged, and it should be. To properly grasp the nature of this divided camp requires a theory of government that captures subjective processes—the ways that people make sense of the world around them—and for this support I draw upon Michel Foucault and his model of governmentality.4 What Foucault (1991, 103) contributes to the study of government is an understanding of how the seemingly apolitical procedures, social scientific analyses, reflections, calculations, and tactics used by bureaucrats, citizens, and politicians alike coalesce into decentralized security apparatuses that effectively organize people. The transnational system represents a bifurcated governmentality, a distinct form in which national authorities, who control people through the threat of harm, stand apart from transnational authorities, who control people through the promise to protect life. Strong transnational actors alter the political landscapes in which they operate whether through international development (Ferguson 1994), postconflict reconstruction (Goodhand and Sedra 2010; Kumar et al. 1997; Swyngedouw 2005), or even transnational corporate sponsorship of company towns (Cutler 1999; Lecraw 1984). These pressures may be made more extreme and therefore more visible in a refugee camp, but they are not unique to this context. They can emerge whenever a transnational actor deploys liberal administrative caregiving in a host country that cedes administrative control. Transnational actors may not acknowledge their political relationships with the people whose lives they enrich or circumscribe, but their presence fundamentally changes the dyadic nature of political relationships between government and the people to introduce a triadic political relationship of transnational–host–subject with profound consequences.

4. Other refugee studies scholars have also found his work helpful in understanding camp politics; see Agier 2011; Hyndman 2000; R. Lippert 1999; Malkki 1995; Peteet 2005; and Turner 2005.

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CONTENTIOUS POLITICS IN CRISIS

Chapter 4

The Concerned Women Protests

As she reflects on the protests she observed in Indonesia, Anna Tsing (2005, 245) says, “It is easy to condemn any dream in hindsight. Yet there is something to say for delving into those bumbling moments of passion and empowerment when so much seems possible.” In the wake of the repression, cynicism suffused accounts of the Concerned Women protests among residents and outsiders who heard their tale. Yet looking back over my field notes, I recollect moments of passion, opportunity, and vision as well as frictions and missteps. In this chapter, I recapture these protest dynamics and use them to challenge both the hindsight cynicism and the official accounts of the protest. Social movement observers regularly overestimate the instrumentality of a movement’s tactics and the inevitability of its success or defeat. It is easy to take for granted the unity of the protesters, the stalwartness of the movement’s allies, and the virulence of its opponents. But the pinnacle of the Concerned Women protests, the February–March sit-down demonstration, was not a wholly premeditated tactic; its participants did not constitute a single unified group. The sit-down demonstration emerged as a confluence of multiple streams of discontentment and optimism about the administration of humanitarian aid. The protest organizers were one of several tributaries of civic engagement in the camp. Other actors besides the original organizers joined the protests in February, and some original allies opposed the sit-down protests in a complexity that belied the tidy accounts of allies and opponents constructed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Ghanaian authorities. The official accounts by the Ghanaian and UNHCR authorities differed from mine and, in some details, from each other, but both authorities delineated clearly

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between responsible parties and bystanders, activists and opponents, and acceptable and unacceptable behavior. The UNHCR saw the protests as a disruption caused by a small group of disgruntled men and women who held misguided expectations about resettlement and repatriation. Officials believed that they had done everything humanly possible to maintain communication, but the protesters disrupted all efforts at dialogue, leaving the agency no choice but to ask the host government to protect the majority of camp residents by ending the protests; although repression was necessary, overzealous host authorities’ efforts got out of hand. The Ghanaian government framed the Concerned Women as refugees engaged in unruly and subversive activities that compromised the security of the state: led by ex-combatant men, the protesters intimidated their fellow refugees with misplaced goals and showed crass ingratitude to the country that had offered them hospitality; the police acted within the confines of the law to contain a national security threat. Below, I present a chronicle of protest events, identifying the key protest dynamics in leadership, membership, opposition, and alliance that ultimately challenged official versions of the events.

A Chronicle of Protest Events The UNHCR’s shift to local integration met with passionate opposition that crystallized in protests between November 2007 and April 2008, during which a newly formed social movement, Liberian Refugee Women with Refugee Concerns (popularly known as the Concerned Women), asked the UNHCR for different migration choices. The protest organizers—Tomah, Isatta, Mary, Sia, and Mardea—turned the desire for resettlement, which they acknowledged was unrealistic for most refugees, into a process-oriented demand for a fair hearing with an explicit resettlement decision for every refugee on the grounds of political asylum, not just family reunification. They advocated for money to rebuild their lives “back home” in postwar Liberia for those who did not qualify for resettlement. They asked that the funds allocated to the local integration program be redirected into repatriation and resettlement programs.

Stage 1: Planning for the Meeting That Never Happened, November 2007 It all started like this: the UNHCR asked the Welfare Council to organize a participatory planning session with women residents to help the agency determine policy recommendations to present at the UN Executive Committee meeting for

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the 2008–9 Country Operations Plan. The Welfare Council member assigned to organize the session spent the next several days trying to find participants she considered proper—that is, people she felt she could trust not to agree to whatever the UNHCR said. She wanted to be sure that the participants were what she called “educated women”—people who could articulate their needs clearly in ways intelligible to internationals—not “illiterate women,” whom she feared would not understand the proceedings and would just agree with whatever the internationals said. She invited Tomah, Isatta, the executives who ran local women’s nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and other like-minded women to a series of discussions ahead of the UNHCR meeting to practice asking questions. Isatta later recounted her experiences in these early days to me over dinner in her restaurant: December 7, 2007. We were against the separate special groups’ consultation [the participatory planning session]. Many of the women who come are old women that are illiterate, so if they are told something, they may not even understand it. Sometimes they are made to agree to things without even understanding it. [She hands me a plate of rice and spicy fishy-tasting sauce with chicken.] We thought it would be discussing the document—the Ghana Refugee Board was coming to talk about integration, about immigration to tell procedures, and the UNHCR to talk about repatriation. They said that people aren’t interested in hearing what they had to say, but really, it was that they were expecting something different.

After several pre-session planning meetings, it grew apparent that the November participatory planning session was not going to happen. It wasn’t canceled but just faded away. This situation was not unusual; it also happened to public meetings scheduled by Liberian community leaders and Ghanaian officials. So most of the women simply moved on to other concerns. But a few decided not to just forget it (as the Liberian saying went). They decided that this time, the UNHCR would hear them through whatever means necessary, so what had started as policy discussions by refugee leaders became a social movement.

Stage 2: Initial Protest Tactics and the Responses from Authorities, November 2007–February 2008 From November 2007 to January 2008, members of the newly established Concerned Women pleaded their case to the UNHCR through demonstrations, meetings, and letter-writing campaigns. In the first action, on November 30, about forty women marched through the field by the highway. One day prior, the camp had buzzed with rumors. Over the loudspeaker at the top of the camp, the Welfare

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Council chairman announced, ‘Under no circumstances are refugees allowed to demonstrate.’ The chairman exhorted women to come to a meeting at the Welfare Council instead. The organizers, unmoved by his offer, secretly switched the meeting time from 6:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. to foil any last-minute effort by the Welfare Council to stifle the demonstration. When I arrived at 5:50 a.m., I could hardly discern the protesters. It was a lovely morning—the sun was very red, and the air was cool and slightly moist. The taxi stand was full of cars, and the toll booth was already up and running. A few people were walking across the field on their morning errands. On the edge of the field farthest from the camp entrance, a small group of women stood in a wide circle, with a woman in the middle leading a prayer. The vast field looked empty, and the group of women looked very small. At the prayer’s close, one woman took out a paper banner and began to unroll it with the help of another. Others began to unfurl small banners on pink, yellow, or white poster paper with slogans written in colored markers. They had no sticks on which to mount them, so they held the papers in their hands. We know of the three (3) R’s Resettlement, Repatriation, Reintegration We do not know about Local Integration!!! Seventeen years of silence is working against us. No!! We must be heard!!! [scribble] GHANA-UNHCR please Resettle us for a better tomorrow. We are entitle to it!!! It’s a way forward yesterday of silence is dead and gone Today is the day of speaking

Together the women formed a loose line and marched toward the road. Can I take your photograph? I asked the three women who walked in front. ‘Take it,’ one woman replied forcefully. ‘We want our plight to be known.’ She wore a long denim skirt that reached down to her calves, a white T-shirt, and a head wrap. A little less than half had chosen to dress in their Sunday best with ornate African print outfits; the rest wore everyday garb. They sang the gospel song “Mighty Warrior” in a long, repetitive, sing-along fashion. A latecomer sat briefly at the raised concrete square, one of the only structures in the front of the field. She carried a baby wrapped in a lappa on her back. She said, ‘Baby, we’re in the battlefield now’ and walked over to join the women.

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People began to slow as they walked through the field. By 6:30 a.m., about twenty onlookers stood singly or congregated in small groups, mostly young men and children in school uniforms and two preadolescent girls without school uniforms who bore large rice bags partially filled with empty water sachets. The largest group of ten or so, mostly men and two or three women, argued. ‘They spoil everything!’ shouted a man in baggy, worn pants and a dark T-shirt with patches of sweat. ‘My brother, we must know our rights at this time,’ a man standing across from him replied in a calm voice. A young man walked up to the group. ‘They say no. It is not for men, only women,’ he said. My colleague from The Vision (the refugee-run newspaper) joined me with a story: a disgruntled woman went to the police station to report the protest. He decided to follow her. At one point, she turned and looked at him suspiciously, but he picked up his cell phone and pretended to have a conversation with someone. The woman told the police that the women threatened the reputation of the camp and wanted to cause trouble. A small group of Vigilantes in plainclothes watched unobtrusively. Later, one officer told me that they didn’t interfere because it was just a group of women singing and praying, and they didn’t want to “embarrass” them. Another officer said, we were there to make sure the bad kinds didn’t come. There are three kinds of protesters, he explained: those who come to make a good cause, those who don’t know the cause and just want to join, and those who have a bad cause. No—four kinds, he corrected himself. Also, people who just want to cause destruction (field notes, December 10, 2007). Around 7:00 a.m., the commandant arrived with a Ghanaian police officer. He walked up the line of women slowly, looking at the signs and stopping to shake each woman’s hand. Another journalist friend told me later that he repeated to each woman: Please greet me—I am not your enemy. He invited the organizers to come to his office for a meeting. They agreed to come but would not tell the other women to stop the demonstration. An hour or so later, the organizers announced that the commandant had agreed to carry their placards to the UNHCR and arrange a meeting. They dispersed, quietly triumphant. Four days later, on December 4, the protesters gathered in the commandant’s office for the meeting with the UNHCR. He had asked that the organizers come alone, but they refused and the other women crowded into the room, sitting on benches and makeshift seats. They met with the UNHCR protection officer. Later, the organizers told me that the meeting was cordial but not yet substantive. They said they made it clear that they would not yield to platitudes. Two weeks later, on December 19, the Welfare Council held a small public meeting about durable solutions policies with representatives from the UNHCR and U.S. embassy. They did not present it as a meeting with the protesters,

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although two of the protest organizers came, invited by a sympathetic Welfare Council member. Almost all audience members were men. The council held the meeting in its hall, a midsized room that could accommodate a few dozen people. I was surprised that the council did not hold a campwide meeting like it did in October in the enormous Catholic church, particularly since any meeting with a member of the U.S. embassy was bound to attract considerable interest. People crowded around the building, listening through the windows and door (field notes, December 19, 2007). The most significant outcome of the meeting was the introduction of the rhetoric of US$1,000 per returnee. A man in the audience used that figure in an impassioned plea for a stronger repatriation package, citing the difficulties of life in Liberia and the challenges of a long exile. Over the ensuing weeks, the organizers continued to recruit in churches and neighborhoods. They held meetings in the yard of Tomah’s compound and in churches. At the same time, they worked on their position statement, drafting a petition to send to the UNHCR and other potentially sympathetic parties. The organizers wrote the first draft together and shared it with the group, friends, allies, and me. They integrated suggestions and then read it to the group again, cutting some points and adding others. On January 15, the UNHCR returned to the camp for a meeting at the commandant’s office. The protest organizers, although not formally invited, were once again tipped off by an ally at the Welfare Council, and they resolved to gather in a hunger strike in the yard of the commandant’s compound. The first group of women to arrive clustered under the single tree that shaded the middle of the courtyard. As the morning passed, their numbers grew, and they began to line the stone wall, avoiding the dust and prickly green plants in the middle of the yard. Gradually the group spread over the entire yard, more than a hundred women strong. One of the protest organizers delivered a copy of their petition to the Welfare Council; this action was a mere formality, because the Welfare Council chairman was at the meeting in the commandant’s office. The other protest organizers joined the meeting in the commandant’s office. In the end, the UNHCR official agreed to carry their petition to Accra. The organizers agreed to suspend the hunger strike and gave the UNHCR until Monday to respond to the petition. At the prayer meeting the next day, the optimism was palpable. In a hoarse but still strong voice, Sia led the women in a call-and-response. Wearing a white shirt, black skirt, and neon-orange flip-flops with a dark headscarf partially covering her long braided hair, she dominated the room by sheer force of personality. Some women prayed silently, others aloud. They did not quite follow the same pace but achieved a kind of harmony nonetheless. It reminded me of running sprints in basketball practice: the fast ones rushing to the end of a stanza and the slower ones moving along, sometimes cutting the distance shorter, turning to the next

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phrase earlier. A few stayed on the sidelines, kneeling with head in hand on a chair or swaying slowly. After an extensive prayer session, the head of the Ministerial Council—the only man in the room—took the stage and gave a rousing sermon that framed resettlement, repatriation, and integration in the language of faith. He said that everyone in the room knew in their hearts where their future would carry them, where they would make a home for themselves. It was not what the people decided; it was what God intended for them. They needed to look deep into their hearts and pray to find what God intended. He knew in his heart that God intended for him to go to America. Whether the resettlement would carry him or not did not matter—God intended for him to be in America, and that was where he would end up. He did not know how or when, but God would see it come to pass. At one point in the sermon, the minister condemned the Welfare Council, decrying its members as leaders possessed by demonic powers to keep their jobs at the expense of their people. Later, when people in the audience got up to share thoughts, Mardea, who sat in the back of the room, asked that they not attack the Welfare Council. She said, I don’t like to think about the negative. Talking of the devil brings him closer. God is stronger. There was much clapping following this comment, but not any more than there had been at the earlier condemnation of the council. The organizers told me that they were going to meet with the Welfare Council to discuss their disagreements on January 17, and I was struck by the increasing strength of their position in that relationship, but I was also worried. “Are you all right, or are they angry with you?” I asked one organizer. She replied, “No, they are not angry with us, we are angry with them. The way they acted yesterday did not go down well with us. We want to tell them how we feel, because people have a tendency to accuse you of being disrespectful to authorities.” She told me that the Concerned Women had informed the Welfare Council’s members that if they kept acting in that manner, the women would have no choice but to act against them (field notes, January 16, 2008). On January 29, the commandant called the protest organizers to his office and told them that the UNHCR would come on February 1 to meet with the leaders of the women’s groups in the camp. The organizers saw this meeting as a golden opportunity to display their increasing clout and show the UNHCR that they were the true spokespeople of the community. Tomah told me that although the Concerned Women was not a registered NGO (“not a legal group,” in her words), the UNHCR protection officer would “come to see who actually the crowd is in favor of. . . . [We will] use the masses. We will make sure that after the UNHCR people arrive, the people come out. We will explain to them why we don’t believe in [first name of a woman who ran the oldest local women’s NGO] and the other women” (field notes, January 29, 2008).

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As had happened before the January 15 meeting, the protesters staged a hunger strike in the commandant’s yard, this one even larger than the last. As the rank-and-file protesters sat waiting while their leaders met inside the office, they caught the attention of two missionaries from the United States. After chatting with them about their cause, one of the missionaries asked whether she could take a photograph of them sitting in the yard. The nearby protesters agreed, but when the commandant looked out his office window and saw what was happening, he rushed outside to object. When the missionary resisted his efforts to take her camera, he lost his temper and took her to the nearby police station. Several protesters followed, rallying to the missionary’s support. The police chief, confronted by a group of angry women and an equally angry commandant, said that if the women had no objection to having their picture taken, it was not his concern. He said to the commandant: Please do not involve me in any unprofessional activities (in Ghana, a code word for police corruption). Much heartened, the protesters took this reaction as a sign that the local police would not involve themselves in their dispute with the UNHCR. At the meeting, the UNHCR official announced that repatriation would start again and that the repatriation package would increase from US$5 to $50 for children and $100 for adults. She said that this change in policy was in response to requests from their leaders, implying that it was not a response to the protesters’ demands. The other refugee leaders disclaimed responsibility, saying that they had never made such requests. Call a residents’ meeting and announce it publicly, Isatta suggested. The meeting left the protest organizers with an increasing sense of power in the community. The next day, the U.S. missionaries asked the protest organizers whether they could attend a Concerned Women’s meeting. They did, and at the meeting they asked whether they could share the women’s stories with members of their church in the United States. Rumors began to fly of U.S. missionaries who wanted to “sponsor” women for resettlement, and the protest organizers were besieged by people who wanted to join their group. The organizers seized the momentum, correcting people’s misconceptions when they arrived but promoting their platform at the same time. By the end of the month, the Concerned Women had more than one thousand active members. By the middle of February, the tensions between the protest organizers and the other women leaders had eased, and the Concerned Women became—for a short time—the leading voice among the refugee community. When I asked Tomah how things were going with the other women, she told me it was all a ‘misunderstanding.’ It was all worked out now, and they didn’t want to have divisions: ‘We are all one, we are all concerned women,

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be it LIREWO, Women of Glory, New Liberian Women, whatsoever tribe’ (field notes, February 14, 2008).

Stage 3: The Sit-Down Protest, February–March 2008 On February 18, the UNHCR held a participatory planning session to discuss durable solutions with older women, a focus group discussion similar to the one originally planned for November. The Concerned Women had gained sufficient power in the refugee camp that when the UNHCR came, they confronted an audience wholly comprising Concerned Women, while the younger women from the movement stood outside the meeting hall. At the meeting, the UNHCR announced that resettlement had finished and that the small food distribution program targeted to UN-designated “most vulnerable persons” would end in March. Audience members disrupted the speakers with questions and condemnation of the UNHCR’s policy, treating the session as an opportunity to air grievances rather than a time to receive communications from the UNHCR. The UNHCR official left the camp feeling harassed. When the Concerned Women arrived the next day for the UNHCR meeting scheduled with the younger women, they found it had been canceled because of the previous day’s “disruption.” They decided that they would go to the field where they held the first protest and sit and wait for the UNHCR to come. Months later, after the protests ended, I asked Mary to tell me about the events leading up to the February–March sit-down protest. April 11, 2008. [At the meeting] we felt that our petitions were being made, but what they had set on doing was what they were sticking to. (. . .) What they were using this meeting for was to persuade us, not to listen to us. They said that $100 would stand. We should not even bother to write any letter or any petition. (. . .) When we found out, we went and called our women to come and meet on the field. We did not tell them we were going for a protest, because we did not want the information to leak. Everyone should just meet at the field. To honor their request, we were going to go to the meeting and then we were going to go back to the field. After the 18th, we had our own meeting. Women it was now time for the [women ages] 15 to 49 to have their own meeting, and we know that is same thing they come and tell us. So we meet on the field. Let us meet and assemble on the field to give us support. Because when the 50-year women had their meeting we were outside, so we wanted them to be outside for us. To give us support.

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Over the ensuing weeks, the movement escalated, and the protesters grew in number. Rumors that Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was coming to meet them prompted a group of stalwart protesters to sleep on the field to avoid missing her visit. Although that rumor soon faded, the protest organizers continued to rotate people day and night. Soon the protesters launched a campwide boycott of schools, nightclubs, and the food distribution program. Resources poured into the group—money, water, food, and people—and the field became increasingly well-organized. The organizers designated lieutenants to administer the routines and a committee of elders to advise them and hear grievances. They coached protesters in the objectives, principles, and slogans. The protest organizers established a routine for distributing water, holding signs, and running prayer circles. A cross-section of field notes from February and March give a sense of the texture of those protest days: February 27, 2008. At 5 p.m., the air is cooler and the sky overcast. The field is crowded with people, many more than last week. Most are on the camp side of the field. Rows of men stand on the road just off the field, blocking a car trying to go through the gate; after some argument they move to make space. People reading newspapers all around—I’ve never seen so many distributed in the camp in one space. A friend jokes that the women are buying them to see themselves on the cover. Suzanne greets me and tells me that the authorities started the water pump to tempt the women away with free water. She laughs derisively, saying that they wouldn’t take the water. February 29, 2008. The field has a festive air. I see children playing a game with shoes, others kicking a football, running around, or sitting on mats with women. Some women are singing in two large circles, others sitting. At the edges of the field, someone has erected a thin string to separate the protesters from the rest of the camp. Groups of men stand behind the thin string, lining the road to the gate, just watching the women. A few men walk through the field, stopping to talk with women along the way. I run into Isatta, who tells me that they have to appoint people to deal with matters or the women will work it out themselves badly. What matters? I wonder. She tells me of all sorts of conflicts in the group. She said, they come to me saying: why you only giving oranges to children? I don’t have any children here, can I have an orange? I don’t want warm water, I want cold water. March 3, 2008. A bright day; my eyes are sore it is so bright. I can feel my irises struggle to contract even smaller than pinpricks. Not a blue sky, but hazy gray. Gusts of wind raise fine clouds of dust from the dirt-covered field. My colleague from The Vision stands across the dirt road eating something small, a white crumb on his lips, and looking at the women. I walk over and stand beside

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him silently, looking at the women. He says, it makes me to think of the war. He pauses, and I continue to stand silently. He said, when we fled to the Hospital, everyone lying around together like this until the Doe army came, and then we had to flee again. The mattresses—when you leave the home, you can take the mattress. March 2008. The first rainstorm since the sit-down demonstration began. I hear a man shout not far from the field, we have to go to the field to protect the women! At the field, an older woman says to her neighbor, we have to take the children in. Not long after, the storm ends, leaving rivulets of water streaming through the mats. The protesters sing in large and small groups, dancing in the puddles—different songs in different languages. March 2008. Tomah gathers a group of a half dozen young children. They sit in a circle and she crouches down to talk with them. She asks them what they are gathered here for. A girl who looks about eight years old says they are here because they want to go home to Liberia. Tomah laughs encouragingly and prompts the others to try answering, too. What if the TV man comes and asks you, too, what will you say? Mary shares hard candies as Tomah skillfully leads them through a child-friendly version of the movement’s platform.

On February 25, a Ghanaian television crew came to Buduburam to cover the protests, creating a seminal event in the protest’s trajectory. I learned what happened when I ran into an acquaintance on the protest field shortly after. She told me, “We were on the TV last night! They interviewed the camp manager, the Welfare Council chairman, and he spoke against us, his own people! You hearing people in small groups talking about it around camp—that’s what they are talking about. His own tribe, the Via, they spoke against him. He is a betrayer of his own people. A white person sees one with black skin speak about people with black skin, he believes him. Because he thinks we are the same people” (field notes, February 26, 2008). A group of male community leaders, seeing an opening in the internal refugee power struggles made by the chairman’s public misstep as well as supporting the protesters’ demands, rallied behind the Concerned Women. Calling themselves the “Stakeholders,” the group included the head of Heads of County, the Ministerial Council chairman, the Elders Council chairman, the Muslim Council chairman, and members of Hatai, the prominent intellectual club in the camp. They positioned themselves as community leaders who represented the true Liberian community.1

1. In June and July 2014, I read the chapter to several former participants in the events. In some cases, I changed the original text in response to their corrections. Other times, I added their commentary in boxes like the one that follows.

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There were a lot of problems we encountered. We needed the Welfare Council to speak for us, but each time the community representatives started to rise up, we were always branded rebels. (Former head of Heads of County, July 2014) It shows the disunity in the camp. The fact was that it was difficult working with the existing structures, to reach them without being seen as being aligned with one group or another. (. . .) Within the camp, there were all these segmented structure—tribal, county—it meant that in dealing with them, there were more than two or three layers of authority that we had to deal with, because there were a lot of suspicions with each other. (Kwamena Bartels, former interior minister, June 17, 2004)2

The member I knew most closely was a man I’ll call Kpassi. Kpassi ran a midsized local NGO. We had often talked about the Concerned Women, and he had voraciously opposed the demonstration until the chairman’s TV interview. Kpassi said, “I’m beginning to see that they are right. Now that I know the law, I feel more comfortable.” He handed me a copy of the 1992 Refugee Law, which I had been looking for, too. “You joining Hatai?” I asked teasingly. Kpassi smiled and denied it: “Hatai is taking a more radical stance than the women. They are delegitimating the Welfare Council, telling everyone not to take cases to them, asking businesses to go on strike to show how Welfare Council is not in control.” 2. On June 17, 2014, I read this chapter to former interior minister Kwamena Bartels in his office in Accra. Before the reading, I ask him to tell me about his experiences with Liberia before the war and during the refugee crisis. I have included his comments on the manuscript in the text and some excerpts from the interview questions here. Bartels: Where I grew up there were some Liberians working as sanitary laborists in sewage. When we were children, we referred to them as the Kru people, but I did not have much by way of interaction. I remember the crisis of the refugees coming by boat. They had been refused entry by other African countries and Ghana had agreed to take them in. The government had taken over a religious camp, seized the camp in Rawlings time. It became very convenient point for the refugees so they were taken there and then it became a way more and more and more people kept on coming until at a point, there were over forty thousand. (. . .) We all thought that we were being kind to another African country, until they kept coming and coming. (.  .  .) My own involvement came when I became interior minister. The fact was that UNHCR had come to the end of their programs and the government had decided it would cooperate with the government of Liberia to create a repatriation program because the war had come to an end. The program included a little stipend for settlement. For local integration, we found ourselves in a situation of difficulty. A lot of them had married into the local people. It was difficult separating them. We looked at that one and felt it was necessary from a legal and humanitarian perspective to allow those to be settled in Ghana. (. . .) We also had a few challenges with some of the refugees that were combatants and that posed a security threat for us.

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He told me, “I am going with the head of Heads of County. He is drafting a letter in support for the women. If the counties are behind the women, then there’s nothing anyone else can do, because everyone is in a county and everyone is in a tribe, and if they are united, then there’s no one that can stand against them” (field notes, February 25, 2008). The Stakeholders finished drafting a letter on March 3. The earliest drafts included anti–Welfare Council and anti-Ghana rhetoric, but the final version of the petition dropped the request to democratize the council and criticisms about discrimination in Ghana in favor of a simpler, less controversial statement of general support for the Concerned Women. In a last-minute triumph, the head of Heads of County succeeded in getting signatures from the head of the Muslim Council and Elders Council to add to signatures from the county association representatives, the Hatai club members, and the Ministerial Council chairman. The February–March sit-down protest succeeded in catching the full attention of the UNHCR. The UNHCR responded by temporarily withdrawing its personnel from the camp, arguing that Buduburam had become an insecure environment. Several women who ran local women’s NGOs and some of the Welfare Council leadership also left the camp, declaring that they felt threatened. But between the Stakeholders’ letter and the lengthening protest, the UNHCR’s position eventually began to soften. In March, the UNHCR sent a letter to invite both the protest organizers and the Stakeholders to “hold pragmatic discussions on the way forward” in Accra.

We also had a dilemma of those called the “recycled refugees,” those who had gone to Liberia and come back. These were the dilemmas that confronted us. We decided to allow those who wanted to settle to settle and to use the national intelligence security network to identify the combatants who posed a threat to us to be returned to Liberia. We found that some people were using the camp for the recruitment of combatants to go back to Liberia to destabilize the regime. (. . .) In the ministry, we had a small department for migration that served as the link between government, GRB, UNHCR, and the refugees. (. . .) I don’t remember any direct contact with the refugees except when the demonstration came, that was when I had a series of meetings with their leaders, the UNHCR, Ghana Refugee Board, a series of meetings to address the anxieties that they had raised. They had asked to be taken to the U.S., but that U.S. program had ended and the U.S. had made it absolutely clear that they weren’t going to take any more of the refugees. But they insisted and we said that the only place they could go was back to Liberia. But they seemed to be obsessed with going to America. (. . .) But our relationship with UNHCR was very cordial. They were very close with us. They did as much as possible to explain to the refugees. I remember going to an IOM conference in Geneva. The Liberian refugees were being paid $50 [for repatriation]. All over the world people were receiving $200. I didn’t see why they should be discriminated against. I raised it up and the Secretary General assured me that they would approve it. (. . .) The UNHCR [resettlement] program had come to an end and they had been told. That was the painful part. That misconception, that they weren’t prepared for any explanation or reasoning on it.

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That was largely the reports that I was getting, but the information that I had was that the women stripped naked and were actually blocking the roads. [Author: I told Mr. Bartels that I didn’t see naked protesters and wouldn’t change the text to include it because I didn’t believe it. I told him that Clara, a conservative woman who opposed the protesters, thought the rumor might have started when a reporter interpreted a colloquial use of the word “naked” (irresponsible, stubborn) literally.] Here, it is the highest form of protest for women, to literally drag their rear ends on the floor. It’s like cursing. So that’s why we were not surprised to have that information. We genuinely believed it, because it is something that is even our own tradition (Kwamena Bartels, former interior minister, June 17, 2014) So you can’t come and see it with your own eyes? (Wilhemina, Concerned Women elder, June 18, 2014)

Stage 4: The Meeting in Accra and Repression of the Protest, March 2008 On March 3, the Stakeholders joined the protest organizers and their lieutenants to strategize about a potential meeting in Accra. They sat on a scaffold that had been erected at the edge of the camp by the Ministerial Council the previous week and debated how best to engage the UNHCR in productive negotiations. By the time the meeting started, it was so dark that I couldn’t see the stairs, so I stumbled to the side of the scaffold, trying not to trip over anyone. It was crowded with people—more than the protest organizers and their lieutenants. I thought at first that we were all sitting around to listen to President Sirleaf ’s broadcast, because someone had a radio. But then someone started to talk, and I realized that I was sitting in the middle of a circle, and that this was a meeting— but with both men and women, a first. A man I didn’t know started interrogating Mary about a telephone call. Mary said, ‘I received a call this morning from [the commandant] Cal Afun. He told me to come to the Ghana Refugee Board tomorrow, us the four women. I said no. If they want to talk to us, they can come here and speak to us on the field’ (field notes, March 3, 2008). I noticed that two of the men asked the head of Heads of County for approval before speaking, giving the impression that they thought he was in charge of the meeting, but Mary never did.

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The protest organizers wanted the Stakeholders to go to the meeting in Accra instead of the Concerned Women (the “men” to go instead of the “women”) and convince the UNHCR that the Concerned Women truly represented “the Liberian community.” The head of Heads of County said that they had planned to go and submit their petition supporting the Concerned Women but that he was worried that if he tried to take the place of the protest organizers at a meeting in Accra, the UNHCR would refuse to admit him because he was not invited. The protest organizers reminded him that they had not been invited to the earlier meetings with the commandant—they had simply taken the initiative and gone. A man I didn’t recognize criticized Mary for not consulting with them before giving a yes or no to the commandant’s request. Another man agreed, going further to say it was a legal thing, being summoned to the Ghana Refugee Board. Mary replied loudly and forcefully, saying, ‘They have been trying from the beginning to isolate us, to undermine us. We are still resisting this.’ She argued it was not a ‘legal thing,’ because it was an oral communication from the commandant, not written. This argument carried the day. A younger man, whom I recognized as the Stakeholders’ representative from Montserrado County, brought up the matter of gender equality, saying some women should come, too. Someone suggested: Perhaps a few of the other women posing as the organizers? Another shot it down (‘No, the commandant will be there to recognize them’). One of the male elders agreed that men should go instead of women. (‘Yes, that’s what I said,’ Mary said). Someone repeated the earlier concern of not being invited. Kpassi said with laughter in his voice, ‘We will arrange a coincidence.’ After some time, they agreed that a contingent of women and men would go to the meeting in Accra. When the men left, Mardea, who had resisted urges to join the women representatives, and Isatta begin to quiz potential representatives. Topics included resettlement, local integration, repatriation, and how to get the women to leave the field. The first representative, a woman elder wearing a T-shirt and a lappa and sitting with her legs spread wide, offered an impassioned call for repatriation support. The urbanity of her voice startled me because of her age and shabby clothes; I felt chilled, reminded again of war’s destruction. Isatta made corrections in the rhetorical form, pretending to be a Ghana Refugee Board member, and a rude one at that. Mardea also offered some suggestions on what they were likely to say. Then another woman went. She introduced herself as a professional woman who couldn’t afford a work permit or a resident’s permit. Isatta riposted: ‘We’ll give you work permit, we’ll give you resident’s permit!’ The others laughed, and she reminded them they had to be

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careful what they said: ‘They don’t want integration.’ The conversation ended with a pep talk as the organizers entreated the newly chosen representatives: ‘Don’t let the men go off topic and off message. If you hear them saying anything against our interests, you disagree with them. Don’t be intimidated by the Ghana Refugee Board man. You have a right to talk and be treated respectfully.’ Over the next week, the Stakeholders grew stronger and more cohesive. When the head of Heads of County sat at a table on the cracked cement of the patio after a Stakeholders meeting on March 5 and began once again to elaborate on their position, a crowd soon grew, lining the whole wall a few people deep. He transitioned adroitly from the Concerned Women’s protests to criticism of the undemocratic nature of refugee leadership in Buduburam. He said, ‘We see the need to mobilize ourselves as a people—to be exact, the head of Heads, which represents our counties. In the past the Welfare Council has been elected, but now the Ghana Refugee Board along with camp manager has decided to avoid elections. They have started appointing representatives! The Welfare Council dance to the rhythm of the appointing bodies.’ The head of Heads of County decried the current system, for ‘it paved the way to personal aggrandizement and to the suffering of the masses.’ He argued that the Stakeholders ‘[were] here to satisfy the mass and grassroots level, to be able to liaise between grassroots level and the authorities’ (field notes, March 5, 2008). On March 11, representatives from the Concerned Women and the Stakeholders left for the meeting in Accra (the protest organizers decided to go in person, too). In the months leading up to the February sit-down protest, the protesters’ platform had evolved into three requests: (1) restart the repatriation program with a package that included US$1,000 per returnee, (2) end local integration programs and reallocate the money to the repatriation program, and (3) reopen resettlement and give everyone a hearing on the grounds of political asylum. This was the platform they took to Accra. The meeting was an abysmal failure. The protesters and Stakeholders arrived to find not a meeting with the UNHCR country representative but a hearing chaired by Interior Minister Kwamena Bartels. The minister invited the UNHCR county representative to make a statement, allowed one man and one woman from the refugee contingent to speak, and then called the press waiting outside into the room. He read from a prepared statement in which he declared the sit-down demonstration to be an ungrateful movement that violated the Public Order Act. He reaffirmed his opposition to local integration and threatened to revoke the refugee status of Liberians in Ghana. He stated that he would send police to arrest the protesters if they did not leave the field immediately.

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We saw the deceit. The 1951 Refugee Convention and OAU Convention on Refugees guarantees the safety of refugees, that they at no time have to come in contact with armed men. But in Ghana it was habitual. We saw heavily armed people. We were at the Accra conference center, not the UNHCR headquarters. Both men and women were subjected to body searches. It was deception on the part of the UNHCR and Ghana. Our rights were not protected. Most of us were intimidated, but a few of us by the Grace of God could speak. In every group, everyone has something to contribute, but the general public would not get our contribution because the journalists were kept out. The negative [was] expected from Ghana, but the deception from the UNHCR was not expected. Kwamena Bartels rubbished everything we said. It wasn’t easy to speak, but the voice of the people is the voice of God. God lead us out of Ghana. The UNHCR is like a parent. If she comes and gives us her assurance as a parent or a mother organization, I got respect for them and expect them to do what they say. But they were under the GRB, Ghana government. (Former head of Heads of County, July 2014) Later, I asked a woman who went to the talks what happened. She said, ‘We got there and the military soldiers lined the walkway. With the soldiers and with how the minister paused and then came back and said he could invoke the cessation clause, I really think that he was planning on doing it right then, but when he saw that we were reasonable people, he decided not to.’ She shifted the conversation to reiterate her commitment to the protest organizers: ‘You know, the girls are young. When the bird’s wings are tied back; it cannot fly. We have untied its wings’ (field notes, March 11, 2008). The UNHCR-Ghana (2008c) later explained that the agency had solicited the intervention of the Ghanaian authorities in response to the food boycott: “Given that the recipients of the food basket include chronically ill, elderly and malnourished refugees, this was a very disturbing development and the authorities were once again asked to intervene as it was beyond the control of the Camp Management and the refugee leadership who had also directly been threatened for not supporting them. UNHCR became increasingly concerned as the situation is causing stress for the majority of the population which remains uninvolved.”

They literally had lost control and the camp was becoming unruly and they had asked us to take control of the situation. (Kwamena Bartels, former interior minister, June 17, 2014)

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Upon their return to Buduburam, the protest organizers led the crowded field in a rally. They declared victory in having eliminated the local integration programs.3 They vowed to remain resolute against any threats from the Ghana government and to stay on the field until the UNHCR came to negotiate. People were cheering and dancing in the field, but I was confused. Didn’t the meeting go badly? I asked a woman next to me, who replied, ‘Yes, but we are celebrating their safe return. The Ghana government could have done anything to our leaders in Accra, but they are back here safe’ (field notes, March 11, 2008). At a joint meeting that evening, the tone was sober as the Stakeholders and protest organizers tried to figure out what to do next. A man sitting on the couch said, ‘Because you know we are the brains of this camp, if the police come and bad things happen, we will be responsible’ (field notes, March 11, 2008). They agreed that the organizers should continue to rally the protesters by focusing on their two successes: the opposition to local integration and a possible start to real negotiations with the UNHCR. But there was no consensus between the groups about whether to leave the field. Most who spoke were in favor of leaving the field (‘We are not at war with Ghana or with UNHCR, but we are violating the law, protesting illegally’; ‘If we had gotten permission from the police to begin with, it would be different’; ‘If they come at daybreak tomorrow, it will go badly’; ‘The only reason they came is the women on the field’; ‘Those boys around there, we can’t control them. They are very aggressive. If the police come there will be fighting’). The head of Heads of County asked at the end of the discussion how many were in favor of ending the sit-down protest. “Unanimous.” How were many against? “Four.” How do they end up with a unanimous vote if four vote against it? I wondered. The Stakeholders reached a near consensus that the protesters should leave the field. But despite their alliance, the protest organizers did not consider themselves beholden to the Stakeholders, and the organizers refused to leave the field. But the following day, everything changed. The protest organizers received a call from a Liberian NGO executive who had been trying to mediate the dispute between the UNHCR and the refugees. The NGO leader invited the organizers to a private meeting with a man he identified as the regional security advisor for the UNHCR, or, as he later became known, “the Man from Senegal” (i.e., the UNHCR regional headquarters). Only four of the five protest leaders, and none of the Stakeholders, attended that meeting. Those organizers left the meeting convinced that the UNHCR was willing to negotiate if the protesters withdrew from the field and that the police would come the next day if they remained. Communications between the protest organizers and the UNHCR seemed finally to be moving forward. The organizers began to ask protesters to leave, but as they 3. The end of the local integration programs proved temporary. After the interior minister left office, the UNHCR returned to its local integration programming.

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had no effective means of passing the information to the more than one thousand people spread across the large field and gave little justification at that time for the dramatic change of strategy, confusion erupted. The organizers did not inform the Stakeholders of their decision, so when the head of Heads of County and others heard that the protesters were leaving the field, the Stakeholders assumed that something had gone wrong. The head of Heads of County rushed to the field and entreated the departing women to stay, as did a few other men and women. Meanwhile, the protest organizers continued to ask people to leave. Confusion reigned. The next day, rumors flew through the camp. Most suspicions focused on the meeting between the Man from Senegal and the organizers. People accused them of bribery—$10,000 to each; fifty people of their choice to be resettled to America. Most women refused to leave the field. Those who did faced accusations of betrayal, as did those who stayed. The Concerned Women’s movement fractured. But women remained in the field. A week later, the interior minister sent forces from the capital to the camp, detaining more than six hundred women and children whom the police bused to Kordiabe, a barren detention camp in the Eastern region. When the police came with tear gas, they say, “Because you are stubborn and hotheaded we’re going to come back for you.” But the girls crowded the bus more and more and they couldn’t get to me. When police came, the group got large. We told the police in as much as you are carrying our people, we will come and bring more. (Sia, July 2014) We hid Sia under the mattress. [Author: Why didn’t they take you?] They said, ‘You big guys should stay, because if we carry all of the big people, there will be no one to control all the people.’ (Wilhemina, Concerned Women elder, June 18, 2014) The UNHCR (2008c) issued a public statement in response to those arrests, praising the Ghanaian police for the professional manner in which the action was carried out and describing the agency’s efforts to minimize the suffering of detainees by, for example, negotiating for the release of unaccompanied minors, pregnant women, the elderly, and those who had been injured. The agency, like the Interior Ministry, described the protest as a criminal act in which “self-styled leaders [were] disrupting programming and dialogue with refugees in Buduburam.” Protesters remained on the field after the first raid, and the Ghanaian authorities launched a second police action a few days later. More violent than the first,

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the second action targeted men throughout Buduburam rather than women and children in the field and brought panic to the refugee camp. Most of the detained men were released at the end of the day, but sixteen were deported, a violation of international refugee law against refoulement that the UNHCR condemned in public statements issued on March 23 from Ghana (UNHCR-Ghana 2008b) and March 25 from Geneva (Pagonis 2008).

Stage 5: An International Dispute and an End to the Protest, March–April 2008 Protesters remained in the field despite the police actions, and the incident grew into an international dispute (Harris 2008; Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Liberia 2008). In Liberia, the perceived abuse of “our brothers and sisters in Ghana” provoked fury against Ghanaians, while some people still in Ghana declared that when they returned to Liberia, they would make the Ghanaians in Liberia suffer as they had suffered in Ghana. The opposition party in Liberia accused Liberian President Sirleaf of indifference to the abuses against her people in Ghana (Agyepong 2008), prompting her to send the foreign minister to Ghana. The Liberian ambassador to Ghana came to the camp ahead of the foreign minister’s arrival. He promised his countrywomen that he would speak for them and begged them to leave the field. The women departed in celebration. The negotiations ultimately failed to produce concessions for the camp residents. Instead Liberia, Ghana, and the UNHCR signed a new tripartite agreement declaring that all Liberians must leave Ghana in six months. This agreement was impractical, because the UNHCR did not have the means to facilitate the repatriation of such a large group, nor could postwar Liberia sustain an influx of thousands of people in six months. But the Ghanaian interior minister was fired soon after, easing the pressure on the UNHCR to enforce the agreement. The authorities later changed the terms of the agreement such that 50 percent of registered refugees were required to leave within seven months (Liberian Refugee Repatriation and Resettlement Commission 2008). Nevertheless, the UNHCR officials returned to Buduburam and launched the first successful large-scale repatriation in Buduburam’s history.

We felt discouraged because our representative did not come back. When your parents come and say we will come back, we expect them to come. Why we never heard back from the ambassador, I don’t know. Whether the Ghana government was doing it so we will leave in our numbers, I don’t know. (Sia, July 2014)

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Later that summer, a man who had begun the UNHCR-sponsored repatriation program recounted his experiences with one of the sessions. He said, They told me, “Don’t go home with anger in your heart.” That phrase was part of the UNHCR’s transnational script, crafted in Geneva as part of its efforts to encourage peace and reconciliation among those returning to a postwar country. But after the events of the Concerned Women protests, this man drew a different meaning from that phrase; he heard it as a plea not to retaliate against the Ghanaians living in Liberia. Over the ensuing months, thousands returned home to Liberia, but many left in fear and with bitterness toward Ghanaians (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Liberia 2008).

Organizing amid a Sea of Concerns and a Multitude of Viewpoints My chronicle of the Concerned Women protests lacks the simplicity of the accounts offered by the UNHCR and the Ghanaian authorities. It muddies the accounts of leadership, membership, opposition, and alliance in the movement. But in reality, the movement created not unyielding opponents and stalwart allies but rather partial alliances and partial opposition that played upon long-standing interpersonal relations and shifted over time during the protest events. By exploring how the protest organizers engaged with other politically active people and factions, we can see, in turn, that when the UNHCR and the Ghanaian authorities decided to repress the protests, they unintentionally chose to support one faction over another in a policy debate. The UNHCR believed that the Concerned Women constituted a small group who intimated and coerced their peers. The agency drew this conclusion primarily based on information it received from several members of the Welfare Council and executives from some major refugee women’s NGOs. The Ghanaian authorities believed that the Concerned Women were a front for a group of ex-combatant men. They based this conclusion primarily on the letter signed by the Stakeholders and on information from local Ghanaian officials in Buduburam about the Stakeholders. These two accounts, although different on the surface, touch on similar concerns about alliance, opposition, and leadership in social protests. In Chapter 2, I show that camp residents actively participated in both the formal and informal administration of the camp, held different views about how the camp should run, and regularly formed and dissolved coalitions in nonviolent factionalism. In the section that follows, I show that the same dynamics emerged in the protests. What I saw in the Concerned Women protests were alliances and divisions between politically active residents that shifted and intensified over time between October 2007 and April 2008 and then quieted to civility by May 2008.

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The Stakeholders did influence the protests, but they did not wrest control of the movement from the protest organizers. The protest organizers did come into conflict with some Welfare Council members and executives from local women’s NGO at times, but they disagreed primarily over protest tactics and leadership, not the movement’s goals.

Relations with Local Women’s NGO Executives In Buduburam, the UNHCR consistently promoted refugee women’s interests and leadership (Apeadu 1991; Kreitzer 2002). The agency’s interventions found a fertile ground in this part of West Africa. Liberia had a long history of women’s civic participation (Moran 2012), as did Ghana (Fallon 2008). Some camp residents justified the UNHCR’s advocacy as a mother’s right to speak for her children and her home. Others embraced a frame of equal rights. By 2007, the community had developed a critical mass of women with experience in camp administration and community development. Many of these women created local NGOs, including the New Liberia Women Skills Training Center and the Liberian Refugee Women Association. Most women leaders had experience with social protests, because the Liberian peace movement had recruited heavily from camp residents in the demonstrations during the peace accords held in Accra. But by 2007, women leaders faced the same financial constraints as the other local NGO executives. They struggled to find and maintain relationships with donors. As a result, these NGO executives formed alliances for some activities and grant proposals and fought over others in the same mundane factionalism found in other local NGOs. The following three vignettes illuminate different facets of the relationships between the local women’s NGOs’ executives and the Concerned Women. The first vignette recounts an interview with two members of this faction. The second vignette offers an example of mundane factionalism between these women and the protest organizers. The third vignette shows how their superior status gave the NGO executives communicative advantages over the Concerned Women organizers. VIGNETTE 1:

“I TOLD THEM”

From the UNHCR’s perspective, the protest organizers had a hostile relationship with local women’s NGOs’ executives, but I observed a much more interesting relationship than one of straightforward hostility. A conversation with Clara and Susan,4 two local women’s NGOs’ executives, after the protests ended offered a particularly revealing window into this relationship. I began with an open-ended 4. The interview took place on June 24, 2008.

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question about their experiences with the Concerned Women. They responded with a long and detailed dissection of the protest tactics and leadership. The most revealing part was the way they framed their criticism: “I told them.” Clara had opposed the demonstration. She said, “They called me, I told them it is not the right thing because this is Ghana. It is not our country.” They asked her to join, and she not only said no but tried to dissuade them with reasoned arguments about the constraints of noncitizens. But her follow-up statement complicates things in an even more interesting way. She said: “So if you say your target is UN (. . .) I would prefer you going to UNHCR grounds. They didn’t listen.” In other words, Clara would have supported a demonstration if they had carried it out not in the field by the road but in the UNHCR’s compound in Accra, as she had suggested. Relationships do change over time. Perhaps Clara meant to convey her feelings at the beginning of the protest. Perhaps what began as a civil exchange in November shifted to threatening by February? Not so for Clara. Even at the height of the internal strife—the days shortly after the Welfare Council chairman’s TV interview—Clara was still talking with the protest organizers. She told me: “When they went and they brought the influx of men, I said, ‘Hey! Don’t put the men behind you! It will cause trouble.’ (. . .) Even that day when they were going [to Accra] with the men, I told them, I say, ‘You all don’t go with these men. You all will spoil it!’ Anything that women alone do, it different. But if you put the men with you, you causing trouble. They didn’t listen to me. Now they [are] all ashamed.”

From Clara’s perspective, the real problem was that the protest organizers did not use the correct protest tactics. Clara believed that she knew better than the protest organizers how to convince the UNHCR to change its policies—that the protest would have worked if the organizers had listened to her. But they didn’t appreciate her past experience; as she put it, “You are just a new little girl coming in with ambitions, which is fine, but you have to listen to other people who have been there before. But she didn’t listen, they didn’t listen.” Like Clara, Susan had opposed the protests but still had a direct relationship with the organizers. Like Clara, she had objected to concrete protest tactics rather than to movement goals: Susan:

“I told the girls it was not possible to get $1,000. They said the Iraqis got it. I told them they got oil, it could be their own money they are giving them—”

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Clara:

“I told them to leave it open. When I read the communication, I told them you should have left it open, you shouldn’t have put the amount, leave it open, say ‘increase,’ and then when they come back to you and they ask how much increment then you can tell them, but you just put $1,000, that was too abrupt. I told them; they didn’t listen to me.”

Both Susan and Clara consulted with the organizers about how to frame their request to increase the repatriation package. Clara read and commented on an earlier draft of the petition. She described her vision of the correct protest tactics, a strategy that would have avoided the real threat, Ghanaian interference: Clara:

“Call all the good stakeholders, women, in Accra women and Liberian women also who will listen to your plight, form a delegation, and even at five o’clock, four o’clock in the morning you will reach to the UN office, when they open the gate, we all go in the office. Then we won’t have no problem with Ghana. You see we will have no problem with Ghana government. But they didn’t listen.”

Once again, note that this is a dispute about protest tactics. They did not object to the main demands of the Concerned Women but to the strategies the protest organizers developed to press their demands. It also expresses a tacit disagreement about leadership. Throughout this conversation, Susan and Clara referred to the protest organizers as “the girls” (although they were in their thirties and forties) who did not give sufficient deference to their elders. Clara’s and Susan’s comments are consistent with my own observations during the events, and they do not support a straightforward interpretation of opponents who were harassed. But they do not support an interpretation of stalwart alliance between “the women” in Buduburam, either. What the interviews with these and other people who opposed the protests reveal are how complex political relationships become in close-knit communities. Camp residents could feel anger, jealousy, contempt, and hurt without becoming sworn enemies. They could disagree and criticize one another without bloodshed. They were, in short, human. So why might conservative leaders have told the UNHCR that their lives were at risk? No one would tell me outright, but my impression is that they had mixed motives. Their decision could have included some personal assessment of risk; if it did, I would imagine that they considered the threats not only from fellow Liberians but also from Ghanaian authorities should the demonstrations turn sour. From the start, this conservative faction expressed greater fear that the protests would trigger violent repression, which, as it turned out, was an accurate assessment of risk. But their decision likely contained some strategic self-interest, too. In an oft-told tale, the UNHCR resettled a Welfare Council chairperson after

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a brawl between partisans of a county association football game. I highly doubt the truth of this story; I suspect that the resettlement case just happened to have finished processing around the same time as the brawl. But in the camp, it was taken as gospel. The story made it seem possible that the UNHCR would resettle community leaders attacked in internal disputes on the grounds of political asylum. This belief worked its way into political discourse in the camp in a number of interesting ways. For example, at a heated meeting in the Welfare Council with the chairman, several people repeatedly calmed their shouting peers—young men who clustered outside the hall—by saying to them, Eh my man, no political asylum, no political asylum! Regardless of their motives, the essential point is to recognize the political nature of their actions: these people did not represent “the Liberian community” any more than the Concerned Women represented “the Liberian community.” They did not convey spin-free information but a well-reasoned position in a complex debate. But that debate was not about how the UNHCR should reform its migration programs—on that point, they agreed with the protest organizers, except the conservative women and the Welfare Council chairman did not trouble themselves to oppose local integration. The debate was about how to advocate for policy change in a high-risk environment. These people took the conservative stance because they feared that contentious politics would provoke the authorities to treat them as rebels. This perception proved to be an accurate assessment of risk. VIGNETTE 2: AN OUTSIDER’S VIEW OF THE INTERNAL DIVISIONS

The first vignette illustrates that the protest organizers and the local women’s NGOs’ executives had more in common than the UNHCR account made them appear. The second vignette shows that these factions were highly unequal. The conservative women leaders mobilized existing networks of donors to their advantage during the most contentious stage of the sit-down protest. This vignette provides a donor’s perspective on their activities and a window into how conservative women successfully rallied support. The donor in question—the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF)—had provided varying degrees of support for a few local women’s NGOs over the previous several years. Around the time of the protests, the program officer for the Ghana branch of the AWDF wrote: “In AWDF’s headquarters in Ghana we recently had a visit from a delegation of Liberian women who have had to ironically flee the Buduburam Refugee Camp and shared their tale of woe with us. These women have had to flee the camp after disagreeing with the demonstrators about their demands from the Ghanaian government

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and have until very recently been camping out at the offices of the UNHCR. Staff at AWDF supported our Liberian Sisters with gifts of clothing, shoes, and money. The heartfelt response from [first name, local women’s NGO executive] the leader of the delegation underpinned why we do what we do. I have paraphrased her words below: If I tell you that we are surprised by your gift then we would be lying. You have always supported us and we are truly grateful. May God richly bless you and multiply the sources where you obtain your funds from. The ‘New Liberian Women’s Organisations Skills Training Centre’ and ‘The Liberian Refugee Women’s Organisation’ have been beneficiaries of AWDF’s grant-making and technical assistance.” (emphasis added)5

In this post, the donor took at face value the claims of the women the organization had worked with for years—that the conservative women were victims of the demonstrators. The organization offered financial and moral support and reiterated its commitment to those particular Liberian women’s NGOs. The conservative women successfully rallied support for their faction. A month after the protests ended, the donor blogged about the events again, but in this account, all sense of division among the Liberian women disappears: “You may have heard about the recent demonstrations by Liberian Refugee Women at the Buduburam camp. Well, so had we. It was really hard to understand what the issues were as there was a lot of sensational stories in the press so AWDF in association with the Network for Women’s Rights in Ghana (NETRIGHT) decided to pay a visit to refugee women at the camp to hear firsthand the issues for ourselves. Our visit to the camp attracted over a thousand women to an open forum we held in a church hall. The church hall was overflowing and several more women were sitting in doorways trying to hear what was going on and to participate. Our mission as women’s right’s organisations was simple, to show solidarity with Liberian Refugee Women and to find out from them directly what their concerns were. To say we were welcomed with open hands was an understatement. “Finally you are here,” said the women at the camp. We explained that as women’s right’s organisations we were concerned when we heard about women demonstrating at the camp and many of them being put in detention. We explained that we had come to show our solidarity and to listen to the concerns of the women. We were keen to explain that we had no silver bullet remedies but will continue to play a role as advocates with the statutory bodies. (. . .) 5. “Female Liberian Refugees in Ghana,” http://www.awdf.org/browse/855.

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AWDF and NETRIGHT have made a commitment to Liberian refugee women that we will advocate on their behalf with statutory partners including the UNHCR and the Ghana Refugee Board. We will also continue our discussions with women at the Buduburam camp. Our visit ended with a donation of food items and clothing to women at the camp.”6

After the protests ended, the organization shifted to showing solidarity with “Liberian Refugee Women”—a presumably unified entity. I happened to interview an attendee—a former rank-and-file member of the Concerned Women— shortly after the meeting. This is how she described it: Me: SSI 34:

“Was that also talking about the protest, or no, they weren’t talking— No they talk about it, that you know we should, they should reconcile to bring peace among them, they shouldn’t—yeah, some of them TALK. One lady, Clara, talk on behalf of the women from the other organization, then Bendu, she talk, two of them talk among the groups. But they never allow the other two girls [Isatta and Tomah] to talk.”

The interviewee’s account moves the story back to the earlier themes of division and unequal access to donors. The women who spoke came from the same faction: the conservative women who led long-standing NGOs. The meeting’s organizers did not let the Concerned Women protest organizers take an active role, even in the “reconciliation” dialogue. VIGNETTE 3: ORGANIZING FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY

The third vignette highlights a dispute over a grant proposal to further illustrate the relations between the protest organizers and the conservative women. The UNHCR sponsored celebrations for the UN holidays in Buduburam, such as World AIDS Day, World Refugee Day, and International Women’s Day. The celebrations for International Women’s Day included a range of activities: public services (e.g., free gynecological exams), outreach programs on gender-based violence, parades, public theater, and public ceremonies (Jehu-Hoyah 2005). The Women’s Initiative for Self-Empowerment (WISE), a Ghanaian NGO, served as the primary implementing partner for the holiday, but the project required considerable efforts by Liberian community organizers as well. The agency solicited a proposal from local women’s NGOs every year to determine sponsorship. The UNHCR funding for International Women’s Day was another source of contention among 6. Women’s Rights Group Visit Liberian Refugee Women, published May 5, 2008, by AWDF in Publications, http://fr.awdf.org/browse/857.

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the different women leaders. This vignette presents the plans for International Women’s Day from a protest organizer’s perspective. The story places the tensions between women leaders that surfaced during the protests within the wider context of mundane factionalism between the community leaders. The contentiousness of the International Women’s Day celebrations first came to my attention in January, when I asked Tomah to tell me about women’s groups in the camp. She began with a critical discussion of the trajectory of women’s leadership in Buduburam: January 29, 2008. Bendu was the one who was controlling women on the camp but due to her incapability and corruption, some women decided to break away from her and they formed Women of Liberia Peace Network. During the peace negotiations, we went to Accra and held them hostage. Bendu as well as other groups protested against the war. Now, they want small monies for project, and they just leave the masses here and go about their own business. But now, they don’t have the masses any more to get what they want.

From Tomah’s perspective, which other protest organizers also shared, the local women’s NGOs’ executives contributed to the good work of the peace demonstrations in Accra, but in the years after, they lost sight of the important part of advocacy. They became corrupt and instrumental in their relationship with “the masses”: January 29, 2008. Tomah reaches into her bag and takes out a document submitted to PCO asking for sponsorship in the upcoming International Women’s Day celebrations from a self-described “Coalition of Women Organizations.” It is signed by leaders of New Liberian Women Skills Training Center, Buduburam Ghanaian Women Group, Sierra Leonean Women Group, Women of Glory, Women Kind, Liberian Refugee Women Organization.

For Tomah, the proposal, which listed the names of five large local women’s NGOs and a Sierra Leonean group under the sweeping banner of “Coalition of Women Organizations,” demonstrated the exclusiveness of that faction. They did not let new groups join them in their grant-writing process. In May, a month after the protests ended and relations between women leaders had returned to strained civility, the issue of the International Women’s Day surfaced again. Tomah told me about her latest efforts to organize events for the International Women’s Day: May 2, 2008. Bendu is taking it like a personal thing, an organizational thing. But the UNHCR wanted women’s groups on the camp to come together. They said

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they would give us umbrella stationeries. The Welfare Council, too, wanted to do the job. Bendu was writing a proposal document to the UNHCR and couldn’t share it to the group. She was not transparent. On her letterhead, she wrote big big proposal in the name of her own organization. [The UNHCR country representative] said that the women on the camp failed her before, the women on the camp are not cooperative—she was talking about the 2006 International Women’s Day—because the women’s groups on the camp are divided; Bendu being a Vai girl, the Welfare Council chairman was always renting the space to her. I said it shouldn’t be only one group keep organizing and organizing. I told Mardea to tell Welfare Council we would not sit there and allow Bendu to organize it again. When you know this day is coming, call all the women groups to work together. We are writing UNHCR that Bendu is not the only one organizing it. She is chair, but WOBNET is co-chair and all the other women’s organizations are part of it. So actually [the UNCHR country representative] was happy to hear that—that we are working together. But Bendu has already been writing proposals to other organizations. They didn’t want to share money; Bendu and WISE. So we said, but Bendu is not communicating to us.

Less than a month after the protests had ended, the different women leaders were once again struggling—civilly—over a share of the scarce resources in the camp. As Tomah recounted her opinions about Bendu and the Welfare Council and her experiences with the UNHCR, she touched upon many of the dimensions of factionalism that I highlight in Chapter 2. There was no neutral “refugee voice” for the UNHCR to sponsor, no singular “refugee women,” only competing factions with different agendas. The different factions had unequal access to the UNHCR. The faction the UNHCR respected—Bendu and her long-standing women’s NGOs’ partners—struggled to preserve its place by shutting out other groups. Meanwhile, new groups sought to gain greater authority by delegitimating the old guard. At the same time, it was small-town politics—everybody knew everybody, and although ethnic loyalties served as a useful source of blame, they did not in practice segregate community leaders. Even Tomah sought not to exclude Bendu from the grant but to lessen her power over it. The UNHCR officials were extrapolating about events on the ground based on the limited information given them. But the agency did not talk to a crosssection of camp residents, relying instead on trusted informants who had yearslong relationships with the agency. In a context of multiple factions with unequal access to authorities, this extrapolation produced an oversimplified version of the alliance, opposition, and leadership in the Concerned Women protests. As a researcher, conflicting accounts were a puzzle worth exploring, not a technical problem to ignore. I had nothing to lose from leaning into the messiness of the

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diverging opinions, so I actively sought sources of conflicting information. Ultimately, these different viewpoints led me to a different conclusion than that of the UNHCR: what I saw was evidence of reasoned disagreements among politically active residents, not harassment or coercion by “self-styled leaders.”

Gender Relations and the Stakeholders Like the relations between the protest organizers and the conservative women leaders, the relations between the organizers and the Stakeholders proved much messier and more interesting than in the authorities’ accounts. The Stakeholders and the protest organizers shared some overlapping concerns, but the Stakeholders also pursued a goal not shared by the protest organizers. In other words, the two groups were partial allies, not a single movement or unified “front.” Indeed, that the two groups experienced so much friction over leadership shows that the protest organizers were autonomous actors who acted independently from “the men.” Below I briefly elaborate these two claims and then explore these processes in depth in two vignettes. Unlike the protest organizers, the Stakeholders wanted to democratize the Welfare Council. Although that concern did not make it into the official letter to the UNHCR, it was clear from the Stakeholders’ meetings and my interviews with various members that democratization was a central concern. When the Ministerial Council chairman (an early supporter even before the Stakeholders coalesced into a movement) gave a sermon at a prayer meeting in January, he incorporated anti–Welfare Council rhetoric that prompted a rebuttal from one of the protest organizers. A newly radicalized member originally presented the desire to delegitimize the Welfare Council as a platform promoted by the Hatai group, a subgroup in the Stakeholders, but by March 5, the head of Heads of County was already framing the Stakeholders’ position in opposition to the Welfare Council. The Ghanaian authorities argued that the protest organizers were nothing more than a front for the true leaders—the Stakeholders. But my observations offered large and small signs that the protest organizers acted independently. I have already noted a few of these instances in my chronicle of the protest events. During the joint meeting on March 3, the men asked the head of Heads of County for permission to speak, but Mary, a protest organizer, never did. In their pep talk after the meeting, the organizers instructed their chosen representatives to not let the men go off topic and off message, adding that if the women heard them saying anything against the group’s interests, they should disagree with the men. Even more strongly, although the Stakeholders reached a near consensus that the protesters should leave the field after the failed meeting in Accra, the protest

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organizers chose not to ask the women to leave the field. The next day, when they were invited to meet with a UNHCR official, they neither called the Stakeholders to invite them to join the meeting nor informed them of the decision to end the demonstration after the meeting. Although they allied with each other in important ways, the protest organizers remained separate. The splintering of the movement, a watershed event in the sit-down protest, offers a particularly illuminating view of the nature of their relationship. The first vignette tells the story from the perspective of a Stakeholder, the second from a protest organizer’s perspective. Their competing accounts draw attention to their struggles over the direction of the movement and the backdrop of diverging interests, sexism, and rampant rumors. It was difficult not just for the protest organizers but also for the Stakeholders to negotiate their relationship. The alliance, although important for the Concerned Women’s credibility, actually heightened risks for both parties. VIGNETTE 4:

“THEY WILL SAY THE LIBERIAN PEOPLE”

The Stakeholders blamed the protest organizers after the movement splintered for a hasty, ill-conceived, and poorly implemented plan for withdrawal. A conversation with Kpassi shortly after the event offered a particularly vivid account of how the Stakeholders experienced that event and their relationship with the protest organizers more broadly (field notes, March 13, 2008): Kpassi: It is all confusion. I don’t know where to stand now. Isatta and those others have lost the support of the people. The Stakeholders, we’re all associated with them. They lost. Yesterday, they went to a meeting with this man, no one knows who he is. Called in by PCO. But we know that PCO has wanted them gone from the field since the beginning. They said that he said that the military was coming tonight last night, that the soldiers were already in the van. Me: Who was he? Kpassi: A man from Senegal, says he’s UNHCR security officer. PCO brought him. So they came back from the meeting and told everybody to leave the field. Of course people were going to think that they had been bought—going to this private meeting and suddenly changing what they had been saying. Without telling us first, or explaining anything. Now they were talking about the law—it had always been illegal! Why does it matter now? They just ordered people off the field, didn’t consult with anyone, didn’t explain anything. They embarrassed [head of Heads of County], made a fool out of him. We saw people leaving the field, and started to tell them to go back, and

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Me: Kpassi:

then saw Isatta and she said they told them to leave from there. [Head of Heads of County]almost got beaten. They never communicate with us. They go and do this, go and do that, and expect us to do it. We invite them to meetings and they don’t come. They never come. We have to go to the field to meet them, fine. But they do things like write a letter to Geneva, and we’re held responsible, but we don’t know anything about it, and we didn’t have any part in it. But maybe the women didn’t really want you? Maybe you’re making an assumption that the women wanted you? It was not an assumption! They came to us when Welfare Council chairman was speaking against them and asked us to support them— the Ministerial Council, the Elders Council, all of us. We asked them to get names to a letter, and Isatta said, I have to consult with the other four, and just wouldn’t do it. They don’t like to hear criticism. Well, they can be four right people. But what does it matter? Politics is not an examination. If the people are not with you, it doesn’t work. People don’t like to be talked to like that. We’re having a meeting at Refugee Baptist to calm the young people down. We’re all taking risks, we will all face the consequences, we should all have a say. Ghana government is not going to say, “Liberian women” are not welcome here, “Liberian women” are ungrateful. They will say the Liberian people.

Kpassi blamed the protest organizers for not consulting with the Stakeholders— or even informing them—before major actions: the meeting with the UNHCR official and the decision to end the sit-down protest. Throughout the interview, Kpassi kept returning to the issue of communication between the Stakeholders and protest organizers. The protest organizers acted “without telling us first or explaining anything.” This was an ongoing problem; they “never communicate with us” and “never come [to meetings with us].” Kpassi exaggerated—they did have some joint meetings—but the general point of his criticism is accurate. The protest organizers never considered themselves beholden to the Stakeholders and consulted them only insofar as they perceived a direct benefit from doing so. For Kpassi, the lack of communication regarding the movement (and control over it) was frustrating because he feared that he and the other politically active men would suffer the same or worse fate as the protesters. Throughout our interview, he kept returning to the theme of taint: “we’re all associated,” “we’re held responsible,” “we’re all taking risks,” “we will all face the consequences.” Ultimately, he argued, the “Ghana government is not going to say ‘Liberian women’ are not welcome here. . . . They will say the Liberian people.” The dilemma that

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Kpassi and the men faced was that authorities took men’s political activism more seriously in two ways: authorities may give male activists greater respect, but they also are more likely to treat male activists more harshly and with greater suspicion. VIGNETTE 5:

“HE’S BEEN TRYING TO TAKE

OVER FROM THE BEGINNING”

For the protest organizers, the Stakeholders’ activities after the movement splintered confirmed what they had always feared: that the Stakeholders wanted to control the Concerned Women: March 20, 2008. Protest Organizer: The Stakeholders are trying to take over. [Head of Heads of County], he’s been trying to take over from the beginning. He’s spreading lies about us. He is taking Sia from us. He’s the one keeping the women on the field. He’s trying to use the women for his own power. You know they had been trying to replace the Welfare Council and that’s not what we are about. I went to the Stakeholders’ meeting today, the end of it, and someone asked a question: [Welfare Council chairman]’s gone but the co-chair for operations and the co-chair for administration are still here and shouldn’t they be a part of the process. [Head of Heads of County] said no, anyone who is interested would have come. We want to tell the lawyer that we are not with them. Even when the lawyer came, he kept telling the men not to interrupt us at the meeting—the men were always trying to talk. We want to talk to him about getting the women from the field. Because we are acting in defiance to the government. And you know when you act in defiance to the authorities they don’t like that, you can’t do that.

When the protest organizer tried to make sense of the collapse of their leadership, she exposed the imperfections of the alliance with the Stakeholders: internal power struggles against a backdrop of diverging interests, sexism, and rampant rumors. Diverging Interests: The camp abounded with people ambitious to reform camp administration or to achieve personal gain. By the February–March sit-down protest, the Concerned Women had become a political force in the refugee camp. Most residents remained bystanders—even at the high point, the day that the delegation left for Accra, the crowd on the field probably numbered fewer than ten thousand of the estimated thirty-five thousand refugees—but whoever controlled “the women” possessed the largest cohesive unit in the camp. The protest organizers recognized this fact and had assiduously cultivated this grassroots force. They had confronted challenges to their leadership from other refugee leaders from the start because they were women, too radical, and too young. But most challengers had sought to quell the movement, not to deploy it for their own ends. The Stakeholders, although allies to the movement, represented a different kind of

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challenge to the leadership of the protest organizers—an alliance as complex as the incomplete opposition from the conservative women. For the Stakeholders, a weakened Concerned Women movement meant the risk of collapse for two campaigns—the migration program reform that the protest organizers supported and the Welfare Council reform, which the women did not support, but might be useful for achieving nonetheless. This diversity of goals need not have severed the alliance, but it did create vulnerability in that relationship. Sexism: Sexism also made the alliance between the protest organizers and Stakeholders vulnerable. A large contingent of Liberian men and women, including at least two of the Stakeholders, held feminist values, but the protest organizers still confronted belittling assumptions about their competence on a regular basis. This chronic irritant created a real threat—that arrogant men would assume the protest organizers to be an easy-enough mark to launch a takeover—and shaped the ways that the protest organizers interpreted challenges to their leadership. For the protest organizer, it was not “the Stakeholders” who tried to take over, but “the men.” Rumors and Accidents: Rumors pervaded all areas of camp life, exacerbating the vulnerabilities of their alliance. The movement splintered not as a result of an actual internal power struggle but from a cascade of miscommunications. The majority of women on the field simply could not hear the protest organizers. The protest organizers were simply too exhausted to arrange a rally where they could present a clearly elaborated rationale on stage with a megaphone. The head of Heads of County had advocated for the women to leave the field the previous day, but he simply did not know that the protest organizers had changed their tactics and had already decided to leave the field. Yet in the aftermath of that series of incidents, the events became subject to rumor-fueled interpretations. Their former allies became in the protest organizers’ minds not unwitting accomplices in a cascade of missteps but deliberate provocateurs who were “spreading lies about us” and “keeping the women on the field.” This account of the events then became true in its consequence: it kept the protest organizers from seeking the Stakeholders’ help to reclaim control of the movement, thereby creating a power vacuum for the Stakeholders to enter. In the end, the Stakeholders never fully succeeded in gaining control over the protesters. Sia, one of the protest organizers, returned to the field and formed a closer alliance with the Stakeholders than had the earlier organizers, but the protesters remained largely directionless until they disbanded. Yes, because they went to the table [to meet with the Man from Senegal] and they left me out. Not knowing why they wanted to leave the field, I said, for what reason? Our plight was hard, and yet we stayed. How do we leave now? I only wanted to see the proper thing done, not to lead. (Sia, July 2014)

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The most significant aspect of the Concerned Women protests was their normality. The protesters’ demands derived from the same commonplace concerns about making a home for themselves after war that surfaced in everyday camp politics. What divided the protest organizers from the Welfare Council members and local women’s NGO executives was the same mundane factionalism that occurred in everyday camp politics. It was not the first or the last demonstration in Buduburam history. The camp did not teeter on the brink of chaos. The Concerned Women did not threaten to destroy life in Buduburam. Contentious politics is a part of life in humanitarian crisis. In his comparative study of humanitarian government, Michel Agier (2011) found many food boycotts, protests, and demands from refugee committees. Several relied on women’s mobilization because it is perceived as safer and more effective at evoking sympathy. In Guinea, for example, Sierra Leonean women blocked the main road to a Guinean refugee camp to demand plastic sheeting for “vulnerable women” (151); likewise, Guatemalan women in a refugee camp in Mexico organized for a new repatriation program (Stepputat 1994; Worby 1999). Even outside refugee camps, people living as refugees can rally together in contentious action—the 2005 Sudanese sit-down protest in Cairo is a well-documented example (Mahmoud 2007). Recognizing the normality of the Concerned Women protests allows us to evaluate their suppression as a political decision rather than an unavoidable defense against the forces of chaos. Like all political decisions, the decision to suppress the protests was a choice that authorities and residents had to resolve with other political and moral beliefs. Thus, the question emerges: how could humanitarians and refugees reconcile the UNHCR’s decision to suppress the protests with the agency’s broader commitment to the compassionate care of refugees? The next chapters attempt to answer that question.

Chapter 5

Refugee Dissent as a Social Problem

One day, in the midst of the February–March sit-down demonstration, the head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Ghana called a meeting with staff in Accra. As she laid out the events unfolding in Buduburam, she told her staff to remember that the refugees had the right to express their views.1 Not long after that meeting, the UNHCR decided to suppress the protests. Because our interest lies primarily in activists, social movement scholars often fail to give “repressive actors” due consideration. We interrogate the interests, emotions, structural positions, cognitive maps, and social ties of activists and movement organizations, but we treat repression as an intervention into the lives of activists rather than as an act committed by people and institutions with their own good intentions and structural constraints. This chapter explores the UNHCR’s actions during the repression. I examine the material realities the agency confronted—the limited resources and existing power-sharing arrangements—but the interminable state of crisis had shrouded the camp in such confusion and uncertainty that the meaning that the UNHCR took from events often had the greatest consequences. So the primary focus of the story is the frames, the structured ways that the UNHCR made sense of its world of “Liberian refugees” and “humanitarian aid.” 1. Informal conversation with a UNHCR official shortly after the meeting. This belief later surfaced publicly in one of the agency’s statement about the protests as well: “refugees had the freedom to express their views,” quoted in “Liberian Refugees Asked to Obey Laws of Ghana,” Accra, March 11, 2008, GNA, http://mobile.ghanaweb.com/wap/article.php?ID=140607.

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As in earlier chapters, I treat the UNHCR as an actor embedded, like all organizations, in wider social relations and institutional contexts (Powell and DiMaggio 1993). The people who staffed the agency mattered (much of the evidence that I rely upon comes from conversations with or observations of these people), but the agency cannot ultimately be reduced to the idiosyncratic individuals who staffed it. Like other organizations, the UNHCR was made up of “social relations deliberately created, with the explicit intention of continuously accomplishing some specific goals or purposes” (Stinchcombe 1965, 142). Like other organizations, the UNHCR operated according to institutional logics that tacitly or explicitly defined appropriate behavior (Friedland and Alford 1993, 248–53; W. R. Scott and Meyer 1994, 63). It is these institutional logics, which emerged in documents and official forms as well as interviews, public statements, and informal conversations with UNHCR staff, that I am seeking to grasp. The UNHCR’s side of the story goes like this. The UNHCR needed to protect vulnerable refugees from the food boycott. The protesters were intimidating other refugees, forcing them to become unwilling collaborators in the boycott. The protesters held unrealistic expectations about resettlement and repatriation. There was nothing more that the UNHCR could do to make them understand the harsh reality of the agency’s powerlessness to continue the resettlement program or offer substantial cash grants to returnees. The agency had no choice but to ask the host government to end the protests to protect the other refugees from the food boycott. This is a compelling story with meaningful moral underpinnings, but, like all stories, the UNHCR’s version emphasizes some facts and sidesteps others. In the discussion that follows, I reveal one complicating fact that leads us to an intriguing subtext about “legitimate” and “illegitimate” impediments to humanitarian aid. Through it all, the UNCHR continued to promote democratic principles, even as it balked at treating refugees as autonomous political beings. Altogether, what this analysis uncovers is a multifaceted process by which refugee dissent becomes a social problem.

Shifting the Story from Moral Certitude to Moral Ambiguity According to the UNHCR, authorities needed to suppress the protests to protect refugees from the food boycott, which could lead to malnutrition and other health issues. The UNHCR explained its actions most explicitly in a public statement issued immediately following the first police raid: Targeted food distribution scheduled to take place at Buduburam on 28 February 2008 was halted until further notice due to reported threats to the recipients,

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mounting tension and disruption by the ‘Liberian Refugee Women with Refugee Concerns.’ Given that the recipients of the food basket include chronically ill, elderly and malnourished refugees, this was a very disturbing development and the authorities were once again asked to intervene. . . . UNHCR became increasingly concerned as the situation is causing stress for the majority of the population which remains uninvolved. (UNHCR-Ghana 2008c)

This statement contains two recognizable moral arguments. Repressive actors feel justified when protesters act against their own best interests. Caregivers often force people to do what is best for them; a parent may with good reason force a recalcitrant toddler to wear a coat on a cold day. Repressive actors can also feel justified when they protect unwilling participants or bystanders; a parent may send a bullying older brother to his room to give a harassed little sister a welldeserved respite. In Buduburam, several factors complicated both possible scenarios to ultimately create moral ambiguity. Chief among these complicating factors was that shortly before the food boycott, the UNHCR announced that it would be ending the food program. The agency discussed this decision during the February 18 meeting, the day before the sit-down demonstration began; it also posted the information on public bulletin boards in the camp. According to the public bulletin: As of today UNHCR has only received incomplete food rations from WFP for refugees until the end of March 2008. There is no clarity on the continuation of food distribution beyond March. All assistance—food distribution and others from the WFP—ends in June 2008. Therefore all refugees in Ghana should make decisions about their future accordingly. (UNHCR-Ghana 2008a; emphasis added)

Supply issues had already created food shortages for the anticipated distributions in February and March 2008, the distribution would probably not go forward in April or May, and the program was scheduled to end completely in June. This was not a purely technical announcement—the UNHCR explicitly linked the food program to the ongoing debates about the future of the camp residents. In effect, the subtext to the line “refugees in Ghana should make decisions about their future accordingly” was that people needed to be less resistant to the local integration and repatriation programs, because the UNHCR was nearing the end of its support for the refugee camp. What are we to make of this complication? If the UNHCR planned to stop the food program shortly anyway, maybe it lacked sincerity when it said it was acting to protect the chronically ill, elderly, and malnourished refugees from the

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boycott. Perhaps the real explanation is that UNHCR saw the boycott as a convenient excuse to reassert control over disruptive parties in the camp. Critical refugee studies researchers have long argued that refugee camps function primarily as a means to contain and control the disruptions caused by large-scale forced migration (Edkins 2000; Hyndman 2000; R. Lippert 1999; Turner 2010). Kevin Hartigan (1992, 719), for example, draws on retrospective interviews with Mexican and UNHCR officials to show that the Mexican government allowed the UNHCR to intervene only because “the UNHCR’s plan for refugee camps promised the containment and depoliticization of refugee populations.” These prior cases lend weight to the interpretation that the UNHCR sought to reassert control over Buduburam. Politics relies so often on false fronts that it can be hard to recognize the elements of sincerity in political talk. And the need to reassert control likely did play some role in the UNHCR’s decision to suppress the protests. But the UNHCR’s concerns about vulnerable refugees were entirely consistent with some important institutional logics of the agency. Instead of suggesting an ulterior motive, this complicating factor draws attention to a taken-for-granted administrative act in humanitarian crises: the social construction of “legitimate” and “illegitimate” impediments to humanitarian aid.

“Legitimate” and “Illegitimate” Impediments to Humanitarian Aid Many factors interfered with the distribution of humanitarian aid, and how humanitarian actors made sense of these sources of interference mattered. In everyday administrative practices, the UNHCR distinguished between “legitimate” obstacles to food distribution that it had to work around and “illegitimate” obstacles that warranted punitive countermeasures. That legitimation process became a critical but largely unconscious part of the mundane administrative practices by which the UNHCR governed crisis. Because it became so routinized, no explicit reference to this practice can be found in the agency’s documents or conversations with officials, but we can see its traces throughout agency paperwork. A report on the food situation for refugees in Ghana, which provides a critical self-accounting of the humanitarian administration of food security in Buduburam, offers a particularly clear window into this legitimation process (UNHCR/WFP Joint Assessment Mission 2006). This report serves as the centerpiece to this discussion. The UNHCR regularly conducts self-assessments of its programs throughout the world. These reports offer rich details about administrative practices and about

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the agency’s critical engagement with the limitations of existing policies offering a window into the tensions between ideals and pragmatic compromises within the organization itself. In 2006, the UNHCR and the World Food Programme (WFP), its UN implementing partner, carried out an assessment of food policies in Ghana. The research team included staff from the Ghana offices and regional offices of the UNHCR and the WFP. Assessing food security was the immediate objective, but the report also became linked in interesting ways to concerns about durable solutions (UNHCR/WFP Joint Assessment Mission 2006, 55–57). Overall, the report conveys the sense of a fading humanitarian crisis. It acknowledges shortcomings in food aid but downplays their consequences for food security, which is assessed as fairly good for most camp inhabitants. The assessed needs and recommendations draw attention instead to efforts to end the refugee crisis and promote durable solutions, particularly repatriation. For our purposes, the most revealing part of the UNHCR/WFP report is the discussion of obstacles to the food programs. Of these impediments, lack of funding emerges as the primary block. The report describes reduced rations “due to the lack of UNHCR funds” (27), problems for the nutrition program “due to lack of funding” (39), and the unlikelihood of continuing the food program for much longer given that the “feasibility of funding a pure refugee operation beyond repatriation is minimal” (26). Funding shortfalls over which the agency had only minimal control created much more extensive interference with the care of “chronically ill, elderly and malnourished refugees” than any actions from refugees. Few people in Buduburam believed that the UNHCR’s fiscal limitations explained the food shortages; they tended to blame the Ghanaian officials instead. Wilhemina, an elder who had been in Buduburam since the early years, gave an account that represented the views of most of the people I met. She recalled, “They used to bring us rice, (.  .  .) chickens too, salt, pepper, everything! Pots, everything that we lose, all used clothing used to come! (. . .) They were helping for one-and-a-half years, then they stopped the rations.” Well-schooled in political maneuvering, she interpreted it as a matter of graft: “It’s still coming, but we don’t see [food aid] now” (SSI 27). She thought that the real problems stemmed from corruption, not funding shortages. I knew that Wilhemina was actually among the minority who did receive food rations. Many of the conversations I had with people about food aid were political talk embellished for effect. Insufficient support became “no support.” One inadequate meal a day became “no food.” But when Wilhemina said that the UNHCR had means and that “the Ghanaians” prevented the UNHCR from delivering aid, she did not offer this comment as a political embellishment. She believed it with utter certitude, as did the majority of the people I met in the camp.

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The UNHCR and the WFP do not mention corruption explicitly in the report, although they note that “pipeline breaks” sometimes prevent the transfer of food to and from warehouses (UNHCR/WFP Joint Assessment Mission 2006, 18). Corruption was a regular part of life in Ghana and Liberia, from the police officers who took small bribes to “forget” a traffic ticket to the government officials who wanted large payouts to award national contracts, and Buduburam did not escape these practices. But pipeline breaks could also stem from operational failures, such as a broken engine or a flooded road. In refugee camps located in more isolated areas, these kinds of logistical issues created larger problems than seen in Buduburam. Perhaps for that reason, the report makes very little mention of pipeline breaks. According to the report, the UNHCR considered donor fatigue to be the major impediment to food aid in Buduburam (18). By 2006, the UNHCR could no longer afford to distribute food to the entire refugee population, because donations for the Liberian refugee crisis had fallen to a trickle. To cope with these decreasing supplies, the UNHCR switched to a ration system that targeted vulnerable subpopulations within the camp. The Buduburam food program had shrunk to serve about a quarter of the refugee population registered with the agency (6). It used the international criterion of “most vulnerable persons” to target pregnant and nursing women, people over sixty, people with HIV/AIDS, and unaccompanied children (see UNHCR et al. 2003 for a general overview). But to actually identify the appropriate recipients proved difficult; the report notes that some “food insecure people may have been omitted, whereas some food secure individuals may be part of the list” (UNHCR/WFP Joint Assessment Mission 2006, 22). Partly for that reason, the ration system was extremely unpopular: We are all vulnerable, people in the camp would say. And even those who did get food received only minimal aid: “Two days, it finished,” said one woman (SSI 39). The UNHCR/WFP report also notes impediments that stem from refugee actions (UNHCR/WFP Joint Assessment Mission 2006, 14). People might miss the fact that their names now appeared on the food distribution list. The camp authorities posted the distribution lists at public bulletin boards located in each zone of the camp. Residents had to check the lists posted on the public bulletin boards before each distribution. Few people did this regularly, but those who did often told their acquaintances on the list, particularly when a recipient did not come forward after a few distribution sessions (e.g., SSI 41). A recipient might also be away from the camp on the day that authorities distributed food; some people worked in Accra or elsewhere outside the camp. Others might leave to visit family or friends. Buduburam was not a closed refugee camp, and people came and went inasmuch as they could pay for transport.

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But this account of the factors that hinder food aid has a striking subtext: the humanitarian authorities saw some but not all of these impediments as “legitimate” obstacles to humanitarian aid that they needed to work around. If a refugee missed two rations without prior authorization, that was an “illegitimate” impediment that should be grounds for expulsion from the program (UNHCR/ WFP Joint Assessment Mission 2006, 41). In contrast, the assumption that the UNHCR would lack sufficient funds became so ingrained that authors of the UNHCR/WFP report make their recommendations contingent on “funds permitting” (30). Donor miserliness became like the normalized deviance that Diane Vaughan (1997) describes in her analysis of the Challenger disaster—deviant acts that become so routine that officials create rules and norms in response. This reaction may seem only natural given the superior power of donor governments, but the fact that the UNHCR had little recourse other than to work around governments’ lack of generosity did not lessen the significance of this practice. To separate “illegitimate” impediments from “legitimate” impediments to humanitarian aid became a critical taken-for-granted part of humanitarian administration, and across the board, the UNHCR tended to consider impediments that derived most directly from refugee activities “illegitimate” and therefore subject to punitive countermeasures.

Civic Debate or a Social Problem? How did refugees become so easily viewed as “illegitimate” impediments to humanitarian aid? One common challenge to exploring the taken-for-granted parts of the social world is that readers may find it difficult to imagine that things could have been arranged any differently, and the route from belief in inevitability to indifference is short: Of course the UNHCR responded more critically to refugees than to donors—why does that matter? A counterexample might help enstrange and make noteworthy these delegitimation processes. Many years ago in Buduburam, community activists successfully used a food boycott to advocate for dry rations to replace prepared food. These activities helped create the Welfare Council, which the UNHCR and Ghanaian authorities later recognized as the official representative body for the refugees in Buduburam. The UNHCR may have been less likely to treat obstacles created by refugees as legitimate impediments to aid, but this administrative logic did not surface automatically. So the question emerges: what prevented the UNHCR from interpreting the 2008 food boycott as a legitimate act of civil disobedience? One could just as readily ask, what distinguishes any act of civil disobedience from a social problem? Both acts disrupt the powers that be. One could say

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that the difference is simply a matter of perspective—a graffiti artist’s subversive artwork is a landlord’s cleaning expense—but perspective is never simple. In the complexity of perspective, status matters; after the artist Shepard Fairey gained fame from the Obama “Hope” posters, few landlords would be in a hurry to wash his graffiti off their walls. Perceived competency matters as well; a baby toddling at the top of staircase is a problem, but a teenager in the same place is not. From the UNHCR’s perspective, the protesters were a disruptive force that “coerced, manipulated, threatened, and intimidated” others to join them, “so-called leaders” who did not “address issues in a realistic manner” (UNHCR-Ghana 2008b). What frames made this understanding seem reasonable? What structural pathways guided the UNHCR to this conclusion?

Organizational Understandings of “Liberian Refugees” By 2007, the UNHCR had more than a decade of shared history with people living in Buduburam. Although international humanitarian officials usually came and went from the field offices in two- to five-year rotations, the UNHCR as an organization had institutionalized understandings for the people for whom it cared. These understandings, which formed part of the UNHCR’s organizational memory, were taught to newcomers as they joined the UNHCR-Ghana office and implemented the UNHCR’s programs in Buduburam. They were not unchanging or monolithic, but nevertheless, a few understandings about “Liberian refugees” became the UNHCR’s primary frames. One understanding of refugees, which many other scholars have explored, framed refugees as recipients of charity. This frame could have clear consequences for interpreting such an act as the food boycott. Barbara Harrell-Bond (1986), for example, has argued that humanitarian officials find it difficult to accept refugee dissent, because they see opposition to administrative policies as ingratitude. Dissidents probably did appear ungrateful to some individuals at the UNHCR, but during the Concerned Women protests, Ghanaian authorities, not the UNHCR, embraced this interpretation more readily; Interior Minister Kwamena Bartels (2008) condemned the protests as “crass ingratitude.” The public rhetoric of the UNHCR and Ghanaian officials converged in many ways when talking about the protests, but not in the language of ingratitude.2 This frame cannot fully explain the outcome. 2. Together with Samuel Agblorti of the University of Cape Coast, I analyzed the different frames that the UNHCR and Ghanaian actors used to describe the protesters and protests based on a search of Ghanaian newspapers and public statements. The results from that analysis and more discussion of the methods can be found in Holzer and Agblorti, “Discrediting Social Protest in a Refugee Camp” (unpublished conference paper, 2012).

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Refugees weren’t simply charity cases for the UNHCR. Buduburam had become the site of a distinctive form of international development that saw refugees as future citizens of a postconflict democracy. In its rhetoric and programs, the UNHCR encouraged refugees to become educated, economically self-reliant, and peaceful. The agency encouraged refugees to value human rights and gender equality. In other words, the UNHCR encouraged people to become ideal democratic citizens in the homeland to which they would return. Empowerment rhetoric permeated this “citizens-for-the-future” frame: “the Agency’s aim [is] to empower refugees and bring them to a position of selfreliance” (UNHCR-Ghana 2008b); “empowered refugees more easily can make valuable contributions to their community” (UNHCR 2004c). These empowerment discourses were very similar to the discourses found in the U.S. welfare programs described by Barbara Cruikshank (1999) and African development practices described by James Ferguson (1994). As Cruikshank and Ferguson observe in these disparate settings, empowerment discourses depoliticize people, reframing their public concerns as personal troubles. One can see this outcome, for example, in the way that the UNHCR reframed people’s frequent calls for economic justice in Buduburam: “Through various participatory assessments carried out in 2007, UNHCR has been informed by members of the refugee community of various ages and gender that they should be empowered with income generating skills to improve their livelihoods” (UNHCR-Ghana 2008a; emphasis added). People living as refugees had well-founded objections to economic discrimination in Ghana, and they regularly voiced these concerns. But rather than launching a legal campaign against economic discrimination in Ghana, the UNHCR devoted its resources to individual skills training. The bulletin announcing this program, which labeled the initiative as “self reliance activities,” included “gaining vocational skills through training; learning local languages to sell and trade more produce on the local market; being trained to manage small scale enterprise; learning how to teach or how to farm or becoming a nurse.” The initiative presupposed that refugees in Ghana could buy land to farm (which foreigners could not do), get hired as teachers in Ghana (despite the discrimination against foreign Africans in Ghana), or, more realistically, go home to Liberia to use these newfound skills. The agency’s self-reliance policies had a pragmatic gloss that hid important facets of social life in Buduburam: the UNHCR avoided the anti-discrimination campaigns, because the agency assumed that most people living in Buduburam belonged to the informal economy of small trade and services that the host legal system did not penetrate deeply (e.g., UNHCR/WFP Joint Assessment Mission 2006, 20). But what got overlooked was that, unlike in many refugee camps, a substantial proportion of the people in Buduburam had worked as professionals

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or had been on professional career trajectories before the war interrupted their schooling. Civil servants, teachers, students of higher education, and health care professionals might have appeared as small traders in the official surveys because they could not get licenses, pay university fees, or overcome discriminatory hiring practices to preserve their professional identities. The citizens-for-the-future frame encouraged shallow pragmatism, because it drew attention to the anticipated potential of refugees rather than the present-day competencies of actual people living in the refugee camp. Empowerment can mean many things, including rallying one’s community toward a common goal, becoming politically enfranchised, or embracing a cultural heritage (Sharma 2008). In Buduburam, the UNHCR programs focused on individualistic self-improvement toward future goals. Regardless of the area of camp administration—economic activities, gender relations, health, water and sanitation, migration, security—the UNHCR applied this individualistic, depoliticized approach. “Individualistic” and “depoliticized” characterize many international development projects, but the refugee development project carried these tendencies even further than nonhumanitarian development projects because of its future-oriented approach. Particularly in the later years of the camp, UNHCR initiatives focused on refugees’ anticipated future in Liberia rather than their presentday concerns in Ghana. The UNHCR, for example, brought representatives from the Liberian Ministry of Education to camp to tell people about educational and employment opportunities in Liberia. The discussion of education resonated particularly well in Buduburam, because so many people had worked as teachers before the war or wanted to continue their own or their children’s studies. But this intervention must be considered not only on its own merits but also in comparison to what other humanitarian interventions could have occurred. In present-day Ghana, Liberian children did not have equal access to local schools, and Liberian teachers rarely got jobs. The irony is that access to schooling and to the labor market in the host country falls under the 1951 Refugee Convention, while schooling or jobs in the “home” country do not. Other internationally funded projects in Buduburam converged with the UNHCR on the perceived need to develop Liberian refugees into effective democratic citizens-for-the-future. One NGO, for example, created mock ballots for the 2005 elections in Liberia, encouraging people in the camp to “practice” voting. As with the educational interventions, this program must be considered in light of other potential interventions to grasp the subtext. Why not permit people living as refugees to vote in exile? More often than not, refugees cannot vote unless they risk traveling back to their home countries—Liberia is not exceptional in this regard—but in some cases, as with the Bosnian refugee crisis, the diaspora did vote in elections for the postconflict government. The question

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of whether to permit people who remain in exile to vote—and if so, how—raises difficult practical and ethical concerns, so the point is not to dismiss mock elections and other future-oriented activities out of hand but to highlight and to question the underlying political logic. After the 2005 Liberian presidential elections, the UNCHR began to use the term “nation building” even more widely in its rhetoric. For example, in a press release, the UNHCR framed its repatriation achievements (“UNHCR has been at the forefront of endeavours that resulted in nearly 420,000 registered refugees and internally displaced persons returning to all fifteen Counties of Liberia”) as an activity that would “contribute to the task of nation building.”3 Although it lacked the individualizing tendencies of the empowerment discourse, the nationbuilding rhetoric still focused on the imagined future rather than on present-day political concerns. The refugee development framework did not necessarily make programs ineffectual. The nation-building rhetoric and the empowerment discourses resonated deeply with many people living in Buduburam, including some who supported the Concerned Women protests. ‘It is a great time to be alive, rebuilding a country!’ one man was moved to say as he watched a flock of Muslim women join the previously Christian-only prayer circle of the Concerned Women one evening (field notes, February 27, 2008). Sometimes the UNHCR applied the framework deftly. When the UNHCR celebrated a new community policing initiative in Buduburam, the agency framed it as a lesson in how to “live peacefully side by side” (Zongolowicz 2003). But the initiative also directly ameliorated a political concern of people in Buduburam by adding Liberian security personnel to support a woefully understaffed Ghanaian police force. Additionally, it created a space for Liberians who used to work in security to return to their profession, albeit not with comparable pay. At the UNHCR’s insistence, the force included women as well as men, thereby not just modeling gender equality norms but actually creating a more egalitarian institution. Over the years, the UNHCR displayed varying levels of commitment to the citizens-for-the-future project in its programs, and individual staffers had different levels of buy-in to the underlying assumptions about refugees implicit in this development project, but ultimately the principles and arguments that informed the refugee development project became the most common political logic seen in 3. UNHCR, “Government of Japan Funding Boosts UNHCR’s Return and Re-integration Programme,” March 16, 2007. This letter became part of camp politics after members of the Hatai club found it through Internet searches during the sit-down protest. But it is interesting to note that people applied this directly to events in Ghana: they used it as evidence that the UNHCR was getting substantial donor support for Liberian refugees and therefore did have the resources to provide more financial support to people repatriating to Liberia.

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camp administration. The idea that Liberian refugees belonged in Liberia, existing in Ghana only on temporary sufferance, became thoroughly engrained in camp administration. At the same time, the repeated failures of the repatriation programs increasingly drove the UNHCR to local integration initiatives after 2006 (UNHCR 2005a, 221). Rebuilding Liberia remained the central framework for administrative discourse in the camp, but the agency began to craft programs to serve other goals. Some programs sought to make refugees more economically self-reliant; others sponsored public works projects to gain support from local Ghanaian nationals. The UNHCR also negotiated with high-level government officials to champion permanent status for Liberians in Ghana and began to hand over tasks related to social service and infrastructure administration to the Ghanaian government (UNHCR 2007b, 250; UNHCR 2008, 92–94). Despite these efforts, the national government and local hosts continued to strongly oppose large-scale local integration, especially the political dimensions of integration (Agblorti 2011; Salducci 2008). The UNHCR temporarily abandoned efforts to establish citizenship or permanent residency for refugees. Reasoning that camp inhabitants were West African nationals residing in a West African nation, the UNHCR focused instead on using the legal framework of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to promote “freedom of movement, access to education and the labour market, access to property, access to valid travel and identity documents, and access to the realization of family unity” (Salducci 2008, 7). The UNHCR (2007a, 170) advocated for a “less restrictive implementation of the ECOWAS free-movement protocols.” The status did not convey political rights to Liberians in Ghana. When the UNHCR transferred authority over its programs for water and sanitation, the health clinic and HIV/AIDS treatment, schools, and other institutions to government agencies, these local integration initiatives did not promote an understanding of Liberian refugees as political beings, so they did not ultimately provide a countervailing frame for the protests. The UNHCR did not force the liberal ideals of the citizens-for-the-future frame upon unwilling listeners. Instead, the agency crafted its understanding from the multiple cultural milieus, striving to appeal to donors, agency staff, Ghanaian hosts, and the people living in Buduburam themselves. But the frequent instances of consensus did not mitigate the depoliticizing tendencies of that citizens-forthe-future frame. If anything, the agreement added even greater resonance and power to that way of thinking about Liberian refugees. The most significant point for the question of how the UNHCR came to understand the Concerned Women protests was that Liberian refugees remained, by this logic, political children who needed to be weaned from aid and nurtured to grow into democratic citizens when they went home to Liberia.

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Interpreting Protest through the Lens of Citizens-for-the-Future The citizens-for-the-future framework encouraged the UNHCR to talk to refugees about rights and empowerment but interpret actual political engagement as unruliness or immaturity—unrealistic expectations rather than rights claims. A particularly vivid example of this surfaced in the agency’s responses to the movement’s call to reform the repatriation program by offering each returnee $1,000. “One thousand dollars” became a rhetorical device to capture people’s desire for substantial cash grants to restart their lives in Liberia. The protest organizers did not create this slogan, but they adopted the $1,000 rhetoric in their platform. When a community activist used this rhetoric at a meeting with representatives of the UNHCR and the U.S. embassy in the Welfare Council office, the UNHCR representative exclaimed, “One thousand dollars—it’s crazy, it’s nonsense.” The UNHCR, he said, would look into increasing the repatriation package, but “we have to be realistic” (field notes, January 9, 2007). In contrast, the interactions with the U.S. embassy official at that meeting had a very different tenor: “You say [the repatriation package is] insufficient, so I need to know where you’re trying to go and why it’s insufficient and what would be sufficient.” She asked the activists to clarify and justify their position. Rhetorically, her expression “I need to know” framed the discussion as an exchange of information. Whereas the UNHCR official framed the refugees as immature and foolish in their demands, the official from the U.S. embassy took for granted that they were politically competent and asked them to go beyond rhetoric to provide details. As a single example, this exchange may be explained away as individual variation confined to an official, not a reflection of organizational logic within the agency. But that rhetoric surfaced in three widely different arenas and became part of the UNHCR’s official public statement. The UNHCR consistently framed the protesters and protest acts in terms of unrealistic expectations by misinformed or misguided people throughout their interactions with the protesters. At a conference well after the protest ended, a UNHCR official who had been in Ghana during some of these events presented the $1,000 position as evidence that the UNHCR confronted a barrier to reasoned debate that could not have been overcome, as though that figure had been nonnegotiable (field notes, June 29, 2009). During the protests, another UNHCR official said, “It is unfortunate that the people who can today appreciate the value of education are the same people who are now preventing children from going to school. This truly hurts me” (IRIN 2008). Here the subtext is again one of unruliness and even childishness: the protest organizers placed the right value on education, but in boycotting the schools, they acted in a way that disappointed her. She went on to say, “It is my

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hope that the so-called leaders will use the opportunity presented by this meeting to re-establish constructive dialogue to address issues in a realistic manner.” For the UNHCR, the protesters were not engaging in reasoned negotiations but behaving unrealistically. In truth, the protest organizers saw “one thousand dollars” as a good slogan for mobilizing protesters and a reasonable opening bid for negotiations; among themselves, the organizers hoped to raise the repatriation cash grant (which had already increased from $5 to $100 after two months of protest) to $300 or $400. Likewise, the UNHCR reported that protesters responded without active resistance to the first police raid not because they chose to engage in reasoned acts of civil disobedience but because “refugees who boarded the buses apparently assumed they were going to be resettled and were therefore very cooperative with authorities” (UNHCR-Ghana 2008c). Liberian refugees, by this political logic, were foolish and misinformed people who would do anything for resettlement. Undoubtedly some people did get on the buses out of misguided optimism, just as some others did so out of fear of the police or because they were caught up in the excitement, but these impulsive and unintended motivations did not characterize any protesters whom I knew. Prior to the detention, in the prayer circles and rallies that the protest organizers used to sustain mobilization during the weekslong wait for the UNHCR to respond, speakers commonly invoked the prospect of “the Ghanaians” coming for them. Whatsoever they will do to us, let them do it became commonplace oppositional rhetoric among the protesters, painstakingly cultivated by the protest organizers. For the Concerned Women as a group—if not perhaps for every single detainee—the rush to the police buses was reasoned civil disobedience. Similarly, a protest organizer was understood to be a troublemaker because she had been involved in an earlier social protest in Buduburam relating to education reform. ‘I’ve seen this woman. She always wants new things,’ said one UNHCR official (field notes, January 15, 2008). These education protests spurred the massive (if temporary) enrollment of Liberian students in local Ghanaian schools—a highly successful act of civic engagement. But for the UNHCR official, this past activity simply gave the organizer a history of disruptive behavior. Yet the UNHCR as an organization—and many UNHCR officials as individuals— recognized the importance and legitimacy of “refugee voice” and human rights. ‘Protesting is good—I myself have done it—but not here, not now—not in this place,’ a UNHCR official said to the protest organizers at an earlier meeting. Yet Ghana was a democracy with an increasingly strong civil society. Liberian women (including some from Buduburam) had been the linchpin in peace demonstrations during the Accra peace talks that ended the Liberian civil war. The idea that Ghana was not the right place for refugee women to protest was not just an

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assessment of objective risk but an understanding of the proper place of refugees in Ghanaian society.

Structural Barriers to Routine Civic Debate Frames operate more easily along fertile structural pathways, and in Buduburam, several long-standing structural impediments to pursuing grievances facilitated the UNHCR’s interpretation of refugee civil disobedience as a social problem. These structural impediments prevented camp residents from pursuing grievances in a routine fashion, making their disagreements with camp authorities—and the disagreements within the refugee community—appear more ominous than they would have otherwise. Were women really engaged in civic debate, or did shadowy rebels and ex-combatants stage-manage the boycott for their own sinister ends? In the absence of effective communication or power-sharing systems, how could camp authorities really know for sure?4 The discussion turns now to these systems as they collided with mundane factionalism in Buduburam. Civic associations, NGOs, churches, political alliances, and other forms of community activism flourished in Buduburam. Some engagement drew people closer to vulnerable social cleavages, such as ethnic-county identity or war-party membership, but for the most part, Buduburam, unlike many refugee camps, became remarkably impervious to these kinds of war-related tensions. Most civic engagement reflected the immediate concerns of refugees in Ghana. People often disagreed about resources, positions, and constituencies, but factions could cross ethnic-county lines and rarely, if ever, drew on political parties active in the Liberian civil war. This is the point that I try to convey in Chapter 2. Despite the diversity of viewpoints and the vigorous community engagement among the camp inhabitants, Buduburam lacked institutional arrangements to allow different factions to compete for a share of the limited power available to people living as refugees. Buduburam did not have democratic elections, participatory budgeting, or regular town hall meetings. People living as refugees did not have legal recourse to hold Ghanaian or UNHCR authorities or each other liable for their decision making. Camp authorities did not offer refugees clear grievance procedures that would impose real institutional limits on the power of authorities. Nevertheless, the UNHCR did actively seek refugee perspectives through three primary methods in what it thought of as technocratic—not political— policy making. The agency maintained a formal line of communication with the Welfare Council. Through the Welfare Council, the UNHCR also organized 4. I don’t mean to make light of the more distasteful elements of the credulousness of authorities. To believe that men must be behind the women, as though women could not possibly organize such a large movement without men to direct them, is offensive.

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participatory planning sessions, focus groups that targeted certain demographic constituencies, such as elderly women or the disabled. In addition, the UNHCR staff tended to talk formally or informally with leaders of a few refugee-run NGOs that had been operating in the camp for many years. Because the Concerned Women were women, the leaders of a few long-standing women’s NGOs became particularly important interlocutors during the protests. The UNHCR consistently and disastrously treated these select spokespeople as representatives of the Liberian refugee community as a whole. A conversation in December 2007 with Isatta, one of the protest organizers, highlights why this monolithic approach was so ill-conceived. We were talking about the UNHCR’s Country of Operations Plan, a publicly available overview of the agency’s plans for each refugee crisis, including its durable solutions strategies. Isatta was telling me that the UNHCR solicited advice from camp residents before drafting each year’s plan—not that she had any direct personal experience. ‘They have meetings with stakeholders, but they aren’t my people,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to be affiliated with that group because those people, they are part of the integration plan’ (field notes, December 3, 2007). For politically active people like Isatta, durable solutions were positions in a political debate around which factions formed. For the UNHCR, durable solutions were technocratic policies that benefited from “refugee voices.” ‘That group didn’t take information back to the residents and let them decide or try to convince them,’ Isatta said. Who was in that group? I wanted to know. ‘Women’s group’—you mean Bendu? I interjected, naming the executive of a local women’s NGO—‘Yeah, and the Welfare Council,’ she replied. I was talking with people in all these factions. They all had defensible political positions that resonated with some supporters in the camp and not others. But none represented “the refugees”—there was no consensus over migration policies or the most effective tactics to convince the camp authorities to reform their policies. This is the point that I mean to convey in Chapter 4. None of the UNHCR’s channels of communication with refugees gave the agency a means to identify and respond to factionalism in the camp. Democratic elections at the Welfare Council could have offered a way of institutionalizing representation for different factions, but camp management appointed the Welfare Council chairman. The more politically minded camp residents found this practice infuriating, and this frustration boiled over during the last demonstration after the Welfare Council chairman condemned the protesters in a public interview. For the UNHCR, the fierce opposition to the Welfare Council chairman in the aftermath of the media interview became one more piece of evidence that the protesters threatened other refugees. ‘It’s not going down well,’ a UNHCR official told me informally. ‘They don’t think they are representative. They think

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that others are being intimidated. Some people approached them to say they were intimidated, especially preventing the distribution and taking the children out of school—it makes it harder to take them as the nonviolent protesters that they claim to be’ (field notes, February 29, 2008). I began to put this question to everyone I saw. The most interesting reply—because it became a window for me into one of the most critical acts of the protest—came from a man who ran a local NGO. Before the media interview, he had viewed the protest with skepticism as a waste of time and effort, but like many people, the chairman’s public opposition offended him to the point where it became a catalyst for his support for the protesters. I told him that I had heard that the UNHCR didn’t see the protesters as representative; what did he think? ‘Yes!’ he exclaimed. ‘We are working on that. We drafted a letter of support signed by the county associations, Ministerial Council, the teachers’ (field notes, February 29, 2008). That letter was eventually submitted to the UNHCR, the Ghana Refugee Board, and other relevant authorities. It convinced the UNHCR to invite the community activists who drafted the letter and the Concerned Women protest organizers to Accra to negotiate. But it also became the primary signal to the Ghanaian authorities that ex-combatant men were somehow behind the protests. ‘The signed letter from the men—that was evidence that they were the ones who organized it,’ the chairman of the GRB told me later (interview, June 21, 2011).5 From its perspective, the UNHCR had continued to communicate with the legitimate refugee representatives throughout the protests. Once it became aware of the growing public opposition to its migration programs, the UNHCR “speedily initiated a series of meetings to inform and explain the various aspects of its programmes” (UNHCR-Ghana 2008b). Indeed, the UNHCR did hold several meetings between October 2007 and February 2008, but because the agency never recognized the legitimacy of the Concerned Women, these meetings did little to facilitate civic debate. When the agency organized a meeting between the UNHCR, the U.S. embassy, and “the refugees” to discuss migration policies, it did so through the Welfare Council—protest organizers were not invited, although two did sneak into the meeting. From the UNHCR’s perspective, “leaders were tasked to spread the word within the community” (UNHCR-Ghana 2008b). But these refugee leaders had their own positions in the debate—they were not neutral carriers for communications between the UNHCR and “the refugees.” What’s more, by the end of February, they no longer held legitimacy among the majority of the camp’s inhabitants. When the UNHCR asked the Welfare Council to organize two participatory planning sessions with women in February after several months of protests, the first session, which targeted elderly women, came the closest of any meeting 5. This interview was conducted jointly with Samuel Agblorti of the University of Cape Coast.

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to transforming the protests into recognized civic debate.6 Examining how the UNHCR and the protesters experienced that meeting—wholly differently—offers a particularly clear window into the process by which the Concerned Women became a social problem for the UNHCR. During that session, unlike most meetings, the UNHCR did actually meet with the Concerned Women, because a Welfare Council member sympathetic to the movement had arranged for activists to attend. Members of the Concerned Women saw that session as their opportunity to finally air their grievances to the UNHCR. They interrupted the UNHCR speaker throughout the meeting with criticisms of the agency’s policies and suggestions for reform. In the immediate aftermath, the protesters saw the meeting as a wonderful success—the UNHCR had come and listened to their concerns! They eagerly anticipated the next day’s session, which they also intended to use to air grievances. But from the UNHCR’s perspective, the “meetings were met with hostility and deliberately disrupted by individuals who identify themselves with the ‘Liberian Refugee Women with Refugee Concerns’” (UNHCR-Ghana 2008b). Some basic facts appear in both accounts of the important meeting—the Concerned Women interrupted the UNHCR and criticized its programs—but the interpretation of these facts differs considerably. First, the impression of hostility is inconsistent. The Concerned Women thought of the UNHCR as fundamentally on their side and did not consider themselves hostile to the agency. Nevertheless, it is easy to imagine how an official standing in front of a unified group of critical elderly women might experience their vitriolic opposition as hostility. The impression of disruption rather than dialogue is likewise inconsistent. I highlight these inconsistencies not to say that the UNHCR official was responding unreasonably but to emphasize that the UNHCR official was interpreting refugee dissent. These interpretations did not emerge in a cultural vacuum but drew upon a well-established frame that made it difficult for the UNHCR to recognize the legitimacy of political acts by refugees. The UNHCR decided not to return for the next session. When the Concerned Women arrived at the meeting place, they learned that the UNHCR had canceled the meeting. The protesters resolved to return to the protest field to wait for the UNHCR to come. Thus began the final demonstration of the Concerned Women, the February–March sit-down protest, which became the watershed event in the movement’s trajectory. The Concerned Women became a social problem because the UNHCR had no effective means of recognizing new refugee groups as legitimate or determining 6. This analysis is based on informal conversations shortly after the meeting with multiple attendees, including rank-and-file protesters and protest organizers. The UNHCR’s perspective comes from its public statement cited in the text.

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which among multiple viewpoints represented the interests of camp residents. In the absence of these institutional supports, the UNHCR took at face value the statements that conservative leaders made about the protesters: protesters were not representative of the majority of refugees; the protest organizers had managed to attract so much visible support (the number of protesters grew substantially at every protest event) only because they were “intimidating” other refugees; and the women would not remain resolute. This understanding of the movement became the agency’s official position (Pagonis 2008; UNHCR-Ghana 2008b; UNHCR-Ghana 2008c). In the months leading up to the police action, the UNHCR maintained communications with the refugees it believed legitimately represented “the Liberian refugees”: the individuals and groups the camp administration had appointed as spokespeople. But the agency fell prey to a leadership dynamic that was by no means unique to Buduburam. Michel Agier (2011, 157) writes of a similar tension between appointed representatives and popular leaders in the Tobanda refugee camp in Sierra Leone. Simon Turner’s (2006, 777) observations in the Lukole refugee camp in Tanzania show that this tension is not accidental: “It is exactly from [refugee leaders’] ability to span the gap between relief agencies and the population that they derive authority. And it is in all their interests that the gap remains.” The UNHCR sought to give voice to “marginalized refugee voices” through the participatory planning sessions and conversations with leaders of refugeerun women’s NGOs. But the agency used such demographic markers as gender, age, and disability status to select marginal voices, and these demographic characteristics—like the appointed refugee leadership structure—did not map well onto the divisions that surrounded the complex question of how to make a home for oneself after war. The UNHCR has used this strategy elsewhere and with similar results. Among Karen refugees and in Thailand, Elisabeth Olivius (2014) interprets the UNHCR’s efforts to create “alternative forms of refugee participation” by dividing the refugee population into groups of “diversities” (Muslims, widows, elderly) as part of the agency’s distrust of refugee political activism. Many observers have commented on the negative associations that the UNHCR and host authorities have of refugee activists. They treat activists as troublemakers and cheats (Agier 2011, 92–93) and frame “politicization” as inherently dangerous (Kaiser 2004, 196; Turner 2011). Yet only about 15 percent of refugee crises become militarized (Stedman and Tanner 2003), and civilian refugees constitute the vast majority of the population, even in situations of refugee militarization (Onoma 2013, 9). In Buduburam, like elsewhere, many people had strong beliefs about what would make a successful homecoming, how much better life could be in a postindustrial country, and how hard life could be after the UNHCR left. Opposition

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to the protest tactics and to the goals of the protest existed among some camp inhabitants, but this attitude did not make protesters “unrepresentative,” nor did it lessen the civic value of their actions; it merely made the refugee community multifaceted and complex. Had institutions existed to accommodate this kind of diversity and engagement among people living as refugees, the protest might have remained a civic debate. The UNHCR might have seen the Concerned Women as a catalyst to reenergize the defunct repatriation program or perhaps even as an ally in the agency’s efforts to expand donor commitments to resettlement programs. As it was, the narrow structural pathways together with the citizens-forthe future frame led to “demoralized aid workers” who saw only disruption and threats in the refugee dissent (UNHCR 2008, 94).

Chapter 6

Legitimacy in Repression’s Aftermath

Quentin grew up the son of a civil servant in Monrovia. He became an active member of the student wing of a powerful political party in high school, but when the war broke out, he found himself targeted. He fled briefly to Côte D’Ivoire before settling in Ghana in the early 1990s. He never found means to continue his schooling, and at thirty-three he worked odd jobs in the market in camp to survive; nevertheless, he had become a community leader and an intellectual. Though he was not one of the original supporters of the protests, he had come to back the Concerned Women during the final demonstration. What the protesters wanted, said Quentin, was “for UN to come and talk to them, but the Ghana Government come between them.” He said, “There was no way for their hand to reach to UN, they were preventing them to reach to UN, you see, so it was a big gap” (SSI 6). Quentin decried “a gap” between the UNHCR and refugees, which he said undermined the Concerned Women movement. For Quentin, this gap emerged not through any actions by the UNHCR, but by the interference of the Ghanaian hosts. Quentin’s friend Mohamed had a similar life trajectory. Raised by his father, a teacher in Monrovia, Mohamed’s aspirations had been circumscribed but not wholly crushed by the war. He fled to Sierra Leone in 1990 but had returned during the brief ceasefire in Liberia and managed to earn his high school diploma in 2001 before renewed fighting ended his efforts to attend university. He fled to Ghana in 2002. When I met him in 2008, he was, at thirty-six years old, a husband and father who made a precarious living selling used clothes, but he still

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hoped to find a university scholarship. Though not a community leader, he was an intellectual, and, like Quentin, a member of the Hatai club in Buduburam. Mohamed assessed the UNHCR’s role in the protests with a characteristically measured tone: “UNHCR and the Ghana Government; I would say they betrayed us because the interior minister (.  .  .) said it was the UNHCR initiative [that had] told them to come and halt the sit-in protest. (. . .) He said that’s what the UNHCR told them, and up till now, the UNCHR haven’t come up to rebut such statement so I will say we were betrayed” (SSI 3). Mohamed concludes with some ambivalence that the UNHCR betrayed him and his fellow refugees, framing the interior minister’s statement not as an example of Ghanaian interference but as imperfect evidence that the UNHCR asked the Ghanaian authorities to suppress the protests. For Mohamed, both authority figures bore the blame for the protest’s ignominious end. The puzzle of this chapter is how Quentin’s account became the dominant frame for the repression. If people had little clear information available for making sense of the protest and its repression, if all parties operated in the midst of rumors and stories, why did Quentin’s frame have so much more resonance than Mohamed’s? This chapter picks up where I left off in Chapter 3 with a closer examination of the two major frames in camp politics, the UNHCR-as-caregiver frame and the Ghanaians-as-threat frame. I had shown in that chapter that despite the many structural intersections between UNHCR and Ghanaian authorities, camp residents experienced camp government as a bifurcated governmentality: national authorities, who controlled people through the threat of harm, appeared to stand apart from transnational authorities, who controlled people through the promise to protect life. I had alluded to some important consequences that stemmed from this form of government. In this chapter, I will show that during the Concerned Women protests in Buduburam, bifurcated governmentality altered the trajectory of conflict over humanitarian aid to transform a dispute between refugees and humanitarians into a conflict between hosts and refugees. This consequence made the frames of caring transnational authorities and threatening host authorities something other than a benign feature of the humanitarian terrain.

Bystander, Mediator, Ally, or Opponent? Georg Simmel (1950) once observed that adding a third party to a conflict creates a remarkably consistent set of new opportunities. In transnational settings, his insights about the triadic dynamics of conflict have gained new relevance.

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Transnational authorities transform the dyadic political relationship of government and governed into a triadic political relationship of transnational–hosts– subjects. These triadic political relationships create a new range of trajectories for conflict to unfold. Once the UNHCR decided to treat the Concerned Women protests as a criminal act rather than civic debate, the agency had to ask hosts to directly intervene in the dispute because it did not have a police force. But the Ghanaian police could have refused to become involved, or agreed to act only as a mediator to the dispute between the UNHCR and camp residents. So there were five possible scenarios for how conflict could have developed in this triadic relationship. 1. Hosts refuse to become involved; hosts remain bystanders to a dispute between the UNHCR and refugees. 2. Hosts intervene and successfully mediate the conflict; their involvement leads protesters to acquiesce. 3. Hosts try unsuccessfully to mediate the conflict in a way that leads protesters to become increasingly angry with the UNHCR. Hosts withdraw, but anger at their involvement escalates the dispute between the UNHCR and protesters. 4. Host involvement leads protesters to become increasingly angry with both the UNHCR and hosts; the protesters’ conflict with the UNHCR escalates and spreads to hosts. 5. Host involvement leads protesters to become increasingly angry with hosts and less angry with the UNCHR; conflict escalates but becomes directed toward hosts; protesters and hosts accept the UNHCR’s mediation to end the conflict. Reading through these possible scenarios, I am struck once again by how farfetched the last scenario sounds. How could a disputing party possibly become a more palatable mediator than a third party that had begun as a bystander to the conflict? Yet that scenario represents the trajectory of conflict during the Concerned Women protests. If I had begun my observations in March 2008 instead of November 2007, I might have concluded that the host authorities undermined their claims to fair mediation when they chose to respond with violent police tactics. But I was hearing people reject the notion of fair mediation by Ghanaian authorities well before police began using harsh tactics. What else might have kept people living as refugees from accepting hosts as mediators?

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Making Accounts and Assigning Blame for the Repression When confronted with “untoward behavior,” people make accounts to “repair the broken” so that social interactions can continue (M. B. Scott and Lyman 1968, 46). When things go wrong, they often assign blame, the step in the creation of grievances that links an actor to an injurious experience (Felstiner, Abel, and Sarat 1980). As camp residents rejected host mediation, they engaged in just these sort of blaming practices and accounts-making.

Blaming the Ghanaians When asked to explain what happened at the end of the protests, residents tended to focus exclusively on Ghanaian activities without making reference to the UNHCR, as Kathleen, a close friend of the protest organizers, did when I asked her to explain what happened: “Well, the police came to the field, based on the statements that were issued by the interior minister on the 12th March, when they had a conference, at the Accra Conference Centre, where he said that the women [were trying] to destabilise the community and the government will not sit there and allow that. They defy. The protest was illegal, and they must get the permission before going to the field, so he asked that they withdraw from the field, and then they decided to call in the police.” (SSI 33)

Kathleen identified the basis for the police action in the failed negotiations in Accra, yet the UNHCR participated in the Accra meeting, too. The agency not the minister issued invitations to the protesters. Kathleen could have latched onto the agency’s role in that meeting to blame both authority figures, but her account focuses exclusively on the activities of the Ghanaian authorities instead. This account surfaced even in conversations between fellow residents—they were not just frames used to talk with me. A conversation between middleaged men at a chop shop exemplifies the common rhetoric: ‘Were we talking to the Ghana government? No! We were not talking to Ghana. We were asking UN. U—N!’ (field notes, March 2008). This framing of the repression as an act of Ghanaian malfeasance spread so virulently that the Liberian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2008) issued a public statement condemning the “reports received from [Ghanaian] citizens in Liberia about threats of reprisals against them” (see also Harris 2008).

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Yet camp residents did encounter some evidence of a more constructive role from Ghanaian actors. At the November demonstration, the Ghanaian camp commandant had positioned himself as a mediator carrying the women’s placards to the UNHCR in Accra. On March 9, the protest organizers told their compatriots that they had had a productive meeting with the Ghanaian police chief, who thanked them for the peace and calm and assured them that the Ghanaian government sympathized with the women (field notes, March 9, 2008). During the February–March sit-down protests, a popular radio broadcaster from Joy FM had come to Buduburam and given positive coverage to the protesters and the Stakeholders. If evidence of Ghanaian support did exist, why did the dominant frame focus on Ghanaian malfeasance? People made accounts and assigned blame for the repression not as an isolated act, but through broader practices of sense-making. In Buduburam, negative talk about “the Ghanaians” pervaded conversations well before the protests ended. A selection of field notes that recorded conversations among camp residents exemplifies how this talk seeped into everyday conversations and protest rhetoric. March 3, 2008. (Overheard on the protest field) Those Ghanaians in Liberia, they don’t build permanent structures. They just send the money back here to build nice houses here. March 19, 2008. (Overheard on the protest field): Why are the Ghana people always lying to UN? Tell them they give us free food, free health, free water. March 23, 2008. Three women near the entrance to the field are telling each other stories about people who they knew who were supposed to travel for resettlement, but Ghanaians took their spots.

In important ways, “the Ghanaians” were never a neutral party to the dispute. Though the protest organizers did not encourage this perspective, many saw the Concerned Women as mobilizing against the Ghanaian hosts from the start. Maryann, a bystander to the protests expressed a common criticism when she accused Ghanaian nationals of stealing resettlement. She told me, “We have been hearing rumours, they sell the [resettlement] space, they take the [Liberian person’s] name, (. . .) and put a Ghanaian name on it. We have been having that problem, and that’s one of the reasons [that] I think brought [about] the situation on the field, with the women, because we felt that we were not treated rightly, although I wasn’t part of it. I was in town at that time, but I just sign up for school, so I didn’t even know that my daughter was involved.” (SSI 40)

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I cannot say for certain how closely this Ghanaians-as-threat frame matched material realities. Ghanaian authorities did sometimes treat refugees harshly, but other times, authorities responded with generosity and forbearance. The interior minister may never have intended to mediate the conflict in good faith, but then again, maybe he did. No one knew for sure. But the important point is that in this uncertain situation, camp residents found accounts that framed the repression as an act of host malfeasance more credible than other stories. Something in this setting made it easier for people to blame hosts for repressive acts that the UNHCR. In Chapter 3, I exposed the middleman effects that discouraged people from seeing Ghanaian actors as caregivers even when Ghanaian organizations participated in social service programs. These middleman effects undermined Ghanaian efforts to mediate the dispute between the UNHCR and protesters as well. Partly this was because as people made sense of host involvement, they interpreted host actions through an already established schema that framed the Ghanaian actors as threats. But other more immediate middleman effects surfaced during the protests as well; chiefly, the UNHCR may have asked the police to intervene, but the people actually carrying out the police raid were Ghanaian nationals.

The UNHCR-as-Caregiver One day, not long after the protests ended, I sat in my apartment with some protest organizers. The conversation turned as it often did to the collapse of the protests. One organizer opined that ‘the UNHCR was not responsible for the crackdown—it was the interior minister who was to blame. The UNHCR is trying to help us.’ Was it really, I asked? Or did it just make greater strategic sense to blame Ghanaian authorities publicly? But a second organizer agreed. ‘People don’t like it when you remind them of obligations, but the UNHCR was on our side’ (field notes, March 2008). If politically active leaders who had spent the last several months criticizing UNHCR policies still saw the agency as a caregiver in the aftermath of the repression, then that frame must have been incredibly powerful. One way that the caregiver frame worked was by making evidence of the UNHCR’s involvement in the suppression of the protests implausible. When I asked Monji, a rank-and-file protester, about her experiences in the detention camp, she said, “If it was UN along with the Government of Ghana that had us arrested, somehow UNHCR was going to see to it that we be given the proper meal. But it was not like that.” She told me, “It is the government that arrested us” (SSI 41). By Monji’s account, the UNHCR cared for refugees. If the agency had been responsible for the arrests, then detainees would have been better treated. The absence

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of caregiving activities become evidence of the absence of UNHCR involvement. Likewise when I asked Patricia what the UNHCR did during the police action. She replied with an indirect answer about earlier support, and she said, “[The organizers] told us that UN wanted to give us, coverage, to take us out from under the sun. (. . .) And UN wanted to give us rice, so. [The elders] had meeting in the group and said that, the coverage would be a sign that we are content. Yes. And then we want to tell them that we are not content with our condition on this camp. (. . .) UN should see us through. (. . .) We said that we want them to know that what we are appealing of is serious. So food, rice, cannot solve our problem.” (SSI 49)

Rather than answering my question with information about the UNHCR’s actions most relevant to the repression, she returns to an example of earlier UNHCR involvement that more clearly matches the frame of UNHCR-as-caregiver. She presents them as offering food and shelter. Protesters rejected the UNHCR’s care in this case—this was not an uncritical reflection of the UNHCR—but the criticism still operates within the limits of the UNHCR-as-caregiver frame. Similarly, when asked what the UNHCR was doing during the protest, Benjamin focused on the agency’s efforts to mediate the conflict: “The only thing they did was, they said they were talking to the government of Ghana to deport no Liberian again because the Liberians were brought in here and UNHCR is responsible to carry them back. It’s not the government of Ghana to forcibly take them from here and carry them back like we were [they may be persecuted]. They talked to them. So they said they give a few months for UNHCR to take Liberians from here.” (SSI 9)

The UNHCR emerges in this account as the mediator that seeks to protect refugees. Deploying the UNHCR-as-caregiver frame, Benjamin argues that the UNHCR, not the Ghanaian government, is ultimately responsible for refugees including to “carry them back” to Liberia. The UNHCR by his account succeeds in convincing the hosts to leave the refugees to the UNHCR’s care. Yet the UNHCR was intimately involved in several acts of the repression including one of the pivotal acts of detention, an activity the UNHCR described with the language of liberal administrative caregiving: “[The UNHCR] is currently determining (. . .) protection and assistance needs of the detainees as well as obtaining a full list and demographic breakdown” (UNHCR-Ghana 2008c). Two things were actually happening in this act. First, the agency was identifying people who should be released on humanitarian grounds: the elderly, children separated

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from their mothers, and the injured. But second, the agency was also making a list of people not registered with the agency as refugees, which the agency gave to the host government. These people were singled out for harsher punishment. U.S. embassy cables from this time period present a complex picture of the UNHCR’s rising concerns over the interior minister’s decision to escalate the police action by deporting some of the detainees to Liberia (or possibly, President John Kufuor’s decision [U.S. Embassy-Ghana 2008b]). Though the agency ultimately refused to allow Ghana to use of the UN plane in the deportations, the UNHCR did work with Ghana to determine which detainees to deport: “UNHCR has also informed us that they are involved with the screening process” (U.S. Embassy-Ghana 2008a).1 Refugee registration is an imperfect indicator for vulnerability and risk, a limitation that the UNHCR often recognized in its policies. The agency had allowed unregistered refugees access to an earlier repatriation program and regularly referred new refugees to the Welfare Council, which kept an updated (but unofficial) registration list. Roughly one in five Liberians I met in Buduburam were not registered with the UNHCR, most because they had arrived in Ghana after the last registration exercise, others because of administrative errors in registration. But nevertheless, the UNHCR drafted a list of the unregistered refugees for Ghanaian authorities, and these detainees were removed from the detention camp and imprisoned or deported. How did camp residents make sense of this repressive act? I met two unregistered refugees who avoided that transfer from the detention camp, Monji and Barbara, and they both framed their experiences with the official in the same manner. Monji said: “Well, I have talked to her that I don’t have ID card. They are saying that we who don’t have place [i.e., UNHCR ID card], we should wait. (. . .) I talked to her because she registered the non–ID card members. (. . .) She registered me and she asked me if I have been refugee before; I say, ‘Yes.’ She say, ‘Where?’ I say I was a refugee in Guinea. She asked me if I was repatriated before; I say no, I said I came back to Liberia on my own. She say, ‘Why?’ I say, ‘Well, I could not stand the life in Guinea so I decided to come back to Liberia.’ She say, ‘Then why are you here?’ I say, ‘I came here because my children got missing from me during WW III [the 1. The U.S. embassy official saw the UNHCR as a more passive figure then I do: “[T]he [Government of Ghana’s (GOG)] actions seem to signal a deterioration of the asylum regime in Ghana, a development that has also been enabled by UNHCR Accra’s unassertive stance toward the GOG. (. . .) It appears that UNHCR-GOG consultations thus far have not been as thorough as desired, and UNHCR must re-establish its leadership role on this issue and actively ensure that the GOG is applying appropriate legal protections to maintain the integrity of the asylum system” (U.S. Embassy-Ghana 2008c). But several sources support my stronger claim, which is that the UNHCR requested police intervention; most publicly, the agency’s press release about the food boycott cited earlier, but also interviews with the interior minister.

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last fighting during the Liberian civil war]; I came in search of them.’ So she said that she was going to check in the UNCHR database, I say, ‘No problem.’ And she went she checked, and they came back and took nineteen women and four children without ID card. The people that were deported, I was there and I was not taken.” (SSI 41)

Like many camp residents, Monji assumed based on past experience that being on a UNHCR list brought benefits, so she tried to get her name on the transfer list. But she could not get on the list. I asked her why not, and in listening to her try to make sense of the experience, the most striking part is what is left out. “I don’t know, and I was not the only one. I think there were about eighty-five of us who never had ID card. (. . .) The day they came for them, I went to her. I felt that maybe she did not remember my name. I went to her, I said you called twenty persons’ name and I never heard my name, and I don’t have ID card. She told me she say, ‘If you were supposed to be in this number, your name was going to be on the paper.’ (. . .) And I went to her twice asking her, she told me she say, “I’ve told you if your name were supposed to be here, it could have been here.” So I forgot it, I went and sat down.”

Once she learned of the consequences of being on the transfer list, she was grateful for having been left off the list. But missing from this account is any discussion of the harm to her compatriots that could be attributed to the UNHCR by virtue of collecting the list of names. This account was echoed by Barbara, the other unregistered refugee who I had met returning from the detention camp. She recounts how she, too, had tried to get on the list, believing that getting on a UNHCR list would bring her benefits. She thanked God that she ultimately never got her name on that list but drew no implications from the fact that a UNHCR official had made the lists. The coercive element of that act is wholly excluded from the account. NATIONALIZING IDENTITY TO REASSIGN BLAME

Some people did consider UNHCR officials to be directly involved in the suppression, but laid final blame on Ghanaian authorities by treating national identity as the ultimate marker of identity. Another woman, a registered refugee who had returned from the detention camp, explained away the role of a white and therefore clearly non-Ghanaian UNHCR official saying, ‘But you know [first name, UNHCR official] is against us. She is married to a Ghana man. Of course, she has to support her husband’s people.’ In fact, the UNHCR official was not married to a Ghanaian national, but this belief in the matrimonial transmission of sympathies was common, part of a political logic that intermingled personal with professional

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and citizens with government. This was not a feature exclusive to refugee camps, but an amalgam of Liberian and Ghanaian political traditions conditioned by the structural realities of contemporary West African refuge in which positive decisions were very often personal kindnesses not rights-based entitlements, and public policies did frequently reach intrusively into private domains By treating national identity as the ultimate marker of identity, people could reconcile the UNHCR-as-caregiver frame with their observations of the actions of UNHCR personnel. For example, Momolu who was particularly critical in his assessment of the UNHCR declared, “[The UNHCR] actually they were not in the refugee interest, because many of the UNHCR comes here, are Ghanaian representatives from UNHCR actually” (SSI 2). He ultimately shifts to blaming the people of Ghanaian nationality who work at the UNHCR. Even Mohamed, who expressed the most critical perspective on UNHCR actions that I heard, shifted blame from the UNHCR to the Ghanaian authorities later in the conversation. He said: “UNHCR in Ghana is headed by Ghanaians in totality, although there are other foreigners, but the majority of them are Ghanaians, you know what I mean, and I will be bold to say it that the Ghanaians are not in support of us. On the line of benefiting from UNHCR. Naturally, they are not in support of us. (. . .) Benefits from UNHCR, they do block our way, they do stop us from receiving it. They are not in support of us. That one I state clear.” (SSI 3) Through a political logic that recognizes national identity as the primary identity, Mohamed talks himself into blaming the Ghanaians, making a distinction between foreigners working at the UNHCR and local Ghanaians staffers. At its extreme, the UNHCR-Ghana becomes an entity set apart from the “real” UNHCR in Geneva. By the end of the protest, refugees were appealing not only to “UN” or “UNHCR” but to “Geneva.”

Criticizing the UNHCR People deployed the UNHCR-as-caregiver frame to criticize the UNHCR as well as praise it. Adam, a supporter of the protests, exemplified this complexity. When asked what the UNHCR was doing during the protest, he replied: “[The UNHCR] I felt they are here to protect us and if anything are going wrong and we are not satisfied with anything, I think they are the ones who are supposed to come out to address whatsoever problems we have, but instead they sit, you know, and never cared to listen to the women until everything blew out of proportion.” (SSI 44)

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Adam still relied on the UNHCR-as-caregiver frame, taking for granted that the UNHCR “are here to protect us”—but he criticized the agency for not listening: proper care requires hearing grievances. I knew that Adam frequently made critical remarks of the agency, but when he answers my question of what happened during the repression, he still focused exclusively on the Ghanaian actors. “Many people in Ghana (. . .) felt we were requesting this money from the Ghana Government. (. . .) Of course it was not the Ghana Government we were requesting to. We were requesting to UNHCR so some Ghanaians even interrogated us locally on the streets say ‘oh who are you to receive money like US$1000 even as a Ghanaian, I haven’t receive US$1000 and who are you for the Government to give US$1000?’ I say ‘no!’ I convince many of them, I say ‘we are not requesting to the Government. We are requesting to a UN body which is responsible for refugees it is not the Ghana Government we are asking.’ They say, ‘Ha, but the Government told us it’s them (. . .) you people are asking,’ (. . .) I will say it is true that the Government said that because [it is] from the President[’s] statement.” (SSI 44) Adam is not an isolated or unreflective man. He followed the national news and talked with Ghanaian citizens. From those interactions, he constructed a damning account of the role of Ghanaian authorities in the protests: the authorities deliberately fomented public anger against the Liberian refugees by lying about the protest demands. Like Adam, when I discussed the collapse of the protests with Emma, a neighbor who had gone to the meeting in Accra, she responded with a criticism of the UNHCR without rejecting the UNHCR-as-caregiver frame. She said: April 2008. The UNHCR boss lady from Accra, she started off saying you are writing letters to Geneva and that isn’t right. She sided with the government. You know you have a group of people you are taking care of, your duty is to come and find out what happened.

Like Adam, Emma criticizes the UNHCR for its activities during the Concerned Women protests. But she does not reject the overarching assumption that the UNHCR cares for refugees. Like Adam, she blames the UNHCR for not coming to discuss demands with the protesters, but does not ultimately fault them for the repression of the protests. What these counter-examples show is that people did have access to information that could have led them to reach a different conclusion. That so few people accepted this information is indicative not only of the general unreliability of information in the camp, but also of the wide resonance of the two dominant frames that promoted distrust in Ghanaians and faith in the UNHCR.

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Bifurcated Governmentality and the Trajectory of Conflict over Humanitarian Aid Popular accounts of humanitarian intervention emphasize the courage and generosity of humanitarians and the suffering and gratitude of refugees (Bergman 2003; Danieli 2001). This is a partial truth. In practice, conflicts over humanitarian aid are severe and commonplace. In the repression’s aftermath in the Buduburam Refugee Camp, residents maintained a commitment to humanitarian rule by shifting blame for the repressive acts to the Ghanaian authorities. These blaming practices did not occur in a vacuum. They derived from long-standing features of the refugee camp; from an interrelated set of structures and frames that I have called bifurcated governmentality. In Buduburam, three mechanisms fostered the subjective re-division of authority into caring humanitarians and threatening hosts: host subcontracting, liberal administrative care-giving, and the nationalization of identity. These mechanisms continued to operate during the Concerned Women protests, shielding the UNHCR and undercutting host efforts to mediate the dispute. In the years after the Concerned Women protests, I combed the news media, policy reports and academic sources for accounts of other protests in refugee crises to gain some sense of context. It became increasingly clear that the trajectory of Concerned Women protests was not an outlier—disputes between refugees and humanitarians regularly transformed into conflicts between refugees and hosts (Amupadhi and Dentlinger 2003; FMRS 2006; U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants 2005). This connection has not been made explicit before, but it is evident in the subtext to many other reports. For example, a new report about protests in a refugee camp in Namibia over food and fuel scarcities said: “Police spokesman, Chief Inspector Angula Amulungu . . . said when people at the camp awoke ‘placards were up this morning already urging’ refugees not to accept the rations and to demand an explanation from the UNHCR. As they were demanding explanations, the Government-employed camp administrator reportedly called the Police to arrest the ‘instigators.’” (http://www.refugees.org/article.aspx?id=1708)

Likewise, it surfaces in the protests over migration policies by urban Sudanese refugees in Cairo: “At least 28 Sudanese were killed in December 2005 as Egyptian riot police violently dispersed a sit-in near the Cairo offices of UNHCR” (Mahmoud 2007, 75). In both of these cases, refugee protests against UNHCR programs transformed into violent confrontations with host police. In Egypt, like in Ghana, the UNHCR made the decision to suppress the protests and indeed had to make multiple requests before the host authorities agreed to intervene (Azzam 2006).

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We know very little about how conflicts over humanitarian aid unfold. The researchers who have explored this social problem tend to focus on refugee–host disputes—the conditions under which hosts and refugees dispute land use (Aukot 2001; Chambers 1986; Martin 2005; Salehyan and Gleditsch 2006) or the spillovers in civil conflict (Lischer 2005; Stedman and Tanner 2003). Humanitarian actors rarely feature in these analyses, except when scholars recommend ways that humanitarian actors can mitigate conflicts between refugees and hosts by, for example, distributing aid to hosts in refugee-affected areas (Black 1994). Yet humanitarian actors are not above political processes (Barnett and Weiss 2008; Belgrad and Nachmias 1997; Calhoun 2008; Hyndman 2000; Verdirame and Harrell-Bond 2005). Humanitarians, hosts, and refugees are linked together in complex socio-political relationships that are intimately shaped by the political reorganization that occurs during transnational interventions. Structural forces influence these relationships, but like Susan Watkins and her colleagues so aptly put it, “NGOs are shaped as much by how they are imagined as by what they actually do” (Watkins et al. 2012, 286). What the Concerned Women protests and the aftermath show us is that humanitarian actors can serve as mediators, but the mediator role is one achieved through political processes, which extract political costs from hosts, refugees, and humanitarians themselves.

Conclusion Compassionate Authoritarianism

So what is the place of ordinary politics in humanitarian crisis? It constitutes both a foundation of survival and a focal point in the collision between humanitarian compassion and refugee rights. Unstable and poor, refugee camps endure only because residents work together to mitigate collective challenges. To get clean water for an afternoon or a seat for a child at school can remain a solitary burden, but in the absence of reliable public administration, such actions regularly become fodder for collective action, even—or perhaps especially—in crisis. This engagement is ultimately political: collective action directed toward “authority over, production of, or allocation of resources” (Kerkvliet 2009, 232).1 Researchers have amassed considerable evidence that humanitarian actors like the UNHCR govern refugee camps with quasi-sovereign political authority (Agier 2011; Barnett 2001; Edkins 2000; R. Lippert 1999; Voutira and Harrell-Bond 1995). Indeed, this is true, but ordinary people contribute to the government of humanitarian crisis, too. Ordinary political disputes remain a part of life in crisis, too. Crisis does not replace human sentiments with unadulterated good will; it cannot strip collective action of its contentious elements. The problem is that authorities treat politically active refugees with suspicion, as though their disputes constitute an unnecessary and unexpected challenge. They fail to create robust institutions for accountability 1. Benedict Kerkvliet (2009, 231–32) offers a nuanced and engaging discussion of the different forms of politics (official, advocacy, and everyday). My own definition is slightly narrower in that I argue for an act to be political it must have some collective dimension.

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and deliberation, often blaming the ongoing crisis as though grievance institutions require stability and affluence to work. In refugee camps, a distinctive form of rule emerges, one that is compassionate in that refugees and authorities frame humanitarians as committed to refugee well-being and authoritarian in its lack of meaningful grievance practices. But in the absence of clear and effective grievance procedures, ordinary disagreements about public goods regularly metastasize, transforming civic debate into a social problem provoking authorities to react in an ever more authoritarian manner. The UNHCR could treat refugees as people who, though in unfortunate circumstances, are able to contribute to their own self-organization, but instead grievance practices become one of the many luxuries that authorities abandon to meet more pressing concerns. My goal in sharing the story of the Concerned Women is to show that this is not an inevitable decision made in the face of chaos but a choice of ethics for humanitarian action and one with profound consequences for refugee activism. Humanitarian authorities may possess a sincere commitment to human rights in the face of state breakdown and a genuine compassion for refugees, but in practice, they compromise on those commitments in the face of political activism. Despite their disagreements, residents and administrators of refugee camps come like Harold Garfinkel’s (1967, 35) archetypical “society’s members” to “know the moral order as perceivedly normal courses of action.” These understandings of the social and political world have consequences. “We had faith, we had a strong faith, that UN was going to come back,” Patricia told me when I asked her why she stayed on the protest field. When I wondered what gave her that faith, she said: “Because we know that UN have interest in women (. . .) and for children as a whole, they got that concern. (. . .) It was a high risk that we took, and these are cases that UN love to see, so [we] believe that if we do this, UN will do that. You understand? That was our hope. (. . .) We went with that faith, with that agreement, that if we take this stand, since our leaders are not looking at us and they are like, putting us to the back, so let us go with our own cry, we and our children.” (SSI 49, emphasis added)

In her own mind and like her peers, Patricia had formed a faith and an agreement with the UNHCR. In this book, I have sought to understand that sometimes one-sided agreement—what it entailed, why it emerged, and how it influenced people’s lives. What did this tacit agreement entail? In the refugee camp, people regularly framed the UNHCR as a powerful caregiver, often juxtaposing this frame to an

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equally influential foil, which presented Ghanaian actors as malevolent figures that made life harder for refugees. A critical part of camp life, this frame surfaced in almost all political talk in Buduburam. People deployed it to praise as well as criticize the UNHCR. They used it in strategic appeals to the agency but also in offhand comments to fellow residents. A person could vehemently reject this frame at one point in an interview and then unthinkingly deploy it a few minutes later. In short, the UNHCR-as-caregiver frame was resonant. Why did it emerge? The UNHCR-as-caregiver frame was part of a larger set of political dynamics that subjectively divided camp authorities into caring humanitarians and threatening hosts, a system that I call bifurcated governmentality. In the refugee camp, three mechanisms fostered the subjective division of authority and the resonance of the UNHCR-as-caregiver frame: host subcontracting, liberal administrative caregiving, and the nationalization of identity. By subcontracting administrative programs through host institutions, the UNHCR unwittingly fostered middleman effects that encouraged residents to blame hosts for shortcomings in programming that might otherwise have undermined their faith in a caring UNHCR. The common assumption within the refugee community that national identity trumped other identities exacerbated these unintentional middleman effects by lumping UNHCR officials of Ghanaian descent in with “the Ghanaians.” At the same time, the UNHCR unintentionally obscured the ordinary coerciveness of its compliance efforts by relying on liberal administrative technologies to govern. How did this influence people’s lives? The great irony was that the system probably encouraged greater civic engagement—especially women’s engagement—than would have emerged in its absence because people believed that the UNHCR would protect them from host threats. The everyday routines of camp administration came to rely on this engagement—the residents who volunteered their labor and time and the activists who rallied peers to collectively resolve the shortfalls. But the prevailing institutions and frames of the camp administration still regularly transformed refugee engagement into a social problem. Ultimately, relations between refugees and hosts bore the greatest brunt of this dynamic, because disputes over humanitarian aid between refugees and humanitarians regularly transformed into conflicts between refugees and hosts. To what extent do the insights from the Buduburam Refugee Camp extend to other refugee camps, other kinds of humanitarian crises, and other social settings? The refugee camp case raises broader questions about how transnational actors influence the social worlds in which they operate. Humanitarian intervention carries with it a unique set of benefits and obligations, but strong transnational actors can be found in international development projects, postconflict reconstruction, and sometimes even in the sites of postcolonial extractions that create

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contemporary “company towns.” That bifurcated governmentality could emerge in any of these settings is a real possibility. Transnational authorities that originate in the global north draw on different institutional scripts than do southern hosts, and in the face of global inequality regimes tied to race, nation, trade, and geography, separate government will never be equal government. When concerns about accountability transform into accountability struggles between hosts and transnationals, these global inequality regimes will strengthen transnational actors. Host states will find as Ghana did that even with superior military might, they will enter accountability struggles at a disadvantage, because these struggles hinge on subjective processes—not actual material benefits, but perceived benefits; not actual threats, but perceived threats. Subjective and material dimensions of government do not always coalesce into a single coherent story. Uncertainty, confusion, and rumors persist in all settings and to the extent that these misunderstandings have material consequences, we must acknowledge these “mistakes” as integral parts of the political system. In short, the case has shown us something interesting about transnational vulnerabilities of host states. How far does this case generalize? While much the story of the Concerned Women derives from accidents of history, one can also see in its “shifting constellations” causal mechanisms that could occur elsewhere (Steinmetz 2004, 383). Some mechanisms promise to generalize further than others, and in the next section, I draw on related studies to begin to answer that question.

Cross-National Variation in Perceptions of Humanitarian Actors The framework of caring humanitarians and threatening hosts has emerged elsewhere. Among Burundian refugees in Tanzania, Simon Turner (2010, 46) observed a similar dynamic, as did Liisa Malkki (1995, 129, 141) several years earlier. In the last decade, several major humanitarian actors including Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the International Committee of the Red Cross have administered cross-national surveys to study public perceptions of humanitarian intervention. Altogether, these surveys present a complex picture. The majority of the countries surveyed follow the patterns identified in Buduburam; the “contradictory, yet oft-expressed greater trust that local communities have in international groups over national agencies” (Donini et al. 2008, 12). But the reports also document severe alienation from humanitarian actors in certain countries. Most countries surveyed showed strong positive responses in a wide range of questions about humanitarian action. Liberians surveyed in Liberia, for example, often answered the question of who they expected “to reduce suffering during

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armed conflict” with reference to international organizations, especially the UN (ICRC 2009, 7). Likewise, 70 percent of respondents in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) agreed that the UN understands their needs while only 28 percent said that the government helped to reduce suffering (ICRC and IPSOS 2009, 50). In Cameroon, a MSF report concluded, “Humanitarian aid is generally seen as important and welcome” (Souza and Abu-Sada 2008a, 7). This finding though concentrated in African countries, also extended to Guatemala, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. In Nepal and Sri Lanka, for example, the majority of respondents reported that humanitarian agencies increased their security (Donini et al. 2008, 23, 24). Like the nationalization of identity in Buduburam, foreign ties played a key role in legitimizing humanitarian actors. In Guatemala, researchers concluded that “the facts that MSF is a foreign organization and coordinated by foreigners are . . . an essential factor of credibility” (Souza and Abu-Sada 2008b, 17). This was true even though, like UNHCR-Ghana, the majority of the MSF-Guatemala staff was national (36). Similarly, a study of public perceptions among Congolese citizens displaced by the violence in the DRC found that “local people tend to make a distinction between the organisation and its local staff. They can be highly critical of the organisation’s staff members, but remain positive about the organisation” (Dijkzeul and Wakenge 2010, 1154). Even otherwise critical respondents in Kyrgyzstan, who expressed shame that foreigners provided services, reported that foreigners were less corrupt than fellow nationals (Souza and Abu-Sada 2009, 17). In the countries surveyed in Africa, foreignness was also deeply racialized. In Kenya, respondents tied humanitarian aid tied to White people (Abu-Sada and Souza 2008, 9). Likewise, in Cameroon the “link between the ‘Whites’ and humanitarian aid is permanent. It is seen both as a guarantee of quality, but also as an obligation that the ‘Whites’ have towards the ‘Blacks’” (Souza and Abu-Sada 2008a, 7). The ICRC analysts also note the significance of this finding, framing it as a threat to the long term viability and safety of humanitarian intervention: “‘Foreigners know best,’ people sometimes say, meaning that foreigners are more unbiased and better able to resist the corruption to which local agencies are more prone. But if nothing changes in the lives of those in need of assistance and protection as time goes by, trust may well turn into animosity, or worse” (Donini et al. 2008, 12). Like in Buduburam, even where the framework of caring humanitarians dominates, expressions of betrayal and distrust sometimes surface. Among Liberian refugees in the Tobanda refugee camp in Sierra Leone, for example, Michel Agier (2011, 159) documents a critical political talk against the UNHCR: “The Whites and the Sierra Leonese are together against us.” Similarly Marie Beatrice Umutesi (2004, 157) gives a very different account from the Rwandan refugee camps in Zaire/DRC: “we felt that [UNHCR] organization had, from the beginning,

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betrayed the refugees and that we could expect nothing good to come of [High Commissioner Ogata’s] visit.” Even resonant frames do not operate automatically for all people at all times. The framework of caring humanitarians and threatening hosts stands not as an inevitable accompaniment to humanitarian crisis, but as a possibility that should motivate empirical investigation. Surveys from Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Haiti tell a more critical story. In Kyrgyzstan, older respondents saw humanitarian aid as a front for political activities; as one interviewee put it: “Humanitarian organization as MSF and ICRC provide medical drugs and treat AIDS, but they also wash money and gather information as they have access to different organizations” (Souza and Abu-Sada 2009, 10). Just 27 percent of respondents in Haiti said that UN understands their needs (ICRC 2009). A survey in Iraqi Kurdistan found that the public tended to blend military, business and humanitarianism as part of the broader system of Western intervention (Abu-Sada 2009, 24, 25). What made these countries different? In Kyrgyzstan, and possible Georgia as well, the generational variation in responses suggests that old Soviet dynamics may be driving negative perceptions of humanitarian action among the older generation but not the youth. The story in Haiti seems to be grounded in their unique history of extensive, ineffectual humanitarian intervention. But in Iraq, Palestine, and Afghanistan, the story has serious, consistent implications: war strategies that link humanitarian aid with military intervention taint perceptions of UN aid agencies and NGOs to make them “guilty by association” (Donini et al. 2008).

What Ought to Happen Next? Seeking Better Challenges in a Second Best World Putting people in refugee camps is not a pragmatic compromise achieved in the face of insurmountable obstacles. It is an institutional response to the small and large challenges produced by humanitarian crisis, poverty, state breakdown, and migration policy making. The former research director of MSF Fiona Terry argued that humanitarian action inevitably produces negative outcomes, but the institutional resistance to acknowledging these challenges make their consequences worse—“we must aim for a second-best world and adjust to that accordingly” (Terry 2002, 245). People do not govern humanitarian crises particularly well, but where people govern—where we engage systematically in collective endeavors—we can institutionalize practices that help our better selves triumph, even in a second-best world. But no power-sharing arrangement and no quantity of resources can make refugee camps into a truly fair and effective response to the challenges of contemporary sanctuary.

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Incorporate Political Engagement and Factionalism in Humanitarian Intervention No one loses their capacity to engage in collection action, form alliances or disagree about the best way to allocate shared resources when they lose their homeland. People living as refugees deserve the “freedom to act politically and strategically, i.e., the ‘freedom to pursue normal lives,’” (Polzer 2009). Humanitarian action needs to incorporate civic engagement and refugee politics into decision-making. Bringing more people into the decision-making process is not without challenges, but it offers a different—and better—set of practical questions. Which forms of representation work best for transitory communities? Which political activists should represent their people? What happens when would-be representatives discriminate against women or other marginalized groups? What about when they disagree with one another? As Tania Kaiser (2004, 197) concludes in her study of Liberian and Sierra Leonean refugees in Guinea, “not only do practitioners need to understand how competing agendas are expressed in such situations, they also need to be able to formulate a response to irreconcilable differences.” What the experiences of the Concerned Women contribute to this debate is evidence that ignoring the problem of mundane factionalism does not make it go away. Camp residents already engage politically with humanitarian aid and fight over who gets to represent refugee interests, but they are doing it without the institutional means to channel these debates into safe and effective civic engagement.

Embrace Different Challenges in Refugee Migration If putting people in refugee camps was going to work anywhere in Africa, it would have worked in the Buduburam Refugee Camp. Liberian refugees in Ghana did not suffer incursions from combatants. Ghana did not curtail freedom of movement for refugees or confine them to an isolated part of the country. Yet camp residents faced crippling social, political, and economic exclusion that thrust even resilient and well-equipped people into poverty. Refugee camps, as Jennifer Hyndman (2000, 177–78) has written, “institutionalize . . . waste of both human and financial resources.” But a refugee camp also afflicts political harms. It operates as a public stage for host officials who want to make low-cost public lessons. The national security posturing of the interior minister beset by scandals was by no means the only such example in Buduburam. A public health official tipped off a national television news station and sent riot police to enforce a licensing issue at two health training centers in the camp. It made for great TV and undoubtedly provided a salutary lesson for public health administrators about the need to get licensed by the Ministry of Public Health. But the lesson came like so many lessons at the expense of people living as refugees.

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What other choice is there? In their indictment of refugee camps in East Africa, Guglielmo Verdirame and Barbara Harrell-Bond (2005, 15) conclude that the only way to protect refugee rights was to promote full social and economic integration in host states. Recently, the UNHCR (2009) has begun to move in this direction, reversing its policies against aiding people outside of camps and even going so far as to submit an amicus curiae to the High Court of Kenya that defended the right of refugees to live outside of camps (Verdirame and Pobjoy 2013). The UNHCR does not make refugee policy alone, and it has limited capacity to transform host policies; the agency’s progress in this direction has proven uneven, but this is a profound shift in policy (Kagan 2013). There are many examples of large-scale refugee integration, and these deserve close investigation. Early studies of Liberian refugees outside of camps in Guinea concluded that their presence produced an economic boom, expanded infrastructure like health clinics for locals as well as refugees, and decreased health crises relative to refugee camps (Van Damme 1995). Refugees gained access to land for farming through ties to locals as “friend” or “stranger-father” (Black and Sessay 1997). But for most Liberians in Guinea, “integration” meant subjugation to local elites and protection from state violence only insofar as “good” hosts advocated on their behalf (Onoma 2013). Likewise, the integration of Iraqi refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria had been hailed as progressive and humane alternative to camps.2 But observers found widespread downward social mobility among Iraqi refugees in Jordan because the government would not generally grant refugee status, work permits or access to social services; meanwhile humanitarian actors faced strong pressure from hosts to share the benefits of programs targeting Iraqi refugees (Libal and Harding 2011). Sharing resources with hosts is likely to make these programs more effective in the long run, but when donors earmark funding for more narrow purposes, it makes it hard for humanitarian aid organizations to adapt. In short, directing resources to local integration is not a panacea, but a decision to embrace a different and better set of challenges. The greatest challenge is likely to be sustaining the resistance to parallel institutions. In the 1990s, Ghana responded very differently to Togolese refugees than Liberian refugees, effectively integrating the Togolese Ewe people with co-ethnics in the Volta region; but in a later influx, some Togolese refugees went to the Krisan Refugee Camp and especially after protests in 2005 overtook the camp, faced a negative response much like Liberians in Buduburam (Frontani, Silvestri, and Brown 2009). Likewise, in the more recent Syrian refugee crisis, Jordan and Turkey shifted away from integration to camps. Jordan seems to be moving back towards integration, but for a time, the Za’atari Refugee Camp was the largest in 2. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/01/for-refugees-the-price-of-dignity/.

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the world. Even without using refugee camps, humanitarians and hosts may find it difficult to resist the short-term strategy that create parallel institutions for refugees rather than strengthening existing infrastructure to accommodate the influx. Many years after authorities made that decision for Liberian refugees the Zone d’Accueil des Réfugiés in Cote D’Ivoire, the UNHCR was still dealing with the fallout (Kuhlman 2002). Xenophobia will remain a challenge even in the absence of encampment, and combating xenophobia requires enormous resources. Every dollar spent maintaining the enormous infrastructure, personnel, and programming of a refugee camp is one dollar less for antidiscrimination cases, public advocacy campaigns, and capital investment programs. The UNHCR has the legal mandate to fight economic discrimination—the 1951 Refugee Convention prohibits discrimination in employment, education, public relief, and elsewhere. The agency has programs and experts that target these humanitarian ills (UNHCR 2002; UNHCR 2005b; UNHCR 2011; UNHCR 2012). The challenge is to reallocate resources away from refugee camps to the antidiscrimination campaigns and economic opportunity programs—and fund refugee campaigns in the absence of photo ops in refugee camps. All of this is made more complicated by the fact that even if refugees, hosts and humanitarians embrace the challenges of social and economic integration, some border areas cannot become sanctuaries. Resettlement will still be a necessary part of humanitarian action. But contemporary resettlement has become conflated with migration from the global south to the global north. In Buduburam, like other camps, residents dreamed of a more prosperous life in the United States, Australia, Sweden or the United Kingdom, and the UNHCR could not fulfill the passionate resettlement dreams that its migration programs spurred.3 Resettlement became a bottleneck in the path to forging a new home after war. It was not always like this. When the UNHCR first developed resettlement, the agency transferred Europeans to Brazil, Australia, Canada, Turkey, Israel, Hong Kong, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, France, and other countries (UNHCR 1953). Expanding resettlement so that people get accustomed to the idea that resettlement could mean making a new home in Uganda or Uruguay as likely as the United States could help strengthen that migration choice. This reform carries a steep moral cost—it supports efforts by wealthy countries to close their borders to people fleeing crises in faraway lands. But there is an even higher cost to leaving refugee protection in the morass of south-north migration. We have tried that strategy unsuccessfully for decades. It is time for a different approach. 3. Cindy Horst (2007) offers a rich account of the power of these resettlement dreams for camp inhabitants.

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In 2013, the global population of refugees surpassed fifty million for the first time since World War II.4 The demand for humanitarian action is stronger now than it has been in decades. Any of these policy shifts could work, but not without sharing the financial burden that they entail. The 1951 Refugee Convention signatories could, as Jennifer Hyndman (2000) suggests, choose between hosting refugees or paying for their support in other countries. Signatories have the institutional space in the UN to negotiate the contribution that members must make to remain in good standing as well as a conversion rate for each refugee hosted. Global burden-sharing has its own set of challenges, but better ones.

What Happened After: Notes from Ghana and Liberia In 2012, following an agreement that the UNHCR brokered between Liberia and the host countries in the region, Ghana invoked the cessation clause terminating the prima facie refugee status of Liberian residents. Since then, cessation has proven to be a years-long process. Not until 2014 did the UNHCR conclude that cessation was “practically over” (interview with UNHCR official, June 2014). Nearly thirty thousand people returned to Liberia from the region, but others still remain in the closing refugee camp.5 When I returned in June 2014, I found that copious shops, houses, and stands had sprung up along the highway that runs past Buduburam including a gleaming new gas station across the road. The roadside where the tro-tros used to pick up passengers had become an orderly stop separated from the road by tires. Inside the camp, the taxi stand had expanded to over a dozen cars, busses, and motorcycles. As I walked from the road to the old protest field, I passed under the shade of a broad leafy tree, meeting three young men who set up a roadside business selling tires and air. Ghanaians, they had come to the Gomoa district shortly after the Concerned Women protests from Central Region. As I walked across the field, I came to a short stone wall that now bisected the field running parallel to the highway. I met a young Ghanaian woman, who told me that she arrived three years ago when her family moved into the Estates, the housing complex still under development when I left in 2008. She attends a private high school in Kasoa. Lined with grass and well-tended flowering shrubs, the wall separated a new police and fire station (“Donated by UNHCR”) from the rest of the field. They

4. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/20/global-refugee-figure-passes-50-millionunhcr-report. 5. http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/page?page=4a03e2f76&submit=GO.

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paved the yard in front of the station with gravel and ornamented it with lovely flowers and a tree. In the yard, I chatted with two firemen. They told me the new station covers the entire Gomoa district, tackling more than one hundred fires per year. The U.S. even gave them training in Accra, one of the firemen told me. Though the front of the camp looked as crowded as ever to me, the firemen told me that the population has shrunk enormously—maybe to fewer than twenty thousand people (perhaps twenty-five to thirty thousand, his colleague corrected him). Now the residents included a greater mix of people—Togolese, Liberians, Ghanaians, Sierra Leoneans, Nigerians, and Ivorians. What will happen to the Liberians who stay, I wondered? One fireman replied me that UNIDO is carrying the last group back to Liberia—even the ones without ID cards—but only after teaching them a trade. Really? I asked with some skepticism. Yes, it is being paid for by the Chinese government—they are teaching baking, dressmaking, computers, both the women and men. Despite his confidence, I was not so sure, but I let the conversation meander along anyway. Who is running the camp now? I asked. They tell me that there is no commandant now, no one in charge for a year. Even the Welfare Council had finished. Really? I asked with much interest, so they told me the story. Fireman: They wanted the building for a clinic, brought in reinforcements from Kasoa and pushed the people outside. They have given their space to the clinic to build a new maternal health wing—the health center is now wholly controlled by NCS. They made a great fire in the yard and destroyed all the Council documents. Me: But who will take care of the water and sanitation Fireman: Residents will need to pay to dump in the village. Me: What about Point Hope? Fireman: Point Hope is wrapping up its water program. So many changes! On the far end of the field in front of the CRIDHA—the first church built in the refugee camp—another wall had been erected. Near the church, in an old shed on the corner of the field, I saw three gentlemen garbed in white flowing robes sitting on prayer mats. As I left the field, winding my way through the familiar back alleys of the camp, I encountered many more signs of Ghanaian residents—even the children shouted “Obruni” at me instead of White woman. Although the firemen and later, the camp residents I met worried about the increased crime in the camp, I didn’t have the same sense of unease walking through the streets that I did in my return in 2011. The veiled tensions I encountered in 2011 seemed to have dissipated, and I heard World Cup cheers, gospel sounds, and leisurely conversations coming from the homes.

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On the other side of camp, a wide concrete porch now surrounded the Catholic Church. One of the largest structures in the camp, the site of many memorable meetings and rallies, the church now had window panes and a newly completed doorway that opened under an enormous archway. Catholics come from elsewhere in the district to use it now too, I was told. The old Buduburam secondary school that the UNHCR used to run had been transferred to Point Hope, as was the Harmony Disability Center. The Welfare Council building had become the St. Gregory Hospital maternity ward. The Neighborhood Watch Team office was also a new medical facility. The Social Welfare Office had moved into WISE’s old building, and Point Hope had briefly taken over the old Social Welfare and fire station before moving its offices to Kasoa. In front of the old WISE building, the blue announcement board still stood— the white stenciled “UNHCR services are free” sign was the most visible of the faded writing and forgotten posters. The commandant’s office was still empty, but the future occupant had already put up its sign: Gomoa District Revenue Services. What will happen to this place? The UNHCR official whom I asked told me that even with local integration, Liberians would not stay in Buduburam. The land would be handed over to its lawful owners (interview with UNHCR official, June 2014). Who might that be? No one is quite sure yet—Ghana has formed an interministerial committee to coordinate the hand over, the UNHCR official told me.

The Shrinking Political Life in Buduburam and Reengagement in Liberia The UNHCR withdrew most programming from the refugee camp. For a time, Point Hope maintained some of the schools, infrastructure and social service programs, but in 2014, they too began to withdraw. A power vacuum emerged with different local and national authorities claiming the right to tax the remaining residents. But though the UNHCR had officially withdrawn from Buduburam, many still looked to the agency for support. Paulo, a politically active refugee laid out the current power structure for me: ‘The UN Protection Officer, he alone is doing everything (. . .) They sacked the camp manager. They invoked the cessation clause. Not only Ghana alone, but seven West African countries. It is left with Geneva. [A claimant to the local chiefdom] Nana Boatong has claimed zones 1–4. Paa Kwesi [a completing claimant to the chiefdom] has claimed zones 9–10. He is charging 10 cedis per room a month! The Protection Officer did a survey—there is no deed from chief. Gomoa Assembly has nothing to do until refugees leave.’ (Interview with Paulo, June 2014)

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Refugee political structures gradually atrophied between 2011 and 2014. In February 2011, during a series of struggles over leadership of the Welfare Council, a refugee group known as the Joint Liberian Refugee Committees in Ghana (JOLRECG) ousted the appointed leader, just as they had in 2008. But this time, the factionalism descended into a violent clash with Ghanaian police that killed a resident and provoked rioting throughout the top of camp.6 The incident weakened the Council and other representative bodies faded away soon after. Later, a UNHCR official told me that it was NADMO’s decision to close the Welfare Council and that they would remain closed until the government selected new election criteria (interview with UNHCR official, June 2014). For the political activists in the camp, it was difficult end. Simon, a supporter of JOLRECG told me: ‘It’s ourselves sometimes too who make trouble. The Welfare Council chairman was selling our people like in the February 13 incident. Now it has been taken over by the hospital. The Elders Council has been dissolved long time now—they said the leader was using it for commercial gain. The Heads of County—there has been no one after the one in 2008 fled. The county association may be talking now, but not with authority. The Ministerial Council, the head is a Sierra Leonean living in Accra. Hatai is still there but there is no politics in it. The Vigilantes dissolved in 2013. Point Hope couldn’t maintain them.’ (Interview with Simon, June 2014)

Small, informal collective action still remained part of life, but the camp seemed more isolating and less cohesive then in early years. ‘We are just on this camp now by the grace of God,’ one woman told me (Samantha, June 2014). What if there are troubles, I wondered? ‘If you have problems, you just come together as neighbors. If not, you take it to the police,’ she told me. I asked her about the old representative groups, running through the names of the organizations that I had known in 2008, but of the long list, she could only identify county associations that still remained. ‘The Krahn still have their people here, their big person. Lofa people too. Bassa, Vai too. And the Lofa and Krahn built a [football] league.’ Most civic engagement that remained after the refugee-run organizations collapsed occurred in campaigns to reform migration, just like the Concerned Women. In 2014, the major activism centered on a group of camp residents called the “exemption group.” As the UNHCR began to intensify its efforts to close the camp, it launched a campwide push to convince residents to decide to accept local integration or repatriation to Liberia. But the agency no longer 6. http://www.modernghana.com/newsthread/316236/1/140353.

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supported resettlement programs for Liberian refugees, and this became a source of contention in the camp. As one of the activists told me later, “They are closing the camp and there is a small tussle over durable solutions—whether there are two or three of them” (Simon, June 2014). Like with the Concerned Women activism, the UNHCR found it difficult to recognize this activism as legitimate debate. Instead, it became another example of destructive political maneuvering from the refugees. JOLRECG is driving this. JOLRECG was always a bit political—humanitarian issues were not of primary importance except resettlement, which is of course a humanitarian intervention, but quite impossible. They did prevent us from doing some meaningful experiences with their resistance to income-generating programs. They are obviously a minority and very loud, especially among unregistered people after cessation invoked, and it became clear to most people that the end is near. (Interview with UNHCR official, June 2014)

Rather than deciding to return to Liberia or locally integrate, these residents appealed for exemption to allow them to stay in Ghana temporarily but retain their refugee status and with it, the possibility of traveling on resettlement programs. The UNHCR eventually formalized this status as the “exemption group” working with the Liberian government to issue passports and with the Ghanaian government to issue residence permits. Like with the Concerned Women protests, resettlement dreams still drive many of the activists (‘There is a rumor that UNHCR will take the exemption group out—this place is still owned by the UNHCR’ [Simon, June 2014]). But in practice, the group spends most time advocating for more concrete needs—the passports that failed to arrive or the money promised for local integration that failed to materialize. If the story in Ghana is one of narrowed political opportunities and waning engagement, the story in Liberia was of human flourishing in challenging circumstances. The housing shortages, widespread unemployment, crime and high inflation made daily life harder and more expensive in Liberia than Ghana for most returnees, but the civic and political leaders that had faced distrust and repression in Ghana found space for their activism in Liberia. When I traveled to Liberia in the early days of the Ebola crisis, I found that three of the Concerned Women protest organizers had achieved the meaningful professional jobs so well-suited to their background and talents. Another one was studying for the university entrance exam. Several of the Stakeholders created an advocacy group for returnees called Liberian Returnee Network and won a contract with

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UNIDO through the Liberian Refugee Repatriation and Resettlement Commission.7 “Being a refugee and a returnee is a big difference,” said the former head of Heads of County. Another former Stakeholder agreed—“advocating in Liberia and Ghana is not the same.” A former Concerned Women said, “We were not considered advocates. We were considered troublemakers. Here, people appreciate us. Someone’s listening to you here. You were not allowed to ask questions [as a refugee]. Here you can ask questions” (group interview, July 2014).

Further Cycles of Expansion and Contraction at the UNHCR-Ghana As the Liberian crisis faded in 2009 and 2010, the UNHCR-Ghana and the Ghanaian refugee authorities fell into a rut. The Interior Ministry failed to appoint a new chairman for the Ghana Refugee Board when the previous one stepped down. The refugee situation in Ghana became, in the words of one UNHCR official, just another protracted refugee situation were nothing was moving. But the 2011 crisis in Côte D’Ivoire changed all that. ‘The Ivorian crisis actually shaped the dynamics of other refugee groups. Being faced with the emergency helped motivate the team. UNHCR suddenly became more vocal, and government followed policies and procedures’ (interview with UNHCR official, June 2014). The agency grew bigger than ever, and with the agency’s support, the GRB established its presence in two other regions, becoming more institutionalized than it had in the past. For the UNHCR, this was a major victory. ‘The long term goal has always been to integrate services into local systems rather than making parallel systems—the best way is to integrate services’ (interview with UNHCR official, June 2014). The Ivorian crisis had subsided again by the time that I visited in June 2014, leaving the UNHCR-Ghana to once again reassess its mission. Will the UNHCR leave when Liberian crisis that first brought it to Ghana is over, I asked? No, the UNHCR official tells me, the UNHCR is not in Ghana because of Liberian crisis. Nonetheless, he expects that by 2016, UNHCR will have become reduced with more activities nationalized. ‘We are hoping that the times of hardship and violence are coming to a close in West Africa’ (interview with UNHCR official, June 2014).

7. http://www.unliberia.org/press.asp?pr_detail=446.

Methodological Appendix Public Sociology and Private Compromise

What shaped my understanding of camp politics more than any other experience I had in Buduburam was being “a woman with the women” during the Concerned Women protests. I met the protest organizers on the evening before their first event. Everyone knew that I was a researcher, and many welcomed the publicity. But my access was never seamless, never total, and never simple. I tried to help when I could, even when I did not entirely agree with the Concerned Women’s platform. I gave them contact information for UNHCR officials, talked with them about the broader institutional influences on local UNHCR policies, helped edit a letter of recommendations they submitted to camp authorities, and encouraged them to seek legal counsel with a contact I had at a Ghanaian human rights organization. I didn’t suffer from the illusion that I had any insights about how to organize a protest in West Africa, and it was clear to me that as a U.S. citizen, I would bear little of the consequences if things went awry. Even so, I was wholly unprepared for the dilemmas I confronted in the Concerned Women protests and their aftermath. I had gone to Buduburam carrying Michael Burawoy’s (2005) vision of the unity of research and advocacy—public sociology—and found myself blindsided by the many instances that forced me to choose between being a good researcher and a good advocate. Burawoy (2005) describes the two main challenges of public sociology as the risks of patronizing your public as an expert and of uncritically praising your public. But in practice, these were not the main challenges. The main challenge of publicly engaged researchers is that there are times when research and advocacy

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cannot be reconciled, when you need to choose to act against your research ideals or against what you can euphemistically call your “public.” That is a terrible choice to have to make while scared and alone and without time to think through your actions, and to the extent that the public sociology debate hides the fact that such choices exist from view, I fault the debaters. I don’t have any quick fixes or foolproof strategies for making these choices effectively, but I can at least offer some examples to start the discussion.1 Good research, good advocacy—the phone call to UNHCR-Geneva: During the February protest, one of the organizers wanted to call Geneva and ask officials there to investigate the local UNHCR’s response. She asked me whether I had a telephone number for the Geneva offices, and I found it and gave it to her. Later she told me that she couldn’t understand their “language,” so I took her cell phone and dialed the number with her standing beside me. It went directly to an automated switchboard. I explained the nature of switchboards to her and repeated the choices. She made her choice, and then I followed it through until I got to a live person. At that point, I handed the phone over to her and listened to her conversation. It was fascinating. The UNHCR staff person, once she realized she was talking to a refugee, said that all complaints should be filed through the local UNHCR offices. Then the organizer said that she was making a complaint about the local UNHCR. She then asked whether she had to go through the local UNHCR to file a complaint about it. The UNHCR staff person continued to quote regulations for a few more moments, asked the organizer to hold, and then came back to give her a fax number so that she could send her complaint directly to UNHCR-Geneva. It was good advocacy—I gave her what I could and stood back while she ran with it. It was good research—I got great data about the UNHCR’s grievance procedures. I wish everything went this well. Bad research, good advocacy—giving them the contact information for the lawyer: I was studying whether people reached for legal resources and discourses in the protests, so actively promoting legal counsel for the Concerned Women was a poor research strategy. But I was scared for the people in the detention camp, and I had no confidence that the UNHCR would provide disinterested legal counsel. I started giving protestors gentle hints about a contact I had in a national human rights law organization, but they didn’t want to hire a Ghanaian. I finally gave the lawyer’s phone number to one of the Stakeholders, a person whom I thought would be more likely to call the lawyer. The lawyer turned out to be willing and helpful, and the protest organizers came to see him as their ally—it was good

1. This account owes much to a panel I sat on at the Midwest Law and Society Retreat shortly after my return in September 2008, and I am grateful still for the warmth and generosity of the audience and my fellow panelist.

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advocacy. But this action made it harder to make a meaningful argument about the internal legal mobilization dynamics in the camp. Good research, bad advocacy—didn’t directly confront the UNHCR about the protests: I never went to speak for the protesters to the UNHCR, even though in the beginning, at least, I might have been able to convince the agency that these women were representative of a large group who feared local integration and were successfully talking many people into planning to go back to Liberia, something the UNHCR desired but had been unable to achieve. It was good research because it allowed me to preserve my access to the research site. But it was bad advocacy, and I wish I had acted differently. I didn’t want to jeopardize my formal permission to be in camp, and I thought that this kind of formal association with the women would have done so. But it might have helped. I don’t know, but the point is that I wasn’t thinking about the interests of the protesters when I made my decision. Bad research, bad advocacy—withdrawal from the field: After the movement fractured, I stopped sitting in the field with the protesters, which is one of the reasons I was not there during the first police raid. I might have been able to help the two sides of the movement come to an understanding, because both thought of me as an ally. But I didn’t want to interfere and I didn’t know what to do, so instead I just stopped going to the field. I wasn’t getting data, nor was I helping.

Re-engaging in Difficult Circumstances My memories of the early months after I returned to the United States in 2008 are not happy ones, but I want to end with one that others might find helpful, too. I had been back for two months and was in the midst of avoiding email and intellectualizing my concerns, half-heartedly reading an article that may or may not relate to my study: Phillip Bourgois’s (2001, 13) retrospective essay on his research in wartime El Salvador: “I can still vividly remember that night of 14 November 1981, when I found myself running through the military’s line of fire with about a thousand terrified men, women and children.” I started to feel ill, but he had my full attention now, and I kept reading, the account growing deeper, more harrowing, darker and ultimately more illuminating. I quote it at length here, beginning with his field notes: When the grenade landed on the teenage fighter up ahead, I dove into the dirt behind some bushes. I accidently jostled a young mother who was already crouching behind the bushes where I landed. I startled her six-month-old baby and it began to cry. With me panting

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next to them, huge, foreign, and stinking of strange sweat and panic, the baby’s cries spiraled into wailed shrieks. The mother hissed in my ear, “Vete! Vete de aqui! Rapido!” [Get out of here! Scram!]. At first shocked, I thought she was angry at me and was being cruel, pushing me off into the hail of bullets. Suddenly, it dawned on me that she was trying to save my life: her baby’s cries were beginning to cut through the sound of the gunfire. I jumped to my feet and sprinted forward, just as another barrage of machine guns fired into the shrieks of mothers and babies behind me. This was my first participant-observation exposure to the kind of human betrayal that survivors commit. . . . I do not know for sure if the mother and baby died in the bullets directed at the infant’s cries. I suspect that they were both killed. Had I not startled that baby, it would have turned 20 as this article goes to press. Maybe if I had been smarter and sprinted away sooner when the baby’s mother begged me to, then the infant’s wailing would not have escalated into shrieking and the government soldiers may not have heard it. (13)

I was crying by the end of the first paragraph; and if my first unworthy thought was gratitude that at least no one had died in the Concerned Women protests, more lastingly, Bourgois’s account showed a space beyond despair where I could imagine myself twenty years later living as a worthwhile human being again. It did not so much resolve my fears about public sociology as refine them. In fieldwork, in advocacy, and in life, I will sometimes fail to meet dilemmas with courage or grace. In situations of violence, this will happen more often and with more terrible consequences. I might lessen the cost with some forethought—a strategy I heartily recommend (If I find myself confronted with such-and-such choice, I will choose to do such-and-such)—but it cannot be wholly avoided. Ultimately, as the years passed, the instances when I failed to effectively reconcile advocacy and research became another part of myself that I accepted along with all of my daily failures—the times when I saw a person getting beaten and looked away, refused to share food or money, ignored a phone call or an email. I hope that I will make fewer mistakes as I go along. I have few illusions about the likelihood of complete success, but I believe even more firmly now than I did before my time in the refugee camp that distance and isolation are not the more worthy positions.

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Index

Abuja II peace agreement (1996), 9 accountability, humanitarian actors and, 20, 50, 54, 161–62 accountability struggles, in refugee camp administration, 14–17, 21, 164 Accra, Ghana: and administration of Buduburam, 41; Concerned Women protests and meeting in, 105, 106–9, 115, 151, 158; highway to, 8, 25, 33; Liberian peace demonstrations in, 10, 114, 120, 141; UNHCR regional office in, 9, 88, 98, 128 activism, refugee, 19, 72; dilemmas in, 10–11; host country assumptions regarding, 20; humanitarian system and, 4–5, 12, 50–51, 162. See also civic engagement; Concerned Women protests administration, refugee camp: accountability struggles in, 14–17, 21, 164; divisions in, 14, 41; political and moral dilemmas in, 11–12 administration of Buduburam Refugee Camp, 41–45; cooperation in, 47–49, 51, 53; divisions in, 14, 20–21, 32–33, 76–80; separation from Ghanaian administration, 76–78 administrative caregiving: control through, 15–16, 87–89; transnational actors and, 90; UNHCR and, 10, 15–16, 17, 80, 81, 86, 89, 154, 163 advocacy, research and, 177–80 African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF), 117–18, 119

Agblorti, Samuel, 135n2 Agier, Michel, 5, 37, 51, 87, 127, 146, 165 Algeria, Sahrawi refugee camps in, 71 AWDF. See African Women’s Development Fund Barnett, Michael, 5 Bartels, Kwamena, 3, 104, 104n2, 106, 108, 109, 135 Barton, Louise, 71, 89 bifurcated governmentality, 17, 89–90, 163; in Buduburam Refugee Camp, 14, 20–21, 32–33, 76–80; and conflict over humanitarian aid, 159–60; and fate of Concerned Women protests, 149–50 Bourgois, Phillip, 179–80 Buduburam Refugee Camp, Ghana: administration of, 41–45, 47–49, 51, 53; administrative separation from Ghana, 76–78; businesses in, 27, 34; civic engagement in, 19, 40, 54–62, 68–69, 71–72, 142; commandant of, 32, 33, 47–48, 53, 97, 99–100, 152; as community, 71; compared to other towns in Ghana, 37–38; compounds in, 35–36; division of authority in, 14, 20–21, 32–33, 76–80; durable solutions programs and, 3, 28–31; electricity crisis in, 46–47, 83; establishment of, 8, 25; everyday life in, 26–28, 31–36; factionalism in, 62–72, 103–4, 108, 143, 144; food distribution program in, 43, 44, 85–87;

194

Index

Buduburam Refugee Camp, Ghana (cont.) food in, 36, 43, 52; Ghanaian authorities and, 15, 16, 27; Ghanaian residents in, 170–71; health care in, 34, 43; highway passing through, 8, 25, 33; interpersonal assistance in, 58–62; lack of basic infrastructure in, 78–79; life trajectories of refugees in, 57, 74, 136–37, 148–49, 174–75; local integration program and, 3, 28, 30–31, 94, 96, 110, 168–69, 173–74; location of, 8, 25; as model refugee camp, 6–7, 10, 167; NGOs operating in, 42, 43–44, 54–58; official closure of, 170–74; as open refugee camp, 33; ordinariness of, 49–50; police raids in, 27, 44–45; policing in, 32, 41, 76, 79, 85, 138, 173; population of, 1, 8, 25–26, 136–37; powersharing systems in, lack of, 142; repatriation program and, 3, 28–29, 98, 100, 105n2, 112–13, 174–75; resettlement program and, 3, 28, 29–30, 38, 81–82, 88, 101, 105n2; resource scarcity in, 51–52, 78; resurgence of Liberian civil war in 2000 and, 9; schools in, 43, 68–69; size of, 25; transnationalism of, 38–39; water shortages in, 2, 3, 31, 44, 52, 78 Burawoy, Michael, 177 Burundian refugees, in Tanzania, 47, 50–51, 164 Cambodian refugees, in Thailand, 71 Cameroon, perceptions of humanitarian actors in, 165 CARE, 53, 74 Chan, Kwok, 37 Christian Council (NGO), 42, 79, 84 citizens-for-the-future framework: Concerned Women protests interpreted through, 140–42, 147; repatriation program interpreted through, 136–39 civic engagement, in refugee camps, 53–54, 71; in Buduburam, 19, 40, 54–62, 68–69, 71–72, 142; following repression, 173; humanitarian administration’s reliance on, 5, 53, 71; need to incorporate in humanitarian intervention, 167; transformation into social problem, 19, 129, 134–35, 141–42, 145–46, 162, 163; UNHCR and, 69–70, 94–95, 101, 148, 163. See also Concerned Women protests civil society, transnational actors and, 14 commandant, of Buduburam, 32, 33; Concerned Women protests and, 97, 99–100, 152; electricity crisis and, 47–48, 53; generosity of, 48, 53 community, refugee camp as, 71, 72 compassion: humanitarianism and, 5, 50; trajectory to repression from, 6, 20, 21

compassionate authoritarianism, 20, 162 Concerned Women: autonomy of, challenges of sustaining, 6, 103, 106–7, 115; fracturing of, 111, 123–24, 126; local NGOs and, 54, 58, 100–101, 113, 114–17, 119–21, 127, 143; origins of, 3, 94–95; repatriation to Liberia, 174–75; and Stakeholders, 103–11, 113–14, 122–26; UNHCR participatory planning sessions and, 69, 94–95, 101, 145; vs. Welfare Council, 95–99, 103, 113, 114, 124, 127, 143 Concerned Women protests: Accra meeting, 105, 106–9, 115, 151; aftermath of, 155–56, 170–74; bifurcated governmentality and fate of, 149–50; chronicle of, 94–113; citizens-for-the-future framework and, 140–42, 147; criticism of tactics of, 115–16; empowerment rhetoric and, 40, 138; factionalism before, 62–70; factionalism during, 103–4, 108, 113–27; and food boycott, 109, 130–31; framing of, 94, 128, 135–47; Ghanaian government’s perspective on, 19–20, 94, 104, 106, 108, 113, 135; normality of, 21, 127; official accounts of, 93–94; platform of, 96, 108; repression of, 1–3, 4, 111–12, 128, 129–31, 151–59; sexism in response to, 126; sit-down demonstration of February-March 2008, 93, 101–5, 145; as social problem, 145; TV coverage of, 103; UNHCR perspective on, 94, 127, 129–31, 135–47. See also repression of Concerned Women protests conflict: over humanitarian aid, 3, 4, 159–60; triadic dynamics of, 149–50 Conquergood, Dwight, 37 control: administrative caregiving and, 15–16, 87–89; refugee camps and, 131 corruption: host country, 12; local NGO, 55–57, 120, 133; police, 32, 100 Côte D’Ivoire: 2011 crisis in, 175; Liberian civil war and, 9; Liberian refugees in, 29t, 71, 169; militarized towns in, 33; refugees from, in Buduburam Refugee Camp, 1 counties, Liberian, 63n5 county associations, in Buduburam, 41, 63–64, 173. See also Heads of County Cruikshank, Barbara, 136 David, Abednego, 63n4 D’Azevedo, Warren, 77 Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), perceptions of humanitarian actors in, 165 dependency paradigm, 52 deportations, following Concerned Women protests, 155–56

Index Diken, Bulent, 37 discrimination, against refugees, 169; Liberians in Ghana, 7, 27, 39, 81, 136–37 Doe, Samuel, 7 domestic violence, 18, 60–61 Donini, Antonio, 89 donor fatigue, 133, 134 donors, and refugee camp politics, 57, 117–19 DRC. See Democratic Republic of Congo durable solutions programs, 3, 28–31; conflict over, 3, 143, 174; refugee perspectives on, 70; UNHCR shift in policies, 139, 168–69. See also local integration; repatriation; resettlement East Timor, UN Transitional Administration in, 74 Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS): free-movement protocols of, 139; peacekeeping mission in Liberia, 7–8, 10 economic discrimination. See discrimination economic migrants, refugees compared to, 38 economy, Ghanaian, 8 ECOWAS. See Economic Community of West African States Egypt, Sudanese refugees in, 127, 159 Elders Council, 41, 63, 64; during Concerned Women protests, 103, 105; dissolution of, 173; vs. Welfare Council, 64–68 electricity crisis, in Buduburam, 46–47, 83 empowerment rhetoric: and Concerned Women protests, 40, 138; UNHCR-Ghana and, 136–37, 138 Ethiopian refugees, 72 factionalism, in Buduburam, 62–72; after Concerned Women protests, 173; during Concerned Women protests, 103–4, 108, 113–27; local NGOs and, 114; UNHCR’s failure to take into account, 143, 144; war-torn past and, 67 factionalism, in refugee camps, 62; humanitarian administration’s response to, 71; mundane vs. destructive, 72; need to incorporate in humanitarian intervention, 167 Fairey, Shepard, 135 family reunification, resettlement based on, 30, 88 Fassin, Didier, 5 Ferguson, James, 17, 136 Firestone Corporation, 74 food, in refugee camp, 36, 52 food distribution program, in Buduburam, 43, 44; assessment of, 131–34; Concerned Women protests and, 109, 130–31; legitimate

195

vs. illegitimate impediments to, 131–34; middlemen in, blaming for shortages, 85–87, 132; scheduled termination of, 13, 101 Foucault, Michel, 16–17, 90 frames/framing, 15, 75; and accountability struggles in camp administration, 15; of Concerned Women protests, 94, 128, 135–47; of electricity crisis, 46–47, 83; of Ghanaian authorities, 15, 16, 27, 47, 52, 83–89, 132, 151–59, 163; in refugee camps, 80–81; of refugees, 135, 136–39; of repression of Concerned Women protests, 151–59; of UNHCR-Ghana, 15–16, 47, 52, 73–74, 75–76, 80–83, 84–89, 153–58, 162–63 Gale, Lacey, 89 Garfinkel, Harold, 162 gender equality: UNHCR programs and, 136, 138. See also under women Georgia, perceptions of humanitarian actors in, 166 Ghana: economic migrants from, 38; hospitality to foreigners, 30–31, 39, 84; Liberian civil war and, 7–8; nationalist rhetoric in, 39; Refugee Law of 1992, 32, 33, 85; relative security of, 9; reputation for fair and generous refugee policies, 33; rise to lower-middle-income democracy, 8; Togolese refugees in, 168; towns in, Buduburam Refugee Camp compared to, 37–38; women in, civic participation of, 114, 118–19. See also Accra; Buduburam Refugee Camp; Ghanaian authorities; Liberian refugees, in Ghana; UNHCR-Ghana Ghana AIDS Commission, 43 Ghanaian authorities: and administration of Buduburam, 14–17, 20–21, 41–43, 70–80; blaming for repression of Concerned Women protests, 19, 151–59; blaming for shortages, 21, 85–89; Concerned Women protests and, 4, 19–20, 94, 104, 106, 108, 113, 135; and food distribution program, 85–87, 132; framing by refugees, 15, 16, 27, 47, 52, 83–89, 132, 151– 59, 163; generosity of, 48, 53; opposition to local integration of refugees, 3, 30, 104n2, 108, 139; and UNHCR, accountability struggles in camp administration, 14–17, 21, 164; and UNHCR, cooperation with, 43–44, 109, 111 Ghanaian NGOs, in Buduburam, 42, 43 Ghanaians-as-threat frame, 47, 83–89, 149, 163; repression of Concerned Women protests and, 151–59 Ghana Refugee Board (GRB), 31, 175

196

Index

Gio people, 7 government: democratic ideals vs. practical enactment of, 13; in refugee camps, need to study, 18; transnational, 14, 18–19, 74. See also under administration governmentality, 16–17, 90. See also bifurcated governmentality gratitude, humanitarianism and expectations for, 5, 94, 135, 159 GRB. See Ghana Refugee Board grievance procedures, absence in refugee camps, 20, 162; and transformation of civil disobedience into social problem, 19, 142, 162 Guatemala, perceptions of humanitarian actors in, 165 Guinea: Liberian civil war and, 9; Liberian refugees in, 29t, 71, 89, 167, 168 Haiti, perceptions of humanitarian actors in, 166 Hampshire, Kate, 38n6 Harrell-Bond, Barbara, 5, 37, 50, 53, 86, 135, 168 Hartigan, Kevin, 131 Hatai club, 34, 103, 104, 122, 138n3, 149, 173 Heads of County: after Concerned Women protests, 173; during Concerned Women protests, 64, 103, 104, 105, 106–7, 126; vs. Welfare Council, 122 health care, in Buduburam, 34, 43 Henrich, Joseph, 58 HIV/AIDS program, 43 Hong Kong, refugee camps in, 37 Horst, Cindy, 87 host countries: accountability struggles in camp administration, 14–17, 21, 164; blaming for humanitarian repression, 19; blaming for shortages, 21, 85–89; for Liberian refugees, 29t; middleman effects and, 21, 85–87; and politics of refugee camps, 167; reluctant, 3, 31; transnational vulnerabilities of, 47, 164; UNHCR’s relations with, 12, 13, 163. See also Ghana; Ghanaian authorities humanitarian actors: accountability of, 50; crossnational variation in perceptions of, 164–66; power of, 5; self-concept of, 12 humanitarian aid: conflict over, 3, 4, 159–60; demand for, 170; vs. development programs, 50; dilemmas of, 10–12; durable solutions as most powerful form of, 3; legitimate vs. illegitimate impediments to, 129, 131–34 humanitarian crises: politics in, 127, 161; stereotypes about, 19–20; transnationalism of, 39

humanitarianism, definitions of, 5 human rights: humanitarian interventions and, 5; UNHCR and, 136, 141 Hutu refugees, in Tanzania, 71, 72, 146 Hyndman, Jennifer, 5, 51, 70, 167, 170 intermittent resources, consequences of, 51–52 International Committee of the Red Cross, 164–66 International Organization for Migration (IOM), 13, 42 International Women’s Day, organizing in Buduburam, 119–21 Internet cafés, in Buduburam, 34, 38 IOM. See International Organization for Migration Iraq, perceptions of humanitarian actors in, 166 Iraqi refugees, integration in neighboring countries, 168 Jacobsen, Karen, 40 Johnson, Jelbeh, 18 Johnston, Michael, 77 Joint Liberian Refugee Committees in Ghana (JOLRECG), 173, 174 Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), 42 Jordan, refugees in, 71, 168 Kaiser, Tania, 167 Karen refugees, in Thailand, 146 Kasoa, Ghana: and administration of Buduburam, 32, 41; Buduburam refugee camp compared to, 17, 38, 52; local administration of, 76; Nigerian migrants in, 78 Kenya: Dadaab refugee camps in, 33, 51, 70, 74, 87; Ifo camp in, 53; perceptions of humanitarian actors in, 165 Kerkvliet, Benedict, 161n1 Kollar, Lea (Buffalini), 29n2 Krahn people: in Buduburam Refugee Camp, 8, 173; Liberian civil war and, 7–8, 9 Krisan Refugee Camp, Ghana, 168 Kufuor, John, 155 Kyrgyzstan, perceptions of humanitarian actors in, 165, 166 Lebanon, refugees in, 71, 168 Liberia: counties in, 63n5; history of, 7; perceptions of humanitarian actors in, 164–65; refugee camps in, 71; refugees repatriated to, fate of, 174–75

Index Liberian civil war, 7–10; end of, 3, 10; peace demonstrations in Accra, 10, 120, 141 Liberian refugees, 7, 29t; in Côte D’Ivoire, 29t, 71, 169; in Guinea, 29t, 71, 89, 167, 168; in Sierra Leone, 87, 89, 146, 148, 165 Liberian refugees, in Ghana, 1, 8, 26, 29t; economic discrimination against, 7, 27, 39, 81, 136–37; initial welcome of, 30–31, 39; invocation of cessation clause and, 170, 172; life trajectories of, 57, 74, 136–37, 148–49; local integration of, 3, 28, 30–31, 104n2, 108, 139, 168–69, 173–74; repatriation of, 3, 28–29, 98, 100, 105n2, 112–13, 174–75; resettlement of, 3, 28, 29–30, 38, 81–82, 88, 101, 105n2; ties to homeland, 38–39; UNHCR’s understandings of, 135–39. See also Buduburam Refugee Camp Liberian Refugees United against HIV (LIBRUAH), 43 Liberian Refugee Welfare Council. See Welfare Council Liberian Refugee Women Association, 114, 118 Liberian Refugee Women with Refugee Concerns. See Concerned Women Liberian Returnee Network, 174–75 Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), 9 LIBRUAH. See Liberian Refugees United against HIV local integration, 3, 28, 30–31; Ghanaian opposition to, 3, 30, 104n2, 108, 139; refugee opposition to, 3, 31, 94, 96, 110; after repression of Concerned Women protests, 168–69, 173–74; UNHCR’s shift in policies regarding, 139, 168–69 local NGOs, in Buduburam, 42, 43, 54–58; and Concerned Women, 54, 58, 100–101, 113, 114–17, 119–21, 127, 143; corruption of, 55–57, 120, 133. See also women’s NGOs Loveridge, David, 37 Lukole refugee camp, Tanzania, 71, 72, 146 LURD. See Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy Malkki, Liisa, 47, 51, 164 Mandingo people, 7–8, 9 Mano people, 7 Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), 164–66 men: arrests of, Concerned Women protests and, 1–3; women’s movements and, 6, 103, 106–7, 115 Mesbah, Novin, 31

197

middleman effects, host authority and, 21, 85–87, 153, 163 Mills, C. Wright, 4 Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), 9 MSF. See Médecins Sans Frontières Muslim Council, during Concerned Women protests, 103, 105 Namibia, refugee camp in, 159 National Catholic Secretariat (NCS), 34, 42, 43, 79, 84, 85 nationalization of identity, in refugee community, 21, 87–88, 163; and blame for repression of Concerned Women protests, 156–57; and perceptions of humanitarian actors, 89, 165 National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), 7 national security: Concerned Women protests reframed as threat to, 19–20, 94; Ghana Refugee Law on, 85 National Vocational Training Institute, 43 nation-building rhetoric, UNHCR-Ghana and, 138 NCS. See National Catholic Secretariat Neighborhood Watch Team (Vigilantes), in Buduburam, 33–34, 41, 173 Nepal, perceptions of humanitarian actors in, 165 Network for Women’s Rights in Ghana (NETRIGHT), 118, 119 New Liberian Women Skills Training Center, 101, 114, 118 Nimley, Anthony, 18 Nkrumah, Kwame, 39 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and contemporary humanitarian system, 5 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), in Buduburam, 42, 43–44; UNHCR and, 43, 77, 79, 85–87, 143. See also local NGOs; women’s NGOs; specific NGOs NPFL. See National Patriotic Front of Liberia Olivius, Elisabeth, 146 Omata, Naohiko, 38n7 P-1 political asylum category, 30, 88 P-3 family reunification asylum category, 30, 88 Palestinian refugee camps, 71 participatory planning sessions, UNHCR, 69–70, 146; and Concerned Women, 69, 94–95, 101, 145 Point Hope (NGO), 31, 42, 44, 171, 172, 173

198

Index

police, Ghanaian: in Buduburam, 32, 41, 76, 79, 85, 138; corruption of, 32, 100; initial response to Concerned Women protests, 97, 100; raids on Buduburam, 27, 44–45; suppression of Concerned Women protests by, 1–3, 111, 141, 150 political activism, refugee. See activism; civic engagement postcolonial settings, multiple sovereignties in, 13 power: administrative caregiving and, 15–16; humanitarian actors and, 5 protests, refugee, 127, 141; repression of, 6, 12, 19, 20, 21. See also Concerned Women protests public sociology, challenges of, 177–80 rebels, politically active refugees perceived as, 4, 22, 104 Red Cross, 164–66 refugee(s): clothing of, 28, 96; economic migrants compared to, 38; efficacy and autonomy of, 4; framed as future citizens of postconflict democracy, 136–42; framed as recipients of charity, 135; Ghanaian regulations on, 32–33; global population of, 170; myths about, 37; personal choice and durable solutions for, 28; politically active, perceived as rebels, 4, 22, 104; protests by, 127, 141; UNHCR’s relations with, 12; voting rights of, 137–38; would-be activists, dilemma of, 10–11. See also activism; civic engagement; specific refugee groups refugee camps: alternatives to, 168–69; bifurcated governmentality in, 17, 89–90; Buduburam Refugee Camp as model for, 6–7, 10, 167; chaotic image of, 40; civic engagement in, 53–54, 71; community in, 71, 72; control as main purpose of, 131; efforts to eliminate, 11; factionalism in, 62, 71, 72, 167; frames in, 80–81; government of, 18, 161–62; and host country politics, 167; liminality of, 37, 39; limitations of model of, 10, 11; ordinariness of, 37, 49–50; prolonged experience of tragedy in, 4; sociospatial isolation of, theories of, 51, 76; squatter settlements compared to, 45; volunteerism in, 48–49, 53, 59, 71. See also administration; Buduburam Refugee Camp Refugee Convention of 1951, 11, 169 Refugee Law of 1992 (Ghana), 32, 33, 85, 104 remittances, and Buduburam refugee camp, 31, 38 repatriation program, 3, 28–29; citizens-for-thefuture frame and, 136–39; after Concerned Women protests, 112–13, 174–75; fraud in, 28; Ghanaian official’s perspective on, 104n2;

refugee demands regarding, 98, 100, 105n2; repeated failures of, 139; scope of, 44 repression, of protests, 21; attribution of blame for, 19; dilemmas of, 12; trajectory from compassion to, 6, 20, 21 repression of Concerned Women protests, 1–3, 4, 111–12; assigning blame for, 151–59; civic engagement after, 173; UNHCR role in, 94, 113, 127, 128–31, 145–46, 150 repressive authorities: justifications for actions of, 130; transnational actors as, 6, 128 research, and advocacy, 177–80 resettlement programs, 3, 28, 29–30, 44; constraints on, 78, 169; need to expand, 169; refugee desire for, 96, 99, 169, 174; refugee perspectives on, 60, 81–82, 88; termination of, 101, 105n2; and transnationalism of Buduburam, 38; UNHCR as gatekeeper in, 30, 82, 173–74 Rieff, David, 5 Roberts, Zanoe, 63n4 rumors: during Concerned Women protests, 106, 126, 152; distrust of Ghanaian officials and, 45, 46, 47, 52. See also frames/framing Rwandan refugee camps, in Zaire, 165 Sahrawi refugee camps, in Algeria, 71 schools, for Liberian children: in Buduburam, 43; civic engagement to secure, 68–69; unequal access to, 137 security, in refugee camps: host authorities and, 79, 85; local groups and, 33–34, 41, 173. See also police Shklovsky, Victor, 37 Sierra Leone: refugees from, in Buduburam Refugee Camp, 1; Tobanda refugee camp in, 87, 146, 165; Waterloo refugee camp in, 89 Simmel, Georg, 149 Sirleaf, Ellen Johnson, 10, 102, 106, 112 social problem: civil disobedience transformed into, 19, 129, 134–35, 141–42, 145–46, 162, 163; Concerned Women protests as, 145 Somalia, Ethiopian refugees in, 72 squatter settlements, refugee camps compared to, 45 Sri Lanka, perceptions of humanitarian actors in, 165 Stakeholders: Concerned Women protests and, 103–11, 113–14, 122–26; Ghanaian authorities’ perspective on, 113; repatriation to Liberia, 174–75; vs. Welfare Council, 104, 108, 122, 125 Sudan, Ugandan refugees in, 50, 86

Index Sudanese refugees, in Egypt, 127, 159 Syria, Iraqi refugees in, 168 Syrian refugees, 168 Tanzania: Burundian refugees in, 47, 50–51, 164; Hutu refugees in (Lukole refugee camp), 71, 72, 146 Taylor, Charles, 7, 9, 10 Terry, Fiona, 166 Thailand, refugees in, 71, 146 Toe, Leon, 63n4 Togolese refugees, in Ghana, 168 transnational actors: accountability struggles with host countries, 14–17, 21, 164; impact on political landscape, 90, 150, 163–64; potential for becoming repressive authorities, 6, 20, 162; as quasi-governmental authorities, 13, 74, 78, 161; scholarship on, 14 transnational government, 14, 74; constituents of, 18–19 Tsing, Anna, 93 Turkey, Syrian refugees in, 168 Turner, Simon, 47, 50–51, 146, 164 Ugandan refugees, in Sudan, 50, 86 Umutesi, Marie, 71, 165 UNAIDS, 42, 43 UNHCR-as-caregiver frame, 47, 75–76, 80–83, 84–89, 149, 162–63; in aftermath of Concerned Women protests’ repression, 153–58 UNHCR-Ghana: and administrative caregiving, 10, 15–16, 17, 80, 81, 86, 89, 154, 163; Concerned Women protests and, 4, 94, 97–101, 105, 109–10, 113, 121–22, 127–31, 135–47, 150; cycles of expansion and contraction, 8, 9, 10, 172, 175; efforts to close Buduburam, 173–74; and empowerment rhetoric, 136–37, 138; food distribution program of, 43, 44, 101, 130, 131–34; framing by refugees, 15–16, 47, 52, 73–74, 75–76, 80–83, 84–89, 153–58, 162–63; and Ghanaian authorities, 43, 109, 150; and host government, divisions in camp administration, 14, 20–21, 32–33, 43–44, 79–80; institutional logics of, 129; and International Women’s Day, 119–21; local integration program of, 3, 28, 30–31, 94, 110, 139, 168–69, 173–74; and nation-building rhetoric, 138; and NGO subcontractors, 43, 77, 79, 85–87, 143, 163; origins of, 8; participatory planning sessions used by, 69–70, 94–95, 101, 145, 146; personal generosity of officials of, 53; repatriation

199

program of, 3, 28, 44, 98, 100, 112–13, 136–39; and repression of Concerned Women protests, 94, 113, 127, 128–31, 145–46, 150; after repression of Concerned Women protests, 154–56; resettlement program of, 3, 28, 29–30, 44, 78, 81–82, 101, 105n2, 173–74; resource constraints on, 30, 78; and Welfare Council, 69–70, 94, 142, 143; and women’s issues, 94–95, 114. See also UNHCR-ascaregiver frame UNIDO. See United Nations Industrial Development Organization United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), 25 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR): accountability struggles in camp administration, 14–17, 21; and administrative caregiving, 15–16; in contemporary humanitarian system, 5; dilemmas for, 11–12; distrust of, 165–66; and durable solutions programs, 3, 28, 30, 139, 168–69; funding constraints of, 13; and host states, 12, 13; and local integration, 139, 168–69; mandate to fight discrimination, 169; political activism of refugees and, 5, 12, 50–51; quasi-governmental role of, 14, 74, 78, 161; relations with refugees, 12, 158, 178; self-assessment of programs, 131–32. See also UNHCR-as-caregiver frame; UNHCR-Ghana United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), 42, 43 United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), 10 United States, resettlement of Liberian refugees in, 29–30, 88 U.S. embassy, Concerned Women protests and, 97–98, 140, 155 Vaughan, Diane, 134 Verdirame, Guglielmo, 53, 168 Vigilantes (Neighborhood Watch Team), 33–34, 41, 173 volunteerism, in refugee camps, 53, 59; Buduburam electricity crisis and, 48–49; humanitarian administration’s reliance on, 53, 71 voting rights, of refugees, 137–38 water, in refugee camp: provision of, 2, 3, 31, 44, 52; scarcity of, 78; sharing of, 58–60 Watkins, Susan, 160 Welfare Council: and camp administration, 66, 71; challenges to authority of, 62, 63–64; vs. Concerned Women, 95–99, 103, 113,

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Welfare Council (cont.) 114, 124, 127, 143; after Concerned Women protests, 171, 173; vs. Elders Council, 64–68; electricity crisis and, 48; functions of, 41, 44, 64–65; offices of, 33; origins of, 134; vs. Stakeholders, 104, 108, 122, 125; and UNHCR, 69–70, 94, 142, 143 Western Union, in Buduburam, 38 WFP. See World Food Programme WISE. See Women’s Initiative for Self-Empowerment women, civic engagement of: autonomy as key determinant of outcomes of, 6; in Ghana and Liberia, 106, 114, 116, 118–19; transnational government and, 19 women, Liberian: in Buduburam police force, 138; domestic violence and, 18, 60–61; history of civic participation of, 114; peace

demonstrations during Accra peace talks, 10, 120, 141; UNHCR and, 94–95, 114. See also Concerned Women; Concerned Women protests; women’s NGOs Women in Peacebuilding Network, 10 Women of Glory, 101 Women’s Initiative for Self-Empowerment (WISE), 42, 43, 119, 172 women’s NGOs, in Buduburam: Concerned Women and, 100–101, 113, 114–17, 119–21, 127, 143; donor support for, 117–19 World Food Programme (WFP), 42, 85, 86, 132 World War II, refugee camps during, 11 xenophobia: against refugees, 169. See also discrimination Za’atari Refugee Camp, Jordan, 168 Zaire, Rwandan refugee camps in, 165