The Politics of Humanitarianism: Power, Ideology and Aid 9780755620043, 9781780768304

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CONTRIBUTORS

Julie Billaud is a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Halle). In 2011– 12 she was Rechtskulturen Fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien (Humboldt University and Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin). She is the co-moderator of Allegra Lab: Anthropology, Law, Art & World (www.allegralaboratory.net). Her research interests include gender, human rights, Islam, law and anthropology, Afghanistan and Islamic legal practices in the United Kingdom. She is the author of Kabul Carnival: Gender Politics in Postwar Afghanistan (2015). Antonio De Lauri is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Milan-Bicocca. He was Rechtskulturen Fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien (Humboldt University and Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin) in 2012– 13 having previously been a recipient of the Fernand Braudel International Fellowship for Experienced Researchers, Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme (Paris). Since 2005 he has been carrying out fieldwork in Afghanistan, with a focus on legal reconstruction, human rights, war and humanitarian interventionism. As a member of the ERC project SWAB he is currently studying freedom, bondage and humanitarianism in Afghanistan and beyond. Elisabetta Grande is Professor of Comparative Law at the Universita` del Piemonte Orientale ‘Amedeo Avogadro’, Alessandria, Italy, and Rudolf B. Schlesinger Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. She is a member of the International Academy of Comparative Law. She has published extensively in Italian, English and French on comparative criminal law, comparative criminal procedure, African law and legal anthropology.

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Sophia Hoffmann is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Bremen (Germany). Her research addresses the international relations of the Middle East, with a focus on current migration and humanitarian aid. Sophia received her PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, in which she addressed the question of how state sovereignty appeared in the daily life of Iraqi migrants in Damascus; the thesis won the 2012 dissertation prize of the Syrian Studies Association. Between 2010 and 2012 she was Teaching Fellow, Geneva Centre for Research and Education on Humanitarian Action. Alexandra Lewis is Lecturer in International Relations and Comparative Politics, University of Exeter. She received her PhD in Post-war Recovery from the University of York in early 2013, having conducted her doctoral research on the theme of violent young offending in Yemen and other fragile states. The thesis explored the connections between apolitical violence and conflict in countries affected by severe social and economic challenges. She now specializes in youth violence and integration in Yemen, the Somali territories, and the broader Middle East and North Africa region, and is currently conducting a series of commissioned research projects on behalf of the Institute for Effective Education. She also teaches international development at the University of Leeds. Laura Nader is Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley. Her current work focuses on how central dogmas are made and how they work in law, energy science and anthropology. Her books Harmony, Ideology, Injustice and Control in a Mountain Zapotec Village (1990) and The Life of the Law: Anthropological Projects (2002), reflect a wide range of interests in law that has moved from village sites into national and international arenas. In 2012 she published Culture and Dignity: Dialogues Between the Middle East and the West. A recipient of the Law and Society Association’s Kalven Prize for distinguished research on law and society, she is also member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Mariella Pandolfi is Professor of Anthropology, University of Montreal and heads the research group there on military and humanitarian interventions. She has been actively involved in programs of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (UNODCCP). In 2004 she received Montreal’s Women of Distinction award. Her publications include Contemporary States of Emergency (2010, co-edited with D. Fassin); Poteri Mobili. L’industria umanitaria in Albania

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e Kosovo (2010), Souverainete´s mouvantes et fil de fer barbele´ (2009), Sovranitete te¨ le¨vizshme. Kujtesa, konfliktet, dhuna ne¨ Ballkanin e ere¨s globale (2009). Edoardo Quaretta received a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Perugia and Universite´ Libre de Bruxelles (co-tutorship) in 2013. He has carried out fieldwork in Katanga, Democratic Republic of Congo. Phillip Rousseau holds a joint PhD from the Universite´ de Montre´al and the E´cole des Hautes E´tudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris). His research has focused mainly on contemporary negotiated uses and elaboration of frameworks attempting to ensure attention to culture(s) in a wide range of contrasting institutionalized fields. Thus far, his venture in the proliferation of such efforts to gain cultural insight has led him to engage with this topic in international politics (UNESCO, WTO), North American marketing and the US military (Human Terrain System). He currently holds a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Montreal with the International Research Training Group (IRTG) Diversity. Robin Savinar is a PhD candidate at the Department of Sociology, University of California, Davis. Her research interests include migration to non-traditional destinations, brain drain and politically motivated migration.

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Antonio De Lauri

Humanitarianism Ltd Since the mid-nineteenth century at least (see for example Barnett 2011; Barnett and Weiss 2011), humanitarian intervention has increasingly become the dominant instrument framing protection, aid and democratization at the global level. This process accelerated considerably after World War II and even more so in the wake of the Cold War, when the stability of the nationstate became visibly undermined (yet with a re-invigorated capacity to produce ‘outcasts’; see Hoffmann q.v.), making room for new forms of (private and humanitarian) sovereignty. From the very beginning, the impressive volume of humanitarian interventions worldwide has been accompanied by a certain dose of idolatry and blind trust in its ostensibly salvific goals, to the point that nowadays humanitarian intervention is deservedly described as humanitarianism – whereby the suffix ‘-ism’ embodies a whole set of beliefs, practices, categories, discourses and procedures. Alongside the successful diffusion of humanitarian actions there have also been doubts and concerns (particularly from the perspective of the social sciences), which however have barely scratched the surface of the ideological armour of humanitarianism. To be sure, more than a unanimous and permanently defined system, humanitarianism may be seen as an ethos, as a political mode of controlling territories and lives and governing international relations. Humanitarianism consists of theories and practices, ideologies and contradictions, movements for change and conservatism. By bringing together different approaches and positionings – with varying degrees of tension amongst them – the chapters in this book mirror to some extent this non-univocal nature of humanitarianism. And yet, the book’s main goal is to question structural

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dilemmas, hidden intentions and dramatic implications of what appears to be the Humanitarianism Limited enterprise. The quasi-metaphorical use of ‘limited’ in this context is useful for representing the form of governance and power embodied by humanitarianism, in which the limited liability of humanitarian agents serves the function of glorifying their declared intentions while at the same time freeing them of any culpability regarding the implications of their interventions.1 Limited liability also seems appropriately to depict the position of ‘humanitarian supporters’, whose proxy humanitarianism implies a process of de-responsibilization through acts of charity. Hence the ritualized declarations of presumed neutrality on the part of humanitarian organizations, whose bureaucratic and standardized procedures are more a reflection of mechanisms of estrangement than of full responsibility for the outcomes of humanitarian action. Nonetheless, this volume does not only analyse the consequentialist dimension of humanitarianism. The authors, in fact, go beyond the logic of cause and effect, for humanitarian actions simply consist of a response to a specific crisis. By addressing the shift from mode of thought to actual power, the book reflects on the very world-making and constitutive force of humanitarianism: not only a product of our era, but also the ‘producer’ of a specific form of humanity.2

Who is in need of humanitarianism? The end of humanitarianism, to use a formula that appeals to academics (see the end of history, the end of law, the end of human rights, etc.3), does not seem to be very close. Indeed, as shown in several contexts from Afghanistan to Yemen, from Haiti to the Democratic Republic of Congo, humanitarianism is actually in quite good health – and critical implications aside, this in itself reveals that the human condition is going through a dramatic stage. Already in the second half of the twentieth century, humanitarianism had begun to appear as a sort of ‘next page’ not only in the history of the nationstate and international relations, but also – at a deeper level – in the reconfiguration of human relations (with a monopoly on the definition of concepts such as aid, solidarity, need, etc.). Coherently with this, Mariella Pandolfi and Phillip Rousseau argue that the humanitarian impulse was intended to be ‘an effective and organized answer to global pietas, offering to cater for the needs of the suffering and downtrodden – ever more represented in the hyper-mediated context of the second half of the twentieth century’. Yet, the changing character of humanitarianism opens the door to less than totally predictable future developments. Antonio Donini has recently observed that

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Over the past 20 years [humanitarianism] has functioned for many young and not so young people in the North as a kind of last (Western) frontier. In this it has been similar to the human rights movement. It was a mobiliser of energy. It gave meaning to people and functioned as a substitute for ‘revolution’ and other ‘isms’ of the past. Success came at its own peril because like its human rights cousin, humanitarianism emerged largely in confrontation with power. Now, it seems to have shifted from being a powerful discourse to a form of power. The humanitarian enterprise has thus crossed the threshold of power, even if most humanitarians are loathe to admit it. (Donini 2010) However, can we really affirm that humanitarianism emerged in confrontation with power? If we do not settle for a definition of power that reduces it to its ‘institutional’ dimension, it becomes easier to recognize that, on the contrary, humanitarianism emerged largely in association with power. The genealogy of ’humanitarian attitude’ takes us back to ancient times and, in an even more powerful manner, to the civilizing goals of Christian missions and colonial projects, abolitionist movements, the hegemonic diffusion of the democratic nation-state model, and the US’s attempts to establish itself as world leader (see Grande; Nader and Savinar; Pandolfi and Rousseau; Quaretta, in this volume; see also Barnett 2011 and Minn 2007). The dependency between the Global South and North is two-way: although dependent on foreign aid, several countries in the Global South significantly contribute to the prosperity of the Global North via interest payments,4 subcontracts, exploitation of resources, labour force, etc. But while in the North we are used to hearing how much people in the Global South are in need of humanitarian intervention and aid, we less often hear how much the Global North is in need of delivering it. This aspect assumes specific relevance within the current historical conjuncture of radical changes in world equilibrium.5 In fact, although humanitarianism seems to be in good health, it is not possible to foresee all the future consequences of the political struggles and economic challenges of today. I now briefly address four key elements of humanitarianism, clearly interdependent, which can help us to identify what it is – for now – that keeps humanitarianism in good health and also to formulate a more mindful answer to the question, ‘Who is in need of humanitarianism?’ Proxy humanitarianism The first element concerns the sympathy that many intellectuals (from conservative to left-wing), artists and celebrities have for proxy

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humanitarianism. This form of humanitarianism is fuelled by certain myths and beliefs, such as the undeniable advantage of a universal and inflexible idea of progress and development, the merciful work of humanitarian operators, the ease with which we can solve the world’s problems (‘donate now to save children’s lives’, as many campaigns exhort), the glorification of positive science as the only possible way of exploring human nature and emancipating humans, etc. Understanding the ambiguities connected with these processes – though pertinent – is not enough to evoke the ‘poisoned gift’.6 In order to endorse humanitarian myths and beliefs, a number of protagonists rush onto the scene. These are the so-called ‘ambassadors’, who are required to fulfil at least two main functions: (1) to remind their compatriots that the best possible way of life is that which they enjoy at home (primarily in Europe and the United States); and (2) to show the ‘underdeveloped’ that, if they want to improve their living conditions, they need to embrace a different model of life: that promoted by humanitarian agencies. Ambassadors are, to all intents and purposes, global super models. The aim, however, is not to sell clothes, but to sell a way of life.7 To some degree, proxy humanitarianism is the antithesis of compassion, the opposite of intimacy. As such, it is not only a very easy remedy for soothing the conscience, it is also an anaesthetic for empathy and responsibility (hence ‘limited liability’). As pointed out by Chouliaraki, while action remains in the hands of few, it is the millions who watch at a distance who confer upon it its true legitimacy. It is this arrangement of separation, often but not always between the West and the developing world, that tends to organize the social relationships of humanitarianism around a theatrical conception of politics. Rather than inviting these publics to engage in direct action, [. . .] theatrical politics encourages us to engage in images and stories about action, and thereby enables us to imagine ourselves as citizens who can act at a distance, by speaking out (through protest or petition) and by paying (through donation) in the name of a moral cause. (2012: 2) In their chapter, Billaud and De Lauri extend the theatricality of humanitarianism to the very sphere of intervention, pointing to the promise of normalization that accompanies the so-called reconstruction of Afghanistan. In her reflection on the management of refugees, Sophia Hoffmann similarly notes that it is generally taken for granted ‘that refugees require intervention, and some form of correction, in order to lead “normal” lives’. One of the leitmotifs of the chapters in this volume is precisely the tension between the

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ordinary and the extra-ordinary, between ‘the perennialised existence of the state of exception’ (Pandolfi and Rousseau q.v.) – or protracted relief/crisis/ emergency (Hoffmann q.v.; Lewis q.v.) – and the ‘radicalization of normality’ (Billaud and De Lauri q.v.). Proxy humanitarianism is impregnated with such a tension – insofar as it is primarily justified by an idea of emergency, urgency for development or progress, but only with a view to attaining an illusory and aggressive promise of normality: the normality that will be imposed on others in order to model the world according to specific patterns. Normality here also takes on a medical connotation and is constructed in opposition to an idea of abnormality that includes the psychopathological deficits attributed to the person considered unable to design a world of his or her own (de Martino 1977). Via a semantic transposition, this idea of abnormality is extended from the individual to collectivities: to populations or nations considered not yet ready to govern themselves, embrace democracy, implement a rule of law system, or achieve civilized standards of life. In the eyes of ‘supporters at a distance’, humanitarianism is thus the cure for all these forms of abnormality. The migration of experts The second element is related to the fact that humanitarianism functions as an employment outlet for a huge number of graduates and professionals from donor countries. James Petras argued that ‘The NGOs world-wide have become the latest vehicle for upward mobility for the ambitious educated classes’ (1999: 430). Anybody who works or carries out research in war or post-war countries, or in post-disaster contexts, can be witness to the largescale movement of ‘experts’ in the employ of the humanitarian industry: engineers, architects, doctors, nurses, lawyers, agronomists, analysts, project managers, accounting managers, consultants, researchers, IT specialists, security staff, and so on, not to mention the military.8 Most humanitarian workers (with or without borders) receive a far higher salary than they could command with the same skills in their home country. In reality, this is a mass migration movement from the donor countries to the Global South, that is driven by economic factors – and thus, is something that is difficult to do without, particularly in the context of the present-day economic crisis and consequent severe unemployment in the West. Indeed, the political economy of NGOs (Choudry and Kapoor 2013; Wallace 2003) and international institutions is closely connected to the wild-market model typifying today’s world economy. Nonetheless, while mainstream media produce daily narratives of multitudes of people invading the Global North – a sort of schizophrenic view that alternates the ‘immobility’ of the populations of the Global South with their constant movement toward the North – no attention

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whatsoever is paid to the significant movement of humanitarian-professionals towards the South, with its manifold consequences such as the creation of parallel economic systems, increases in the cost of primary goods, exacerbation of the gap between those involved in humanitarianism and those excluded, and so forth. Humanitarian power to manipulate categories (Quaretta q.v.) leads to certain groups of people being classified as migrants, and other groups as experts. Obviously this is not the only reason why such a distinction is so widely accepted, but it is in line with the fact that expertise is both essentially interactional and relentlessly ideological, entailing the affirmation of hierarchies of value that legitimate specific ways of recognizing someone as ‘expert’ (Carr 2010).9 In a sense, the distinction between experts and migrants reflects, at a different level, the asymmetrical power relations between donor and so-called developing countries. Humanitarian business The third element specifically refers to the huge business that revolves around humanitarianism, with the related circuits of dependence, looting, corruption and clientelism that this feeds at the local level. The harsh critical perspective proposed by James Petras in 1999 already convincingly outlined the impact of the NGOs’ subcontract sector on political and economic agendas at both the local and international level, with the result of compounding inequalities between social classes in the places where projects are implemented. The sizeable phenomenon of humanitarian business is currently most appreciable in Afghanistan. A 2008 ACBAR report states: international assistance constitutes around 90% of all public expenditure in the country [. . .] Reconstruction assistance is a fraction of military spending. Since 2001 the United States has appropriated $127 billion for the war in Afghanistan and the US military is currently spending nearly $100 million a day in the country, some $36 billion a year. [. . .] Since 2001 some $25 billion has been spent on security-related assistance to Afghanistan, such as building Afghan security forces. Donors have committed to spending the same amount on reconstruction and development, yet some leading donors have failed to fulfil little more than half of their aid commitments. Thus, there is an aid shortfall of some $10 billion – equivalent to thirty times the annual national education budget. Just $15 billion in aid has so far been spent, of which it is estimated a staggering 40% has returned to donor countries in corporate profits and consultant salaries.

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In absolute terms, the US is by far the largest donor, contributing onethird of all aid since 2001. Other major donors are: Japan, the UK, the European Commission (EC), the World Bank (WB), Germany and Canada; the relative contributions of The Netherlands, Norway and Sweden also are substantial. France and Spain, however, have made scant bilateral contributions since 2001 of just $80 million and $26 million. [. . .] In 2006 the then director of the World Bank in Kabul estimated that 35 –40% of aid was ‘badly spent’ and that ‘the wastage of aid is sky-high: there is real looting going on, mainly by private enterprises. It is a scandal’. Afghanistan’s biggest donor, USAID, allocates close to half of its funds to five large US contractors in the country and it is clear that substantial amounts of aid continue to be absorbed in corporate profits. According to the US-based Centre for Public Integrity, the US government has awarded major contracts in Afghanistan, some worth hundreds of millions of dollars, to, inter alia, KBR, the Louis Berger Group, Chemonics International, Bearing Point and Dyncorp International. (Waldman 2008) As of more recently the reconstruction scene appears even more impressive (Bilmes 2013; Brinkley 2013). Furthermore, if we shift the lens from the Afghan case to the global scale, it almost becomes a truism to affirm that humanitarian action is the tip of the iceberg of a broader transnational industry based on the ‘benevolent values of our moral culture’ (Asad 2013). Laura Nader and Robin Savinar emphasize this aspect by addressing the interdependence of power holders and ‘humanitarian-for-profit ideologies’. In the same tenor, Elisabetta Grande focuses on the perverse implications of women’s rights discourses and actions, concluding that: ‘It would appear crucial for enthusiasts of women’s rights discourse to become aware of the risks connected with the fostering of such a “humonetarian” message, dressed up in humanitarian language.’ In line with this, Alexandra Lewis observes that humanitarian donors are also involved in highly politicised interventions in Yemen. The United States of America, which contributed US $18 million to Yemen in 2010 (Global Humanitarian Assistance 2013), has commissioned wide-scale counter-terrorism programming that is immensely unpopular in the South, and faces allegations by Wikileaks of secret bombings and other devastating military campaigns (Booth and Black 2010). The United Kingdom, which contributed US $16 million in 2010 (Global Humanitarian

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Assistance 2013), is involved in an intrusive and security-centric stabilisation strategy under the auspices of the Stabilisation Unit, and is also taking the lead in European Union police training and reform in Yemen. The political and economic interests of donor countries, particularly in relation to security (Olsen, Carstensen and Høyen 2003), are the main factors at work in creating (or protracting) the need for intervention. In many contexts, humanitarian agencies are seen as an extension of the military and political agendas of donor countries (Abiew 2012; Pandolfi and Rousseau q.v.). Furthermore, by creating the conditions for the suspension of sovereignty, the proliferation of humanitarian actions feeds the growing phenomenon of privatized military industry (Mandel 2002; Singer 2003). Hierarchies The fourth element consists of humanitarianism’s implicit reification of a hierarchical perception of human beings. Beyond geopolitical strategies, a certain hierarchical order is guaranteed through more nuanced geocultural (Wallerstein 1991) performances such as the global circulation of cultural, legal and political models. As Billaud and De Lauri argue, humanitarianism as a form of utopia plays a crucial role in determining a global understanding of what is human, good, normal. It has been noted for example that the perception that human lives10 have different exchange values on the market of death – depending on whether they are the lives of ‘civilized’ or ‘uncivilized’ people – is not only very common in liberal democracies: it is functional to a specific hierarchical world order (Asad 2007). Although humanitarian publicity and policy do not explicitly reiterate such a hierarchical perception of life and death, what happens on the ground where NGOs and international organizations operate shows quite a different side of the coin. Due to their culturalist approach, humanitarian agents tend to connect the social problems of a group or population to its cultural habits and pre-modern attitudes, and this is particularly true when women’s rights discourses (Grande q.v.; see also Abu-Lughod 2013) and children’s innocence (Quaretta q.v.) are involved. The broader discursive production associated with this approach generates a form of humanitarian culturalism that permeates both military and civil interventions. It is worth reporting an example: in a speech delivered at the University of Milan-Bicocca in December 2010, a decorated LieutenantColonel of the Arma dei Carabinieri spoke for about an hour of his past missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of his words were worrying. For the purposes of my argument here, what came closest to the idea of humanitarian

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culturalism in this military officer’s outlook were statements such as: ‘We have taught the Afghans to wash themselves with soap’, ‘They’re good people, but they need to be kept under control’, ‘Our goal there is to normalize the country’, ‘Afghanistan is in some ways like Europe 100 years ago’, ‘Afghan culture is not good for women.’ This kind of language is not only used by military personnel, but also by NGO workers, international observers and activists. A persistently evolutionist conception of human societies is the basis for this humanitarian culturalism, which combines the essentializing inclination of culturalist approaches with the developmentalist character of humanitarianism, and which publicly frames pretexts (Nader and Savinar q.v.; Lewis q.v.) for interventions and action plans. In March 2008, I was living a short distance from the Provincial Office in Kabul. One morning, as usual, news of a bombing attack was doing the rounds of the city. There was talk of at least nine dead and dozens injured. What struck me that day was the conversation I had with Karim, an Afghan employee of a French NGO. When I told him of the attack he replied: ‘Those who do these things are not Muslims.’ But it was actually what he added a little later that made the strongest impression on me: ‘Anyhow, the dead are all Afghans.’ He thought that I would be reassured by this. ‘Why do you think that is important?’ I asked, and he then hinted: ‘We are all human beings, but. . .’ He said nothing more, and we were silent for a few minutes. Maybe what was passing through his mind was that some of us are more human than others, or that even in the face of death humans are not really all equal. Karim took it for granted that my first concern would be for the possible involvement of my own countrymen or other Europeans. This was not the case for me. But in the face of such a painful and politically connotated event, the complicity and intimacy that had arisen between us over time were suddenly in danger of being undermined. Shortly afterwards, while sharing a few almonds left over from the day before and drinking black tea, we had the opportunity to clarify our respective positions. I then translated for Karim, as best I could, into a mix of English and Dari, a poem in Neapolitan dialect that my father used to recite to me when I was a child. Written by Antonio de Curtis, alias Toto`, the poem (‘A livella’) narrates the story of a man who gets locked into a cemetery. While walking around, he notes the difference between the tomb of a rich Marquis and that of a poor street cleaner. Suddenly the protagonist finds himself observing the nobleman and the street cleaner having a heated conversation in front of him. The Marquis wants the street cleaner to move to another tomb as he cannot bear to spend the whole of eternity beside a miserable wretch. The street cleaner begs forgiveness, but says that it is not his fault because his wife was responsible for his burial.

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As the conversation develops, the street cleaner loses patience with the Marquis’s arrogance, and then concludes: ‘A morte ‘o ssaje ched’ ‘e?. . .e` una livella. ‘Nu rre,’nu maggistrato,’nu grand’ommo, trasenno stu canciello ha fatt’o punto c’ha perzo tutto, ‘a vita e pure ‘o nomme: tu nu t’he` fatto ancora chistu cunto? Percio`, stamme a ssenti. . .nun fa’ ‘o restivo, suppuorteme vicino-che te ‘mporta? Sti ppagliacciate ‘e ffanno sulo ‘e vive: nuje simmo serie. . .appartenimmo a` morte! In prose: death is a leveller. Even a king, a judge or a great man, once they have entered this gate, lose everything, their lives and even their names. So, listen to me, don’t be reluctant, bear with me, what do you care? Only the living do these antics. We are serious, we belong to death. Karim pointedly observed: ‘I like this poem. [. . .] A person’s name is very important, but it is not only with death that you can lose it. I came back from Pakistan in 2002. For my family I was Karim, but for the NGOs I was a returnee. Before that I was a refugee. My name never mattered.’ This feeling of having being ‘neutralized’ and ‘homogenized’ by humanitarian categories is common in contexts such as that of contemporary Afghanistan.11 Then Karim argued: There’s no equality between people. Our passports say something about us; actually they say many things about us. We Afghans are all proud of being Afghans. But honestly I see it as a reaction more than anything else. The more you are excluded, forced to the global margins – Karim implied – the more you have to be proud in order to survive.

Critique of humanitarianism The chapters in this book taken as a whole provide a comprehensive critique of the humanitarian realm, without however relying on a merely unilateral argument. To a certain extent both humanitarians and scholars are potentially

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attracted by reductionist magnets. For humanitarian actors this often translates into the practice of reifying the image of the ‘good poor’, the defenceless victim who is eternally in need of help – whose existence is therefore thinkable only within the helper-victim relationship. Elisabetta Grande (q.v.) addresses this point arguing that By construing as an extreme violation of women’s dignity certain practices accepted by non-Western women out of a sense of belonging, duty, caring for and responsibility to others, and of participation in community life, women’s rights discourses frame non-Western women as in need of protection every time they make choices as relational individuals. For scholars, reductionism can be the outcome of an inflexible ‘systemic explanation’, which provides a compelling alternative to humanitarian vehemence. Such explanations may offer convincing arguments against humanitarianism but, at the same time, they risk blurring the complex and inconsistent ways in which people – both those who ‘deliver’ aid and those who ‘receive’ it – articulate their choices and lives. The responsibilities and initiatives of individual people, with their virtues and their vices, tend to vanish within the systemic explanation and what remains is only the shadow of lived experience. At the other extreme, lies the risk of hypersubjectivism, which produces a regression in our attitude toward the other, a drastic decrease in the importance of concepts such as belonging, relationship, interdependence. Beyond systemic explanation and hypersubjectivism lies the ‘critical gaze’ inspiring this volume. Through a multidisciplinary and multifocal perspective, this critical gaze functions as an interpretative filter for the multiple intentions of the actors in humanitarian landscapes, the complex relationship between values (what humanitarian action is intended to be) and practices (what happens ‘on the ground’), the global forces that over-determine social and political realms at the local level, the ways in which states and social groups react to humanitarian action, the ways in which the subjects of humanitarian intervention are influenced/governed by different epistemologies/applications of international law, missionary aims, attempts at normalizing, etc. In this book, the authors throw light on these aspects by unpacking the legal, political and ideological architecture of humanitarianism. To some extent the chapters in this volume point up the ‘grand’ narrative underpinning humanitarian interventions, and while they reflect the plural nature of humanitarianism, they also insist on its utopian and self-reproducing search-for-legitimacy – see, for instance, the chapter of Billaud and De Lauri.

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I wish to stress here the difference between criticism and critique.12 As Wendy Brown has reminded us, ‘critique remains distinguished from criticism for much of modernity and especially for Kant and Marx, who distanced themselves respectively from “criticasters”, and “critical critics”’.13 And even though the fact remains that critique seems to intrinsically ‘carry a tacit presumption of reason’s capacity to unveil error’ (ibid.), the distinction between criticism and critique is based on a further difference. While I see criticism as reiterating a counter-discourse, critique is stimulated by a generative force.14 Criticism can also be functional to the reproduction of power, to the extent that a certain level of criticism is what makes a hierarchical order legitimate – if criticism were not allowed, this order would appear to be totalitarian as a matter of course. Critique, on the contrary, produces ways of imagining the world. Critique is clearly part and parcel of humanitarianism, yet it is a ‘qualitative posture’ never identical to itself. Its scope is continuously being reformulated. Rather than meta-historical, critique is fully immersed in the time it belongs to. For this reason ‘grounded critical analyses’ (Choudry and Kapoor 2013) of humanitarianism15 are crucial in order to combine vigilant self-reflexivity (Kapoor 2008; see also Kennedy 2004) with the multiplicity of cultural and political instances raised by humanitarian policy. As a means of imagining the world in other ways,16 critique is necessarily linked to public consciousness. In an extension of the reflections of Biehl and McKay, it is possible to argue that critique is a means of repopulating the public imagination (2012: 1224) and is therefore needed to animate moral dialectics: ultimately, it is a propensity to avoid both oversimplifications (Nader and Savinar q.v.) and ‘hierarchies of truth’ – based on the assumption that human plurality does not necessarily have to be reduced to homogenized (and normalized) cultural settings. Located at the intersection of different disciplines, such an understanding of critique meets the need to transcend disciplinarism, or to put it differently, to oppose the tendency towards that form of intellectual myopia that is present-day hyperspecialism. For instance, the combination of critical attitudes in law, anthropology and politics that this book condenses, contributes to an international debate that may not be reduced to a single disciplinary approach.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank Alice Bellagamba, Paolo Gaibazzi, Luca Jourdan, Alexandra Kemmerer, Marina de Regt, Julie Castro and Julie Billaud for commenting on earlier versions of some of the chapters here included. I am

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grateful to Miia Halme-Tuomisaari and Nichola Khan for comments on earlier drafts of this introduction. My participation at the workshop ‘Toward an Anthropology of International Intervention’, held at McMaster University, 20 – 21 September 2013, provided interesting input for comparative reflections. This research received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007 – 2013), ERC Grant agreement n8313737.

Notes 1 It is important to note that even when the idea of responsibility is used as a political/ ideological principle to justify interventions (e.g., the ‘responsibility to protect’), this does not translate into a consolidated practice of assessing the implications of the intervention itself, with consequent responsibility for ‘what we have done’, as an Italian embassy stuff member told me in Kabul in May 2013 referring to what appeared to him as ‘effective democratization of Afghanistan’. 2 On the relations among humanity, humanism and humanitarianism see Asad 2013. Historically what has been done ’in the name of humanity’ has taken a variety of forms including bombing (White 2000) and United Nations intervention (Urquhart 2000). For different perspective, see also Feldman and Ticktin 2010; Todorov 1982. 3 See, for example, Allen 2013; Douzinas 2000; Hopgood 2013; Fukuyama 1992; Moyn 2010; Perschbacher and Basset 2004; Pound 1914. 4 As an example, in the 1990s, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, ‘about 50 percent of the national budget available to the government was needed to pay the debt to the same international institutions whose loans were used to carry out the structural reforms’ (Quaretta q.v.). 5 For a broader discussion see Prashad 2013; Slater 2003; Soederberg 2006. 6 On the stratified and polysemic concept of ‘gift’ see Derrida 1991; Kapoor 2008; Laclau 1996; Nguyen 2012; O’Neil 2001; Samuels 2013; Strathern 1988. 7 As a consequence, humanitarianism reinforces anachronistic racialized ideas of nonEuropean ‘others’ through categories such as trauma, pathology, abnormality, incapacity, ‘arrested development’ (Khan 2014). Another consequence is the hegemonic universalization of the notion of wellbeing. For a discussion on this category, see Corsin Jimenez 2008; cf. also Jackson 2011. Furthermore, even when implemented in Europe or the United States, humanitarianism maintains the ideological mechanism of imposing ideas such as ‘a normal life’, or a ‘proper model of life’, and so on. See for example Ticktin 2006, 2011. 8 On the militarization of humanitarianism, see Pandolfi and Rousseau q.v. 9 On expertise see also Kennedy 2005; Mosse 2011; Halme-Toumisaari 2010. 10 For a discussion on the value/sacredness/politics of human life and related ‘humanitarian implications’ see Asad 2013; Fassin 2007, 2009; Redfield 2012; Reid 2011. 11 Significantly, in her chapter Sophia Hoffmann shows ‘that the vast majority of humanitarian agencies engaged in refugee management are part and parcel of the politics that produces refugees as outcasts’. On the impact of humanitarian assistance to refugees, see also Lischer 2003. 12 For a discussion on the meanings and uses of critique, see for example Asad, Brown, Butler and Mahmood 2009; Butler 2002, 2009; Fassin 2012; Fuenmayor 1990; Jahn 2012; Saar 2010; Schaff 2002; Waggoner 2006.

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13 In Asad, Brown, Butler and Mahmood 2009: 9. 14 For the same reason critique is not to be confused with scepticism, which ‘involves suspension of belief in something, and radical epistemological scepticism involves an attempted – or affected – suspension of belief in everything’ (Sayer 2009: 770). 15 See also Kamat 2004; McKay 2012. 16 In this perspective, critique itself seems to have a utopian inclination. It is in any case relevant to recognize that these ‘other ways’ of imagining the world, these ‘alternate social worlds’ – to use the words of Lambek – ‘are in some ways more different but less easily distinguishable from our own than we imagine’ (2008: 152).

Bibliography Abiew, F.C., 2012, ‘Humanitarian Action under Fire: Reflections on the Role of NGOs in Conflict and Post-Conflict Situation’s, International Peacekeeping, 19(2): 203– 16. Abu-Lughod, L., 2013, Do Muslim Women Need Saving? Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Allen, L., 2013, The Rise and Fall of Human Rights. Cynicism and Politics in Occupied Palestine, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Asad, T., 2007, On Suicide Bombing, New York: Columbia University Press. ——, 2013, Reflections on Violence, Law, and Humanitarianism, Critical Inquiry, http://criti calinquiry.uchicago.edu/reflections_on_violence_law_and_humanitarianism/. Asad, T., Brown, W., Butler, J. and S. Mahmood, 2009, Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press; The Townsend Papers in the Humanities. Barnett, M., 2011, Empire of Humanity. A History of Humanitarianism, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Barnett, M. and T. G. Weiss, 2011, Humanitarianism Contested: Where Angels Fear to Tread, Abingdon: Routledge. Biehl, J. and R. McKay, 2012, ‘Ethnography as Political Critique’, Anthropological Quarterly, 85(4): 1209– 28. Bilmes, L. J., 2013, ‘The Financial Legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan: How Wartime Spending Decisions Will Constrain Future National Security Budgets’, Faculty Research Working Paper Series, Harvard Kennedy School. Brinkley, J., 2013, Money Pit: The Monstrous Failure of US Aid to Afghanistan, World Affairs, www.worldaffairsjournal.org/. Butler, J., 2002, What is Critique? An Essay on Foucault’s Virtues, http://f.hypotheses.org/ wp-content/blogs.dir/744/files/2012/03/butler-2002.pdf. ——, 2009, ‘Critique, Dissent, Disciplinarity’, Critical Inquiry, 35(4): 773– 95. Carr, E.S., 2010, ‘Enactments of Expertise’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 39: 17 – 32. Choudry, A. and D. Kapoor, 2013, eds, NGOization. Complicity, Contradictions and Prospects, London: Zed Books. Chouliaraki, L., 2012, ‘The Theatricality of Humanitarianism: A Critique of Celebrity Advocacy’, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 9(1): 1 – 21. Corsin Jimenez, A., ed., 2008, Culture and Well-Being. Anthropological Approaches to Freedom and Political Ethics, London: Pluto Press. de Martino, E., 1977, La fine del mondo. Contributo all’analisi delle apocalissi culturali, Turin: Einaudi. Derrida, J., 1991, Donner le temps, Paris: Galile´e. Donini, A., 2010, ‘Humanitarianism in the 21st Century’, Humanitaire, http://humanitaire. revues.org/771 Douzinas, C., 2000, The End of Human Rights. Critical Legal Thought at the End of the Century, London: Hart Publishing.

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Fassin, D., 2007, ‘Humanitarianism as Politics of Life’, Public Culture, 19(3): 499– 520. ——, 2009, Another Politics of Life is Possible, Theory, Culture and Society, 26(5): 44 – 60. ——, 2012, Humanitarian Reason. A Moral History of the Present, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Feldman, I., and M. Ticktin, eds, 2010, In the Name of Humanity. The Government of Threat and Care, Durham: Duke University Press. Fuenmayor, R., 1990, ‘Systems Thinking and Critique. I. What is Critique?’, Systems Practice, 3(6): 525– 44. Fukuyama, F., 1992, The End of History and the Last Man, New York: Avon Books. Halme-Toumisaari, M., 2010, Human Rights in Action: Learning Expert Knowledge, Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers Hopgood, S., 2013, The Endtimes of Human Rights, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Jackson, M., 2011, Life Within Limits. Well-being in a World of Want, Durham: Duke University Press. Jahn, B., 2012, ‘Critique in a Time of Liberal World Order’, Journal of International Relations and Development, 15: 145– 57. Kamat, S., 2004, ‘The Privatization of Public Interest: Theorizing NGO Discourse in a Neoliberal Era’, Review of International Political Economy, 11(1): 155–76. Kapoor, I., 2008, The Postcolonial Politics of Development, Abingdon: Routledge. Kennedy, D., 2004, The Dark Sides of Virtue: Reassessing International Humanitarianism, Princeton: Princeton University Press. ——, 2005, ‘Challenging Expert Rule: The Politics of Global Governance’, Sydney Journal of International Law, 27: 5 – 28. Khan, N., 2014, ‘A Moving Heart: Querying a Singular Problem of “Immobility” in Afghan Migration to the UK’, Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness, 32(6): 518– 34. Laclau, E., 1996, Emancipation(s), London: Verso. Lambek, M., 2008, ‘Value and Virtue’, Anthropological Theory, 8(2): 133– 57. Lischer, S.K., 2003, ‘Collateral Damage. Humanitarian Assistance as a Cause of Conflict’, International Security, 28(1): 79 – 109. Mandel, R., 2002, Armies Without States. The Privatization of Security, Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers. McKay, R., 2012, ‘Afterlives: Humanitarian Histories and Critical Subjects in Mozambique’, Cultural Anthropology, 27, 286– 309. Minn, P., 2007, ‘Toward an Anthropology of Humanitarianism’, Journal of Humanitarian Assistance, http://sites.tufts.edu/jha/archives/51. Mosse, D., ed., 2011, Adventures in Aidland: The Anthropology of Professionals in International Development, Oxford and New York: Berghahn. Moyn, S., 2010, The Last Utopia. Human Rights in History, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Nguyen, M.T., 2012, The Gift of Freedom. War, Debt, and Other Refugee Passages, Durham: Duke University Press. Olsen, G.R., Carstensen, N. and K. Høyen, 2003, ‘Humanitarian Crises: What Determines the Level of Emergency Assistance? Media Coverage, Donor Interests and the Aid Business’, Disasters, 27(2): 109– 26. O’Neil, J., 2001, ‘The Time(s) of the Gift’, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 6(2): 41 – 8. Perschbacher, R.D. and D.L. Basset, 2004, ‘The End of Law’, Boston University Law Review, 84: 1 – 62. Petras, J., 1999, ‘NGOs: In the Service of Imperialism’, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 29(4): 429– 40. Pound, R., 1914, ‘The End of Law as Developed in Legal Rules and Doctrines’, Harvard Law Review, 27(3): 195– 234. Prashad, V., 2013, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, London: Verso.

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Redfield, P., 2012, ‘Secular Humanitarianism and the Value of Life’ in What Matters? Ethnographies of Value in a Not So Secular Age, C. Bender and A. Taves, eds, New York: Columbia University Press. Reid, J., 2010, ‘The Biopoliticization of Humanitarianism: From Saving Bare Life to Securing the Biohuman in Post-Interventionary Societies’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 4(4): 391– 411. Saar, M., 2010, ‘Power and Critique’, Journal of Power, 3(1): 7 – 20. Samuels, A., 2013, ‘“Aceh Thanks the World”. The Possibilities of the Gift in a Post-disaster Society’, Anthropology Today, 29(4): 8 –11. Sayer, A., 2009, ‘Who’s Afraid of Critical Social Sciences?’, Current Sociology, 57(6): 767– 86. Schaff, K.P., 2002, ‘Foucault and the Critical Tradition’, Human Studies, 25(3): 323– 32. Singer, P.W., 2003, ‘War, Profits, and the Vacuum of Law: Privatized Military Firms and International Law’, Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, 42(2): 521– 50. Slater, D., 2004, Geopolitics and the Post-colonial. Rethinking North-South Relations, Malden: Blackwell. Soederberg, S., 2006, Global Governance in Question: Empire, Class, and the New Common Sense in Managing North-South Relations, London: Pluto Press. Strathern, M., 1988, The Gender of the Gift, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Ticktin, M., 2006, ‘Where Ethics and Politics Meet: The Violence of Humanitarianism in France’, American Ethnologist, 33(1): 33 – 49. ——, 2011, Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Todorov, T., 1982, La conqueˆte de l’Ame´rique. La question de l’autre, Paris: Seuil. Urquhart, B., 2000, ‘In the Name of Humanity’, The New York Review of Books, 47(7), www. nybooks.com. Waggoner, M., 2006, ‘Irony, Embodiment, and the “Critical Attitude”: Engaging Saba Mahmood’s Critique of Secular Morality’, Culture and Religion: An International Journal, 6(2): 237– 61. Waldman, M., 2008, Falling Short. Aid Effectiveness in Afghanistan, ACBAR Advocacy Series, http://www.oxfam.org. Wallace, T., 2003, ‘NGO Dilemmas: Trojan Horses for Global Neoliberalism?’, Socialist Register, London: The Merlin Press. Wallerstein, I., 1991, Geopolitics and Geoculture. Essays on the Changing World-system, Paris and Cambridge: MSH and Cambridge University Press. White, N.D., 2000, ‘The Legality of Bombing in the Name of Humanity’, Journal of Conflict and Security Law, 5(1): 27– 43.

CHAPTER 2 GOVERNING THE CRISIS A CRITICAL GENEALOGY OF HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION Mariella Pandolfi and Phillip Rousseau

The United Nations once dealt only with governments. By now, we know that peace and prosperity cannot be achieved without partnerships involving governments, international organizations, the business community and civil society. In today’s world, we depend on each other. Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General (1997– 2006)

The humanitarian impulse Contemporary humanitarianism is the poster child of the idealism and optimism surrounding the post-World War II human rights framework, coupled with the enthusiastic anti-statist – or more precisely, antitotalitarian – bias of the civil rights movements of the 1960s. Growing into an ever more specialized and mostly bio-medical technology of social intervention,1 humanitarianism was intended to stay autonomous, neutral and private – i.e., not submitting to any political bias, ideological pressure or, above all, state control. The humanitarian impulse was simply to be an effective and organized answer to global pietas, offering to cater for the needs of the suffering and downtrodden – ever more represented in the hypermediated context of the second half of the twentieth century.

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Such professionalized devotion to the needs of the suffering came, however, with some unexpected costs. The more it gained currency, the more pietas itself tended to become a commodity. Strong sensitivity to donors’ prerogatives and the obligation to follow the media spotlight were often in contradiction with the initial humanitarian objectives. Even more troubling was the fact that by promising to overcome all barriers hindering the rescue of the victim, this complex apparatus gradually accommodated not only to high-performance principles akin to business practices but also to the modus operandi of the military, with which it developed a close relation. From this point onwards, political cooptation – so readily dismissed on the basis of the anti-establishment fantasies of humanitarian’s origins and the stubborn belief in an impartial point of view ‘from outside’ – was somehow standing just around the corner. This process of institutionalization has certainly served to consolidate the political relevance of the donor – victim pair2 – precisely as they are mediated through the gaze and practices of the humanitarian apparatus. In the post-Cold War context, as Mark Duffield (2001, 2004) suggested with great insight, political conflict is increasingly framed in terms of humanitarianism, that is, through its gaze: crises calling for intervention to rebuild civil society and ensure public health. In this sense, the growing legitimacy of experts ‘sans frontie`res’ and the paradoxical logic it feeds on – that of a ‘professional depoliticized militancy’ – continue to decentre the political from its now traditional state – citizen nucleus. Such an emphasis on the political tradition of modernity makes humanitarianism integral to understanding the rapid and constant transformations of contemporary politics. Cases of humanitarian intervention have become the sites of an emergent experimentation of new political techniques (Cuillerai and Abe´le`s 2002; Pandolfi and Abe´le`s 2002), recasting our traditional dichotomies in unexpected and original ways: war and peace, national and international, state and civil society, etc. We need to shed light on the articulation of the strategic ambiguities of international law and the growing transnational moral consensus that strives to minimize them. Such is the ‘grey zone’ in which humanitarian interventions seem to proliferate today. Anthropology, or any social science for that matter, cannot simply serve as intellectual and moral support. However critical such an operation might be – both in the sense of its importance and of encouraging a healthy dose of critique regarding some of humanitarian’s features – it ends up conveniently fine-tuning an apparatus that constantly short-circuits any other political possibilities by overcrowding the scene with its militarized biomedical framework.3 Not unlike humanitarianism itself,

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such an operation can certainly be morally reassuring. Yet, defence mechanisms can also, quite paradoxically, expose us even more to – and reinforce – that which we are defending ourselves against.

From the right to intervene to the responsibility to protect. . . The hegemonic transnational expansion of the humanitarian apparatus relied on three main elements. First, it consolidated its publics (Warner 2005), sharpening its ability to produce transnational generosity through the expanding channels of the mass media. Second, it established its credibility by implementing a quasi-technological mobile protocol defining standard modes of operation that could be deployed throughout the world (Pandolfi 2000). Third, it repeatedly asserted its capacity to respond swiftly, which, as we shall see, made it consistent with a temporality of emergency integral to the expansion of international security discourses and practices. This capacity for instantaneous response, perhaps even more than its results, continuously nourishes humanitarianism’s validity in a hyper-mediated world. As the humanitarian apparatus gradually won its autonomy from traditional institutional controls, it became increasingly clear that it was not simply seeking to intervene where states lacked thorough ascendancy or, in other cases, to limit some of their unwanted prerogatives: it also tended to take their place. Most often, of course, intervention occurs where there is a sudden breakdown in a pre-existing equilibrium; it is constructed out of such a diagnosis of ‘crisis’, for it is here that its operations are legitimized. Such rapid diagnoses, conveniently complemented with the ‘appropriate’ services, tend to shift the focus from the responsibilities associated with the causes of conflict and war to their effects. In other words, the question of the right to war ( jus ad bellum) is swiftly bypassed to concentrate on the right conduct in war ( jus in bello). By the same token, humanitarian ethics, based solely on the urgent need to rescue victims, also tend to minimize the level of ‘militarization’ involved in humanitarian activities themselves, whether this comes about by adopting methods of trade or by profiting from direct military support for, and active involvement in, the intervention. However, as testified by a growing number of striking examples, the notion of breakdown of a pre-existing equilibrium is often as hard to establish as it is ambiguous.4 The protagonists at the scene, humanitarians included,5 can certainly manipulate or modulate a ‘crisis’, whether by exacerbating or playing it down. Collaboration, for example, is no easy task and can be an exercise fraught with danger, given that such situations are marked by a high

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level of potentiality. Such contexts unavoidably end up being the site of intense efforts of co-optation, which then lead to the reinforcement, destabilization or displacement of prevalent structures or relations (Hauser 2009). Yet, this does not seem to hamper the prevalent homogenization of ‘good’ practices in humanitarian intervention. Not unlike the colonial gaze before it, humanitarianism rarely, if ever, acknowledges the elephant in the china shop. Nowhere is such a short-sighted outlook more obvious than in the troubling, yet inherent relation between humanitarianism and war. This kinship was particularly well exposed by the incalculable number of ambiguities and contradictions inherent to the NATO intervention in Kosovo (1999). Bombing parts of a sovereign state, while demanding that another (Albania) allows the demarcation of an international humanitarian zone, was an illuminating case of confusion of genre and a clear indication that something was profoundly amiss. Indeed, never had the timeline of war and peace been so utterly disjointed and rarely had the roles of warmongers and peacemakers been so enmeshed with one another. The NATO intervention, in fact, was to be the initial pristine illustration of a profound political and ideological shift that was about to occur in humanitarianism: transforming the right to intervene into a responsibility to protect. The self-proclaimed right to intervene – promulgated by the likes of Bettati, Kouchner, and others following their lead – was certainly carried by the growing prestige, legitimacy and independence of NGOs, from the late 1980s up to turn of the millennium. The end of the Cold War, as Anne Orford argues, ‘also contributed to the plausibility, for some, of the notion that military intervention might be benevolent and disinterested – that powerful states might really come to liberate and not to occupy’ (2013: 98). Still, tensions increased at the international level regarding the recurring reliance on humanitarian intervention, the need to determine the threshold of legitimacy for recourse to force and armed interventions and, especially, the underlying friction of such interventions with the principle of state sovereignty. The doctrine asserting both a right and a duty to intervene in cases of major human rights violations, despite the best of intentions, in practice brought forth an ‘armed’ humanitarianism and interventionism to the point of no return (Kouchner and Bettati 1987). Yet, it was still understood as a measure to be applied in particularly exceptional cases. The attempt to limit and define its use, which emerged as a necessity especially after the war in Kosovo, paradoxically, made the exceptional all the more trivial.6 In the aftermath of the Kosovo War, the report of the Independent International Commission on Kosovo (IICK) – September 1999 – October 2000 – formulated a problematic issue that was to become a matrix for the

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reworking of both the justification and the modalities of humanitarian intervention: The central question addressed is whether the constraints imposed by international law on the non-defensive use of force are adequate for the maintenance of peace and security. In response, [the commission] considers the legality of NATO’s forceful humanitarian intervention by reference to both jus ad bellum (recourse to war) and jus in bellum (lawfulness of conduct in war), and argues on behalf of legitimacy by way of an emergent framework of principled humanitarian intervention. A pre-legal proposal is made to move in the direction of establishing a legal doctrine of humanitarian intervention that balances the claims to protect peoples against the importance of restricting discretion to use force in international relations. (Independent International Commission on Kosovo 2000) Such an account is indicative of a need to ‘politically’ resolve the juridical impasse of the principles of sovereign territoriality on the basis of international law. We can see how renewed reflection (and new ground for political action and legitimacy) can arise from such ambiguity: while not (strictly) legal, NATO’s actions were, after all, considered legitimate. It was from such growing tension between intervention and state sovereignty, exemplified here through the Kosovo example,7 that the doctrine of the responsibility to protect soon emerged as a privileged paradigm, which was to forever change humanitarian logic. If, as this logic implies, a sovereign state cannot exercise its responsibility to protect, then someone else must do it. Between 2001 and 2005, the ‘confusion’ between militarization and humanitarian intervention was only to worsen. The doctrine of the responsibility to protect saw power and humanitarian management being in fact, firmly integrated into the realpolitik of state strategies, albeit under the control of the Security Council of the United Nations. If the duty to intervene still contained vestiges of the anti-establishment posturing of the 1960s, the doctrine of the responsibility to protect could in no way be interpreted as ‘neutral’. Followers of the new interventionism are, still today, secure in their conviction. They continue to emphasize that it is compatible with the values on which the United Nations was founded. They now not only call upon the international community to exert its right to humanitarian intervention, but set out to present it as an obligation, however inadequate this may be

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given that control and security are increasingly exported alongside humanitarian aid. In such scenarios, the militarization of the territory in which the humanitarian apparatus is embroiled, confirms humanitarian action as one of the facets of ‘global policing’. From the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s to tomorrow’s spaces of unwanted unrest, humanitarian intervention has come to mean, above all, military intervention. This, in turn, renders its chief claim – that ‘humanitarianism is apolitical’ – even more questionable.

. . . from the responsibility to protect to global policing War was now a means to peace, strategically placing humanitarianism within its functions. As the temporalities of peace and war converged, each domain was to take an active role in the efforts towards total mobilization. As Foucault (1997) intimated long ago, war thus became an overall structuring principle of sociality. From the 1990s onwards, the very concept of humanitarian ‘crisis’ progressively moved away from what was once the ‘classic’ aid strategy implemented to coincide with ‘natural’ disasters, to the point of assuming the legitimacy to act on disaster-related conflicts, wars, the political vulnerability of minorities, risk of genocide and forced expulsions of populations. The level of interpenetration between civilian and military actors has only amplified in recent decades and, consequently, the me´lange of military and civilian international activity in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria has progressively dissolved any significant distinction between civilian and military engagement. Recent decades have put the autonomy of humanitarian legitimacy under enormous pressure. NGOs and international organizations, together with bilateral bodies and UN agencies, have increasingly crowded the scene of an ever-growing number of conflicts in the world, coming to take an active role in diplomatic negotiations. Engaged as it now is in a sort of parallel diplomacy, humanitarianism has itself been increasingly co-opted and integrated into the agendas of states. Hence, as the ethics of responsibility have prevailed over the ethics of neutrality, intervention has tended to become the rightful prerogative of world powers, potentially applicable to anywhere that undesirable intensities might appear. Fre´de´ric Gros reminds us that contemporary violence is nothing if not a multi-tasking affair. We are indeed becoming used to observing a series of figures all acting simultaneously: the soldier, the mercenary, the computer engineer, security and humanitarian actors, etc. (2006: 217). Victims and their torturers, the soldiers who both fight and destroy, build and rebuild infrastructures, the aid workers who care and heal while deploying the logistics

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of emergency, the experts who redesign the economy and juridical and democratic order, all belong to the same overarching apparatus. Even the social sciences have become willing participants in the establishment and application of counter-insurgency strategies by the US military, by attempting to win the hearts and mind of local populations in Iraq and Afghanistan through the Human Terrain System programme (Pandolfi and Rousseau 2010). Such a process ultimately leaves war and peace, torture and rescue, destruction and development, and perhaps even life and death, indistinguishable from each other. The victims, the perpetrators, the military who fight and build infrastructures, are all part of a global landscape, which, as Alessandro Dal Lago reminds us, illustrates that ‘[w]ar exercises a constituent function [. . .] influencing global structures of culture’ (Dal Lago 2010: 29). As we enter this worldwide regime of protracted war – ‘the war regime’ as Zarifian (2003) defines it – every means is put at its disposal: from political to ideological; from legal to hyper-mediated; from the humanitarian to strategic warfare. Thus, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, contemporary warfare is never merely military as Zarifian (2003) has argued. Naturally, this does not so much mean imagining a sequence of wars, one after another, but rather conceptualizing a constantly moving intensity in a single space: leopard-spots of activities flaring up, within which there is also, but not solely, specifically warlike activity. Developmental aid and, even more so, humanitarian action, are today immersed in the logic of militarization, the ambiguous ethics of humanitarian conflict, or the consequent peacekeeping actions. In this logic of war, humanitarian interventions almost appear to be a natural necessity. In this day and age, it is no longer possible to continue the dance of distinction between good intentions and bad management. Wherever there is barbed wire; a helicopter acting as both combatant and transporter of the wounded; where management is effective but hierarchically subsidiary to humanitarian action which is, at the same time, an action of policing, we must accept that it is impossible to attain the utopia of the new humanitarian era evoked for us, in the late 1980s, by Bernard Kouchner.8 Anyone who has lived amidst the ambiguous atmosphere of bombs falling and victims being rescued knows how difficult it is to mediate or avoid the unilateral logic of territorial militarization: the temporality of urgency and the control of space are, in fact, reorganized according to this logic. Indeed, the protracted war regime is now part of our everyday lives, making us ever more fragile and less sophisticated in our discourses and practices. As Didier Fassin points out, in reacting to the ambivalence of the militarized humanitarianism of Michael Igniatieff: ‘Generous intentions to protect populations and emotional reactions against human rights violations

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are understandable, but when it comes to military intervention, lucidity is indispensable’ (Fassin 2013). The longue dure´e of emergency In recent years we have witnessed the proliferation of control in the management of humanitarian space, accompanied by a progressive legitimization of its militarization. The logic of human rights has become confused with the logic of war, the logic of humanitarian catastrophe confused with that of territories controlled by police and military forces. The reality – as Duffield (2007) reminds us – is that long-lasting, drawn-out wars are ‘unending’ wars, managed by the ever-changing military presence in charge, albeit defined in different terms: peace-stabilizing; peacekeeping or peacebuilding. Guardians and police of peace protecting ‘suspension’ treaties almost as though awaiting the advent of a ‘messiah’ to give local communities back full control of their daily lives. ‘This is not only a strategic project, but [one] which, attentive to ways of thinking and living, rapidly acts through techniques of control and the mobilization of knowledge to reorganize the apparatus of power’ (Zarifian 2003: 13). The Balkans are, again, exemplary here. Between the end of the conflict in Kosovo and the declaration of independence (2008), we witnessed: territoriality without sovereignty, conditional independence, parliamentary pedagogy and unilateral independence. What this example illustrates so well is an international political arsenal that seems more interested in fostering ambiguity and disorder than anything else. Stabilizing, in the name of humanitarian motives, a state of permanent suspension. While a humanitarian militarization regime is deployed on grounds of urgency, in the name of emergency relief, it tends to consolidate that emergency over the long term. Indeed, we have learned that emergency and longue dure´e are not two contradictory poles. They are configured as an apparatus that continuously produces opacity. Under the impact of a military and humanitarian emergency, further swayed by charged, media-conveyed emotions, the basis of universal legitimization is created on the world stage. Who would not condone the need for intervention and help? Go and punish the wicked and bring relief to the victims! Emergency, indeed, sparks the need for urgent action and the creation of a state of exceptionality, permitting the strategic, economic and moral derogations of which Haiti, Libya and Syria (on standby) are emblematic examples. This constant opaque production of war discourses linked to human rights issues is often complemented by softdomination (or empire lite – Ignatieff 2003). Such urgency, aside from creating disorientation, simply feeds the perverse optimism of Western

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ideology in which war appears to be viewed as a marginal phenomenon, a mere hiccup along the way, and not a permanent political strategy. Michel Agier compellingly describes the three necessary components enabling the constitution of contemporary humanitarian intervention, but especially the conditions for its establishment as a durable spatial infrastructure of emergency and exception. The first is the violence related to wars, be they rapid, effective or interminable and creeping ever more into contexts in which there is ‘a growing confusion between urban places of life and places of war’ (2003: 69). The second is care and control: an apparatus for the absolute control of the victim, precisely because the victim only constitutes a body to nourish and be saved (Pandolfi and Corbet 2011). The third component thematized by Agier in identifying the logic of the humanitarian is the production of sites separated from ordinary life.9 To be effective, to work with the apparatus of protecting survival, the spaces constructed for refugees must be spatially and temporally on the fringes of ordinary life. The life of survival cannot be mixed with the life of the new economic hierarchies, diplomatic, governmental or multilateral strategists that now occupy large hotels and eat in the multiple new restaurants. The effectiveness of applying military logistics to crisis zones is evident in all practices of control: in creating maps of the territory that closely follow family units; identifying specific pharmaceutical needs; estimating the amount of showers, food and beds required in accordance with the flow of refugees, etc. Showing that bodies need to be fed or saved not only requires tighter controls over each individual, but also precise territorial controls. Geographical maps in headquarters are progressively filled in with lines of red, green and blue according to safety levels. In order to be rescued, human stories must correspond to the appropriate criteria designed through these specific mapping exercises. Historical trajectories disappear in favour of these newly traced lines as both territorial and bodily spaces are brought into alignment with the efficient militarized mapping of the world. This apparatus has its own peculiar means of deployment in space and time; it transmits lifestyles; it shapes new power relations; it establishes new networks of information and stimulates new strategies, while suffocating the voices of those who do not follow its lead. Humanitarianism helps the quest for international legitimacy because it keeps emphasizing the urgency of the situation and the neutrality of its efforts (Rieff 2003). Its agents move around the globe, erasing, mixing and confusing the differences between different sites of violence. They also neutralize public opinion by obscuring the process by which the logic of exception and emergency continue to slide into permanent crisis and the perpetuation of violence. Their own mobility

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and transnational ethos thrives on their capacity to build enduring camps: spaces in which movement is constantly limited, monitored and relations are expertly controlled. Indeed, if your competence in constructing and managing enclosed spaces is recognized, you could be on your way to living out the cosmopolitan dream! In the territory of ‘crisis’ there is no time to reflect, no time to set moral limits, or see how historicized suffering in an individual or collective history may be lost on a biopolitical market. During the ‘first humanitarian war’ in 1999, the centre of Tirana in Albania saw strategies of war and emergency being put into place, as two refugee camps were built on its outskirts. The barbed wire UN-codified survival zones were marked by the presence of soldiers checking the badges and documents of the representatives of international organizations. Yet again, barbed wire was used to cordon off the territoriality of the humanitarian war, and create the perimeter of ‘security’, establishing insecurity as an essential governing technology and key management principle (Foucault 2004; Rancie`re 2005: 166). The temporality of the state of emergency and the urgency of military and humanitarian action should only enjoy legitimacy if they establish and determine, within a defined time frame, a precise difference between the time of the war and the time of peace. The contemporary world, however, shows us that, in perpetuating the state of exception10 once the emergency is over, an initial adverse effect is that of losing much of the sense of the difference between peace and war. For the moment we are lacking a concrete and full conceptualization of this shift. Indeed, it seems that events have been overly segmented, while another era of violence and war is firmly establishing itself in the world. We need to conceptualize how the sustainability of the state of exception has two poles: emergency and prolonged duration, at both of which militarization of territory, albeit in different guises, pervades all forms of everyday life. The ‘perennialized’ existence of the state of exception produces an undefined global space of ‘policing’, in between peace and war. On the one hand, it configures itself through a temporality of urgency with the imperative mandate of rescuing victims; on the other, through the temporality of longue dure´e, it progressively blurs the boundaries between victims and perpetrators, reversing their roles.

A contemporary biopolitics for a global ailing body The slippage from the institution of order to the management of disorder is precisely what Foucault (2004) identified as the securitizing rupture of

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liberalism that inaugurated our modernity (McFalls and Pandolfi 2012). From this perspective, liberalism is not an historical period or a substantive doctrine; it is a governmental ethos that attempts to groom life through freedom (Duffield 1999). Generally seen as limited to extraordinary crisis zones, this dialectic of new violent disorder and its humanitarian and ‘security’ containment now pervades contemporary politics (Duffield 2001). Remembering the Balkans of the 1990s means highlighting the historical–political period in which the end of the equilibrium of bipolar dominance radically transformed the architecture of contemporary interventionism and, most importantly, of politics. The neo-liberal strategy of a governance of ‘security’ emerged, moulding the different strategies of ’intervention’ in its image, penetrating and dominating a myriad of specialized and differentiated fields: humanitarian, development, peacekeeping missions, management of global disorder, etc. Humanitarianism, which is linked to different types of action, varying from relief to control, should, then, be interpreted as the new neoliberal strategy implemented in all forms of vulnerability and insecurity. Duffield provides an exemplary analysis of this by illustrating the interdependence of this new geopolitical dimension: in controlling migration; monitoring aid; controlling development and controlling welfare. The issues of ethics and security are intertwined and not opposed: the humanitarian procedures used to control the conflicts of the 1990s are replaced by contemporary procedures, which must contain the global ‘threat of instability’. Contemporary humanitarianism therefore reconfigures itself around those actions that contrast, protect, prevent and expand instability. Yet, in negatively defining the notion of security as the neutralization of insecurity and the management of risks, two discourses repeatedly reinforce one another into a timeless reification. The first of these describes a timeless or primitive violence that constantly festers and occasionally erupts into senseless riots or jacqueries in a theatre of age-old victimization and ancestral or ethnic hatred. The second, evokes an equally timeless but modern moment of freedom, security and democracy. From these two discourses emerges the construct of an enemy, not an enemy to be killed or enslaved, not an irreconcilable other, but rather a different configuration of humanity, a forever malleable (McFalls and Pandolfi 2014, forthcoming) one that can be reconfigured by means of the humanitarian techne: techniques of standardization via the physical and psychic care introduced by humanitarian aid, but also techniques of intervention applying targeted force. In this sense, our contemporaneity seems particularly exposed to the risk of naturalizing violence. By standardizing the response to its multifaceted and

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historical dimensions, most notably through militarized humanitarian intervention, the world picture of an unhealthy global body emerges: a body in very bad shape, and yet, that absolutely needs to survive; a body that deserves the best, most efficient treatment of all, whatever the costly side effects. Such is the direction in which contemporary biopolitics are unfortunately engaged: a path that may ultimately lead them to become indistinguishable from thanatopolitics.

Notes 1 In his book Le malheur des autres (1991), Bernard Kouchner, the former special representative in Kosovo of the UN secretary general, former French Health Minister and founder of Me´decins Sans Frontie`res and Me´decins du Monde, wrote that ‘[h]umanitarian activities have become customary’. Kouchner was highlighting new forms of globally organized power and expertise, located within the mobile apparatus constituted by new transnational regimes, humanitarian networks, NGOs, and multilateral and bilateral organizations that Pandolfi (2003) has defined as migrant sovereignties. Indeed, ever fewer policies seem to be enacted by the traditional centres of state power, such as parliaments and ministries, as we witness the emergence of a plurality of new political actors both outside and below the level of the state. Take the European Union for example, a supra-national entity whose nature defies all conventional categories; or consider non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International and the International Red Cross Committee; or national and international ‘civil society’. Marc Abe´le`s has convincingly tracked this displacement of politics from its traditional modernist bedrock. First, institutionally: from its state-centred framework to transnational networks and global space, which he designates as the ‘global-politique’ (Abe´le`s 2008). Second, ideologically: from the quest for the common good to a politics of survival (2010), which implies a growing propensity to anticipate the worst and try to avoid it, given that representations and practices are mostly situated on the horizon of survival, instead of envisaging a better world. 2 The ‘victim’s’ elevated status, the necessity to constantly find and define him or her, as Bertrand Badie argues, has completely reconfigured the political field ‘whereby states were delegitimized [. . .] the end result being the radically privatized management of today’s humanitarianism’ (Badie 2002: 241). As Jordi Raich (2004) points out, one of the protagonists of humanitarian action over the past decade has been the ‘sexy victim’: the human being whose desperate predicament can best be ‘sold’ to the media in the short term. Women and children separated from their families are all sexy victims: Afghan women, Liberian child soldiers, South African AIDS victims, the maimed in Sierra Leone, and people of all ages in the former Yugoslavia who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorders. If only for a short period of time the ‘trafficked women’ from Kosovo also fell into the sexy victim category. ‘Sexy victims’ were the true protagonists of what, within the humanitarian community, have been derisively designated as ‘Frankenstein Projects’. These were projects that developed by putting together bits and pieces of past projects developed to address emergencies across utterly different historical and cultural contexts. 3 In the 1990s, many authors began to debate the nature of humanitarian discourse and practices, drawing on relevant investigations of international development – its conditions of possibility, its ideological features, its practices, etc. (Ferguson 1990; Hobart 1993; Escobar 1995). A more ‘militant’ form of medical anthropology (Scheper-Hughes 1995)

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also emerged, focusing on the political economy perpetuating health inequalities and arguing that the dramatic health disparities between the world’s wealthy and poor should, at best, be understood as a form of structural violence inflicted in a ‘new war on the poor’ (Farmer 2004a, 2004b). Soon, the anthropology of biopolitics complemented these critiques with renewed epistemological concerns. Drawing on the work of Foucault, anthropologists of development were the first to publish ethnographic studies of ‘biopower’ in non-Western settings (Ferguson 1990). Not only have their studies convincingly demonstrated the consequences of interventions on their subjects’ lives and cultures (Malkki 1995), they have also highlighted the continuing relevance of ethnographic approaches in capturing political processes occurring on numerous scales, including the impact of international interventions on local social relations. Through the Foucauldian concept of ‘governmentality’ (Foucault 1997), ethnographic investigations of the political space of health (Fassin 1996), have paved the way to showing how and why biomedical epistemologies and practices are, simultaneously, both a way to design a space of intervention and govern the biological self. Today, answers may be sought in the writings around these common Foucaldian threads of Carl Schmitt, Weber, Arendt, Benjamin and even Hobbes, which have led to theories on the global empire (Hardt and Negri 2000), the biopolitical interpretation of sovereignty and the state of exception as a permanent temporal exemption (Agamben 1998, 2005) as well as critical voices on the violence lurking within the ideology of human rights and the consequent construction of ‘ideal’ victims (Zˇizˇek 2001, 2004; Zolo 2000). 4 ‘Crisis’, of course, is also at the heart of medical anthropology. Illness was, very early on, conceptualized as a crisis of both embodiment and social relations. Humanitarian intervention itself links social order with the management of bodily affliction. Thus, medical anthropology is now at the forefront of an emerging anthropology of humanitarian intervention (Fassin 2001; Englund 2006; Del Vecchio-Good et al. 2008; Pandolfi 2000, 2003, 2006, 2008, 2011; Bornstein and Redfield 2011; Ticktin 2011). 5 Not only do military – humanitarian interventions have a profound and multifaceted impact on local political, economic and social structures, they also impact on the subjectivity of their own personnel on the ground, who have to reconcile their conflicting roles of saviour and police officer. In Volontaire en ONG: l’aventure ambigue¨ (2005), Amina Yala uncovered the composite profiles of humanitarian workers, stressing the contradiction between their narratives of suffering and their evening get-togethers in hotels and villas that, according to an informant, could be aptly defined as ‘Club Med under the bombs’. 6 While the ethics of humanitarian intervention remained generally untouched and well above suspicion, certain doubts concerning specific practices and the increasingly blurred line, on the ground, between humanitarian intervention and military operations began to be voiced by key protagonists towards the mid-1990s (Rufin 1999a, 1999b; Stiglitz 2002; Brauman and Petit 1996; Brauman 1993, 2006). Rufin (1999a, 1999b) began to criticize the naturalization of this disturbing relation between war and peace, of which Brauman (1993, 1996, 2006) has continuously tracked the excess perversities. Even military personnel in positions of responsibility pointed up the progressively greater ambiguity of this apparatus, most notably Fabio Mini (Commander of NATO-led peacekeeping operations in Kosovo between 2002 and 2003) – see Mini 2003 – and General Bruno Loi (former commander of Italian peacekeeping troops in Somalia). A book written by theoreticians and protagonists of humanitarianism further illustrates the growing sense of unease in humanitarian circles at the time, well explained by title of the volume, Hard Choices: The Moral Dilemmas in Humanitarian Interventions (Moore 1998). See also Jean and Dottori 2012; Bello 2006; Orford 2003; Kouchner and Bettati 1987; Ignatieff 2003.

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7 For a detailed account of this shift and its reshaping of moralism and realism in international law, see Orford (2013). 8 Rony Brauman’s more prudent position – who wishes to see the boundaries of humanitarian interventions re-established and therefore reclaim it from processes of professionalization, politicization and military contamination – also merits close critical monitoring. The former president of Me´decins Sans Frontie`res criticized both ‘the Kouchner doctrine’ of the right and duty to intervene, as well as Michael Igniatieff militarized humanitarianism, defined by Danilo Zolo as humanitarian fundamentalism, saying: ‘I am against humanitarian intervention [Je suis contre l’inge´rence humanitaire.].’ Opposed to the intervention in Libya, Brauman still hangs on to the possibility of humanitarianism without militarism. 9 From his perspective, Agier underlines that the logic of humanitarian sites is reinforced by the logic of exception, both spatially and temporally. 10 The philosopher Giorgio Agamben (1998, 2005) has reopened the debate surrounding the notion of exception within the sphere of political action. References to the state of exception have of course multiplied exponentially since the end of the bipolar international order, especially with the advent of such problematic notions and practices as ’humanitarian war’ and ’the war on terror’. Drawing on the political thought of Machiavelli, Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt, Agamben, in his book State of Exception, undertakes a genealogy of the politico-juridical concept of this term, which has passed into common parlance. At the centre of his reflection, we find the issue of power as a mechanism that links violence and law as well as violence and life in a ‘relation that binds, and at the same time, abandons the living being to law’.

Bibliography Abe´le`s, M., 2008, Anthropologie de la globalisation, Paris: Payot. ——, 2010 [2006], The Politics of Survival, Durham: Duke University Press. Agamben, G., 1998 [1995], Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford: Stanford University Press. ——, 2005 [2003], State of Exception, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Agier, M., 2003, ‘La main gauche de l’Empire. Ordre et de´sordres de l’humanitaire’, Multitudes, 11: 67 – 77. Badie, B., 2002, La diplomatie des droits de l’homme, Paris: Fayard. Bello, W., 2006, ‘Humanitarian Intervention: Evolution of a Dangerous Doctrine’, Focus on the Global South, 19 January. Bettati, M., 2000, Droit humanitaire, Paris: Seuil. Bornstein, E. and P. Redfield, eds, 2011, Forces of Compassion Between Politics and Ethics: The Anthropology of Global Humanitarianism, New Mexico: School for Advanced Research Press. Brauman, R., 1993, L’action humanitaire, Paris: Flammarion. ——, 2006, Penser dans l’urgence: parcours critique d’un humanitaire, Paris: Seuil. Brauman, R. and P. Petit, 1996, Humanitaire: le dilemme, Paris: Textuel. Cuillerai, M. and M. Abe´le`s, 2002, ‘Mondialisation: du ge´o-culturel au bio-politique’, Anthropologie et Socie´te´s, 26(1): 11 – 28. Dal Lago, A., 2010, ‘Fields Without Honour: Contemporary War as Global Enforcement’ in Conflict, Security and the Reshaping of Society: The Civilization of War, A. Dal Lago and S. Palidda, eds, London: Routledge. Del Vecchio Good, M.-J. et al., eds, 2008, Postcolonial Disorders, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

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Duffield, M., 1999, ‘Globalization and War Economies: Promoting Order or the Return of History?’, The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, 23(2): 21 – 37. ——, 2001, Global Governance and the New Wars, London: Zed Books ——, 2004, ‘Carry on Killing: Global Governance, Humanitarianism and Terror’, Danish Institute for International Studies, Working Paper, 23: 1 – 24. ——, 2007, Development, Security and Unending War: Governing the World of Peoples, Cambridge: Polity. Englund, H., 2006, Prisoner of Freedom: Human Rights and the African Poor, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Escobar, A., 1995, Encountering Development, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Farmer, P., 2004a, Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ——, 2004b, ‘An Anthropology of Structural Violence’, Current Anthropology, 45(3): 305–25. Fassin, D., 1996, L’espace politique de la sante´. Essai de ge´ne´alogie, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. ——, 2001a, ‘Charite´ bien ordonne´e. Principes de justice et pratiques de jugement dans les aides d’urgence’, Revue francaise de sociologie, 42(3): 437– 75. ——, 2001b, ‘Quand le corps fait loi. La raison humanitaire dans les proce´dures de re´gularisation des e´trangers’, Sciences sociales et sante´, 19(4): 5– 34. ——, 2012 (2010), Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ——, 2013, ‘The Duty to Reflect, Still Cogent’, Humanity, http://www.humanityjournal.org / blog/2013/10/duty-reflect-still-cogent. Fassin, D. and M. Pandolfi, eds, 2010, Contemporary States of Emergency: The Politics of Military and Humanitarian Interventions, London: Zone Books. Feldman, A., 1991, Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ——, 1997, ‘Violence and Vision: The Prosthetics and Aesthetics of Terror’, Public Culture, 10 (1): 24 – 60. Ferguson, J., 1990, The Anti-Politics Machine, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Foucault, M., 1997, Il faut de´fendre la socie´te´. Cours au Colle`ge de France 1975– 1976, Paris: Seuil et Gallimard. ——, 2004, Se´curite´, territoire et population. Cours au Colle`ge de France 1977– 1978, Paris: Seuil et Gallimard. Gros, F., 2006, E´tats de violence. Essai sur la fin de la guerre, Paris: Gallimard. Hardt, M. and A. Negri, 2000, Empire, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Hauser, P., 2009, ‘Des usages policiers et “moraux” de la crise’, Lignes, 30: 11 – 24. Hobart, M., 1993, An Anthropological Critique of Development, London: Routledge. Ignatieff, M., 2003, Empire Lite: Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, Toronto: Penguin. Independent International Commission on Kosovo, 2000, The Kosovo Report: Conflict, International Response, Lessons Learned, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jean, C. and G. Dottori, 2012, Guerre umanitarie. La militarizzazione dei diritti umani, Milan: Dalai. Kouchner, B., 1991, Le malheur des autres, Paris: Odile Jacob. Kouchner, B. and M. Battati, 1987, Le devoir d’inge´rence. Peut-on les laisser mourir?, Paris: Denoe¨l. McFalls, L., 2012, ‘Post-Liberalism’, Academic Foresights, http://www.academic-foresights.com/ Post-Liberalism.html. ——, 2014, ‘Parrhesia and Therapeusis: Foucault on and in the World of Contemporary Neoliberalism’ in Foucault Now, J. Faubion, ed., London: Polity. ——, forthcoming, ‘The Enemy Live: A Genealogy’ in The New Interventionism. Perspectives on War-police Assemblages, C. Bell et al., eds, London: Routledge. McFalls, L. and M. Pandolfi, 2009, ‘Intervention as Therapeutic Order’, Antropologia Medica, 27/28: 91 – 112.

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Malkki, L., 1995, ‘Refugees and Exile: From “Refugee Studies” to the National Order of Things’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 24: 495– 523. ——, 2002, ‘Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and Dehistoricization’ in Genocide: An Anthropological Reader, A.L. Hinton, ed., Malden: Blackwell. Mini, F., 2003, La guerra dopo la guerra. Soldati, burocrati e mercenari nell’epoca della pace virtuale, Turin: Einaudi. Moore, J., ed., 1998, Hard Choices: Moral Dilemmas in Humanitarian Intervention, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Orford, A., 2003, Reading Humanitarian Intervention: Human Rights and the Use of Force in International Law, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ——, 2013, ‘Moral Internationalism and the Responsibility to Protect’, The European Journal of International Law, 24(1): 83 – 108. Pandolfi, M., 2000, ‘Une souverainete´ mouvante et supracoloniale’, Multitudes, 3: 97 – 105. ——, 2003, ‘Contract of Mutual (In)Difference: Government and the Humanitarian Apparatus in Contemporary Albania and Kosovo’, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 10(1): 369– 81. ——, 2006, ‘La zone grise des guerres humanitaires’, Anthropologica, 48(1): 43 –58. ——, 2008, ‘The´aˆtre de guerres: passions politiques et violences’, Anthropologie et Socie´te´s, 32(3): 99 – 119. ——, 2011, ‘Humanitarianism and Its Discontents’ in Forces of Compassion Between Politics and Ethics: The Anthropology of Global Humanitarianism, E. Bornstein and P. Redfield, eds, New Mexico: School for Advanced Research Press. Pandolfi, M. and M. Abe´le`s, 2002, ‘Pre´sentation: Politique et jeux d’espace’, Anthropologie et Socie´te´s, 26(1): 5 –9. Pandolfi, M. and A. Corbet, 2011, ‘De l’humanitaire imparfait’, Ethnologie francaise, 41(3): 465– 72. Pandolfi, M. and P. Rousseau, 2010, ‘Minerva in guerra. Note sulle scienze sociali embedded’, Etnografia e ricerca qualitativa, 2: 193– 216. Raich, J., 2004, El espejismo humanitario, Madrid: Debate. Rancie`re, J., 2005, Chroniques des temps consensuels, Paris: Seuil. Rieff, D., 2003, A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis, New York: Simon & Schuster. Rufin, J.C., 1999a, ‘Les humanitaires et la guerre du Kosovo’, Le De´bat, 105: 3 – 27. ——, 1999b, ‘Pour l’humanitaire: De´passer le sentiment d’E´chec’, Le De´bat, 105: 4 – 21. Scheper-Hughes, N., 1995, ‘The Primacy of the Ethical: Propositions for a Militant Anthropology’, Current Anthropology, 36(3): 409– 20. Stiglitz, J., 2002, Globalization and Its Discontents, New York: W.W. Norton. Ticktin, M., 2011, Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Warner, M., 2005, Publics and Counterpublics, New York: Zone Books. Yala, A., 2005, Volontaire en ONG: l’aventure ambigue¨, Paris: Charles Le´opold Mayer. Zarifian, P., 2003, ‘Pourquoi ce nouveau re´gime de guerre?’, Multitudes, 11: 11 – 24. Zˇizˇek, S., 2001, On Belief, London: Routledge. ——, 2004, ‘Against an Ideology of Human Rights’ in Displacement, Asylum, Migration, K. Tunstall, ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zolo, D., 2000, Chi dice umanita`. Guerra, diritto e ordine globale, Torino: Einaudi.

CHAPTER 3 HUMANITARIANISM AS PRETEXT DEFINING WHAT IS MORAL AND JUST Laura Nader and Robin Savinar

Introduction In an article on ‘The Rise of Modern Humanitarianism’ Maurice Parmelee outlined ‘a strange anomaly’: ‘The peoples of modern civilized nations are displaying much concern over the welfare of the poor and yet with the utmost readiness rush into wars with each other which cause untold suffering and loss of life’ (1915: 345). Noting that humanitarianism had expanded over the course of social evolution he searched for the causes of the ‘great modern humanitarian movement’ (1915: 347) as well as its sudden rise. Some thinkers, he noted, attributed this rise to human biological evolution, an idea that Parmelee himself eschewed. More likely, he said, such a movement was due to religion, and in particular Christianity. He then argued against this causative, however, by noting that Christianity had been a force both for and against humanitarianism, before moving on to seek an explanation for the rise of humanitarianism in the Renaissance, the industrial revolution, and the extension of explorations to all parts of the world. Such exploration, he noted, resulted in increased interdependence in the world thus making concern for others more evidently a matter of self-interest. What follows, along with the observation that humans everywhere share similarities, is that the interests of industry, commerce and science fit with European expansions. Thus, Parmelee speculated, the desire for individuals and social groups to become as alike as possible resulted from the development of a universal world culture, a product of social evolution.

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In conclusion, Parmelee spoke to double-edged or bifurcated actions by distinguishing between different types of concern for others: almsgiving (a result of emotion), charity (arising from sentimental motives), and finally social movements for social justice, movements intended to benefit all of mankind. This was in 1915, before World War I. Whatever the accomplishments of the presumed rise of modern humanitarianism discussed by Parmelee, it was not long after World War I that World War II came along, inspiring the movement for a world order in the form of the United Nations (UN), followed thereafter by the human rights movement. The 1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights emerges as a marker in the history of the human community. Its importance lay in the coordinated attempt of delegates from Western, Communist, and ThirdWorld nations to find agreement as to what constituted human rights. Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the UN Human Rights Commission’s drawing up of a declaration acceptable to all religions, ideologies and cultures. Nevertheless the issue of human rights as part of a Western and mainly American hegemonic movement was felt even in 1948. The US Department of State orchestrated the early drafts; the crucial meetings took place in the United States, and even the goal itself – crafting an International Bill of Rights – had an undeniably American flavour of knowing what was best for others, thereby raising issues of Western positional superiority, and later engendering commentary on the resulting asymmetry of Americans taking human rights to others while not looking in the mirror at themselves.

Defining what is moral and just By the end of the twentieth century, understanding of the ‘strange anomaly’ raised by Parmelee in 1915 had not progressed as speedily as the spread of modern humanitarianism, at least not in the English-speaking world. In his 1997 work Famine Crimes: Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa, Alex de Waal launched a stinging critique based on then-emerging observations and put forward a theory of humanitarianism in the modern world (see also Colson 1982; Harrell-Bond, Voutira and Leopold 1992; and more recently Barnett 2011). He focused on humanitarian international – the elite relief workers including civil servants, academics, journalists, politicians and others who function as obstacles rather than aid to solving famine in Africa. He tracked the role of African governments and armed movements, Western governments and international finance institutions, humanitarian agencies and the mass media, in an attempt to figure out what was going on that had resulted in the failure to achieve solutions, in this case to African famines.

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He addressed the paradox of more humanitarian aid resulting in more intractable crises, and the oddity of humanitarian international’s ability to apparently absorb criticism, while simultaneously not changing tactics, yet emerging stronger than ever in the media, fundraising campaigns and so on, with the ultimate outcome of enhancing humanitarian discourse at the expense of those suffering famine. In other words, de Waal took a wide-angle perspective to push analysis beyond polemic. He did not want to discredit humanitarian acts but recognized that unremedied human suffering is scandalous. Furthermore, he suggested that human rights abuses are part and parcel of famine creation, as is politics. Humanitarianism that is professionalized, privatized and institutionalized excludes those who suffer from permanent solutions: ‘A humanitarianism that sets itself against or above politics is futile. Rather we should seek a form of politics that transforms humanitarianism’ (de Waal 1997: 6). De Waal’s work also included the people suffering famine and the methods they use to survive famine as well as the knowledge that they can deploy in trying to rebuild their lives afterwards. He reminded us that foreign oversimplification of the very idea of famine is part of the problem, identifying different kinds of famine such as when famine causes mortalities over and above deaths from diseases such as diarrhoea, population movements, poor sanitation and lack of clean water. In so doing, he underlined the need to prioritize prevention, public health, livestock health, seed, food aid and respect for rural people’s knowledge. In his view, humanitarianism that only targets food aid in both national and international aid interventions, will not only miss out on the complex ingredients of effective aid, but lead to sensationalized journalism directing us away from accounts of the multiple causes of famines. His was a critique of the relief industry more generally, that directs us to the obvious truth of the politics involved at every level – local, national, and international. Each context is different; thus no attempt at problem solving can be formulaic. For de Waal and others, philanthropic imperialism must be recognized as part of the internationalization of relief efforts. Western governments are often more interested in managing famines and refugee crises than in solving them. De Waal pushed this notion further by declaring that the UN Security Council should stop ‘bestowing impunity on international forces and humanitarians’ (de Waal 1997: 215), particularly in relation to demands for the repayment of debt, the manipulation of world markets for agricultural goods and the aggressive sale of armaments. Sometimes it is better to do nothing. De Waal pointed to the decline of political accountability in relation to structural adjustment, the lack of transparency

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and the proneness of humanitarian international to create delusions and illusions: in sum, de Waal’s agenda was that of a pragmatist. Building on de Waal’s experience with philanthropic imperialism, in this chapter we introduce a few recent examples of how, under the guise of selflessness, humanitarianism is mainly used by Western powers as a pretext, taking note of the critiques this generates, before responding to Maurice Parmelee’s only partially answered questions about the different types of concern for others and the reasons for them.

The Libyan Spring ‘Libya is the first country that the Euro-American consortium has invaded exclusively on the pretext of human rights violations’, notes Aijaz Ahmad in ‘Libya Recolonised’ (2011: 1). Invoking the ‘responsibility to protect’ resolution of the United Nations Security Council inserted into the duties of the UN 2005, more than 40,000 NATO bombings in Libya during March 2011 were justified as human rights interventions. Ahmad argues that such human rights interventionism was and still is used to justify imperialist goals. For Ahmad and others imperialist interventionism is in direct violation of state sovereignty and ‘in pursuit of the interests of those who intervene’. Oil is the jewel in the crown of Libya’s natural resources. Ahmad continues, ‘dismantling of the welfare state and privatization, and corporatization of the national assets – is in fact the filthy underbelly of this human rights imperialism’ (2011: 3). The author convincingly argues that if human rights were the issue, Saudi Arabia and the Israeli occupation of Palestine would be logical targets. He goes on that there was no inherent genocide in Libya. It was a ‘civil war’ between government troops and armed insurrectionists. Furthermore, Ahmad claims that the war in Libya caused the loss of life of at least 50,000 people, with France’s Sarkozy justifying it as a project of civilization – a civilizing mission – the ‘reconquest’ of North Africa. This broad-brush analysis is in contrast with the messages Americans were hearing on radio and television. In another analysis of the ‘Libyan Revolution’, Hugh Roberts writing for The London Review of Books begins with the following: So Gaddafi is dead and NATO has fought a war in North Africa for the first time since the FLN defeated France in 1962 [. . .] In contrast to the bloodless coup of 1 September 1969 that overthrew King Idris and brought Gaddafi and his colleagues to power, the combined rebellion/ civil war/NATO bombing campaign to protect civilians has occasioned several thousand (5000? 10000? 25000?) deaths, many thousands of

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injured and hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, as well as massive damage to infrastructure. (2011: 1) ‘The Libyan drama is an addition to the list of Western or Western-backed wars against hostile, “defiant”, insufficiently “compliant”, or “rogue” regimes’ (2011: 1). The Libyan story, according to Roberts, is less a straightforward story about oil than it is about Gaddafi’s attempts to establish links with other Arab nations as part of a Pan-Arabist future – first with Nasser’s Egypt, followed by a break when Sadat came into power with his open door policy, a policy that was most certainly neither Nasserite nor socialist. Then in the 1970s Gaddafi turned his attention west to Tunisia and later to Algeria. But given the vicissitudes caused by history and transition in each of these countries, he finally gave up on the Arab nations and turned his attention to Africa, while maintaining Nasser’s socialist model of the distributive state. Why is there an analytical turn to Africa on Roberts’ part? He and others want to understand why, despite having mended the fences with Washington and London in 2003– 4 and connecting in a friendly manner with Paris and Rome, Gaddafi was vulnerable to military intervention. What was the pretext for humanitarian intervention if it was about more than oil and other natural resources? Cultural reconquest of North African colonies? In a way, Roberts’ piece may be read as the life history of a pretext, especially when he and Ahmad move the lens to Africa. Roberts points out that all the North African states have had African policies, but what distinguished Gaddafi’s Libya was the monied investment in African countries and his vision of Libya’s mission to unite Africa. Gaddafi’s African policy, following on his earlier failed attempts to connect with Arab countries, benefitted both Libya and Africa. Not surprisingly the African Union was opposed to the NATO intervention and attempted to negotiate between the government and the rebels as well as calling for a ceasefire, while the Arab League’s resolution supported the no-fly zone invoked by London, Paris and Washington. Meanwhile the majority of Libyans were more interested in their Arab counterparts than in the African Union countries; they did not support Gaddafi’s African policy, wishing instead to emulate the Gulf Arabs. This ‘Gulf envy’ position made Gaddafi vulnerable in spite of his firm attachment to an idea of governance that lasted 34 years while benefitting the people with high standards of healthcare, an 88 per cent literacy rate and occupational promotion for women – in other words, a distributive state, authoritarian though it was. The story of the African Union versus ‘The International Community’ was seminal in Ahmad’s piece for Frontline (2011: 6 – 7). In a letter to the Security

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Council the African Union spelled out their position on the Libyan crises of 15 June 2011. Ahmad provides us with some key quotes regarding state sovereignty: Fighting between government troops and armed insurrectionists is not genocide. It is civil war [. . .] It is wrong to characterize every violence as genocide or imminent genocide so as to use it as a pretext for the undermining of the sovereignty of states [. . .] The UN should not take sides in a civil war. The UN should promote dialogue. And what right does NATO or the Security Council have to represent themselves as the international community? (2011: 7) Ahmad concludes by expanding the focus from Libya to Africa as a whole. The military operation in Libya was a highly successful experiment as an assault coordinated between the US Command for the control of Africa (AFRICOM) and its European partners. Ahmad quotes Paul Craig Roberts, a former Under Secretary of State for Treasury under President Ronald Reagan: ‘With Libya conquered, AFRICOM will start on the other African countries where China has energy and mineral investments [. . .] Whereas China brings Africa investment and gift of infrastructure, Washington sends troops, bombs and military bases’ (Ahmad 2011: 10). Ahmad calls this redeployment ‘the tip of an oncoming iceberg’, aimed to protect energy supplies in Africa that are needed by the West while also deny these resources to China who currently gets most of its African oil from Sudan and Angola. When China evacuated its personnel from Libya, it complained that NATO had changed the UN Resolution ‘from protecting civilians to regime change’. Hugh Roberts, who was working with the International Crisis group in Cairo, is in agreement with many of the points raised by Ahmad, adding to the story the processes through which Gaddafi was demonized in order to facilitate an intervention he himself had referred to as ‘histrionic rubbish’. Roberts’ conclusion? ‘The intervention tarnished every one of the principles the war party invoked to justify it. It occasioned the deaths of thousands of civilians, debased the idea of democracy, debased the idea of law and passed off a counterfeit revolution as the real thing’ (2011: 22).

Palestine: the refugees, the colonized and the prisoners Palestinians first became a problem for humanitarian relief organizations as a direct consequence of the colonial policies of a Zionist settler state,

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Israel. The creation of a Jewish state produced thousands of Palestinian refugees located both inside the pre-Israeli Palestinian territories and in the Arabic-speaking countries, mainly Jordan, Syria, Egypt. Secondly, the colonized people in the Palestinian West Bank had ‘settler communities’ in their midst and, thirdly, Gaza was the – Israeli-created – largest open-air human prison in the world. These three situations have invoked different ‘humanitarian’ solutions. The intertwining of humanitarianism, politics and ideology becomes clear in the history of Syria’s Palestinian refugee camps. Nell Gabiam conducted several years of anthropological fieldwork in Palestinian refugee camps in Yarmouk and camps in northern Syria between 2004 and 2006. She returned for a visit in summer 2009. In her ensuing article (Gabiam 2012), she discusses her study of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency’s (UNRWA) provision of relief and basic services, also noting that since 2000 the Palestinian camps in the north, Ein el Tal and Neirab, have been the target of a new policy, as relief has shifted towards development. She reports that by 2009, 300 Palestinian families had been moved from the World War II army barracks in which they were staying to new UNRWA-built homes in the camp of Ein el Tal. This development project has been controversial in relation to Palestinians’ right of return to their Palestinian homeland. Because Palestinian refugees as a collective have always insisted on their right of return to their former homes, they perceive relief-centred humanitarian aid as positive proof of international responsibility to find a political solution to their dilemma. If they become ‘developed’ and thereby self-reliant, such development could become an alternative to the political solution they seek. The transgenerational discourse of return analysed by Gabiam speaks to their future from their past. Until recently, the Syrian government officially opposed the permanent resettlement of Palestinian refugees on Syrian territory insisting that any alternative to return was not acceptable. In Gabiam’s summary, she points out that ‘development’ is not entirely new to UNRWA: ‘What is different today is UNRWA’s open embrace of “development” as an ideology and UNRWA’s attempt to frame its relationship with Palestinian refugees through this ideology’ (2012: 98). From the Palestinian refugee side, the trend towards development generates both distrust and attachment towards the agency. Their political parties became major players in running charities and social programmes. The difference between giver and receiver was made clear by the recent Commissioner General Filippo Gradi who stated that there was a separation between politics and services provided by UNRWA, given that UNRWA does not have the power to

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bring about Palestinian unity and the contiguity of the West Bank and Gaza; an end to the occupation; a negotiated conclusion of the Israeli– Palestinian conflict; the establishment of a viable State of Palestine; and the realization of a just and lasting solution to refugees’ plight. (Gabiam 2012: 99) Two ideologies, one apolitical and the other political. For the Palestinians the purpose of aid was proof of one’s identity as a refugee, of a historic injustice. From the point of view of global humanitarian development in the twentieth century, efforts to save lives or care for those in suffering have become a substitute for political action; for the locals at the least humanitarians act as witnesses. In summarizing, Gabiam observes that ‘humanitarianism can now be understood to include a whole range of activities including development, human rights, democracy promotion, gender equality, peace building and even military intervention’ (2012: 102), much of which can be best understood in terms of Western modernity and its idea of progress. During her 2009 visit to Syrian camps in which residents were moving to newly-built UNRWA houses, Gabiam describes the painting of a giant mural on the side of one of the houses – a group of fleeing refugees, a Palestinian woman in traditional dress hugging an olive tree, a hand holding what seems to be a land deed with the words ‘not for sale’ stamped on it, the Dome of the Rock shrine in Jerusalem, and a young girl with ‘Palestine’ written on her headband holding a stone in her raised fist, and the words ‘Return is a Right’. The West Bank is a different situation if we exclude refugee camps such as Jenin. Twenty-two per cent of historic Palestine is Occupied Territory. Israeli leaders claim that this historic land is owned by Jews, thus justifying the annexation of Palestinian lands through outright plunder, and through the establishment of settlements that imprison the Palestinians in small, resource-poor areas. The permanency of these settlers is ‘legitimized’ not only by Israel but also by the US government. Israel has been rated ‘the most militarized nation in the world’ by the Global Military Index, a power through which Israel has been able to maintain lack of continuity between the West Bank and Gaza and even within the West Bank. Israeli control operates through checkpoints, the Wall, surveillance and other technologies of suppression. President Carter’s 2006 book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid brought the Bantustan aspects of Israeli occupation into the open: a colonial military rule in the Occupied Territories thought by some to be worse than the apartheid regime in South Africa. But the role of humanitarianism is not

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even listed in places looking for solutions. Rather in response to the Israeli challenge to the international rule of law and human rights there are calls to boycott, divest, sanction, in addition to flotillas to Gaza. In Gaza, there is no charade of a peace process. It is all about israeli war criminals, and Gazan missiles, and even discussion of the negative consequences of identifying Gaza as a humanitarian problem. Ilana Feldman (2009) writes about humanitarianism as a problem for Gaza given that wellintentioned interventions can have unintended political effects. She argues that viewing Gaza as a humanitarian problem derails the struggle for statehood. Once again we have a story of humanitarian agencies heavily dependent on donations from governments, foundations and individuals based on the ‘transforming of emotions into donations’ (Feldman 2009: 25). Aid agencies may not have political power, but their political impact is clear. In 1950, the relief agency UNRWA was created to help Palestinians who had been displaced by the creation of the state of Israel. In Gaza today new categories – ‘native’ and ‘refugee’ – are used to refer to those who were displaced, and only the displaced are to receive UN aid. Unlike Haiti and the earthquake disaster of 2010, what has happened in Palestine is a manmade disaster, the result of war and military assaults. One informant told Feldman ‘Western imperialism made us beggars’ (2009: 28). Isolation is the direct result of Israeli policies, with no penalty imposed for the wreaking of short- or long-term destruction. Contrast UN complicity and humanitarianism with the Free Gaza Movement that has sailed several times since 2008 from Cyprus to the Gaza Strip with international witnesses to see the devastating effects of Israeli violence. Those on board represent a variety of nationalities – Irish, Italian, Greek, Canadian, Tunisian, German, Australian, American, Scottish and Israeli. Their intent is to break the siege on Gaza which was intensified after the democratic election of the Hamas party in 2007. They do so by means of non-violent civil resistance and direct action. While Israel stopped activist ships from entering Gaza, even boarding a Turkish-based ship and killing eight Turkish citizens and one Turkish American, a UN panel still found the Israeli blockage legal under international law as a measure of self-defence. International humanitarian law constructed a different view of the visitors, human rights observers, journalists, humanitarian aid workers and others aboard the flotillas. The Free Gaza mission was clear: ‘The lawful inhabitants of all territories occupied by Israel since June 5, 1967 should be free of occupation and have the right to control all entry and exit to and from those territories without Israeli interference’ (http://www.freegaza.org/en/our-missi on.html).

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The Free Gaza Movement is not a humanitarian organization. It is not an industry of elite managers who know what is best for humanitarian aid. It represents world citizens who have a sense of right and wrong they believe to be compatible with the right of Gazans to control entry and exit from their land without Israeli control. And it might be added, the Free Gaza citizens have ‘skin in the game’ to use Nassim Taleb’s phrase: they risk their lives and wellbeing on the basis of their principles (Taleb 2012).

Haiti: The 2010 earthquake and NGO aftershocks The humanitarian response to the 12 January 2010 earthquake in Haiti that killed more than 220,000 people provides several examples of de Waal’s contention that humanitarian action is political action. Specifically, humanitarianism provides a political alibi for Western entities to intrude into other societies for purposes such as fundraising, missionizing, corporate philanthropy as marketing, as in the case of the Monsanto seed donations. In discussing the ‘competitive humanitarian’, anthropologist Jock Stirrat (2006) states that ‘disasters become opportunities for [relief] agencies to stake a claim to continuing or new effectiveness’. Accordingly, after disasters non-governmental organizations (NGO) and military aid groups divvy up and claim relief duties, jockeying to be perceived as the most successful – regardless of whether or not their tactics are effectual. Here, according to Stirrat, humanitarian responses and subsequent progress reports are designed to further the reputation of relief organizations by accumulating success stories. An article in The Nation summarized Haiti after the earthquake in its title, ‘The NGO Republic of Haiti’: Shortly after the earthquake, Log Base became the nerve center of the international recovery effort, the place where aid organizations could coordinate reconstruction strategies [. . .] Few Haitians can cross from one side of the compound’s walls to the other [. . .] most meetings are held in English, not Creole or even French. When a steering committee for NGO coordination was held in July 2010 at Log Base, sixty international organizations case their votes, but since there were no local NGOs present, Haitians were not represented. (Klarreich and Polman 2012: 11) The earthquake response effort provided significant relief to Haitians and reports highlighting its accomplishments are readily available. In 2011,

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UNICEF had rehabilitated 636 schools and the World Food Programme was providing a daily hot meal to 1.1 million schoolchildren (Report of the United Nations in Haiti 2011: 40). The same year Oxfam distributed thousands of water filters, and rehabilitated water pumps, dug wells and built latrines benefitting thousands more (Oxfam America 2012). But relief agencies also brought cases of UN peacekeeping troops sexually abusing Haitian teenagers; the deaths of thousands of Haitians due to a cholera outbreak that originated in a UN camp (Wells 2011); and, lumbering reconstruction that still trails behind the demand for housing. Further, there were questions about mismanagement of funds, whether aid matched the needs of the people, and to what extent Haitians had participated in planning/implementing the response and aftermath. Scandals like these are egg on the face of relief agencies that must demonstrate their ability as humanitarian actors in order to remain competitive and financially viable. In a Toronto Star report, Jennifer Wells (2011) notes that Dr Paul Farmer – the renowned anthropologist/physician who had tremendous success in Haiti in establishing community hospitals and who speaks fluent Creole – was affected by such public relations pressures. In 2011, Farmer, who was appointed UN Deputy Special Envoy for Haiti under former United States President Bill Clinton, published a book called Haiti after the Earthquake. Instead of the angry, humanist, straight-shooting tone that Farmer struck in earlier writings, Wells says that in Haiti after the Earthquake Farmer comes off as unexpectedly ‘meek’ and ‘feeble’. His anger is gone and his hard-hitting critiques have morphed into suggestions for prudent action. Wells implies that Farmer’s service as Deputy Special Envoy tempered his assessment of the humanitarian response in Haiti. After all, it was the Clinton Foundation that installed trailers as Haitian classrooms in which temperatures topped 1008F (388C), causing headaches among schoolchildren. But the UN and Clinton are not the only forces that may have influenced Farmer’s tone. Wells also faults Public Affairs, Farmer’s publisher, for wanting a product that ‘reads like an anniversary book’. The Haitian government is also complicit in picking humanitarian projects that maximize ‘measureable outcomes’, generate positive media spin, and aim to enhance the reputation and fundraising of relief agencies. On the six-month anniversary of the earthquake, Clinton and Haitian President Rene´ Pre´val observed the occasion in a ceremony at the National Palace in Port-auPrince. A food distribution operation was set up across the street, which some surmised was part of the media event. Haitians who spoke with the Christian Science Monitor that day remarked that they felt abandoned by their

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government, that they were kept in the dark, and that little progress had been made in the way of jobs and shelter. With regard to the food distribution operation one Haitian remarked, ‘Thank God today is a special day, they gave us food and even clothes. But they don’t usually do that, and I don’t think they will be there tomorrow’ (Speri and Miller Llana 2010). Development and modernization philosophies underpin humanitarian policy in many parts of the world. Concerning military humanitarianism in Bosnia and Africa, Mark Duffield wrote, ‘internationally-managed relief programs are asked to incorporate institution-building measures [into their work] with the intention of handing them over to indigenous structures’ (1994: 17). In many cases, the transition of power never occurs, or only partially occurs, so international NGOs end up controlling basic welfare functions. These groups use their claim to political neutrality to justify ongoing control over public programmes, sapping the state’s authority and capacity to carry out such provisions (1994: 17). In Haiti, which has been the site of Western interventions for decades, the earthquake provides extra cover to expand the mix of aid and subordination that has characterized development and modernization actions there. In remarks made a month after the earthquake, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, ‘our challenge today is [. . .] to help Haitians build back better. Done right, we can turn tragedy into opportunity; an opportunity to “re-invent Haiti”, as President Clinton has put it’ (2010). The Haitian people are in need, but they are angry about being sidelined in the aid process, about the inadequacy of the relief campaign, and about the conditions they must accept in order to receive assistance. Nearly three years after the earthquake, many international agencies were still providing public welfare services (Klarreich and Polman 2012). Only time will tell whether international relief efforts will build a more self-sufficient Haiti, but for now a precedent of disregarding Haitian sovereignty has been set, and in one of the most sensational instances by an American Christian ministry. The New Life Children’s Refuge (NLCR) is an Idaho-based group dedicated to ‘rescuing, loving and caring for orphaned, abandoned and impoverished Haitian and Dominican children’ (Thompson 2010). After the earthquake, ten Americans working with NLCR were arrested at the border of the Dominican Republic for human trafficking. They were travelling with 33 Haitian children to bring them into the Dominican Republic. The Americans say their intentions were good; they meant to save the children by bringing them to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic. But the children did not have travel documents, and at least one child who was not an orphan was

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under the impression that her mother had sent her on a short vacation. Laura Silsby, who was one of those arrested, said, ‘we intended to raise those children and be with them their entire lives, if necessary. We wanted to give them lives of joy and dignity in God’s love’ (Thompson 2010). Missionary work has long been predicated on humanitarian relief. What was unique about the NLCR case was the blatant disregard for Haitian law and for the posture of moral superiority assumed by NLCR. Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive decried NLCR’s unconcern for the autonomy of the Haitian state and laws, while Frantz Thermilus of the Central Directorate of Judicial Police balked at their presumptuousness (Thompson 2010). What would NCLR think of a foreign organization swooping into Idaho to rescue their children by carrying them away across the border? Haitians were also concerned that the children might end up in illegal adoptions, prostitution or slavery (Thompson 2010). NCLR aimed to facilitate adoptions of rescued children by Christian parents in the United States (NLCR Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission). Other groups such as the Canadian Catholic charity Hearts Together for Haiti provided humanitarian aid while pursuing strategies to match Haitians with Canadian families. Indeed many Haitians were looking for a way to emigrate to escape the destruction after the earthquake (LaFranchi 2010), but the charities’ opportunistic disregard for Haitian legal institutions and the moral hubris of their mission continues a legacy of subjugation through beneficence. Multinational corporations played a major role in raising money and providing donations of goods following the earthquake. By one account, corporations gave more than US$ 146.8 million (US Chamber of Commerce Foundation 2010) in the first month following the earthquake. The case of private corporations may be the most transparent illustration of the often self-interested nature of humanitarian acts and actors. An entire literature has developed around the contradictions of corporate philanthropy. The subjects of just one CNNMoney.com article about the top corporate donors to Haiti provide much fodder. Three of these top corporate donors are pharmaceutical companies – Teva Pharmaceuticals1 gave US$ 7 million; Becton, Dickinson and Co. donated US$ 6.5 million; and, Abbott Labs contributed US$ 5 million. Much of the donations consisted of drugs and medical supplies (Censky 2010). Their gifts likely saved many lives; however the compassionate glow that such good deeds lend to their corporate brands help obscure the pharmaceutical sector’s more selfish acts. For example, many pharmaceutical companies take advantage of World Trade Organization protections on intellectual property to defend their profits by forbidding poor countries to buy generic-brand drugs. Furthermore, to protect their

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prices some pharmaceutical companies prefer that charities buy their drugs at the full price and then donate them, instead of offering discounted drugs to poor countries. Two investment banks also made the list of top corporate donors: Jeffries & Co. and Deutsche Bank AG. They raised US$ 6.5 million and US$ 4.9 million respectively. And both corporations pursued the same giving strategy. They donated the proceeds of one day’s worth of commission fees (which they publicized to their investors), and matched their employees’ donations. But by offering the commission fees as a model of philanthropy the banks distance themselves from submitting to a regular financial transaction tax, a demand that has resurfaced in the shadow of the 2008 global economic downturn. Such a tax would generate revenues that could be donated following disasters. Other top donors used fundraising tactics that were more overtly for publicity. An executive at mobile telecom provider Digicel shaved his head to raise US$ 10,000 and another waxed his chest to collect US$ 2,000. Stunts like these reek of self-promotion, especially when they raise such paltry sums. Further, Digicel was joined by Carnival Cruise Lines among corporations that launched campaigns to get their customers to donate (Censky 2010). In this marketing ploy, corporations temporarily become philanthropic organizations, getting their customers to give the sums that are later attached to their brand names. Coming in at US$ 4 million in donations, agriculture giant Monsanto Company was not the largest corporate donor, but may be the one who sparked off the most negative reaction. In May 2010, Monsanto donated 475 tons of hybrid corn and vegetable seeds to Haiti for distribution in partnership with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Hybrid seeds are manually cross-pollinated. They produce larger yields than conventional seeds but they have to be repurchased every year (Katz 2010). Monsanto executives said they selected seeds that would be best suited to Haiti’s conditions; however, thousands of Haitian farmers responded by participating in a demonstration in which they burned thousands of donated Monsanto seed sacks. In May 2010, Jean-Baptiste Chavannes of the Peasant Movement of Papay sent an open letter that called Monsanto’s presence in Haiti, ‘a very strong attack on small agriculture, on farmers, on biodiversity, on Creole seeds [. . .] and on what is left of our environment in Haiti’ (Greenhalgh 2010). Many Haitian groups opposed the seeds because it would make Haitian farmers dependent on Monsanto, requiring them to buy new seeds every year, decreasing Haiti’s food sovereignty. Elizabeth Vancil, Monsanto’s develop-

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ment partnership director, told Associated Press reporter Jonathan Katz, ‘What we’re really focused on now [is. . .] trying to help during this current crisis. Doing future business in Haiti would be good, but it’s not a requirement by any means’ (Katz 2010). ‘The Humanitarians’ in the case of Haiti were, in addition to Monsanto, cruise lines, mobile telecommunications companies, investment banks, pharmaceutical corporations and religious organizations, not to mention governments who donated much that never saw the light of day.

Joseph Kony and the White Saviour industrial complex In March 2012, the California-based non-profit organization Invisible Children released a 30-minute internet video2 that was one of the most viral films of the year. Within a week nearly 50 million people (Shaughnessy 2012) had seen it, and as of the writing of this chapter the YouTube count topped 100 million. The film describes the atrocities committed by Ugandan-born warlord Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). These include abducting children and enlisting them as soldiers and sex slaves, as well as disfiguring and murdering civilians. The film was an appeal to young people around the world to help increase the visibility of Kony’s crimes, to donate money and time to rescue Ugandan children, and most of all, to bring Joseph Kony to justice before the International Criminal Court (ICC). Invisible Children had been working in Uganda for nearly ten years but the buzz around their internet video thrust them into the limelight. The film, Kony 2012, was the cornerstone of a public awareness campaign that used a political propaganda motif featuring a Shepard Fairey-like rendering of Kony. The primary goal of the campaign was to capture Kony by the end of the year. According to the logic of the film, the reason Kony was still terrorizing Africans was because the public was not aware of what he was doing. So Invisible Children’s strategy was to use social media to make Kony’s misdeeds known to people everywhere who could put pressure on the United States to undertake political and military intervention. The mass viewing of the video was heralded as a success. Traditional humanitarian aid organizations had been working on this issue for decades and had not been able to garner mass appeal, especially not among teens and college students. Invisible Children counts among its successes the fact that in 2011 President Barack Obama sent 100 US Special Forces to Africa to train local militaries in communications and intelligence gathering supposedly to aid in the capture of Kony (Moore 2012; Kramer 2012). Also, in the US House of Representatives, Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Ed Royce

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(R-CA) introduced a Congressional resolution, H.Res. 583, to support the United States’ efforts to counter the Lord’s Resistance Army (US House of Representatives 2012). But as the clock struck midnight on 31 December 2012, Kony was still at large. Perhaps this did not matter that much given that, as with most things in the social media sphere, the buzz over the video had flamed out almost as quickly as it had ignited (Fowler, Orden and Bariyo 2012). Nevertheless, the film was the subject of significant and pointed criticism from Ugandan officials, Kony’s victims and African writers and intellectuals. Many were troubled by the simplistic, ahistorical manner in which the political situation in Uganda was presented (Goodman 2012). Some parts of the film are misleading, for example suggesting that the Kony rebels number thousands and that they are still quite active in Uganda. ‘The Kony 2012 campaign fails to make one crucial point clear. Joseph Kony is not in Uganda’, said Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi. The Ugandan government ‘does not need a slick video on YouTube to take notice of the war’ (Kamukama 2012). Following a public screening of Kony 2012 in Lira, a town greatly affected by Kony’s rebels, people in the crowd of 35,000 jeered and threw rocks at the screen. Victor Ochen, Director of African Youth Initiative Network, the group that organized and translated the film for the public screening, said ‘people are still very emotional about Kony. They would rather just be left alone’ (Bariyo and Orden 2012: 7). Ochen, who grew up in the midst of the Lord’s Resistance Army war, called the Kony 2012 campaign offensive and said the tone felt ‘more like a celebration than a condemnation [of the Lord’s Resistance Army]’. He highlighted Invisible Children’s disconnection from the Ugandan people by pointing out that the date they selected for a day-of-action coincided with the anniversary of one of the most brutal Lord’s Resistance Army massacres (Canberra Times 2012). Ugandan activists responded to Kony-mania by confirming that Ugandan children could benefit from international support, but not in the form of a manhunt for Kony. They said Uganda needs help to fight ‘nodding disease’, an illness of unknown origin and with no known cure that has affected thousands of Ugandan children. The illness causes violent seizures that prevent children from eating, resulting in stunted growth, brain atrophy, blindness and other catastrophic consequences (York 2012). On the Kony question, Alex de Waal commented, The problem hasn’t been that Kony isn’t well-known. Compared to [. . .] other rebel groups [. . .] he enjoys by far the highest profile. The

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problem is that he is hard to catch, and that his adversaries have too often colluded in keeping the war going. The Ugandan army had an incentive for keeping the Lord’s Resistance Army alive and kicking – it justified a high defence budget and gave the generals plenty of opportunities for getting rich. (York 2012) De Waal (2010) has emphasized the damage caused by aid organizations that force Western models of state-building and political institutions onto countries whose local politics function through client – patron networks, and principles of loyalty and reward. This level of nuance is beyond many outside humanitarian actors but they still intervene. For example, Luis Moreno Ocampo, Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, who featured in the Kony 2012 video, is said to have derailed peace talks between the Lord’s Resistance Army and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni by stepping into the middle of the process, which had been painstakingly finessed for years by Ugandan mediator Betty Bigombe (Saunders 2012). Beside oversimplifying reality, getting some facts wrong and making hurtful faux pas, the gravest fault of the Kony 2012 campaign is that it perpetuates a model of helping that is rooted in colonialism. Strong critical voices denouncing the campaign have emerged. Foremost among them Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole, who defined Kony 2012 as part of the White Saviour Industrial Complex. One song we hear too often is the one in which Africa serves as a backdrop for white fantasies of conquest and heroism. From the colonial project to Out of Africa to The Constant Gardener and Kony 2012, Africa has provided a space onto which white egos can conveniently be projected. (Cole 2012) Cole calls attention to the extreme hubris with which campaigns like Kony 2012 are carried out on behalf of others, in a way that is reminiscent of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s famous sentence: ‘White men are saving brown women from brown men’ (1994: 93). Spivak’s description of Western human– scientific radicalism as ‘ferocious, standardizing, benevolent’ is fitting, too. Such campaigns mute the voices of their subjects and create a generalized narrative of Africans as helpless victims. As with Jerry Lewisstyle telethons and aid projects in which Westerners can ‘sponsor a child for pennies a day’, Kony 2012 perpetuates stereotypes that make Africans into the Other.

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The video oscillates between infantile – Dinaw Mengestu (2013) called it ‘thirty minutes of child-talk’ – and chic. The film feels like a cross between a dramatic movie preview and a peppy music video. In it, Jason Russell, Cofounder of Invisible Children and the narrator, is prominently featured. Several cameos in the film suggest Russell’s importance – walking briskly in the airport, giving an inspirational speech, wearing trendy clothes on a visit to rural Uganda. The flashiness of the video communicates to viewers that they can help solve the conflict in Uganda, and boost their social cachet while doing so (given that the Ugandans obviously can’t solve their own problems). The actions inspired by Kony 2012 might have been more soberly considered had they been taken by individuals who placed themselves, or their reputations, on the line. Little knowledge or courage is required to ‘like’ a campaign on Facebook. The consequences for jumping on the bandwagon are negligible, and the ‘supporters’ are not likely to keep current on relevant events or stay committed to the cause for long. So, why should we expect a tangible response from such an effort? As campaigns like Kony 2012 satisfy our impulse to help, less popular problems recede into the distance. Perhaps such issues have less traction with do-gooders because they hit too close to home, or because they lack convenient villains. Pointing out the atrocities going on over there may discourage an interrogation of the atrocities going on here. In a critique of advocacy that purports to solve major problems with quick ‘click’ campaigns, Dinaw Mengestu (2013) said, ‘I couldn’t [. . .] offer a solution to any of the conflicts I’ve worked on [for decades], any more than I could explain [. . .] why so many people are [. . .] homeless in America [. . .] or why we don’t have better healthcare.’ It is significant that Mengestu uses examples of problems occurring in the United States. Imagine if a foreign military and non-profit organization, buoyed by the energetic organizing of thousands of foreign youth, intervened in the United States or Western Europe to help us eradicate racism, or to influence an election. It is unlikely that such action would be met with an enthusiastic response. In a move that subverted the usual power dynamic of national governments, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez initiated a programme to provide free heating oil to poor Americans. Chavez meant to communicate that the United States’ government is not willing or able to take care of its own poor citizens. Other offers of help from Venezuela were not accepted by the United States (Campbell 2005). Politicians do not want others meddling in our business yet we have free reign to meddle abroad?

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As de Waal says, it is the self-justifying quality of humanitarianism, and the very genuineness of the motive, that is the root of many of the problems with humanitarian action. De Waal finds that intervention is the antithesis of local accountability, which is the essence of protection against atrocities. The internationalization of responsibility for problems such as the conflict involving the LRA has made it so that ‘any kid anywhere’ can be a stakeholder in any problem in the world. Perhaps we would all benefit if we started with the problems closer to home. This sentiment is summed up in one of Teju Cole’s tweets responding to Kony 2012: ‘Feverish worry over that awful African warlord. But close to 1.5 million Iraqis died from an American war of choice. Worry about that’ (Mackey 2012). But the White Saviour Industrial Complex presses on. In April 2013, the United States Department of State offered a US$ 5 million bounty for information leading to the capture of Kony and two other LRA leaders (Associated Press, 3 April 2013).

Discussion – food for thought In an article on altruism David Graeber (2007) addresses the secret of nobility: ‘To be noble is to be generous, high-minded, altruistic, to pursue higher forms of value.’ Millions of teenagers supporting the Invisible Children Kony 2012 campaign want to do something genuinely noble for their far-away age-mates. The doctor who helps build a hospital in Haiti, or the volunteers for the Gaza flotillas want to do what the United Nations and governments have been unable or who have out right refused to do. United Nations relief organizations want to get food and shelter to fellow humans whether in Palestinian refugee camps or in addressing famine in Africa. Individuals who supported NATO in Libya thought they were helping to avoid genocide, ‘the killing of his own people’. All noble goals but those pursuing them may have leaped before looking: what Alex de Waal (1997) described as oversimplification. What the examples summarized in this chapter illustrate is that oversimplification and inadequate analysis of power holders has serious consequences. Once we include the power holders it becomes clearer that humanitarian-for-profit ideologies take over and become grounds for accusations of imperialist philanthropy. Thus, even with bad press, relief organizations of the sort that swept into Haiti can still enjoy some recognition for the nobility for their work, drowning out realities such as the importation of subsidized United States rice to Haiti that has depressed local farming. The ‘alienated right to do good’ that Graeber speaks of overrides the negative aspects of economic imperialism.

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Furthermore, whether it is Libya, Palestine, Haiti or Uganda, the wouldbe altruists are dealing with those formerly colonized by Euro-American interests. The Libyans, Palestinians, Haitian and Ugandans are not mute: the altruists are often deaf to their analyses and opinions about their own conditions, which is why the earlier cited Nigerian-American novelist (Cole 2012) refers to the Invisible Children campaign as the ‘White Saviour Industrial Complex’ that flanks national involvement in brutal policies in the Iraq war with charities and award ceremonies for good deeds. The Other is crying out about structural adjustment imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), American foreign policies in Africa, the arms deals, lack of support for democratic elections, the economic destruction of Haiti over decades. As Cole notes, ‘Innocent heroes don’t always understand that they play a useful role for people who have much more cynical motives.’ Cole also suggests that ‘[s]uccess for Kony 2012 would mean increased militarization of the anti-democratic Yoweri Museveni government’, as well as pointing out Museveni’s troubling connections as a proxy for the United States in its battles against militants in Sudan and Somalia. Self-interest rules imperialist philanthropy. Alex de Waal’s solution is that ‘we should seek a form of politics that transforms humanitarianism’ (1997: 6), that acknowledges its control and power (Nader 2012). What this necessitates is a different mind-set on the part of those with true concern for the welfare of those in dire need, one that requires a kind of thinking beyond the momentary, short-term attention span, one that crosses borders in both directions, engages partners in both directions and is governed by mutual respect. This cannot happen without dismantling the notion of Western exceptionalism. If ‘humanitarian international’ is a pretext, then it is a hoax: a hoax that works and is self-perpetuating. The first step in transforming humanitarianism is to decolonize our minds, a form of politics that would be transformative. World conditions have quickened interest in understanding the junctures of local and global history in order to locate populations in larger currents and to trace larger currents in local places, thereby identifying the mechanisms by which ideas take hold and become institutional in relation to power. The term ‘controlling processes’ coined by Laura Nader (1997) in her Mintz lecture refers to the transformative nature of key ideas such as notions of humanitarianism which emanate from institutions operating as the dynamic components of power acquisition. In this sense Parmelee had already touched on the controlling processes inherent in humanitarianism 100 years ago when he pointed out that the ‘Rise of Modern Humanitarianism’ was related in part to Christianity, in his context Western Christianity, as well as

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to the spread of European explorations to all parts of the globe. In Parmelee’s context, this global expansion prompted the need for a universal culture, a culture fashioned after European exceptionalism. Such a universal world culture would fit with European expansions, primarily European colonialism or Euro-American imperialism, and the need to justify this through a philosophy-of-salvation mentality. The salvation mentality philosophy becomes an industry pretending to be free of political self-interest. As social scientists have long recognized, control operates most effectively through symbols that appear to be beyond the jurisdiction of formal and social control systems. The controlling processes operating as pretext become deeply internalized and gradually come to seem natural and desirable and culturally more acceptable, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. What may have changed in the 100 years since Parmelee’s essay is the relationship between Euro-Americans and the peoples that have been colonized and neocolonized, a change that enables both Us and the Other to see more clearly when humanitarianism is merely pretext.

Notes 1 Teva Pharmaceuticals is the world’s largest manufacturer of generic drugs. 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v¼Y4MnpzG5Sqc.

Bibliography Ahmad, A., 2011, ‘Libya Recolonized’, Frontline: India’s National Magazine, 28(23): 1 – 12. Associated Press, 2013, U.S. Places $5 Million Bounty on LRA Leader Kony, Top Commanders, 3 April. Bariyo, N. and E. Orden, 2012, ‘Kony’ Screening Inflames Ugandans’, Wall Street Journal, 15 March. Barnett, M., 2011, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Campbell, D., 2005, ‘Bush Rejects Chavez Aid’, Guardian, 6 September. Canberra Times, 2012, ‘Kony Campaign Lights up Controversy’, 22 April. Carter, J.E., 2006, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, New York: Simon & Schuster. Censky, A., 2010, Haiti’s Top Corporate Donors, CNNMoney.com. Cole, T., 2012, ‘The White Savior Industrial Complex’, The Atlantic, 21 March. Colson, E., 1982, Planned Change: The Creation of a New Community, Bernard Moses Memorial Lecture, Institute of International Studies: Regents of the University of California. de Waal, A., 1997, Famine Crimes: Politics & The Disaster Relief Industry in Africa, London: African Rights & the International African Institute; Oxford: in association with James Currey; Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ——, 2010, ‘Dollarised’, The London Review of Books, 32(12): 38 – 41. Duffield, M., 1994, Without Troops and Tanks: The Emergency Relief Desk and Cross Border Operation into Eritrea and Tigray, Lawrenceville: Red Sea Press. Farmer, P., 2011, Haiti after the Earthquake, New York: Public Affairs. Feldman, I., 2009, ‘Gaza’s Humanitarian Problem’, Journal of Palestine Studies, 38(3): 22– 37.

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Fowler, G., Orden, E. and N. Bariyo, 2012, ‘Web Activists Back Rally Against Ugandan Rebel Leader’, Wall Street Journal, 20 April. Free Gaza Movement, http://www.freegaza.org/en/our-mission.html. Gabiam, N., 2012, ‘When “Humanitarianism” Becomes “Development”: The Politics of International Aid in Syria’s Palestinian Refugee Camps’, American Anthropologist, 114(1): 95 – 107. Goodman, J.D., 2012, ‘Backlash Aside, Charities See Lessons in a Web Video’, New York Times, 16 March. Graeber, D., 2007, ‘Army of Altruists. On the Alienated Right to do Good’, Harper’s Magazine, 314: 31 – 8. Greenhalgh, M., 2010, ‘Haitian Farmers Reject Monsanto Donation’, Food Safety News, 7 June. Harrell-Bond, B., Voutira, E. and M. Leopold, 1992, ‘Counting the Refugees: Gifts, Givers, Patrons and Clients’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 5(3/4): 205– 25. Kamukama, P., 2012, ‘Uganda; Kony 2012 Sequel Out’, Observer (Kampala), 18 October. Katz, J., 2010, ‘Monsanto Gives Haiti $4 million in Hybrid Seeds’, BusinessWeek, 14 May. Ki-moon, B., 2010, Earthquake Tragedy Can Be Turned into Opportunity to Invest in Better Future, New York: United Nations Department of Public Information. Klarreich, K. and L. Polman, 2012, ‘The NGO Republic of Haiti’, The Nation, 19 November. Kramer, R., 2012, Central Africa: U.S.-Sponsored Visit to Anti-Kony Staging Camp Produces Flurry of News, AllAfrica.com, 30 April. LaFranchi, H., 2010, ‘After Near Riots, US Embassy in Haiti Asks Haitians to Stay Away’, Christian Science Monitor, 28 January. Mackey, R., 2012, ‘African Critics of Kony Campaign See a “White Man’s Burden” for the Facebook Generation’, Lede Blog, New York Times, 9 March. Mengestu, D., 2013, Not a Click Away: Joseph Kony in the Real World, www.warscapes.com. Moore, S., 2012, ‘U.S. Takes a Bigger Role in Hunt for Kony’, Wall Street Journal, 30 April. Nader, L., 1997, ‘Controlling Processes: Tracing the Dynamic Components of Power’, Current Anthropology, 38(5): 711– 23. Nader, L., 2012, ‘Rethinking Salvation Mentality and Counter-Terrorism’, Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems, 21(1): 99 –117. New Life Children’s Refuge Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission, www.esbctwinfalls.com. Oxfam America, 2012, Haiti Progress Report 2011, www.oxfamamerica.org. Parmelee, M., 1915, ‘The Rise of Modern Humanitarianism’, American Journal of Sociology, 21 (3): 345– 59. Roberts, H., 2011, ‘Who Said Gaddafi Had to Go?’, London Review of Books, 33(22): 8 – 18. Saunders, D., 2012, ‘The Horror and the Hashtag’, Globe and Mail, 10 March. Shaughnessy, H., 2012, Stop Kony/Kony 2012 Closes on 50 Million YouTube Views: Meanwhile The Guardian Investigates, Forbes.com, 9 March. Speri, A. and S.M. Llana, 2010, ‘Six Months After the Haiti Earthquake, What Progress?’, Christian Science Monitor, 12 July. Spivak, G.C., 1994 [1988], ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ in Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, P. Williams and L. Chrisman, eds, New York: Columbia University Press. Stirrat, J., 2006, ‘Competitive Humanitarianism: Relief and the Tsunami in Sri Lanka’, Anthropology Today, 22(5): 11– 16. Taleb, N.N., 2012, Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder, New York: Random House. Thompson, G., 2010, ‘Case Stokes Haiti’s Fear for Children, and Itself’, New York Times, 1 February. United Nations, 2011, Report of the United Nations in Haiti 2011 (Rapo` Nasyon Zini an Ayiti 2011), http://onu-haiti.org. United States Chamber of Commerce Foundation, Business Civic Leadership Center Capturing the Business Response to the 2010 Haitian Earthquake, http://bclc.uschamber.com/.

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United States House of Representatives, 2011-2012, 112th Congress, H.RES.583.IH Introduced on 13 March 2012, http://thomas.loc.gov. Wells, J., 2011, ‘Review of Haiti after the Earthquake by Paul Farmer’, Toronto Star, 17 July. York, G., 2012a, ‘A Cry for Uganda’s other “Invisible Children”: Citizens Hope Kony Video Will Bring Attention to the Thousands Who Suffer from Nodding Disease’, Globe and Mail, 14 March. ——, 2012b, ‘While the World is Stopping Kony, There’s Lots More to do in Africa’, Globe and Mail, 12 March.

CHAPTER 4 HUMANITARIAN THEATRE NORMALITY AND THE CARNIVALESQUE IN AFGHANISTAN

Julie Billaud and Antonio De Lauri

Triggered by the rhetoric of ‘normalization’ that has accompanied the humanitarian project in Afghanistan, this chapter is an attempt to investigate the close (and counter-intuitive) relationship between the idea of carnivalesque as a story of reversal and the humanitarian promise of ‘normality’. Recent anthropological accounts have generally compared the conditions of humanitarian interventionism to those that come into play in the ‘state of exception’. Building on Giorgio Agamben’s re-reading of Walter Benjamin, Carl Schmitt and Michel Foucault to analyse the ambiguous relationships between sovereignty, law and injustice, this literature (Pandolfi 2003; Fassin and Pandolfi 2010; Fassin and Vasquez 2005; Redfield 2005) places humanitarian forms of governance at the intersection of rights, ‘biopolitics’1 and ‘bare life’.2 It argues that the subject of humanitarian governance, once categorized as ‘refugee’, ‘widow’, ‘trafficked person’ or ‘war victim’, becomes part of the ‘grey zone’ between the non-living and the non-dying (Levi 1988).3 This displacement is legitimized by arguments such as ‘the responsibility to protect’ or ‘the right to intervene’ that avail of the global circulation of human rights discourses in order to challenge the territorial sovereignty of states and justify external intervention in times of ‘crisis’. The main paradox highlighted by this scholarship is that in this new form of ‘mobile sovereignty’ (Pandolfi 2000), delivery of the ‘good’ necessitates the lawful suppression of the law: the imposition of a ‘state of emergency’ and the suspension of ordinary life.

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While this literature reflects particular resourcefulness in deciphering the nature of humanitarian governance as a ‘liminal space’ caught in a vice grip between life and death, less attention has been paid to the ways in which the ‘ordinary’ is imagined in humanitarian discourses calling for ‘normalization’. In this regard, post-2001 Afghanistan, with its myriad of transnational actors involved in so-called ‘reconstruction’, offers a site in which to reflect on the nature of the ‘normality’ that such a project seeks to establish. In contrast with the humanitarian situation in the ‘refugee’ camp, where life is caught in an (only apparently) oxymoronic situation of ‘permanent state of transition’, the reconstruction of Afghanistan has been presented to the public as a return to normality after long years of war and authoritarian rule. This narrative has fed the illusion of an absolute reversal from an old order characterized by brutality to a new one characterized by an abstract social contract between the citizen and the state, that is to say democracy. However, a closer look at the inconsistencies, paradoxes, and ambiguities that have accompanied the reconstruction, especially in the sensitive arena of gender, reveals that the rhetoric of reversals is better understood as a form of carnivalesque expression in the sense of Bakhtin (1984) that bolsters the idea of change and ‘progress’ for the Western public while consolidating structural hierarchies at the local level. Indeed, Bakhtin describes the ‘carnival’ as a ‘brief moment in which life escapes its official furrows and enacts utopian freedom’ (Robinson 2012). But if the notion of ‘carnival’, like the ‘state of exception’, refers to a suspended moment disconnected from the ordinary, it seems to us that it brings further nuance and complexity to the workings of humanitarian power. Specifically, it is because the ‘carnival’ of post-war/reconstruction allows ‘freedom’ to be imagined for a moment outside of the material constraints of the ordinary, that ‘normalization’ exercises cannot be solely conceived in biopolitical terms. The joyous atmosphere of the carnival aside, we want to use the notion of the ‘carnivalesque’ to reveal the regenerative and deceptive potential of humanitarianism, its capacity to produce and shape social imaginaries with great persuasive power. Taking as entry points various spaces carved out with a view to ‘empowering women’, we show how the liberal ideology of ‘freedom’4 that has accompanied such programmes has had the paradoxical effect of engendering confinement, immobility, and alienation. Far from being an exceptional development, we argue that the case of Afghanistan exemplifies in a powerful way ‘the disaster [underlying] a seeming pretence (or ideology) of normal everyday life’ (Navaro-Yashin 2003: 108) that characterizes many contemporary post-war reconstruction projects carried out under the ideology of ‘human rights’ and ‘rule of law’.

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Confined freedom in a women’s dormitory in Kabul In attempting to describe the nature of the humanitarian project in Afghanistan, it may be useful to start with an ethnographic account that is revealing of the cultural fantasies animating the interventions of NGOs and international organizations in the ‘post-Taliban’ period. This story may be used to access some of the ambiguities accompanying the current encounter between the various actors involved in one of the most prominent humanitarian theatres of the contemporary world. In doing so, we will highlight the tensions and contradictions that certain assumptions about the ‘needs of others’ (in particular, women) contribute to creating. In other words, our aim is to unpack the hegemonic definition of freedom that has shaped the specific forms of governance under which ‘state/democracy-building’ in Afghanistan is being conducted. The inconsistencies of the dormitory project illustrate the abject nature of ‘normality’ in the post-Taliban era. Just as Comaroff (2007) describes Guantanamo as an emblematic ‘space of contradictions’ in which the tale of the ‘War on Terror’ can materialize, the dormitory captures its reverse and complementary side by providing the ‘free world’ with a site in which the fruits of its military – humanitarian intervention (the ‘carnival of post-war’) may be represented. In 2004, the University of Kabul saw the inauguration of the National Women’s Dormitory, a brand-new building with four wings and four storeys and the capacity to accommodate 1,100 female students. Equipped with a computer room and Internet access, 24-hour electricity and hot showers, the dormitory marked the beginning of a new era. After over a decade of exclusion from higher education, the dormitory signalled that women were ‘back to school’, to use the slogan of a UNICEF campaign run during the same period. Restored with the financial support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the women’s dormitory was the personal project of America’s First Lady. Ironically, and perhaps without her being aware of it, Laura Bush’s initiative aligned her with the same proactive gender policies previously put in place during the Communist regime. Indeed, the first women’s dormitory was opened in 1980 (Zulfacar 2006) as part of a broader package of programmes aimed at justifying the Red Army’s occupation of the country. It was in a similar spirit that on inauguration day, Laura Bush announced: ‘There is much more to this place than the bricks and mortar you see around us. The ordinary business that will take place here is, in fact, a symbol itself of the extraordinary leap forward Afghan women have taken’ (Herman 2005). A speech which in turn echoed the spirit of a radio communication that the First Lady had addressed to the nation on 17 November 2001:

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I’m Laura Bush, and I’m delivering this week’s radio address to kick off a world-wide effort to focus on the brutality against women and children by the al-Qaida terrorist network and the regime it supports in Afghanistan, the Taliban. That regime is now in retreat across much of the country, and the people of Afghanistan – especially women – are rejoicing. Afghan women know, through hard experience, what the rest of the world is discovering: The brutal oppression of women is a central goal of the terrorists. Long before the current war began, the Taliban and its terrorist allies were making the lives of children and women in Afghanistan miserable. Seventy percent of the Afghan people are malnourished. One in every four children won’t live past the age of five because health care is not available. Women have been denied access to doctors when they’re sick. Life under the Taliban is so hard and repressive, even small displays of joy are outlawed – children aren’t allowed to fly kites; their mothers face beatings for laughing out loud. Women cannot work outside the home, or even leave their homes by themselves. The severe repression and brutality against women in Afghanistan is not a matter of legitimate religious practice. Muslims around the world have condemned the brutal degradation of women and children by the Taliban regime. [. . .] Because of our recent military gains in much of Afghanistan, women are no longer imprisoned in their homes. They can listen to music and teach their daughters without fear of punishment. Yet the terrorists who helped rule that country now plot and plan in many countries. And they must be stopped. The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.5 The appeal was clear and may be summarized like this: ‘We have to save Afghan women in order to avoid being reduced to the same condition ourselves’. Hirschkind and Mahmood (2002) noted that the broad consensus won in the United States by the campaign in defence of Afghan women was due to two main factors: 1) ‘the studied silence about the crucial role the United States had played in creating the miserable conditions under which Afghan women were living’; and 2) ‘a whole set of questionable assumptions, anxieties, and prejudices embedded in the notion of Islamic fundamentalism’ (2002: 340– 1). The building of the Women’s Dormitory was meant to translate the narrative of ‘women’s liberation’ into concrete action. In 2007, Laura Bush’s portrait, together with that of President Karzai, hung in the Dormitory’s entrance hall as a symbolic marker of the new regime’s commitment to women’s education. The walls of the long cold corridors dimly lit with white neon tubes were decorated with posters of the Women’s Rights

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Movement in the US. The sepia prints of suffragettes accompanied with these early feminists’ slogans did not seem to attract much of the girls’ attention. Indeed, the posters that decorated their bedrooms signalled that girls’ imaginations followed different transnational circuits of desire: Leonardo Di Caprio starring in Titanic, Bollywood movie star Aishwarya Rai, white babies with blue eyes and teddy bears embracing pink hearts. The contrast between the interior decoration of the rooms and the outside corridors covered with posters of suffragettes captures the various versions of modernity simultaneously at work in this institution put in place in order to produce the female elite of the nation in the post-2001 era. It bears witness to the multiple imaginaries that fashioned and shaped these young women’s aspirations, desires, and dreams. The women’s lack of interest in the suffragettes, a movement none of them had ever previously heard of, and their attraction to cultural products with greater contemporary aesthetic appeal illustrate the disconnect between content and form inherent in humanitarian communication. Not used to sleeping on bunk beds, the students had recreated their traditional bedrooms with mattresses lined along the white walls around a large central space of carpet, provoking the exasperation of the director of the dormitory who considered these habits concrete proof of the women’s rural (and therefore, in her view, ‘backward’) upbringing.6 Employed by UNOPS, this Tajik woman in her late forties conceived the dormitory as a site of social engineering. ‘Girls from different ethnic backgrounds are mixing for the first time. Not only do they learn how to live together away from their families but they also learn basic principles of hygiene that are seriously lacking in their education’.7 The director’s concern for public hygiene and her feeling of responsibility for the prevention of contagious diseases are illustrative of a broader programme of colonial biopolitics aimed at disciplining modern (and hence hygienic) bodies. Given that most of the Dormitory’s residents were from rural areas, the assumption was that they had been deprived of basic health knowledge. This specific concern is echoed by other humanitarian actors involved in the reconstruction, especially medical NGOs running health education programmes teaching Afghans (and women in particular) how to wash their hands and store food, for example. As observed in other colonial encounters, the control and disciplining of women’s bodies – a primary site of political intervention – is a symbolic means of asserting dominance (Vivian 1999; Fanon 1967; Ahmed 1992). Surrounded by high walls topped by barbwire, the Dormitory was under strict security surveillance: armed guards were posted at the entrance gate 24 hours a day, residents could only receive female visitors, and times of

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entrance and exit were strictly regulated and monitored. With elderly female guards pacing up and down the corridors, entering rooms unannounced, sometimes sitting in silence in the corner of a room without invitation, the living conditions evoked the atmosphere of what Erving Goffman might have identified as a ‘total institution’ under a milder form (Goffman 1968). The confinement that comes with this women’s emancipation project is emblematic of the paradoxes that arise when ‘freedom’ is imagined according to universal parameters and made concrete through standard ‘toolkits’, where aesthetics matter more than outcomes (Apthorpe 2012: 1548). Dormitories built in Kandahar, Jalalabad, and other Afghan cities to accommodate female students were eventually used to host men due to the lack of female volunteers. In spite of obvious social mistrust regarding the ability of the state and its foreign sponsors to care for women, donors continued to support such initiatives. While the National Women’s Dormitory remained half empty, another was being built next to the Faculty of Medicine, as though donors, in competing to make the most visible act of generosity towards Afghan women, had remained blind to the social in any form. These precarious spaces offered as a gift to Afghan women, portrayed as victims of fundamentalism in the moral grammar mobilized to justify the war, bear witness to the irreducible dead ends of the reconstruction project. Although presented as a pragmatic (and therefore ideologically neutral) step toward the improvement of women’s conditions, the Women’s Dormitory, like many other reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, is a political business. Supervised by the Ministry of Higher Education, run by the UNOPS and financed by USAID, the dormitory is a microcosm that reflects the tensions and paradoxes cutting across the Afghan polity. Used as a token of ‘women’s emancipation’ by USAID and its implementing agency, the UNOPS, the dormitory quickly became a poisoned gift in the hands of an Afghan government that was struggling to assert ownership and sovereignty. In a context in which the presence of international forces was perceived as a form of moral pollution (Billaud 2012c), the Ministry of Higher Education had to put in place lengthy and complicated admission and security procedures to guarantee the dorm’s reputation and assert the government’s upper hand in the project. These bureaucratic intricacies, in great part a legacy of the communist period, also served to make the ‘state’ real in a project in which its role was essentially only symbolic. The ultimate responsibility that was left for the ‘state’ to assume was a moral one: to ensure that the dorm remained a respectable place, free of troublesome elements. The immediate effect of these policies was that a dormitory that in principle could accommodate 1,100 students remained half empty after its official opening. Many young women

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who boarded there were gradually forced to leave due to their difficulty in observing rules that became stricter with every passing day, as the ‘woman question’ gradually became a key issue within the political debate. Those who remained spent a significant amount of their time negotiating their stay in a place beset by moral panics around ‘culture’ and ‘national identity’ (Billaud 2012b). In the press, articles were regularly published flagging the threat of moral dilution due to ‘foreign influences’ on young Afghan women (Cheragh 2007a, 2007b; Arman-e-Milli 2007). Journalists denounced young women walking half-naked on university campuses and called for the state to promptly intervene to re-establish order. Struggling to protect themselves against rumours and critiques, most dormitory students strived to present to the world a traditional Afghan and Muslim self entirely dedicated to learning and education. This meant in practice that they rarely left the dormitory outside of their courses and wore traditional Afghan clothes (shalwar kamiz) to distinguish themselves from the few outward-looking girls who wore blue jeans and were nicknamed ‘khariji’ (foreigners) as a consequence. During examination periods, the dormitory took on the appearance of a madrassa, with students sitting in the corridors, rocking their upper bodies backwards and forwards over their books, as if reciting the Qur’an. As an embodied performance of devoted learning, the students’ bodily movements were part of a habitus that contradicted expectations of liberal knowledge practices encouraging creativity and autonomous thinking. Sketched against the backdrop of images of burka-clad women that invaded Western media reports on Afghanistan, the dormitory sponsors’ image of the new Afghan woman was informed by liberal conceptions of femininity: visible, autonomous, self-driven, emancipated from religion and tradition. Caught in between international forces that had set up their own criteria for women’s autonomy and nationalist discourses calling for a return to religious orthodoxy, the everyday life of female students was marked by a fundamental doubt regarding the type of performance that would best express their commitment to both religion and their newly gained class status as educated women. Understood as the flipside of Guantanamo, the utopian freedom that the dormitory project desperately seeks to realize reminds us that ‘most spacialized utopias carry an authoritarian quality’ (Comaroff 2007: 395).

Humanitarianism and the radicalization of normality Building on Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language, Veena Das suggests that ‘the mutual shadowing of the ordinary and scepticism’ is what defines

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‘the character of everyday so that to secure the everyday, far from being something we can take for granted, might be thought as an achievement’ (Das 2010: 376; Das 1998, 2007). Agency is often conceptualized in terms of escape from the ordinary – or at least as a (more or less aware) reaction to what distresses the ordinary. More appropriately, agency can be conceived ‘as a temporally embedded process of social engagement, informed by the past (in its habitual aspect), but also oriented toward the future (as a capacity to imagine alternative possibilities) and toward the present (as a capacity to contextualize past habits and future projects within the contingencies of the moment)’ (Emirbayer and Mische 1998: 963). The everyday practices of people who have survived traumatic events and whose social worlds have been turned upside down by displacement and collective violence point up forms of agency that consist of a descent into the ordinary, for example by seeking to maintain meaningful social relationships. What Das identifies as the descent into the ordinary is therefore the process through which individuals remake social life out of events that threw the very idea of the social into question. Yet, the ordinary as individual and collective imaginary transcends the everyday. By connecting the present with the future, it consists of dynamics related to normality, rule, continuity, adjustment – elements that often (erroneously) suggest a conception of the ordinary as a fact in itself, coherent and univocal. Instead, the very construction of the ordinary is subject to continuous and often erratic reformulations connected to the fragmentation of the self, the unsuitability of the present, the projection of the self into the future, the individuation of individual and collective selves (and otherness) in the world, the capacity to re-build oneself in what becomes an unrecognizable world (De Lauri 2014), etc. But notwithstanding its processual nature and propensity towards the future, the ordinary is the foundation of the present, or, from another perspective, the ordinary is what gives the present its foundation. Social groups yearn for stability: by means of stabilization they define stability; by naturalizing they define nature, by processes of normalization they define normality. The ordinary consists of an apparent pause in becoming, a sort of still image that provides the flow of social life with meaning. Indeed, contrary to what one might imagine, the ordinary is only an illusion of permanence. It is constant change that alternates imperceptible movements with the bending of social norms. Hence, the ordinary may be understood as an ongoing process that tends towards stability, a process of normalization of social change: the ordinary captures the illusion of uniqueness as a means of coping with the multiplicity of becoming. Undoubtedly, this process is historically and culturally determined. For

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example, social groups elaborate manifold stability mechanisms whereby hierarchies of power are involved in the very construction of narratives of normalization. The irreparable tension between the foundation of the present and the propensity towards the future implies that narratives of the ordinary are inconsistent with a ‘radicalized normality’ (that is to say, the construction of a universal need for normality). For example, the perpetual motion of the ordinary reveals the intrinsic impossibility of normality. Nonetheless, humanitarianism promotes (and enforces) a radicalized8 conception of normality as the only possible way of conceptualizing the ordinary – and by extension, of imagining life. Following Agamben (1998, 2005) we are used to thinking of major contemporary humanitarian crises as ‘states of exception’, or ‘permanent states of exception’. It is thus assumed that humanitarian interventions induce the exception to become the rule (Fassin and Vasquez 2005). This perspective has shed light on how different varieties of humanitarianism (from medical to military interventions, from legal to infrastructure reconstructions, etc.) have similar effects in terms of reproducing social asymmetries and political imbalances. What the current humanitarian theatre in Afghanistan reveals however is that the very goal of humanitarianism is not that of reifying or perpetuating a state of exception, but is rather that of normalizing – in the sense of imposing a specific conception of normality. International interventions afflict the ordinary by promoting a rigid (a priori defined) condition of normality, which humanitarian agencies purport to realize (De Lauri 2012). On the ground (post-war contexts, places affected by natural disasters, etc.), humanitarianism is not justified by an idea of exception that becomes the rule. Rather, it is justified by a ‘promise of normalization’. What is at stake therefore is to understand the precise nature of this idea of normality. What normality is has been the object of philosophical investigation, albeit not as assiduous as in other cases. The use of the concept of normality in this paper is critical, especially with regard to its counter-concept of ‘abnormality’. As insightfully discussed by Foucault (1999), the historical construction of abnormality not only shows up the hegemonic, universalistic and hierarchical development of certain traditions of knowledge (e.g., psychiatry; see Basaglia 1971), but also sheds light on some of the implications of normalization – namely the criminalization of diversity, the glorification of the rule, the exaggeration of the positive impact of ‘Science’ on human existence, etc. Foucault successfully captured the pervasiveness of normalization as a step toward a ‘good biological life’, an indoctrination of the body with consequences for social life. The normalizing purpose of humanitarianism however is not entirely understandable in these terms. The

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radicalization of normality imposed by humanitarian interventions acts on the capacity to imagine the future still before materially acting on the everyday. Such a normalizing framework affects not only the body, but also its surrounding universe. And yet bio-discourses and imagining the future intersect in the humanitarian rhetoric of normality. The words of two humanitarian workers in Kabul make this point clear: When I first came to Afghanistan I thought I had gone back I don’t know how far in time. As I had previous experience of working in conditions of crisis, it was quite easy for me to adapt in any case. Of course I immediately understood that my job here was not easy. [. . .] As program manager I’m responsible for many activities. But very often I feel like a Wall Street white collar; you know, I have to make ends meet. [. . .] At the end of the day, people here want a normal life. To me, this is the reason why I’m here. I’ll give you an example: if you break your leg, you go to the doctor and what you expect from his intervention is that it will help you to use your leg again. Here we are. Helping these people to have a normal life.9 Tomorrow will be different if Afghans are able to accept the rule of law. [. . .] In law we use the expression ‘margins of appreciation’ to include diversity in the implementation and protection of human rights. There’s no margin, however, when we want to distinguish between the rule of law and the law of the strongest.10 For Benjamin (1968), the fact that the exception has become the rule does not involve a geographical and temporal extension of exception, but implies that the exception has been suffocated by the imposition of normality, that certain habits and repetitions have become life’s only horizon. The exception is gone and the only thing that remains is the dominant cogency of the absence of surprises, which better protects certain economic interests. In such a context, normality is also the effect of immanentistic economicism (Bagetto 2011), whereby the presence of international donors and organizations is ‘offered’ as the only opportunity for emancipation from the bonds of the present. In these circumstances the humanitarian theatre creates the conditions for the establishment of a new social and political order. Thus, in a counter-intuitive way, the humanitarian carnival becomes the condition making possible a normalizing promise. The very idea of repetition is crucial to understand the normalizing project that humanitarian agencies implement as a civilizing necessity.

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The impressive bulk of reports, workshops, conferences and bureaucratic technologies fielded in the post-war reconstruction is part of a culturally specific humanitarian production (Billaud 2012a) that legitimizes all social transformation as the result of external processes of modernization ‘while conveying an image of Afghanistan as a society rooted in its own traditions’ and resistant to embracing democracy (De Lauri 2013: 5). The everyday business of most expatriate humanitarian workers in Afghanistan mainly consists of producing and archiving documents: reports, forms, guidelines, evaluations and project proposals, which contribute to the recitation of the reconstruction ‘success story’. In this desperate attempt to write the new utopia, reports and proposals in post-war/reconstruction Afghanistan have attained a fetish-like status. This level of emotional attachment to paperwork reminds us that even papers may have a ‘psychic life’ of their own (Kafka 2012: 17). This becomes even more relevant once we have recognized that the production of archives always involves procedures of exclusion. Archives have conventions that allow entry to certain materials only; they deploy techniques that can render lived experiences almost unrecognizable; they demand conformities of form that can reshape documents. (Feldman 2008: 34) The collection and circulation of documents among the actors in the humanitarian industry contribute to the production of a specific kind of sociality marked by patterns of relations primarily organized around form. In the process of compiling documents, the content often fades away behind the aesthetics of logic and language, producing acceptable modes of impartiality (Riles 1998). As ‘paradigmatic artefacts of modern knowledge practices’ (Riles 2006), documents have become the emblem of modern and effective organizations and bureaucracies. Tangible evidence of a functioning institution, documents are used as ‘rationality badges’ to show the public that things are under control (Riles 2006: 11). Because the production of documents shapes behaviour within organizations, they may be viewed as disciplinary tools, ‘panopticon-like devices’ (Riles 2006: 10) that normalize certain discourses about the ‘good’, while reinforcing power hierarchies between those who detain knowledge on how to produce them and those who do not. In such circumstances, it is not rare for the anthropologist to trade his/her access to the field of local NGOs for his/her own knowledge of reports and proposal writing. The cultural hegemony that humanitarian expertise imposes on its various fields of intervention is at the core of normalization efforts. By bringing in

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bureaucratic practices, knowledge claims and institutional codes that ‘humanitarian experts’ have been trained to consider part of the standard apparatus for bolstering ‘progress’, humanitarian interventions aim to produce given scientific truths about how the modern world should be organized. The normality imposed by humanitarian programmes embodies the radical shift from an old to a new order in which narratives of reversals ultimately have the effect of reinforcing the continuity of a transnational hierarchical order. Indeed, the idea of humanity that lies in the shadow of this humanitarianism is profoundly tied up with a radicalized conception of normality that does not allow for alternatives. Costas Douzinas has argued that ideologies sacrificed individuals for the future of humanity; for humanitarians individuals count only as ciphers for suffering humanity. The uniqueness of every person and situation is replaced by a grey, monolithic humanity, the very opposite of the infinite diversity of human experience. (2007: 20) Humanitarian intervention, directly or indirectly, reduces the complex articulation and variety of human experience to a univocal idea of what is conceived to be a modern and civilized life. While behind the fragile walls of academia evolutionism seems just a memory (at least for most social scientists), international relations are strongly dominated by an evolutionary perception of human societies. In those areas of the world in which ‘people still live in an unacceptable way’,11 humanitarian intervention is the cure, the instrument for restoring a normality which, however, was not previously known – but is functional to the new order: ‘you must eat certain things in a certain way’ continued a World Bank consultant met in Kabul, referring to the fact that ‘if Afghans desire a change, they should be aware that stabilization of the country implies a new way of living’.

Humanitarian theatre: The carnivalesque of ‘post-war reconstruction’ in Afghanistan If the first stage of the US-NATO intervention in Afghanistan consisted in setting up a military theatre, the second stage involved the addition of a humanitarian one. The use of the term ‘theatre’ to describe such external interferences needs to be clarified. In general, a theatre is a place that hosts plays, which can be performed in various locations. The theatre provides a stage for the re-citation of a scenario that has been written somewhere else. A

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good illustration of the theatrical dimension of the humanitarian intervention in Afghanistan is a project supposedly aimed at promoting peace and called ‘We Believe in Balloons’, an initiative implemented in May 2013. The US-based artist Yazmany Arboleda, with the support of half-a-dozen internationally financed aid groups set out to distribute pink balloons filled with helium and peace messages all over the capital city. He explained to a reporter of the New York Times that his intention was to ‘create a stream of shared instances of unexpected happiness’ (Nordland 2013). This example together with a myriad of other projects conducted since 2001 (such as the Kabul Kids Circus, Skatistan, the Beauty Academy of Kabul, etc.) demonstrate that the stage of the Afghan theatre is hosting a carnivalesque act in the sense that it provides a space in which a world of utopian freedom can be imagined. We borrow the notion of the ‘carnivalesque’ from Mikhael Bakhtin (1984), as developed in his literary work Rabelais and His World. According to Bakhtin, the carnival is a moment when rules are transgressed and everything is permitted. It is a type of playful performance that is communal, without boundaries between performers and audience. The ‘Pink Balloons’ project, with its objective of bringing happiness and peace to the war-torn country, illustrates the inherent utopia that lies in the promise of normalization. From the outset, the ‘humanitarian theatre’ in Afghanistan has been set up along patterns resembling the Bakhtinian carnival. This has involved a miseen-sce`ne by Western media of ‘distant suffering’ (Boltanski 2004), introducing the argument of pity (in particular, towards women) and freedom in order to justify the scenario of a military occupation of the country. In Human, All Too Human Friedrich Nietzsche maintained that the ‘root idea of humanity’ is that in the world of freedom, humans are not free. The military Operation Enduring Freedom – initially named Operation Infinite Justice – embodied a rather different conception of the human condition: in the areas of the world (still) reluctant to embrace democracy, humans (especially women) must be freed (by means of humanitarian interventions). The assumption is that freedom is the ultimate achievement of an emancipation process culturally understandable within the political framework of Western democratic ideals. By bolstering the idea of ‘just war’ – in a clear overlapping of humanitarianism and militarism (De Lauri 2013) – through Orientalist images of barbarian mullahs and victimized women, the media prepared the ground for international indignation to erupt, making the war not only acceptable but also absolutely necessary for ‘humanitarian reasons’. While clearly this justification alone is not sufficient to mobilize armies and start bombing a country, economic and geopolitical interests find affirmation

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prevalently against such a backdrop. Just as carnival fosters solidarity, in the weeks preceding the bombing of Afghanistan, solidarity was created though the mobilization of moral sentiment (Fassin and Vasquez 2005; Fassin 2012) via a specific humanitarian message (Chouliaraki 2010a). After years of blackout, TV screens in the West suddenly filled with testimonies and images of suffering Afghan women. The narrative aesthetics of news reports had the ritual power to constitute ‘Western spectators as publics, as collectivities with a will to act’ (Chouliaraki 2010b: 306). By nullifying the boundaries between actors and spectators, the carnival aims to break down conventions. It opens up opportunities for a new order of things. During carnival, ordinary life, rules, and hierarchies are temporarily suspended and overturned. A slave may be ‘crowned’ king, just as a king may be ‘decrowned’ and become a slave. However, as explained by Marc Auge´ in Pouvoirs de vie, pouvoirs de mort (1977), the apparent reversal of roles is aimed at maintaining certain power relations: the slave may behave as a king for a while but, by the end of the performance, he will be dead (and the original order will be restored). The carnival is structured by rituals. Although the main goal of rituals of reversal is to show that power belongs to the role and not to the person occupying it, the fact remains that certain roles remain inaccessible to certain categories of people. Rituals, from this perspective, appear to be public sedatives. Indeed, the carnival is the very moment in which, thanks to the apparent subversion, a specific hierarchical order is guaranteed. Furthermore, the carnival is sanctioned by the highest ideal aims of human existence, not by the world of practical conditions. Soon after the Taliban regime collapsed and the United States, with their Northern Alliance allies, took over Kabul, the international community set out an ambitious agenda for the reconstruction of the country that involved the establishment of a new democratic state based on the rule of law. As in the carnival, the rhetoric that accompanied the reconstruction was one of absolute reversals: vis-a`-vis a regime presented as un-democratic, theocratic and authoritarian, the international community offered its ‘assistance’ for the establishment of a democratic state endowed with modern laws and institutions. While the Taliban had ruled the country through religious edicts, the new Islamic republic would rule through laws voted by an elected parliament and enforced by an effective judiciary. Crimes would be judged and punished in courts, not dealt with via public punishments authorized by illiterate mullahs. Finally women would be given equal rights to men and would be encouraged to participate in public affairs. The joyous atmosphere of the carnival notwithstanding, the ‘utopia’ of abundance and freedom that the reconstruction agenda promised was based on a vision of radical reversals, a belief in the

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potential for another world with little concern for the practical conditions that had marked the everyday life of ordinary Afghans during three decades of war, deprivation, and political unrest. To a certain extent, one could argue that the carnival functioned as a rite of passage towards normality: a normalized Afghanistan would appear soon after the carnival. However, daily NATO bombings made legitimate under international law, the flawed development projects of the so-called ‘reconstruction’ and the state of poverty which the vast majority of Afghans must endure, are concrete evidence of the violence that accompanies the ‘democratization’ masquerade. What we want to emphasize here, following Bakhtin’s notion of the carnivalesque, is the new moral imagination born out of this violent encounter, in which the lines between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’, the ‘legal’ and the ‘lethal’, to draw on Walter Benjamin’s Critique of violence (1969), become blurred and displaced. The carnivalesque rhetoric of reversal (in particular, that of the rule of law) may be interpreted as a political act of erasure, that ‘edits out’ significant aspects of violence and injustice embedded within the current reconstruction project (Billaud 2015). Indeed, the power of the humanitarian carnival lies precisely in its capacity to make it impossible to imagine a different path towards peace, justice and stability (De Lauri 2012). The ritualistic performance of the humanitarian play from one theatre to another on the global map tends to write in stone the universal symphony for a free world in which the voices of dissidents may only be heard if they mimic the dominant melody. As Faisal Devji12 (2009) explains, in a world in search of a global political expression, even radical forms of militancy such as that of al-Qaeda, eventually mobilize the humanitarian ethos: that is to say, by appealing to notions of pity for a distant ‘other’, victims of an unfair world order, and displaying courage and self-sacrifice for a greater ideal. But let us return to the ironic twist through which sites carved out to supposedly facilitate women’s emancipation are turned into impossible spaces in which confinement is the price to be paid for externally imposed freedom. Another illustration of this is the new women’s prison in Kabul (Badam Bagh), which was built with the financial support of the international community to provide inmates with ‘dignified’ conditions of incarceration. Half the inmates have committed ‘moral crimes’ while others have voluntarily turned themselves into prison to escape from domestic abuse. After the downfall of the Taliban, the female prison population rose from 380 in 2010 to 600 in 2011 (Farmer 2011).13 In 2007, the director of the prison explains that prison occupancy was up ‘because these days women are given too much freedom’.14 In the liberal ideology guiding the rule of law project in Afghanistan, prison (as is also the case in the West) is conceived of as the

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only acceptable remedy for deviance. Contrary to the Taliban whose public punishments aimed at staging justice in a spectacular and exemplary manner, hence making imprisonment a rare exception, the exercise of power within the new Islamic Republic does not rely on a public mise-en-sce`ne to assert itself. By isolating the undesirable in institutions of public confinement, the ruler disappears from sight but maintenance of morals remains guaranteed. Furthermore, as the drastic increase of inmates in the US over the past decades has shown (Grande 2007), imprisonment is nowadays a huge business for both state and private actors. Because liberal freedom does not match the social fabric on which it is attempting to impose itself, it is not surprising that the former director of the women’s prison during the Taliban era is now heading up the Family Response Unit in Kabul central police station. Alienated from the moral ideology that is supposed to direct her work at this new institution, put in place to provide women victims of domestic violence with access to justice, the policewoman explains that: ‘By the time they turn to the police, there is nothing left of these women. Our prisons are full of such women.’15 The National Women’s Dormitory, the new women’s prison and the Family Response Unit all reveal the ‘abject quality’ of space in a place where international narratives of ‘liberation’ produce the experience of immobility, confinement and entrapment (Navaro-Yashin 2003). The metaphor of the ‘No Man’s Land’ that Yael Navaro-Yashin uses to describe abject spaces in which disruption is normalized by the disciplinary power of transnationalism, most aptly captures the liminal quality of the carnivalesque as a moment which carries promises of renewal that cannot be fulfilled. In a northern Cyprus trapped outside the international system that Navaro-Yashin describes, just as in Afghanistan where the international machine has been in full operation for over ten years, ‘abjection’ – the state that Julia Kristeva (1982: 5) describes as ‘death infecting life [. . .] Something rejected from which one does not part’ – is part of the everyday experience of those caught up in the fantasy of ‘normalization’.

Conclusion Humanitarian interventions constitute a primary means of globally affirming a univocal model of humanity, built according to the cultural, moral and economic standards of neoliberal democracies. From such a perspective, normalizing unstable, corrupt and underdeveloped countries is a need of humanity at large: in the world of freedom, everybody must be free. This process is realized worldwide via a politics of reversal for which

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humanitarianism creates the conditions of subversion/liberation with the ultimate goal of guaranteeing conditions of normality (that is to say, certain models of consumption, political organization, exploitation of territory, social relations, etc. considered acceptable by international donors and global players). In post-2001 Afghanistan this was translated into reconstruction efforts, promotion of rule of law/democracy and women’s emancipation. Yet according to humanitarian and political actors in the reconstruction business, although some good outcomes have been achieved towards (neo)liberalization, Afghanistan is still not a normalized country. In so far as the capacity to aspire (Appadurai 2013) is closely related to it being possible to imagine the future, the normalizing promise that humanitarian agencies purport to realize is the dominant feature of the present. ‘Will I be here?’ asked an Afghan lawyer in Kabul,16 implying that it is in some sense impossible for her to imagine a tomorrow with herself in a place in which the carnival is about to finish, shards of bottles are scattered on the ground and streamers and noisemakers must soon be returned to the drawer. Given that international humanitarian actors have the power to radically influence how the future is imagined, they may be seen as contemporary producers of (new) utopias. According to humanitarian propaganda – from pink balloons to the Millennium Development Goals – tomorrow is the site of hope for normality. The promised land of humanitarianism is a normalized land in which – paradoxically – what should change (social inequalities, forms of subordination, etc.) ultimately remains the same, and what should be considered a human richness (social and cultural diversity) is ultimately stigmatized and used as pretext for civilizing aims (‘we teach them how to wash their hands’). Humanitarian propaganda is basically a promise no one asked for; a universal story of salvation that humanitarian agencies undertake to maintain. Perhaps Lyotard (1979) – and many others after him – were a trifle hasty in pronouncing the end of grand narratives.

Acknowledgements Antonio De Lauri acknowledges support of the European Research Council under the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013), ERC Grant agreement n8 313737.

Notes 1 Foucault (1976) defines ‘biopolitics’ as the ensemble of administrative practices (schooling, policing, caring) used by the modern state to administer and discipline populations.

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2 Agamben explains that ‘according to Foucault, a society’s “threshold of biological modernity” is situated at the point at which the species and the individual as a simple living body become what is at stake in a society’s political strategies’ (1998: 3). 3 Reflecting on the nature of the power exercised in concentration camps, Primo Levi argued that the ‘privileges’ granted to some prisoners functioned as a means of maintaining order. The ‘grey zone’ in which the prisoner-functionaries were placed – i.e., a space in which the distinction between oppressed and oppressors becomes blurred – was the ‘armature’ that held together the totalitarian system. 4 As the extensive literature on slavery has shown (for a discussion see Finley 1964; Glassman 1991; Miers and Kopytoff 1977; Palmie´ 1995), the category of freedom is stratified and polysemic. In several contexts, for example, freedom evokes the idea of ‘belonging’ rather than that of autonomy. Conversely, freedom as personal autonomy and the ultimate achievement of ‘independence’ is the implicit assumption underpinning ‘humanitarian reason’. See also Chamayou 2012 and Mbembe 2006. 5 www.whitehouse.gov. For a broader discussion see Abu-Lughod 2002 and De Lauri 2012. 6 The creation of women’s dormitories on university campuses in Afghanistan has been one of the most visible measures taken by the international community to promote women’s access to higher education after the fall of the Taliban regime. To date, four women’s dormitories have been built in regional universities. It is interesting to note that the creation of ‘boarding schools’ inspired by the British educational model was also central to modernization efforts in rural Iran in the late 1930s. Sullivan (1998: 224) provides a powerful account of how girls living in these institutions were bound to their bunk beds with their chadors to prevent them from falling out at night. 7 Conversation with J. Billaud, 17 February 2007. 8 In using the term ‘radical’ – from the Latin radix, root – we wish to emphasize the foundational nature of such a process of normalization, its generating capacity. 9 Conversation between A. De Lauri and a programme manager with a British NGO, Kabul, 3 April 2008. 10 Conversation between A. De Lauri and a consultant to the European Union Police Mission (EUPOL), Kabul, 22 May 2013. 11 Interview with a World Bank consultant, by A. De Lauri, Kabul, April 2008. 12 ‘Given that militants today routinely invoke the plight of suffering Muslims in exactly the same way that humanitarians do of victims in general, the identification of Islam with humanitarianism is hardly surprising. Indeed, humanitarian actions even serve as the model for militant interventions in the contemporary rhetoric of jihad’ (Devji 2009: 175). 13 These figures powerfully exemplify the fact that it is impossible to interpret statistics outside of their specific historical and political contexts. 14 Interview with the director of the Kabul women’s prison, by J. Billaud, 5 April 2007. 15 Conversation with J. Billaud, 23 September 2007. 16 Conversation with A. De Lauri, 28 March 2008.

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CHAPTER 5 `

I'M DOING IT FOR MYSELF!' THE AGGRESSIVE PROMOTION OF THE INDIVIDUAL SELF AS THE DARK SIDE OF WOMEN'S RIGHTS Elisabetta Grande

Introduction Humanitarianism has often been used as a justification for plunder (Mattei and Nader 2008: Chapter V). This has especially been the case when the ‘humanitarian’ has been articulated in terms of women’s protection. Suffice it to think of the genocide of the Incas, legitimized by the argument that a community which allegedly sacrificed virgins was barbaric; or of the colonization of India, justified – at least in part – on the basis of the need to protect women from sati (i.e., the practice of women immolating themselves on their husbands’ funeral pyres) (Spivak 1988: paragraph IV). The historical records, as is well known, abound with cases in which colonialism enlisted the woman question to its cause (Ahmed 1992; Larzeg 1994).1 It is the aim of this chapter to show that history repeats itself. Women’s rights discourse, as rooted in international charters and treaties, today provides an avenue for a new kind of humanitarianism, which once again becomes a shield for power and greed. Thus, behind a certain women’s rights discourse and its humanitarian approach, more than a real concern to help and protect women, there seems to lie a strong interest in producing the perfect conditions for a market economy – a system that benefits enormously from the atomization of society at the expense of people and their social and communitarian needs.

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In this chapter, I do not claim to offer a scientific foundation for any normative argument in favour of relationality/collectivism (in either its pre-modern or its current forms) as opposed to individualism. Nor do I wish to participate in the highly sterile discussion as to whether any critique of the currently dominant individual-centred vision is bound to be nostalgic of an idealized past, populated by a Rousseauian bon sauvage. Rather I am interested in highlighting the often overlooked connection between the evergreen popularity of humanitarian/women’s rights discourse and the benefits for the corporate agenda of the individualization of society stemming from the great transformation that is currently underway, especially in the Global South. Women’s rights discourse, I argue, supported as it is by most of the ideological apparatuses of globalization, inevitably functions as a powerful agent of social individualization (whether this is good or bad is not of concern to me in this chapter); while an individualized society increases both the demand for products supplied by the market and the wants that the market can satisfy, more than does a relational society in which many wants are satisfied by the group outside of market transactions. Consequently, while in this chapter I offer data from a variety of actual human societies, my description of the individual, as opposed to the group-based society should be considered a stylized Weberian model, unaccompanied by any attempt to draw normative conclusions as to the desirability of one or the other. Again my only purpose is to bring materials that suggest the existence of a ‘hidden connection’ between the corporate agenda and women’s rights discourse. Individualism or collectivism? A focus on rights or on duties? These are the terms of an opposition that characterizes the debate on human rights. Universal or context-specific? Are human rights as they are enshrined in the UN Charter of 1948 essentially a Euro-American centric vision arrogantly trying to impose itself on the whole world (as arguably reflected in the limited number of the Charter’s drafters from non-Western countries2) or moral imperatives outside of which no civilized society is possible? Are they an expression of cultural imperialism or, to the contrary, the minimal guarantee of freedom and dignity that every human being should enjoy? It is difficult to argue for the existence of good or bad per se independently of the social, historical, geographic and cultural context being discussed. In other words it is hard, possibly senseless, to deem certain human behaviours intolerable without taking into account the spatial and temporal, thus cultural, factors at work in the society in question. On 7 March 2013, the World Health Organization reported that ‘if current levels of child marriage hold’, between 2011 and 2012 the number of girls that will be married before the age

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of 15 will come to about 50 million.3 This number shows that in many contexts having sexual intercourse with a very young person is accepted as sound family practice; nevertheless in the dominant view, such a pattern is considered paedophilia, that is to say a severe violation of children’s rights. Who, in such a case, may be considered a fair judge of right and wrong? It is certainly intolerable to modern sensitivities to sacrifice virgins to the gods in order to guarantee peace and security, as practiced centuries ago by certain populations in Greece. However, not many people notice that today too it is in the name of peace and security that the use of dangerous weapons – such as drones – is authorized, with the selfsame outcome of knowingly killing innocent people (including small children). To what extent can good and evil change, even to the point of one taking the place of the other, according to the observer’s point of view? And who is the observer that can claim to have the truth in his pocket? This chapter is not just another normative defence of cultural relativism and the idea that each society should be allowed to have its own values, nor is it an attempt to work out a minimal core of human rights, more restricted than those contained in the 1948 Declaration, and capable of being ‘utterly universal’. Adopting a more positive stance, I wish to point out here how rights talk and practice become a powerful tool in the struggle for hegemony that arises when one power structure aims to eradicate another. More specifically, I suggest that certain human rights, in particular those that are deployed to protect women’s equality and liberty according to a Western post-Enlightenment vision based on individual freedom, have become powerful weapons with which to attack a non-Western communitarian vision based on the reciprocity of duties. I argue in this chapter that the rhetoric of women’s rights promotes a strongly individualizing message that separates each individual from every other individual. In so doing, women’s rights discourse is smoothly functional to business interests and market logic, becoming – to use an image provided by Bourdieu – a means for the neoliberal order to realize its programme to destroy ‘any and all collective structures that could serve as an obstacle to the logic of the pure market’ (Bourdieu 1998, italics in the original). To be sure, the Western legal tradition launched its war against the group structure a long time ago, with the offensive increasing in intensity up to the present day. To put it synthetically – with no other ambition than to provide a very general outline – we may say that starting some centuries ago, the traditional group, as a power structure, has been fiercely contested by different competitors, each aspiring to eradicate its power and replace it with its own rule. The earlier competitor, which ultimately won its battle in the Western

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world, was the modern state. The current contender is multinational corporate power that, having conquered the state, is attacking – particularly in the non-Western world – the group structure and its rules, in order to impose a global legal thinking that is instrumental to its own interests. The most powerful weapon that the modern state used to succeed in its hostile takeover of power from groups was the discourse of individual freedom, rooted above all in the right to hold private property. Today global corporate power deploys a derivative of such rights discourse, especially focused on women, in attempting to finally get rid of the group structure in those areas in which it is still a viable competitor.4 Within this strategy, human rights discourse constructs as compatible with civilization only the personhood of an autonomous subject who makes choices based on utility and self-interest, as opposed to that of the interconnected and multi-dependent subject who makes choices on the basis of a sense of responsibility towards others.5 Human rights discourse is thus deployed in pursuit of a dual outcome. First, it encourages the dismantling of social structures based (like non-Western group structures) on reciprocal duties among individuals. Second, it strengthens at the global level a culture of individualization and separateness that is highly functional to market logic. Autonomous, independent and separate persons are in fact necessarily driven towards the market to satisfy all their needs, many of which, in a more relational setting, would instead have been satisfied under the different logic of reciprocity. Therefore, the diffusion of the kind of subjectivity celebrated by the rights discourse, and by women’s rights discourse in particular, today largely ends up transforming persons into consumers, who can enjoy as many rights as they can buy on the market.

The modern Western state and the rights discourse: How to assert hegemony over the group In its effort to monopolize both coercive force and sovereign jurisdiction, the modern Western state targeted as its first concern the previous social organization based on groups and their legal systems. In order to acquire legitimacy and strength, centralization of power meant control not only of the production of legal rules but also of force and dispute resolution mechanisms; inevitably at the expense of group autonomy. Concerning what today we label as crimes, whereas groups used to solve their disputes through mediation or negotiation, more than through feud, the early modern state began to make use of its criminal law to monopolize the production of legal rules and the use of coercive force in the most sensitive areas of social life. Over time,

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by punishing the group’s method of resolving disputes, the state came to replace group capacity to enforce (and thus produce) rules of its own in these areas of the law. In twelfth-century England, for instance, royal officials, called coroners, were sent about the country to record felonies with a view to punishing the community’s failure to report these crimes to the royal justice system. Negotiation or mediation within the community regarding what the state framed as a serious crime was, by the same token, punished by royal justice as the serious offence of ‘compounding a felony’ (Baker 1979: 411ff.). In sum, felonies violating the rights of individuals and the prerogatives of the state as defined by the centralized law-making power, had to be taken care of by the state and only by the state, to the detriment of the community’s own justice and law-making system. Criminal law was therefore used as an instrument of centralization of power, mainly at the expense of the group structure which was stripped of its role of dispensing justice in more serious situations. By monopolizing the force of law, the state was able to demonstrate the atrocious consequences that would befall those who violated its rules, thereby legitimizing its own role as a producer of norms while undermining the group and its negotiated, context-specific idea of justice. Yet, it was by outlining the powerful concept of individual rights, in theory equally ascribed to all, that the modern Western state finally won its battle against the group structure. While the former could promise to protect rights in the abstract, in line with the general law of the land, the latter valued diversity and was centred on duties, differentially ascribed to its members as a function of their different roles in society. Consequently the group decided on disputes in accordance with the concrete context of each social incident, and not on the basis of abstract equal law (Stein 1984: 14). Rights versus duties, uniformity versus difference, now framed in terms of equality versus inequality: this was the contraposition, particularly in relation to private law, that finally consigned the victory to the modern state. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, a new legal order was born within the whole Western legal tradition, one that put individuals and their rights, especially the right to hold private property, at the centre of the law, while portraying every human being as equally able to freely and rationally dispose of these rights – mainly on a contractual basis – in his or her own best interest. The liberal rights discourse, rooted in the rationalist legal naturalism and philosophical assumptions of the Enlightenment, assumed as its only referent the monistic, autonomous and self-sufficient individual bourgeois property-owner, whose freedom consisted of excluding all others from his property and in doing whatever he wanted as long as he did not harm the rights of others. This constituted a reversal of the centuries-old perspective of legal systems based

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on groups, in which – on the contrary – each individual was assigned a different set of duties, and private property as we now understand it was virtually unknown.6 The new legal perspective, as Karl Marx (1843 [2012]: 15) saw it, celebrated ‘the rights of egoistic man separated from his fellow men and from the community’. This quickly became the dominant perspective that, for better or for worse, swept away the alternative legal culture and produced a new anthropological sense of the human being.7 The new ideology could offer the very attractive social device of individual rights, a set of personal freedoms enforced by the state only (even against the state itself), outside the constraints of hierarchy and status typical of the group structure. The powerful rhetoric of equally vindicated rights, as opposed to the idea of differently enforced duties, won for the state the individual’s final surrender of the protection of his/her group. By the time of the Code Napole´on (1804), all legal systems different from the state, all the alternative producers of rules of social conduct that had previously dispensed justice, had been made illegal, outlawed in the sense of being considered extraneous to the very idea of law. Legal pluralism was formally abolished, relegated to the past, at the expense of collective structures such as guilds, corporations, orders, village or monastic institutions, which for centuries had maintained legal autonomy. All intermediate institutions between the state and the individual were suddenly cancelled from the legal landscape, with the sole exception of the restricted family group.8 All kinds of collective property, as a source of strong ties among individuals, alternative to the ties between individual and state, were marginalized if not fiercely attacked by the law of the state. Marginalization of intermediate collective bodies between the individual and the state was intended to weaken the individual’s sense of loyalty towards all other parties but the state. In the most atomized societies, such as the United States, even ties among family members were heavily weakened by terminating the legal duty of adults to care for each other: neither a legittima parte bonorum for offspring nor alimony towards ascendants, descendants or other family members have ever been generally recognized. By means of a seductive state-guaranteed generalized rights discourse as opposed to the hard reality of context-specific duties towards the traditional group, the state conquered Western law, replacing the group structure system and its rules. The modern Western state struck a deal with the individual bourgeois: it gave him the opportunity to accumulate duty-free wealth in return for abandoning the group. Freedom was mainly conceived as freedom from the group and from its thick structure of strong and unequal relationships. Nevertheless, given that equality meant abolishing differences in status, roles and hierarchy among individuals but not differences in wealth,

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in the legal order of modernity, freedom and rights have been effectively available to few, while the many have only been able to rely on the dream of one day becoming part of the few. Therefore, having forever relinquished the protection of the group, the weak individual has never received enough protection from the state, which has never been able or willing to fulfil the promise contained in its language of emphatic declarations.9 Yet the rights discourse, which proclaims individuals to be autonomous, independent, selfsufficient and ultimately free of each other, has always remained paramount in the Western legal tradition.10

Corporate power and human rights discourse: How to finish off the job As suggested above, in the Western world rights talk and practice gained the modern state its hegemony over the group. Yet, rights and freedom were not only conferred upon human beings. A new type of ‘person’, the legal person, or corporation, was made equivalent to the physical human being by state law. The new legal individual progressively became as free, autonomous and independent as the physical one. It became as much entitled to accumulate wealth and exclusive private property as the flesh-and-blood bourgeois owner, but with no duties whatsoever towards any other person. It reached the point of becoming equally as entitled to rights such as freedom of speech (which meant for instance enjoying the right to strongly influence the outcome of the US presidency race in 201211) as any biological human being. Nevertheless, the legal person remains different from the physical one for at least one very fundamental reason. The new legal individual, by law made equal to the physical one, is indeed immortal. Freedom and rights are therefore given to ‘him’ forever, making it possible for the first time in human history for a single person to endlessly accumulate properties and rights. The new individual, free of the natural limit to growth imposed by death, has become very powerful over time, even more powerful than the modern state that confers ‘him’ with rights and legal protection. The immortal corporation, not limited by jurisdictional boundaries and more capable of growth than states, has thus been able to take over the state, imposing a legal order in its own interest. Moreover the global corporation can reach out further than the modern state, whose imperialist drive may be inhibited by democratic rhetoric. Today’s corporations can be more effective than states in conquering that areas of the world in which group structures are still very much alive and powerful, and they do so by deploying a sophisticated global legal discourse. Colonization, in fact, has rarely meant exporting the Western model as such.

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On the contrary, state legal systems have stratified upon local legal systems that have never disappeared but coexist with a relatively weak state legal order.12 In reality, outside the West, the modern state has never won its battle against the group structure. Social organizations based on group structure are thus still an irritant for the neoliberal global governance project. They produce a fragmentation of power at local level that is difficult to control, and deep group structures put up strong resistance to predatory global economic interests. Corporationdominated global governance therefore strives to cut down the number of political interlocutors to be worked with in the periphery, and at the same time needs these interlocutors to be as weak as possible. Corporations can easily control a post-modern state deprived of its sovereignty by corrupting or blackmailing its elite, but it is much more difficult to disaggregate communities and to replace people’s loyalties to the group with loyalty to the market. The latter still remains in many places a target to be accomplished. Today almost two-thirds of the earth’s population13 live according to non-Western legal traditions (including African, Asian, Melanesian and others) and are thus still governed by a cosmology and an anthropology at odds with the Western model. A cosmology and an anthropology that assign a central position to the community, characterized by the absence of the idea of ‘rights’, by an emphasis on the specificity of each person (different from, but complementary to, others) and by the fact that group survival and cohesion are more important than the individual. ‘Community is constituted by elements that are different, hierarchical and interdependent. Since they are interdependent, it is not a total of summed up elements where you can eliminate some of them and everything remains the same, it is a whole that is totally modified whenever one of its elements is modified’ explains Michel Alliot, a leading expert in African law (Alliot 1980: 88 – 9). ‘People [in the non-Western legal tradition] do not conceive of human dignity nor organize the social order in terms of rights but on the basis of responsibility and gratitude towards parents, extended family, tribe, clan, ancestors, the sun, rivers, animals, plants, in a word, the earth’, says Robert Vachon, adding that: The Asian person sees him/herself as a relational individual, as part of a familial, a communitarian network, and, in the final analysis, as part of Hinduism, like Atman (the total and impersonal self which is Reality, the impersonal whole that is Brahman, i.e. Reality), as part of Buddhism, as the non-I and non-self (anatta) [. . .] I therefore do not define myself by distinguishing and affirming my rights, but

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by identifying with the Whole and the non-I, by assuming my responsibilities towards family, community and the whole or the void that (I) am. I find my dignity in the ‘dharma’ or ‘dharma’ of the non-I. (Vachon: 3 – 4)14 Along similar lines, the strong sense of mutual belonging among members of groups and sub-groups, as well as the perspective that the good of the group is paramount, are vividly described by Marylyn Strathern in her writings on Melanesian societies. In explaining the personhood of the Papua New Guinean individual she describes it as: ‘distributed or dispersed across a spectrum of relationships, belonging to diverse groupings’ or as ‘an entity with a multiple or plural character’ (2004: 223– 4) composed of multiple relationships. This is a concept of personhood similar to that expressed in Africa by the term Ubuntu, which means that one may be a person only through other persons.15 In order to dismantle such a strongly communal and group-based social organization, the new global governance deploys a powerful weapon, stronger than the plain rights discourse that proved ineffective in the non-Western world during colonial times.16 Human rights discourse, in its women’s rights variation, seems to provide just the right instrument for this purpose. Gender discourse is in fact a highly delicate and sensitive topic, touching at once on the Western ideal of equality and on the gender contraposition/juxtaposition that characterizes many group-based societies. By construing as an extreme violation of women’s dignity certain practices accepted by non-Western women out of a sense of belonging, duty, caring for and responsibility to others, and of participation in community life, women’s rights discourses frame nonWestern women as in need of protection every time they make choices as relational individuals. In so doing, women’s rights discourse has the potential to dismantle the most basic institutions of a group-centred structure, including polygyny, female circumcision,17 levirate and arranged marriages. Singling out women’s rights, that is to say framing the question as a gender issue, even when, as is often the case, the same or a very similar practice could also involve men’s rights (as in the case of circumcision, levirate or arranged marriages), gives more strength to this ideological weapon, making it more apt to succeed in dismantling communities. In sum, appealing to the idea of protecting non-Western women’s dignity from cultural (and male) oppression has the potential to produce a new understanding of personhood among non-Western women, making it possible to attain the desired cultural transformation in their (and men’s) subjectivity: one that shifts their definition of the self from relational to individual.

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The right to exit or the right to stay? The right to dissent or the right to consent? As some scholars have pointed out, human rights discourse frames as extreme violation of women’s rights all behaviours considered repugnant in the terms of the Western-dominant vision of women’s dignity.18 Women’s consent to such practices is simply invalid from a Western human rights perspective, given that it cannot but be coerced by cultural pressure running counter to the self-interest of the individual (as if culture could be separated from the individual!). A woman’s agency in these cases is labelled as false, because from the perspective of the liberal rational self she is not considered to have free choice. She therefore needs to be protected even from herself for the sake of her own wellbeing, assessed according to standards other than her own.19 The case of the so-called Compo Girl in Papua New Guinea described by Gewertz and Errington (1999) and commented on by Marilyn Strathern (2004) and Sally Engle Merry (2009) is illustrative of the point. As summarized by Sally Merry, in this incident, a man in the Minj group in the Western Highlands was killed by the police and his mother’s clan claimed compensation from the deceased’s patriclan, claiming that they had not protected their ‘child’ properly. The compensation payment agreed upon between the two clans included 24 pigs, Kina 20,000 money, and a woman to be sent to the aggrieved clan in marriage. A daughter of the dead man, Miriam, emerged as the obvious candidate for the marriage. (2009: 386– 7) She agreed to be part of her father’s ‘head pay’, asking, however, not to marry immediately and not to marry just anyone (Strathern 2004: 225– 6). The settlement would have gone through but for a legal intervention. A human rights NGO sought a series of orders from the court to enforce Miriam’s ‘constitutional rights’, including her ‘right’ to disregard customary law when involving practices incompatible with the general principles of humanity. Judge Injia judged in favour of the NGO, forbidding the marriage, having concluded that Miriam had not freely agreed to the settlement. He judged her consent to have been coerced, given that in his view she was under pressure from cultural claims by her kinship group obliging her to marry. By focusing on culture and obligations coming from the group, tribe, clan, etc., that is to say by focusing on elements outside of Miriam, the judge did not attend to what was going on inside of her, for example, to her possible desire to comply with obligations entrenched in relationships that were part of her composite person. He did not take into due consideration that a person like Miriam, who

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did not define herself as an autonomous individual but in terms of her multiple kin relationships, by choosing in accordance with her relational duties did, in fact, exercise agency. Indeed, as Marilyn Strathern (2004: 225) explains, according to the local understanding, ‘agency is evinced in the ability of persons to (actively) orient themselves or to align themselves with particular relationships, however forgone a conclusion that decision may seem to be’ (italics in the original).20 Miriam, therefore, exercised the agency of a person with a relational self: she exercised her relational agency. Yet, following a human rights discourse shaped around a strictly individualized self, the only possible agency the judge could conceive of as deserving of protection was that of a woman who makes choices out of her sense of rights, self-interest and independence. Miriam’s ‘differently rational’ agency thus went unrecognized and her consent to marry was considered coerced, and as equivalent to dissent. In attempting to protect a decontextualized, abstract and probably nonexistent subjectivity of Miriam’s, Judge Injia’s decision – based on human rights discourse – totally negated her contextual subjectivity, given that, as Marilyn Strathern (2004: 232) notes ‘perhaps she would [have] like[d] to fulfil her obligations’. In order to provide her with the right to dissent, Judge Injia ultimately deprived Miriam of her right to consent. Yet, Miriam’s selfperception could not remain unaffected by the liberating message underlying the women’s rights discourse: her subjectivity probably started to change as a result. In the typically selective style of women’s rights discourse, the issue at stake was framed as a question of gender, evoking Miriam’s freedom of choice but not that of her prospective spouse, and therefore enhancing the potential for subversion of personhood embedded in the discourse. By implying that oppression comes not only from a given (savage and irrational) culture but also from a patriarchal culture, the message of women’s emancipation delivered by NGOs and human rights discourse becomes yet more credible and effective. A women’s rights discourse that, as in the case of the Compo Girl, negates a relational self and a relational agency, may also profoundly affect other practices that are essential for social organizations structured around communities. So that, for instance, by artificially transforming consent into dissent, arranged marriages can easily become forced marriages and, by the same token, levirate (though sororate is never mentioned21) is transformed from a form of protection and life insurance for women into a practice that oppresses them. Ma´ire´ad Enright vividly describes how this mechanism of slippage, from a practice that is acceptable in theory (arranged marriage with the right to dissent) to a never concretely acceptable one (consent never deemed free), is at

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play in Britain today in the legal treatment of arranged marriages and forced marriages (Enright 2009). In traditional liberal political theory, having the ‘right to exit’ is the paramount condition for free choice and should thus in principle render an arranged marriage acceptable vis-a`-vis Western values. In principle, a practice is considered imposed and unacceptable only if those affected do not consent to participate in it. Yet, in the case of (Muslim) arranged marriages, for a British court to deem a woman’s consent to have been substantially invalidated by pressure directed at her, ‘very little pressure may be required where it was applied by a parent or other close and dominating relative using arguments based upon personal affection or duty, religious beliefs, powerful social or cultural conventions or asserted social, familial or domestic obligations’ (Enright 2009: 343). To be sure, it is difficult to conceive of a single case of arranged marriage in which such arguments would not emerge, either explicitly or implicitly; consequently any arranged marriage may easily be transformed by the courts into forced one. Indeed, the decisions of British courts – in line with the dominant women’s rights discourse – by blurring the boundaries between outside constraints and internal motivations, seem to acknowledge, as the only acceptable form of freedom of choice, a freedom of individual choice against every freedom of relational choice. Muslim women who accept arranged marriages, often depicted as ‘passively’ agreeing to become a spouse, are not recognized full agency, when their decision is based on the desire to meet family claims and expectations. Such a ‘choice’ translates into a ‘non-choice’; their consent becomes dissent and their arranged marriages transit into the category of forced marriages, from which of course they need to be protected. Furthermore, the protection that the state provides to women is enforced in the most stringent way possible, given that – in the interest of prevention – any third party, with no authorization whatsoever from the woman, can demand a restrictive order from the court against a prospective marriage that appears to be ‘forced’ in light of the thinking just outlined. Muslim women in Britain are therefore not only provided with the ‘right to exit’ from forced/ arranged marriages; they are also deprived of their ‘right to stay’ in arranged marriages and ultimately burdened, with a ‘duty to exit’ from them, that is to say – as Ma´ire´ad Enright (2009: 359) puts it – with a ‘duty to cast off culture as the pre-condition of full subjecthood’. Thus, by encouraging a subversion of non-Western women’s personhood, the rights discourse, and women’s rights discourse in particular, is potentially destructive of groups and communities grounded on institutions whose functioning requires a self defined by a sense of relationships, that is to say by a sense of mutual duties and responsibilities.

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Acceptable practices In the women’s rights discourse, consent that stems from a sense of belonging, interdependence with others, or duties towards and care for the other human beings in a woman’s communal network, is therefore deemed false, and equated to dissent, while the practices entered into are seen as being imposed by an oppressive outside culture. The idea that group survival or peace and harmony between groups can also represent the interest of the individual is totally discarded, given that the rational individual (where rationality is only valued in a liberal enlightened perspective) may only be driven by an independent self, disconnected from the needs and expectations of others. Consent motivated by the desire to meet perceived debts within a relational set, comply with communal duties or with the claims mutually binding individuals into a network of relationships, is therefore invalid, tantamount to dissent, while the practice entered into is constructed as contrary to human dignity, which is of course none other than the dignity of the autonomous self. Polygyny, female circumcision (irrespective of the age of the woman who wants to practice it) and veiling, are all affected by this reasoning, therefore in principle they all violate women’s rights. It is only by providing strong evidence that such practices are consented to out of a sense of rights, and not out of a sense of duty, that they may become acceptable from a women’s rights perspective. Veiling may therefore be translated from a culturally oppressive practice into a liberating one when a woman wears the veil against her family’s will or for political reasons that empower her. In this vein, the struggle against colonialism in 1960s Algeria or that against Reza Pahlavi in 1970s Persia represent two examples of acceptable veiling.22 By the same token, notwithstanding the gender inequality implication underpinning the resilient bias against full and free consent to it,23 polygyny may also be accepted as a practice compatible with women’s rights, as long as the woman can offer evidence of her solid determination to enter into on grounds of self-interest. The story of the Igbo woman, who divorced from a necessarily monogamous state marriage so as to be able to enter a polygynist ‘traditional’ marriage with the same husband, is a case in point.24 Mr and Mrs Sidonlook were married according to the Nigerian marriage law that forbade polygamy and punished for bigamy a husband who officially married, even under customary law, another woman while the first marriage was still existent. The couple had two children, one boy and one girl, aged 12 and 10, but Mrs Sidonlook could not expect to have more babies. Mr and Mrs Sidonlook understood the need for male issue in order to maintain the family

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line, so, after seven years of marriage, Mr Sidonlook married, under native custom law, another woman, called Ngozi, whom he housed with their two sons in another part of the city in order to avoid prosecution for bigamy. Then, Mrs Sidonlook, alleging adultery, successfully divorced her husband, only to remarry him under customary law in order to be able to live with her new co-wife Ngozi and her children. The reasons she gave for her choice were formulated not only in terms of a desire to comply with her duty to promote survival of the family lineage. She also explained how important it was for herself to become the senior wife of a polygynist family, which meant being ‘mother’ to all her husband’s children as well as manager of the entire household. The position of ‘mother’ to all the offspring would also secure her the respect and social support of all Mr Sidonlook’s children throughout her old age, working in a similar way to social security or an insurance policy. Moreover, on Mr Sidonlook’s death, she and ‘the other woman’, Ngozi, would not have to engage in a conflict over his property. ‘Customary law’, sums up Christopher Mojekwu (1978: 117), who reports this 1957 case, made provisions for the security of the wives in a polygynist marriage, but the received English law appeared to divide the Sidonlook family. The other woman, Ngozi, took her place as a co-wife. She had three more children thereafter. She had her own trading business and carried out duties as assigned to her by Mrs. Sidonlook. The other woman was relieved of most of the chores of nursing the babies, and of training the children. That is the job of the ‘mother’, Mrs. Sidonlook, who also is the senior wife.25 In sum, Mrs Sidonlook so stubbornly pursued her goal of benefiting from a polygyinst marriage, which from her perspective would afford her more protection and happiness than a monogamous one, that it would be difficult to question her agency in entering into it. She was also able to articulate her choice in terms of self-interest, so as to eliminate any doubt about her will being ‘distorted’ by a sense of duty and responsibility towards other people or by an oppressive culture hostile to her wellbeing. Thus, in the dominant women’s rights discourse, certain core practices and institutions of group-based social organization only seem to become acceptable when they take place outside of their normal course. Women need to pursue them against the wishes of their family or in protest against a supposedly liberating Western alternative, or for a self-empowering political or intellectual reason (such as the female circumcision practised by scholar

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Ahmadou Fuhambai26) in order to be able to prove their freedom of choice. On the contrary, these same practices and institutions in their normal, traditional, regular way of unfolding – essential for the survival of the group structure – tend to be constructed as undermining women’s dignity.

Conclusion By aggressively promoting a form of personhood based on the individual self, women’s rights discourse is apt to produce a dual result. On the one hand, it can seriously aspire to dismantling the group structure that is at odds with the advancement of the corporate power structure; on the other hand, it fosters at the global level a vision of the individualization and isolation of people that is perfectly functional to corporate and market interests. Isolated and autonomous individuals, proud to make choices out of a sense of selfishness (reframed of course as a sense of independence and self-governance) are surely freed from their social bonds and – in line with the goal of the human rights system – made responsible for themselves. However, they also become highly dependent on the market for the satisfaction of the needs (from the care of children and elderly parents, to entertainment and leisure or even the search for a husband or wife) that can no longer be satisfied within the community. In the individualized society promoted by the women’s rights discourse, and more broadly legitimized by the urgency of humanitarian actions, the market takes the place of the community, a market economy substitutes an economy of mutuality and persons are transformed into active consumers, and all the more so, the more they end up being isolated. Demonizing as coerced, choices made out of a sense of duty and belonging also has the magical effect of making people believe that choices made out of a sense of rights and self-interest are always free choices. Like the mirror in Snow White, which gives the wicked Queen the illusion of being the most beautiful in the realm, women’s rights discourse gives Western (and globalized) women the illusion that by framing their choices as self-interested, they can always avoid being other-directed. The egoistic ‘I am doing it for myself!’ claim that accompanies Western practices such as breast augmentation, vaginal lifting and other cosmetic surgery, dying hair, or walking on 12-centimetre heels, indeed removes all need to question the true degree of autonomy enjoyed by women with respect to the market and its cultural impositions. And this, of course, no matter how harmful the practice can be. Thanks to the magic formula ‘I am doing it for myself!’, behaving in conformity with market-created expectations never gives rise to a ‘right to dissent’ issue. The freedom of choice of a woman wearing the

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veil or entering into polygyny, ‘her capacity to reason’ as Ma´ire´ad Enright (2009: 357) would say, must be demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt. This is not the case, however, for a woman’s choice to go through breast augmentation surgery, or to follow such a strict diet in order to fit into a smaller-sized dress that she ends up becoming anorexic. The aesthetic and behavioural canons dictated by the market are presented as universal values, and therefore as devoid of culture and beyond the suspicion of giving rise to a false ‘free’ choice. Thus the formalistic utilitarian reason proffered for engaging in the behaviour (the ‘I am doing it for myself!’ motivation) becomes credible in its own right. By promoting the detachment of the individual from communities made up of human beings relating to each other and encouraging his or her relocation to a market community composed of individualized and isolated persons, women’s rights discourse contributes to an anthropological transformation that is instrumental to corporate global power. This power, however, unlike group power, does not protect individuals, but exploits them for profit to the maximum degree, while ultimately, to be sure, affording them as much freedom as they can buy on the market. It would appear crucial for enthusiasts of women’s rights discourse to become aware of the risks connected with the fostering of such a ‘humonetarian’ message, dressed up in humanitarian language.

Acknowledgements While of course I bear full responsibility for this text, I would like to warmly thank, for commenting on and/or revising it, Mauro Bussani, Peppe Mastruzzo, Ugo Mattei, Laura Nader, Luca Pes, Talha Syed, Michele Spano` and Richard Shweder. I would also like to thank George Bisharat and Laura Nader for giving me the opportunity to present the ideas proposed in this chapter in their classes.

Notes 1 In 2001 Cherie Blair and Laura Bush, on their part, once again justified the ‘war on terror’ and the American and English intervention in Afghanistan in terms of liberating Afghan women from the Taliban, while of course the geo-political strategic position of Afghanistan provides a better explanation for the interests involved in the military operation (see Abu Lughod 2002; De Lauri 2012). 2 In describing the committee that drafted the Declaration, Abdullai An-Na’im writes: ‘The only representatives of non-Western countries on that committee were Chang Peng-Chung of China and Charles Habib Malik of Lebanon. Both had been educated at American

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universities, and both reflected their “Westernization” in the positions they took during the debates’ (1990: 350). At: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2013/child_marriage_20130307/en/. Interestingly, among the policy changes that, according to IMF’s and WB’s structural adjustment programs (SAPs) recently transformed into Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), developing countries must implement if they wish to receive new loans or to obtain lower interest rates on existing loans, compliance with women’s rights is frequently mentioned. See www.imf.org and www.wds-worldbank.org. On the fostering by women’s rights discourse of the idea that culture subordinates women, while modernity frees them, see Merry 2003. Polanyi 1944. For the side effects on criminal law of such a reversal in perspective see Foucault 1977, particularly Part II, Chapter I and Norrie 2001. On the rise of the individual in modernity, see Friedman 1990, Chapter 3. See more recently, Ruskola 2013: 209ff. It bears emphasizing that acknowledging that the modern state, in its dominant liberal version, recognizes only two kinds of legal subjects – the state itself and the individual – does not mean that other legal subjects have ceased to be: only that they have been cast outside the ‘law’ by the new order. See, on this subject, Grossi 1981. As summed up by Macpherson (1962: 262): ‘The greatness of seventeenth-century liberalism was its assertion of the free rational individual as the criterion of the good society; its tragedy was that this very assertion was necessarily a denial of individualism to half the nation.’ On the limits to rights thinking and on the need to create a sense of responsibility and community among individuals, see Glendon 1991 and Etzioni 1995. For a strong plea in favour of a ‘communitarian liberalism’ that combines rights with responsibilities, see Luban 1994. See the US Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010) as applied by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission, 599 F.3d 686 (D.C. Cir. 2010) and the effects on the creation of the so called Super PACs. Menski 2006; Guadagni 2010: 90 – 101. According to Vachon at http://www.dhdi.free.fr/recherches/droithomme/articles/ vachondhdharma.htm. For Chinese kinship-based subjectivity, currently strongly combined with a rights-based individual subjectivity, see Ruskola 2013, Chapter 6 especially. See the ‘South African Governmental White Paper on Social Welfare’ (1997), quoted in Orru`, ‘La promozione dei diritti nell’Africa subsahariana’, at http://archivio.rivistaaic.it/ materiali/anticipazioni/diritti_in_africa_orru.pdf, p. 31, which defines Ubuntu as: ‘The principle of caring for each-other’s well being [. . .] and a spirit of mutual support [. . .] Each individual’s humanity is ideally expressed through his or her relationship with others and the latter’s in turn through recognition of the humanity of the individual. Ubuntu means that people are people through other people. It also acknowledges both the rights and responsibilities of every citizen in promoting individual and societal well being.’ For a description of the socially ‘thick’ world of an indigenous community living in the Northern Territories of Australia and of a fascinating attempt to move beyond the binary concepts of individual freedom and social constraint, respectively termed ‘autological subject’ and ‘genealogical society’, see Povinelli 2006. In Africa, for instance, when the colonial powers offered Africans the chance to receive state-protected individual property rights on land simply by registering with ad hoc

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THE POLITICS OF HUMANITARIANISM offices, very few of the indigenous property owners did so (see Mattei 1990). They knew they could rely on immeasurably stronger property rights within the group structure than they could outside it. They trusted the traditional property system (group-centered) rather than the modern individual-centred one. State land reform, therefore, did not succeed and collective property together with its collective organizational structure prevailed. The protection afforded by the group to women in the traditional Ashanti land tenure system has been compared with the individual and disadvantaged position of women in modern Ghana by Asiama (1997). I extensively addressed the issue of female circumcision some time ago in a different paper. See Grande 2004, now at http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/gj, as later revised, Grande 2009– 10. On the issue of the notion of human rights as a Western concept, see, among many others, Pannikkar 1982; de Sousa Santos (who speaks of a globalization of a Western localism) 1998, 2008; Eberhard 2011; Eberhard 2010; Otto 1997; Algostino 2005; Bussani 2010. For an in-depth and sophisticated discussion on the subject, see Merry 2009. A compelling critique of the liberal discourse of freedom and individual autonomy is articulated by Mahmood 2012, in a thick ethnographic and theoretical analysis of Muslim women’s piety movements in Egypt. For a comparative critical perspective, see Nader 1999. Strathern adds, moreover: ‘This is not the same as free choice (indeed someone may have few options in the matter) and does not translate directly into the kinds of act of choice by which the Modern person can be recognized.’ As to the distinction between person and agent in Melanesia, Marilyn Strathern refers to her previous work, where she writes: ‘The person is construed from the vantage point of the relations that constitute him or her: she or he objectifies and is so revealed in those relations. The agent is construed as the one who acts because of those relationships and is revealed in his or her actions’ (1988: 273). Levirate and sororate are widowhood practices according to which the widow or the widower becomes respectively wife or husband of their brother- or sister-in-law. Of course it must be admitted that levirate is much more common than sororate. As reported by Sally Merry (2009: 399–400), in her report to the Human Rights Commission, the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Radhika Coomaraswamy, for instance, while condemning as against human rights many veiling practices on the principle that they are either imposed or physically harmful (chador, purda or burqua would cause ‘asthma, high blood pressure, hearing or sight problems, skin rushes, hair loss and a general decline in mental condition’), makes sure to identify as acceptable, since they can be liberating, those veiling practices which express political or religious identity (see Radhika Coomaraswamy, ‘Cultural Practices in the Family that are Violent to Women’, Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Radhika Coomaraswamy, submitted in accordance with Commission on Human Rights resolution 2001/49, New York: United Nations Economic and Social Council, E/CN.4/2002/83, http://www.unhchr.ch/Huridocda/huridoca.nsf/0/, paragraphs 86–8). Paragraph 24 of the General Comment 28, issued by the Human Rights Committee, commenting on Article 23(4) of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966, that specifically provides for equality in relation to marriage, states: ‘equality of treatment with regard to the right to marry implies that polygamy is incompatible with this principle’. The Committee further explains that ‘poligamy violates the dignity of women. It is an inadmissible discrimination against women. Consequently, it should be definitely abolished wherever it continues to exists’ (Human Rights Committee, 2000, HRC General Comment 28 – Equality of Rights between men and women (Article 3) UN. As reported by Mojekwu 1978.

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25 For a critique of a Western rights-based discourse to marriage law encouraging monogamy see Griffiths 2001 (and quoted literature), who argues (p. 114) that polygyny, ‘far from discriminating against women, provides for a more inclusive approach that is not necessarily at odds with women’s interests’. In the same critical vein, from a comparative perspective, see Nader 2013. 26 Fuambai 2007, 2009.

Bibliography Abu Lughod, L., 2002, ‘Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and its Others’, American Anthropologist, 104(3): 783– 90. Ahmadou, F., 2007, ‘Ain’t I a Woman too? Challenging Myths of Sexual Dysfunctions in Circumcised Women’ in Transcultural Bodies: Female Genital Cutting in Global Context, Y. Hernlund and B. Shell-Duncan, eds, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. ——, 2009, ‘Disputing the Myths of the Sexual Dysfunction in Circumcised Women. An interview with Fuambai Ahmadou by R. Shweder’, Anthropology Today, 25(6): 14– 17. Ahmed, L., 1992, Women and Gender in Islam, New Haven: Yale University Press. Algostino, A., 2005, L’ambigua universalita` dei diritti: diritti occidentali o diritti della persona umana?, Naples: Jovene. Alliot, M., 1980, ‘Mode`les socie´taux. 1. Les communaute´s’, Bulletin de Liaisons du LAJP, 2: 87 – 93. An-Na’im, A., 1990, ‘Problems of Universal Cultural Legitimacy for Human Rights’ in Human Rights in Africa: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, A. An-Na’im and F.M. Deng, eds, Washington, DC: Brookings Institute. Asiama, S.O., 1997, ‘Crossing the Barrier of Time. The Asante Woman in Urban Land Development’, Africa, 2: 212– 36. Baker, J.H., 1979, An Introduction to English Legal History, London: Butterworths. Bourdieu, P., 1998, ‘L’essence du ne´oliberalisme’, Le Monde Diplomatique, http://www.monde-di plomatique.fr/1998/03/BOURDIEU/10167. Bussani, M., 2010, Il diritto dell’Occidente. Geopolitica delle regole globali, Turin: Einaudi. De Lauri, A., 2012, Afghanistan. Ricostruzione, ingiustizia, diritti umani, Milan: Mondadori. de Sousa Santos, B., 1998, ‘Vers une conception multiculturelle des droits de l’homme?’, Droits et socie´te´s, 35: 79 – 96. ——, ed., 2008, Another Knowledge is Possible: Beyond Northern Epistemologies (Reinventing Social Emancipation: Towards News Manifestos), London and New York: Verso. Deveaux, M., 2007, ‘Personal Autonomy and Cultural Tradition. The Arranged Marriage Debate in Britain’ in Sexual Justice/Cultural Justice. Critical Perspectives in Political Theory and Practice, B. Arneil, M. Deveaux, R. Dhamoon and A. Eisenberg, eds, London and New York: Routledge. Eberhard, C., 2010, Droit au miroir des cultures. Pour une autre mondialisation, Paris: LJAP. ——, 2011, Droits de l’homme et dialogue interculturel, Paris: Connaissance et Savoirs. Enright, M., 2009, ‘Choice, Culture and the Politics of Belonging: The Emerging Law of Forced and Arranged Marriage’, Modern Law Review, 72(3): 331– 59. Etzioni, A., 1995, ‘The Spirit of Community. Rights, Responsibilities and the Communitarian Agenda’, London: Fontana Press, Harper Collins Publishers. Foucault, M., 1977 [1975], Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison, Paris: Gallimard. Friedman, L.M., 1990, The Republic of Choice. Law, Authority, and Culture, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Gewertz, D. and F. Errington, 1999, Emerging Class in Papua New Guinea: The Telling of a Difference, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Glendon, M.A., 1991, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse, New York: The Free Press.

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Grande, E., 2004, ‘Hegemonic Human Rights and African Resistance: Female Circumcision in a Broader Comparative Perspective’, Global Jurist, 4(2), Art. 3: 1 – 21. ——, 2009– 10, ‘Hegemonic Human Rights: The Case of Female Circumcision. A Call for Taking Multiculturalism Seriously’, Archivio Antropologico Mediterraneo, 12(1): 11 – 27. Griffiths, A., 2001, ‘Gendering Culture: Towards a Plural Perspective on Kwena Women’s Rights’ in Culture and Rights: Anthropological Perspectives, J.K. Cowan, M.-B. Dembour and R.A. Wilson, eds, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Guadagni, M., 2010, ‘African Law and Legal Pluralism’ in African Law and Social Development, H. Yoonhong and X. Xinhua, eds, Xiantang: Xiantang University Press. Lazerg, M., 1994, The Eloquence of Silence. Algerian Women in Question, New York: Routledge. Luban, D., 1994, Legal Modernism, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Macpherson, C.B., 1962, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism. Hobbes to Locke, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mahmood, S., 2012, Politics of Piety. The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Marx, K., 1843, On the Jewish Question, Republished by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012. Mattei, U., 1990, ‘Socialist and Non-Socialist Approaches to Land Law: Continuity and Change in Somalia and Other African States’, Review of Socialist Law, 16: 17 –55. Mattei, U. and L. Nader, 2008, Plunder. When the Rule of Law is Illegal, Malden: Blackwell. Menski, W., 2006, Comparative Law in a Global Context: The Legal Systems of Asia and Africa, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Merry, E.S., 2003, ‘Human Rights Law and the Demonization of Culture (and Anthropology Along the Way)’, PoLAR, 26(1): 55 – 76. Merry, E.S., 2009, ‘Relating to the Subjects of Human Rights: The Culture of Agency in Human Rights Discourse’ in Law and Anthropology: Current Legal Issues, M. Freeman and D. Napier, eds, New York: New York Press. Mojekwu, C.C., 1978, ‘Law in African Culture and Society’ in African Society, Culture, and Politics: An Introduction to African Studies, C.C. Mojekwu, V.C. Uchendu and L.F. Van Hoey, eds, Washington, DC: University Press of America. Nader, L., 1999, ‘Num espelho de mulher: cegueira normativa e questo˜es de direitos humanos na˜o resolvidas’, Horizontes Antopo´logicos, 5(10): 61 – 82. ——, 2013, Culture and Dignity. Dialogues between the Middle East and the West, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Narayan, U., 2001, ‘Minds of their Own’ in A Mind of One’s Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity, L. Anthony and C. Witt, eds, Boulder: Westview Press. Norrie, A., 2001, Crime, Reason and History. A Critical Introduction to Criminal Law, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Orru`, R., La promozione dei diritti nell’Africa subsahariana, http://archivio.rivistaaic.it/materiali/ anticipazioni/diritti_in_africa_orru.pdf. Otto, D., 1997, ‘Rethinking the Universality of Human Rights Law’, Columbia Human Rights Law Review, 29: 1 – 46. Pannikkar, R., 1982, ‘Is the Notion of Human Rights a Western Concept?’, Diogenes, 120: 75 – 102. Polanyi, K., 1944, The Great Transformation. The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, Boston: Beacon Press. Povinelli, E., 2006, The Empire of Love. Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality, Durham: Duke University Press. Ruskola, T., 2013, Legal Orientalism. China, United States and Modern Law, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Saharso, S., 2000, ‘Female Autonomy and Cultural Imperative: Two Hearts Beating Together’ in Citizenship in Diverse Societies, W. Kymlicka and W. Norman, eds, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Spivak, G.C., 1988, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, C. Nelson and L. Grossberg, eds, Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Stein, P., 1984, Legal Institutions. The Development of Disputes Settlements, London: Butterworth. Strathern, M., 1988, The Gender of the Gift. Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ——, 2004, ‘Losing (out on) Intellectual Resources’, in Law, Anthropology, and the Constitution of the Social. Making Persons and Things, A. Pottage and M. Mundy, eds, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vachon, R., Droits de l’homme et Dharma, http://www.dhdi.free.fr/recherches/droithomme/ articles/vachondhdharma.htm.

CHAPTER 6 BATOTO WA MARIA HUMANITARIANISM, THE PROVINCIAL STATE, SALESIAN MISSIONARIES AND THE CONCEPT OF CHILDHOOD IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO (DRC) Edoardo Quaretta

Introduction In September 2006, while spending a year as a volunteer in Lubumbashi, capital of the Katanga province in the Democratic Republic of Congo, I had the opportunity to take part in a project under the Italian international civic service programme. This project was run by an NGO affiliated with the Salesian Sisters of St John Bosco, who belong to the religious institute the Salesians of Don Bosco. We had difficulty in accomplishing many of the goals established before going on the trip, given that the experience was largely mediated, if not actually limited, by the sisters responsible for the volunteers, who took care of us as though we ourselves were children. We had the feeling of being trapped in a condition of complete dependence on the sisters for all our basic needs: food, movement in and out of the convent, finding a place to sleep and most other daily activities. Although it was highly frustrating at first, this process of being subjected to a kind of ‘infantilization’, and the sisters’ attitude towards the volunteers in general, became a serious point of interest and fascination for me, yielding unexpected insights.

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Ironically, being treated as a child and made subordinate to the adult supervision of the sisters (it was assumed that young white volunteers were unable to care for themselves in unfamiliar surroundings) helped me to appreciate the problems surrounding their methods of teaching children. Just as children, as a group in society, are subordinated to adults by virtue of a specific and dominant definition of them, at the core of the sisters’ idea of childhood is the belief that it is a period in human life characterized by dependency, vulnerability and the need for care and protection. My objective in this chapter is to analyse the idea of childhood that assumes children to be ‘innocent’, and therefore in need of protection, and the uses that are made of this idea in the public sphere of Lubumbashi. I wish to suggest that this Western definition of childhood, understood as a social construction,1 identifies all the children that are apparently dislocated from the places commonly regarded as natural for Western children (families, homes, schools) as ‘out of place’ (Connolly and Ennew 1996). This is why the images propagated of ‘street children’ in the Congo are of children who do not fit into the Western definition of what childhood should be. My analysis here focuses, more specifically, on the particularly problematic impacts of this ideology in the interaction among humanitarian organizations, the Province of Katanga – still going through a process of consolidation and political legitimization – and the Salesian congregation itself, which has played a pioneering role in the protection of children since colonial times. This problematic relationship between these very different institutions, each with its own ideology, has historically exonerated the state from responsibility for the education and welfare of its children. My hope is that analysis of this one specific aspect, that of seeing Congolese children from a Western viewpoint and the complex interaction that ensues, may make the social and political problem of ‘street children’ more accessible and therefore a better understanding of this issue more plausible. A first observation to be made in this regard is that the very notions of ‘innocence’ and ‘protection’, and likewise ‘the politics of age’ (Rosen 2007), are categorizations used by different social agents that constitute a form of social and political action. The manipulation of such notions has produced the dominant and worldwide image of ‘the Child’, which is a Western image, informed by international and local political agendas and regulated by international laws such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). The fundamental ideas underpinning the global notion of ‘the Child’ are, first, that children are inferior subjects to adults and thus must be separated from the social world of adults (Wyness 2000); specifically, inferiority refers to the alleged incapacity of children to assume the set of roles and responsibilities usually taken on by

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adults in society (ibid.). Second, because of their immaturity and lack of skills, as required by a formal economy at any rate, children cannot be workers, and so they must be excluded from the production process (Ennew 2003; Nieuwenhuys 1996). It follows that childhood is a period confined to ideal places such as home and school, and that children are incomplete and innocent subjects needing protection. The political, ideological, and social uses of the global construct of ‘the Child’ undermine sets of local understandings of children and childhood, falling within the framework that Nancy ScheperHughes and Carolyn Sergeant (1998) have defined as ‘the cultural politics of childhood’. In this view, the concept of childhood tends to work differently depending on who is deploying it. The Salesians use it to disempower people, while for the NGOs this same concept of childhood is seen as a tool for empowering children. At the same time, the Provincial State’s rhetoric of the innocent child is alternated with that of the young criminal who must be rehabilitated. The data presented in this document mostly come from socioanthropological fieldwork carried out in Katanga between 2010 and 2012. The most significant sources of information for the research were representatives of two local NGOs (who will remain anonymous), the staff at the Salesian centre for street children, Bakanja Ville, and a number of BISPE2 officials in Lubumbashi.

Abandoned children and youth in crisis During the colonial era, the concepts of childhood and youth were negotiated in both cooperative and conflictual relationships among several social actors. In the period spanning the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, Christian evangelization and colonization went hand in hand with imposing Belgian rule over the Congo. Thus the Congo Free State (1885– 1908) became in turn the Belgian Congo (1908– 1960). From 19063 onwards, the colonial administration entrusted the moral and secular education of the younger generation to the Catholic Church. Colonial administrators granted Catholic congregations huge benefits and abundant finance for the educational system that it had delegated to the them. The missionaries’ emphasis on the education of children was justified by them as a means of gaining access to the children’s families for the purposes of conversion. The concept of childhood that the missions introduced into these areas was as fundamental as it was destabilizing to local conceptions of ‘family’ and ‘childhood’. The missionaries viewed children as subjects who could easily be manipulated into becoming adult subjects of Christian faith.

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As reported by Merlier, adults, unlike children, were in most cases considered by colonialists and missionaries as ‘impossible to civilize’: ‘It is impossible to civilize the negro adults, we can give them a varnish of civilization, but their mentality will always be the negro mentality. We must therefore reach the very young to be able to civilize them, the younger the better’ (1962: 219). Christian missionaries were fundamental to the realization of the social engineering projects implemented by the private companies based in Katanga. They were, in fact, the operational arm of a political project to create a new ethics of childhood. In 1928 the Union Minie`re du Haut Katanga (UMHK), at that time one of the largest copper-mining companies in the world, put in place an efficient education system for the workers at its camps with the support of the Benedictine mission. The objective was to create, from an early age, obedient subjects who would respond to the company’s labour needs. In the industrial colonial era, a certain type of childhood was ‘invented’, modelled, of course, on the Western prototype. The children were raised in a colonial context, unable to make any economic contribution to family finances so that they would become totally dependent, fragile and irresponsible; that was the objective. Just like women, children too had to be completely dependent on the work of their fathers. In order to achieve optimum stability of the UMHK workers, this dependence from childhood on the nuclear family and the father was first established through the confinement of children to schools, playgrounds and churches. This project had the direct objective of limiting the definition of ‘child’ to the sole criterion of biological age, and the age criterion became the organizing principle behind the fundamental educational structures of family, school, playground and youth movements. All this happened within the framework of the crucial and deliberate change brought about by the construction of a new set of childhood ethics shaped by industrial paternalism. The company that employed the workers also provided them with a series of benefits (housing, food, medical care and schooling for children) in order to build a stable model of the nuclear family in which the new concept of childhood was central (Dibwe 2001; Rubbers 2013). Nonetheless, we had to wait until the end of the 1950s to see the emergence of the concepts of ‘abandoned children’ and ‘youth in crisis’. With the aim of relaunching their evangelical mission in central Africa, though no longer from the standpoint of the colonialist mission and all that it implied, the Salesian congregations were the first to use these definitions to their own ends. In so doing, they also aimed to attract funding4 from private associations and wealthy citizens interested in resolving the increasingly

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visible problem of abandoned children. The missionaries were trying to respond to various socio-economic phenomena that had begun to affect the country around the beginning of the 1950s, such as rapid growth in the young population, urbanization, the economic recession and, most importantly, the breakdown of the colonial system. This new strategy led to the opening of the first ‘rehabilitation’ and ‘reeducation’ centres for the growing population of marginalized (de´sœuvre´e) children and youth. The focus on young adults who were not otherwise occupied marked a change in the Salesians’ approach to dealing with children, in contrast with the pragmatic race-based approach that had prevailed during the colonial era (schools for whites, trade schools for locals). The Salesians’ change of perspective is clear from the correspondence between the members of the Lubumbashi congregation and the organization’s central headquarters in Turin. Over the course of several years’ worth of correspondence the rhetoric of ‘saving the children’ was based around three distinct objectives. The first was the Salesians’ desire to differentiate themselves from the colonists who were leaving the country. Secondly, they needed to accommodate the sentimental and bourgeois view of childhood conveyed by the philanthropic groups. Finally, they needed to highlight the flaws of the new post-colonial state, which was not always able to fulfil its institutional responsibilities, as well as highlighting the Salesians’ key role in remedying these omissions. In light of these aspirations, one of the proposed solutions was to direct the missionaries’ actions towards a target that weighed heavily in public opinion, such as marginalized children. In the letters and documents from that era, expressions and plans began to appear that clearly marked new lines of thought and a new orientation for the Salesian mission in the Congo. Expressions such as ‘a church long disassociated from colonialism’, an ‘African church’, ‘eradicating the idea of the colony’, and ‘bearing witness to poverty’ became common in communications between the congregation in Katanga and the Turin headquarters. The passages of two letters sent to the Head Chancellor of the Turin congregation are quite explicit on this matter: The problem of abandoned youth and juvenile delinquency is on the increase, especially in the country’s big cities [. . .]. In particular, some influential lay people, much worried by the youth situation, insist that this charitable work, which they are going to back with broad moral and financial support, should begin.5

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Youth will be saved if we all – families, schools, youth and adult movements, the State – understand that all together we must save the children. Are we not all guilty of their abandonment?6 As a result, in May 1964, the foundations of the first Salesian reeducation centre were laid in Elisabethville.7 In 1969 it became the Cite´ des Jeunes.8 The creation of the centre was driven by a philanthropic organization in the city composed of the Lions Club, the Rotary Club, the Joie et Lumie`re group, which was part of the local Red Cross, and individual wealthy citizens. There were other socio-political factors that drove the Salesian missions to this shift. First, in 1954, the opening of non-denominational secular schools ended the Catholic Church’s monopoly on education. Second, in 1974, under the Mobutu regime, schools were nationalized, and there was no more teaching of religion in schools. It was only with a new agreement in 1977 that the management of education was given back to the churches. It is critical to note that, for at least 20 years following independence, a large percentage of the youth was brought into politics. From 1960 onwards, young adults began to be involved in the jeunesses, the youth branches of the various political parties. The jeunesses of the early 1960s, for example, played a crucial role in the rebellions of 1964 –5 (Verhaegen 1967). In 1964, four years after independence, a series of rebellions spread across several parts of the DRC. The rebellions were organized by the political opponents of President Kasavubu’s moderate regime. The objectives were clear: the violent seizure of power and the overthrow of the regime. According to Benoit Verhaegen, for instance, during the preparatory phases of the rebellions members of the jeunesses hid in nearby communities on the pretence of engaging in educational and sporting activities. In these hidden camps, in contrast with the notion of children and youth as defined earlier, age was not the main criterion for determining these young people’s policy category, nor was it uncommon during this period for the Catholic or Protestant missions to be aware of the location of the camps (Verhaegen 1967). The Mobutu regime did away with the religious youth movements in the 1970s, imposed a ban on religious instruction in schools, and instituted the nationalization of denominational school systems. This was quite a change from the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the powerful Mobutu was seeking to consolidate his social base and popular legitimacy. There was an almost complete inversion in the relationship between the regime and denominational churches in Congo-Zaire. From the end of the major confrontations with the colonia1 order, confrontations that were echoed during the first part of the Mobutu regime, the Zaire Church of Christ (ECZ), the official

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church under which all the Protestant churches were grouped, gave unconditional support to the regime and to the person of President Mobutu (Kabongo-Baya 1991). During the same period, the Roman Catholic bishops came to represent a real challenge to the dictator (ibid. 84). Strategically speaking, the Protestant authorities seemed to see Mobutu’s ascension to power as a way of restoring socio-religious equality (or even equity). Because they were against the Catholic colonizers who not only took advantage of their privileges to establish and maintain their hegemony but also displayed contempt and hostility towards other faiths, Mobutu seemed to the ECZ a powerful symbol of a new story (ibid.). This period provides the key to understanding the Salesians’ pioneering role in consolidating a concept of childhood and form of interventionism with political connotations,9 which subsequently in the early 1990s became the basis for involving the myriad of international and local NGOs that today compose the humanitarian sector.10 It must be noted that during this last important chapter in the country’s history, the transition to democracy (1990– 7), such concepts of childhood and youth were amongst the main objectives of, and tools used by, the humanitarian sector. Around such concepts, many NGOs and Associations sans but lucratif (ASBLs; associations without lucrative purpose) created an area within which to act that became a field providing aid and support in a context in which the state was collapsing.11 From the beginning of the 1990s, this array of non-governmental organizations was to be found in the Congo, a space in which a great number of projects and programmes have been implemented with a view to defending the welfare and rights of children, that is to say children as defined by Western notions, at least. Coinciding with the country’s ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), this impulse has produced two important consequences: first, over the past 20 years the local and national political authorities have been largely driven out of the process of decision-making and prioritizing with regard to where the flow of international funding should be directed;12 and second, the categories of infants and children in a state of humanitarian emergency have multiplied. These categories are subdivided according to specific circumstances and issues, from children working in the ‘artisanal’ mines (creuseurs) to those accused of witchcraft (enfants-sorciers), from street children (shege) to child soldiers (kadogo). The entire list is very long. The continuity between the present-day politics of humanitarian intervention and the missionary zeal of the 1950s and 1960s in support of ‘abandoned children’ and ‘youth in crisis’ is to be seen, beyond these ‘victimizing’ definitions, in the alarmist register used by both groups.

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In this regard, American political scientist Michael Barnett (2011) has distinguished between two forms of humanitarian action: emergency humanitarianism and alchemical humanitarianism. Barnett defines the two types of intervention as, respectively, ‘an emergency branch that focuses on symptoms’ and ‘an alchemical branch that adds the ambition of removing the root causes of suffering’ (2011: 10).13 Current emergency humanitarianism of the NGOs in the Congo is therefore connected to that of the Salesian missions in the period leading up to independence. It seems legitimate to ask how this rhetorical construct manages to maintain the significance of emergency. Using Barnett’s distinction, a possible hypothesis is that the current concept of ‘humanitarian emergency’ is, in reality, only a register of communication and awareness primarily directed at a Western audience. In practice, it seems that humanitarian emergency operations have been transformed and consolidated around actions of the alchemical humanitarian type, or long-term projects geared towards the eradication of the structural factors that cause suffering and crisis conditions among all minors. These preliminary considerations immediately allow us to hypothesize that the viewpoint underpinning social and rhetorical constructs such as ‘abandoned children’, ‘youth in crisis’ and ‘street children’ does not actually pertain to the relief of humanitarian disaster but rather to a long-term political plan. This is the same plan started by the Salesian missions and continued by the contemporary NGO system, which has effectively made use of the emergentialist register to create a permanent interventionist logic.

Batoto wa Maria: The issue of street children ‘Batoto wa Maria’ in Katangese Swahili means ‘Mary’s children’. According to some observers (Kahola and Rubbers 2008) this definition first appeared in the 1990s, when a local building contractor coined this expression to refer to Lubumbashi street children (shege) – to be considered blessed by God precisely because they had been abandoned by society. The contractor thus implicitly positioned himself as ‘father’ of these children and a strong defender of Christian and family values (ibid.). This anecdote aside, the epithet ‘Batoto wa Maria’ concentrates in a few words some significant aspects of the way people commonly look on the phenomenon of street children: the first aspect concerns the perspective, widely shared by the missions and the NGOs, that conceives childhood in terms of vulnerability and abandonment. The second aspect regards the idea of charity within Roman Catholic iconography and doctrine. In short, to

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define street children as Mary’s children is a clear allusion to the role that the Catholic Church has played in the safeguarding and education of children in Lubumbashi, above all through the Salesian missionaries, while, at the same time, it sounds like a new version of the ‘saving the children’ rhetoric mentioned above. As we will later see in the ethnographic case study, these two aspects (charity and the redeeming ethic) are part of the long-term project of the Salesian confessional NGO, and more in general of the Catholic Church, while the state has traditionally used a different discourse of juvenile delinquency and zero tolerance policies, resulting in the institution of repressive practices towards the street children. The issue of street children came strongly to the fore in Lubumbashi in the 1990s. The presence of street children in the Congo, and in particular in Katanga, up to the 1980s, had remained a marginal phenomenon for two main reasons: in rural environments Katangese populations were structured by kinship ties, producing complex patterns of circulation of children within kinship networks, which guaranteed protection even in case of their parents’ death; whereas in urban environments private enterprise and the paternalism of the colonial administration served as a support structure creating a different model of the family. This familial model actuated the upbringing and education of children destined to become tomorrow’s labour force (Fetter 1976; Dibwe 2001). In the years after independence, the paternalistic system continued to support this model of welfare, at least until the 1980s (Rubbers 2006). In such a context, in Lubumbashi, street children were almost non-existent because private enterprise supplied families with food provisions according to the number of children in the household. Medical expenses, housing and the children’s education were also guaranteed by employers. The few homeless children that could be found were classified as ‘tramps’ and entrusted to government reeducation institutes called E´tablissements de Garde et d’E´ducation de l’E´tat (EGEE). From the 1980s onwards, under the Mobutu regime, the dramatic reduction in state aid and social spending significantly disimproved the situation for children.14 Moreover, the decline of the industrial district and the economic recession had a negative impact on parents’ ability to provide for their children’s primary needs, leading to the break-up of numerous families (Petit 2003; Nkuku and Re´mon 2006). Street children made their appearance as a result of the instability of patriarchal families and as a consequence of the wars that had broken out between 1996 and 2002, the interethnic conflicts of 1992 – 3, and the pillaging of the population during the same years (Dibwe 2001; Rubbers 2013).

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The political, economic and social problems of the country led to state bankruptcy and to an increasing ‘NGOization’ of Congolese society, and in the early 1990s the number of ASBLs, NGOs and local association networks increased rapidly across the whole country (Giovannoni et al. 2004). Although it is difficult to define the exact number of NGOs present in that period, E. M’Bokolo, based on extracts from a 1996 study led by the NGO National Council and by the local UNICEF section, estimated that a total of 1,322 NGOs were operating throughout the country (Kabarhuza 2002: 10). In 1998, UNICEF itself (the Lubumbashi branch) forcefully resumed its activities, reinforcing in particular the staff in charge of the childhood protection section (Kakudji 2007: 77); subsequently a programme of Protection le´gale et sociale des couches vulne´rables was launched, and, eventually, the structure Re´seau de Protection de l’Enfant (RPE) was born, regrouping about 20 NGOs engaged in childhood protection (ibid.). Under the influence of a constantly expanding humanitarian sector, the Western media brought the Congolese and Lubumbashi shege issue to the international forefront (Kaola and Rubbers 2008; Rubbers 2007; Kakudji 2007). The Salesians too were faced with the increase in numbers of street children as well as the expansion of the humanitarian sector. The multiplication of benefactors and funding providers, the complex fund-raising strategies, the widening of the field of action, and the necessity for detailed expenditure reports led the congregation to make their structures more suitable to the increasing ‘industrialization’ of the sector by setting up an ASBL structure of their own.15 The opening up of the sphere of childhood and youth care, once under the exclusive control of the missions, to other subjects such as NGOs and ASBLs was attributable to several factors. First, as already mentioned, the sectors hit hardest by the economic crisis that began in the 1980s were those connected with the population’s basic needs (health, food and education), with consequent adverse effects for children’s quality of life. In this regard, the urgency that spurred the international community to bring immediate help also contributed to the development of cooperation between international partners and local NGOs. Secondly, the country, on its way to democratization, approved a number of international agreements and conventions aimed at upholding childhood rights and welfare. The most important of these was the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) signed by the Congo in September 1990.16 The CRC offered a new field, the administrative– legal one, within which it was

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possible to articulate alchemical humanitarianism logic (permanent interventionism aimed at uprooting the causes of suffering/poverty) through the moral principles that make contemporary humanitarianism adjacent to the attitudes of the post-independence missionaries. The influence of the CRC on local legislation is clear and may be seen, for example, in the text of the law on childhood protection issued by the Congolese government in January 2009: Law 09/001 specifies a long list of ‘types of child’ that should benefit from special protection in line with the provisions of the CRC: the rejected child, abandoned child, tramp, beggar, vagabond, the child that is misbehaving, undisciplined, sexually abused, criminal, unschooled, mistreated, without family support, drug addicted, orphaned, accused of witchcraft, handicapped or deaf mute.17 The law on childhood protection seems to confirm the results of studies observing that, in the period since the approval of the CRC, the iconography of childhood ‘victimization’ has changed significantly (Poretti et al. 2013). The street child figure that was predominant in the international agenda up to the 1990s has gradually disappeared in favour of the figure of the child as a victim of violence as the new prevailing icon (ibid. 2). Currently, in Law 09/001 of the Kinshasa government, the term ‘street child’ does not appear anywhere, despite the fact that, in many of the country’s cities, the shege are still a priority for local policy-making and receive strong media attention. Although the local elite and the international community have been approving of the progress represented by ratification of the CRC, the United Nations Committee for Children’s Rights has pointed out the scarcity of resources available to the Congolese government for implementing legislative measures (IBCR 2008). The lack of state funds for social policies regarding children’s health and welfare has had a double impact:18 on the one hand the Congolese state has left the field open to the proliferation of NGOs and ASBLs engaged in the protection of children’s rights and the concrete application of the CRC; on the other, with regard to street children more specifically, the multiplication of shelters, projects and programmes in their favour seems to have created some contradictory situations.19

Shege Ze´ro and the Kasapa Centre Over the past decade or so, the provincial government of Katanga20 has attempted to redefine its power relations with the humanitarian sector and Catholic missions by taking over the responsibility for protecting children.

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This Katanga government initiative, intended to directly help the ‘plight of street children’ and to upstage the Salesians and NGOs, was connected to its strategic motivations: first as a means of consolidating the flow of finance from the humanitarian sector into actions controlled by the provincial government, and secondly to use the public discourse on children (the vulnerability of street children, delinquency, etc.) to legitimize not only the Lubumbashi city government but also, by association, the entire province. In the period between August 2009 and January 2011, the Provincial Department for Social Affairs (DIVAS), the Provincial Department for Gender, Family and Childhood (Division Provinciale du Genre, Famille et Enfant), the BISPE and the municipality of Lubumbashi launched two operations entitled Shege Ze´ro and Ville Sans Shege, respectively. The official aim of both initiatives was to promote the rights of street children and create security in the city centre, which had become dangerous according to local authorities and most of the inhabitants of the central districts, because of the presence of the shege. To give a brief summary, the Shege Ze´ro operation consisted of an awareness campaign aimed at street children and poor families and promotion of the Kasapa reeducation centre, a military camp owned by the National Police that was restructured using provincial funding to provide accommodation for street children. The social workers of the provincial departments were mobilized during the months prior to August 2009 to meet, identify and inform the street children and persuade them to come into the centre (the catchword was ‘aware’). During its first months of operation, the centre received about 980 people, mostly children and adolescents. The second operation Ville Sans Shege was a repetition of the first, but deploying more severe methods such as police forces combing the streets in the city centre in search of street children and other more forceful tactics. After a few months Shege Ze´ro turned out to be a failure, and many children returned to live on the streets. For this reason, the mayor of Lubumbashi decided to continue the programme as Ville Sans Shege, although the methods used were much more repressive. These operations were part of the broader political project on the management of public space known as ‘Lubumbashi European City’. The objective of the governor of the province was to restore lustre to the ville blanche21 for the upcoming celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of the independence of the country in 2010. The measures implemented by the province and the municipalities were designed to clean up the city, from a stance that could be summarized as ‘zero tolerance’.22 The main targets were illegal street vendors and street children.23 With these resolutions the

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authorities wanted to make a clean break with previous administrations and the national government. Despite the uproar this provoked, initiatives of this kind were not new in 2006. ‘Lubumbashi European City’ and ‘Zero Tolerance’ were in fact initiatives already launched ten years previously when the former provincial government had engaged in a vast project aimed at controlling and redeveloping the city centre. Even the watchwords used in the 1990s were very similar to those used in 2009: ‘Bulaya 2000’ (Europe 2000) and ‘Lubumbashi Wantanshi’ (Lubumbashi is the best).24 The strategy adopted by the provincial government to solve the problem of street children was to bring the efforts of the Salesians and the international NGOs to a standstill through the implementation of unilateral actions, while at the same time urging the province’s ‘partners of good will’ to contribute financial resources and expertise to help it protect and educate children. In conversations that I have had with officials from the DIVAS and BISPE, they made it clear that their actions were both legitimate and justified given what they believed was the failure of the international NGOs and the missions to provide the needed help and support to street children, bitterly accusing them of having utterly failed in their humanitarian mission. There was also open condemnation of the messy funding system, something that was frequently emphasized in our conversations. According to the officials, behind the actions to get children off the streets there lurked the intention of perpetuating benefits to the humanitarian sector (finance, employment, prestige, etc.), a belief expressed by many of the functionaries at BISPE. Moreover, Governor Moise Katumbi Chapwe had this to say on a visit to the Kasapa centre a few days after its opening: You know, it’s very difficult, I think we have to be honest [...] today there are about one thousand children and all this is financed by the government of the province. For that reason we apply to the NGOs to come and help us [...] However, most of them do not want these children to be educated anywhere. They just want to show the Congolese people suffering in the street. This is not fair.25 The entire system of financial cooperation was denounced by many officials as ‘unpatriotic’ because it aimed to serve the interests of donors and the countries they come from. On this point one BISPE official was extremely explicit: There are many reasons that you can imagine [...] what we see is a survival strategy put in place for the members of the NGO where if, for

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example, there’s a million to give, of which the state can spend two hundred thousand for the country, the eight hundred thousand left is shared between them which means the money goes back in the direction it came from [...] nothing has changed for years and years. It is clear that public officials perceive their non-governmental counterparts as unfair competitors. The case of Shege Ze´ro and the centre at Kasapa demonstrate that there is competition to receive funds for social initiatives aimed at children. There is also a question of social recognition. In a situation in which state officials often go unpaid for months, and in which they rely on the help of international partners to implement international cooperation agreements and thus receive a salary, aid workers and international private organizations appear to occupy a privileged position compared to their counterparts in the employ of the state. Objections to this opaque system of funding, such as that of the official cited above, are more of an argument against this rivalry than against an objective reality of ‘looting’ ( pillage) by NGOs. In my own ethnographic work, this has clearly emerged on several occasions. In the case of the province’s re-education centre, for example, health and social workers already employed in NGOs were offered jobs at Kasapa before anyone else. However, due to the working conditions and pay proposed, they were not inclined to accept them. According to a social worker at the Salesian centre in Bakanja, NGO workers, especially those working for an international organization, were favoured over state social workers, many of whom had not received any salary for several months: For the success of the centre, the Department for Social Affairs needed experienced people [...] There are social workers from the state and there are also social workers from NGOs like us. [...] So at preparatory meetings the social workers from NGOs discussed with the authorities how to manage these children as well as pay conditions. We were not able to really reach an agreement with the provincial authorities because we would have cost them a lot [in terms of payment], whereas the social workers of the state, who were already unpaid for their services, were willing to accept anything [le petit rien ] they could give them. The bargaining power of a social worker or a volunteer in an NGO, whether secular or religious, is not always self-evident, however, especially when they are employed by small local entities. In the case just mentioned, the employee had been working with the Salesians for some time. The staff of

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the Salesian organization, while not enjoying extraordinary conditions, enjoy the security of a guaranteed minimum wage at the end of every month. However, many small NGOs and associations in Lubumbashi struggle daily to survive and to gain access to a minimum of funding. In these and many other cases, given the high unemployment rate in the city, participation in the activities of an NGO, as a volunteer or employee, does not provide much more security than the hope of receiving small ‘refunds’ (known as ‘motivations’), which is what governmental employees rely on. Against the background of this confrontation between public officials and private operators, respective images of street children are unlikely to be the same. Children living on the streets or shege, depicted as victims of violence in Western contexts, in the context of ‘zero tolerance’, become ‘child criminals’. They are defined by phrases such ‘a delayed action bomb’ (une bombe a` retardement) or ‘damaged children’ (enfants abıˆme´s) or even by their association with witchcraft (Ballet, Dumbi et al. 2009; De Boeck 2000). Such definitions lead people to consider these children and adolescents as a true ‘lost generation’, who will one day become unproductive adults and citizens in terms of contributing to the development and progress of the country. Accordingly, the measures adopted to solve the problem of child ‘vagrancy’ are also different. In this sense, the approach of the centres (maisons d’accueil), particularly the Salesian one, was judged to be over-indulgent and not sufficiently severe. The fact that the children could come and go as they please from the centres, thus maintaining their presence in the city centre, was seen in the eyes of many observers as the first and most obvious sign of the lack of any real will to ‘eradicate the scourge of the shege’. From the point of view of the province, it was necessary to give proof of authoritarian measures in the management of this problem. The children had to be, to use the words most frequently encountered, ‘corrected’, ‘re-educated’ and ‘rehabilitated’ by the toughest and most effective means. This is what emerges from certain passages of the Triennial Plan of Action (2007– 10) on ‘enfants en rupture familiale’ (a politically correct expression for street children): Specific objectives: to combat juvenile delinquency and fight criminality. Actions to be taken the government has initiated the following actions): identify and gather the ‘enfants en rupture familiale’ [the street children] and put them in a location removed from the urban centres, in facilities that need to be created; recruit staff with expertise in caring for persons with social issues; find a suitable site and provide the infrastructure and equipment required to provide education in

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specific trades; organize a framework for dialogue between social workers, parents and the representatives of the provincial authority in order to identify the children’s best options and path to reintegration.26 It is interesting to note that in the passage just cited, two rather contradictory points emerge in the approach to the question of street children. On the one hand, there is the influence of international conventions such as the CRC reflected in the reference to the ‘reintegration’ and ‘caring’ for children. The document states, in effect, that the goal is to educate (by teaching a trade) through the prise en charge (caring for) of the children to help them with their social and family situations with the ultimate goal of social reintegration. On the other hand, other elements of the discourse reflect the ‘zero tolerance’ focus on juvenile delinquency and are used to support and legitimize the cataloguing, control and confinement of the shege outside the space of the city centre as provided for under the Triennial Plan of Action.

The reactions of NGOs and Salesians to Operation Shege Ze´ro It is difficult to simplify the broad application of humanitarian aid in Lubumbashi. Nonetheless, through a series of interviews and informal meetings with the key actors in the sector, I was able to divide the reactions to Shege Ze´ro and the Kasapa centre of some local NGOs into three categories. The first is a strong feeling of regret concerning the lack of consultation by provincial departments with the major NGOs operating in the city. In this regard, the exclusion of non-governmental organizations from these operations has drawn all the related criticism on the government. Secondly, social workers and aid workers alike have pointed out that the manner in which the operations were conducted (police raids, coercive measures, the isolation of the Kasapa Centre) infringed several articles of the Law on Child Protection (national Law n809/001 of 10 January 2009).27 This law provides the legal framework of reference for practitioners in the humanitarian field. The people interviewed mainly cited Articles 4, 628 and 63. Particular emphasis was placed on Article 63, which stipulates that the children’s opinions must be taken into consideration in decision-making processes concerning them, as in the following passage: Placements may only be made by the social worker after taking into account the views of the children themselves in line with their degree of maturity and age. The social worker is to immediately report all such actions to a juvenile judge.29

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Moreover, Article 63 emphasizes that, even when all these requirements have been followed, the assignment of custody of a child to a reception centre must be formalized by a court ruling ( placement social). This created a ‘sticky situation’ in practice because, according to some respondents, failure to enforce this article emphasized the contradictions between national law and the real action taken on the ground by the authorities. In fact, up until 2011 there was no juvenile court nor had judges been specifically appointed for children ‘in conflict with the law’.30 Finally, according to the aid workers interviewed, the titles of the operations conducted by the province (Shege Ze´ro/Ville Sans Shege) show up their true underlying ideology, one of ‘contrainte’, ‘une ide´ologie coercitive’, ‘une pratique de de´fense sociale’ (constraint, coercive ideology, and practice of social defence). Most of my informants considered the coercive measures implemented by the provincial government to have been ineffective. The failure of Shege Ze´ro in 2009– 10, and the reproposition of the same methods just over a year later with Ville Sans Shege, were the most striking examples. The people interviewed recommended softer measures, in keeping with the Law on Child Protection, guiding the children towards taking an ‘active’ role in getting themselves off the streets, supporting the children’s desire to get off the streets, evaluating individual cases and rejecting the stigmatizing approach used by the government to date. One social worker interviewed expressed himself in these terms: We are really concerned with how these actions are carried out because they do not meet up to the standards put in place by child protection laws. When you see how these children are arrested, beaten and thrown into vehicles [...] we believe it violates the principles that protect the rights of children at national and international levels and that’s the real responsibility of the authorities [...] Today the social conditions in our country are an enormous problem. We should address the underlying causes that put the children on the streets and not the children themselves. You know, you have public functionaries who go unpaid in almost all state services. We’re just pretending, we’re going to say we’re helping children on the street, but we can’t look at the reality we have to face. The Salesian Father in charge of the night shelter in Bakanja Ville31 disapproved of the work the province was doing, using arguments similar to those expressed by humanitarian groups. His criticism also addressed the violent practices used by the police and the imprisonment of children in a

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centre isolated from the city as well, but even more importantly, it addressed the explicit intent to exclude the congregation from a field in which it had been the protagonist for nearly a century. According to the priest in charge of the centre, the Kasapa Centre’s lack of both an educational project and a procedure for reinserting children into families was the primary cause of the rapid failure of the initiative. Nevertheless, the point on which the Salesians and social workers of the Bakanja insisted most was the fact that some provincial officials were accusing them of having ‘poisoned’ (intoxique´) children – by filling their heads with ideas. The work done by the Salesians was defined as ‘unpatriotic’, and as in conflict with the good of the city and the country. The ‘brainwashing’ referred to by some officials was interpreted by the missionaries as unacceptable criticism not only of the work they do with street children but, more generally, of the Salesian educational model that focuses on the children themselves with a view to strengthening their capacity to act, freedom of choice and desire to ‘be able to choose’. The alleged brainwashing of the children was interpreted by the Salesians not only as a means of justifying their exclusion from the public policy arena, but also as a clear attempt to discredit their method (the preventive method of Don Bosco) and, ultimately, their very presence in the Congo as missionaries. In my conversations with Salesian social workers, they clearly stated that they would greatly appreciate if the government were to live up to ‘its responsibilities’ (‘que l’e´tat de´missionnaire prenne ses responsabilite´s’) with respect to the shege issue, but that as yet it has acted ineffectively and with inadequate resources. In their view it would be more reasonable to allocate the provincial funds to support the work of NGOs or ASBLs that are already in operation, such as that of the Salesians. Salesian social workers questioned the systematic approach to the shege question itself: ‘l’enfant doit aussi jouir des liberte´s’; ‘Ils ont fait un centre ferme´ ils ont un peu restreint la liberte´ des enfants’; ‘on ne peut pas travailler dans de telles conditions’ (‘the child must also enjoy some freedom’; ‘they set up a detention centre that restrains the children’s freedom a little’; ‘it is not possible to work under such conditions’). However, such ‘misunderstandings’ (as they are called by the people being interviewed) are not only a matter of different approaches to the problem, but also stem from a far more meaningful issue: the conditions and prestige of the job. On the one hand, it is worth remembering that state employees are paid very little and often remain without pay for months at a time. On the other hand, even though the Salesian staff earn a modest salary ($120 þ an incentive of 200 FC (francs congolais) per child), the wage is guaranteed at the

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end of each month, and in addition the staff may receive once-off benefits. As mentioned previously, these superior working conditions meant that social workers employed by the Salesians enjoyed greater bargaining power when offered employment at the Kasapa centre by the province. Nonetheless, the questions posed by Salesian social workers are not solely limited to matters of wages and working conditions. The rivalry also concerns the reputation and social status acquired through charitable activities and help given. In this regard, social workers with whom I spoke in Bakanja defined their work in terms of a ‘vocation’, ‘c’est d’abord une vocation a` aider ces enfants’; ‘Dieu est en train de nous aider’ (‘our vocation is first and foremost to help these children’; ‘God is helping us’). The Salesians’ natural inclination to do their jobs well as a ‘religious duty’ was compared to the ‘technical’, ‘instrumental’ and purely professional employees hired by the state. While the civil servants were described as being forced to accept the job at the Kasapa centre for ‘peanuts’, ‘ils peuvent accepter “le petit rien” qu’on va leur proposer’ (they would accept anything that was offered), they were also described as lacking experience and, above all, as not being familiar with street children. The Salesian social workers, on the other hand, were seen as a kind of street kid’s ‘papa’ (father), given that the majority of the children had been to Bakanja at least once. It is interesting to note the words of one of the Bakanja social workers in this regard: We went there for a walk [to the Kasapa centre] and we were welcomed as heroes by all the children, because these children are children from Bakanja. So when they saw us coming they shouted ‘papa, papa’. The other social workers were really confused. The allegations of ‘poisoning’ street children were interpreted by the Salesian social workers as a tool for undermining the perceived prestige they enjoyed in the eyes of some people, particularly those who believed in the work they were doing with the children, but above all to discredit them in the eyes of the children who benefited from their humanitarian assistance. To sum up, I see in this hard-nosed confrontation between the Salesians and the state’s social workers an example of the complexities of the humanitarian field. In this chapter, I have tried to grasp what lies behind a specific use of a type of childhood (vulnerable and innocent) as an ideology. Nonetheless, ideology is just one aspect of what we call ‘humanitarianism’. In order to fully grasp this complex field of practices, micro-level analysis should also brought to bear on the motivations of individuals who daily work within it. This aspect is, perhaps, left unaddressed in this chapter, and further

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analysis on humanitarianism in Katanga and Lubumbashi is called for. A small-scale analysis might show that the politics of humanitarianism is part and parcel of a wider network of strategies within which individuals bring their own particular motivations, hopes, energies and needs to the endeavour.

Conclusion Starting from the pioneering role played by the Salesians in the era of colonialism, I have attempted here to reconstruct a genealogy of the so-called ‘saving the children’ rhetoric and ‘interventionist ethic’, social and discursive constructions that have been recently adopted by humanitarian agencies. ‘Batoto wa Maria’ is, in this light, a paradigmatic expression referring to street children that encloses in just a few words the ‘humanitarian reason’ (Fassin 2012) at the base of operations both at the Salesian missions and at the missions run by NGOs. Being social constructions, ‘vulnerable childhood’ and ‘street children’ are the outcome of a set of discourses, social agents and forces, historical events and ideologies. In tracing this process of definition, I have focused on some of the country’s fundamental historical events – moments in which these figures of childhood were consolidated: independence, the collapse of the industrial and paternalistic system in Katanga, and the transition towards democracy. With reference to this last period, it seems important to note that the ratification of the Convention for the Rights of Children (CRC) has created new opportunities in contemporary times, especially legislative ones, for structurizing the link between alchemical humanitarianism and the humanitarian ethic. It is within this complex network of power relationships, and against a background of legislative limitations and economic power, that I feel we must place the evolution of the humanitarian sector in the Congo. The Shege Ze´ro, Ville Sans Shege and Kasapa Centre initiatives help to clearly define how these relationships are formed. In the first place, zero tolerance policies have been useful to the Katangese government in orienting the financial resources of the humanitarian sector towards operations directly in the hands of the provincial authorities. At the same time, they have further served to reinforce the power and legitimate the public authority of the government of the city of Lubumbashi. Zero tolerance policy has also been accompanied by bitter criticism of the NGOs and the religious missions, accused of failing to live up to their ‘humanitarian vocation’ and of feeding the opaque system of financing extended to them.

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Both the NGOs and the religious missions have, for their part, expressed severe criticism of the provincial government. Whilst the operators in the humanitarian sector tend to criticize the government by making constant reference to the national Law n809/001 of 10 January 2009 on the protection of childhood, those who run the Bakanja Ville centre define their work in terms of a ‘vocation’, and in so doing highlight the moral and religious discourse characterizing them as missionaries. In both cases, what appears to be at stake is the search for legitimacy of humanitarian practices, a solid ground for them to stand on. In order to achieve that legitimacy, the discursive apparatus of childhood is a means through which humanitarian identity and action is constituted, negotiated and reaffirmed. In this light, what I set out to show in this chapter was the movement from the former missionary ideas of childhood to contemporary humanitarian principles informed by those ideas. In fact, we may conclude that if the humanitarian’s frame of reference provided by the idea of children’s rights is relatively recent, the tropes of innocence, dependence and protection associated with childhood appear to be the legacy of the missionary ideology.

Acknowledgements This chapter is based on data drawn from my doctoral fieldwork in Lubumbashi, Katanga (DRC). The research on street children is part of a study on children accused of witchcraft in Katanga and is supported by a grant obtained from the Regione Autonoma della Sardegna (Italy), within the L.R.7/2007, ‘Promotion of scientific research and technological innovation in Sardinia’ and the operating programme (European Social Fund 2007 –13). I wish to thank the reviewers for their constructive criticisms. I am also grateful to Silvia Aru, Cinzia Berrone and Kate Williamson for their writing assistance. My final thanks go to Bogumil Jewsiewicki for his kind and useful comments.

Notes 1 The concept of ‘social construction’ is widespread in the social sciences and particularly insidious as it is difficult to define. Here, a social construction is understood as a set of discourses and meanings produced as a result of historical events, forces and social agents, from which it draws a specific ideology (see Hacking 1999). 2 Bureau charge´ d’Interventions Sociales pour la Protection de l’Enfance (BISPE), the office for the protection of children, an office that coordinates all the actions undertaken by the government and its international partners (NGOs) and is under the Division des Affaires Sociales (Department for Social Affairs) of the province of Katanga.

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3 On 26 May 1906, an agreement was signed between the Congo Free State, then the private property of King Leopold II of Belgium, and the Vatican, entrusting responsibility for education throughout the nation to the Catholic missions, in exchange for plots of land donated free of charge by the State for the purposes of constructing churches, schools and convents (Ntambwe 1979). 4 The advent of Congo’s independence marked the end of a period of considerable prosperity for the congregation. Like the Catholic Church in general, it had received great benefits from the Belgian administration during the course of the colonial period. Shortly after the change in regime, the congregation faced economic problems that impinged on the resources available to the schools, oratories and nurseries that it had founded. 5 Letter from Father J. Peerlinck, Inspector of the Central African Province, to Head Chancellor Albino Fedrigotti, 4 April 1964, Archivio Centrale Salesiano in Roma. 6 ‘Preˆtre Hollandais, Ancien Officier attache´ a` la R.A.F. tente de sauver des jeunes de´liquants congolais’, in The South Bend Tribune, 14 August 1964, Archivio Centrale Salesiano in Roma. 7 Colonial name for Lubumbashi. 8 Today the Cite´ des Jeunes is a trade school (training bricklayers, electricians, mechanics, carpenters, etc.) that is well known throughout the province. 9 By ‘politically’ I mean that Salesian interventionism in those years conformed to the norms of a certain social class, with ideas of childhood that were certainly not neutral, but rather were marked by a sentimental, bourgeois vision. 10 Although I find it appropriate to position the Salesians’ pioneering role within the period coming up to independence, Poncelet et al. (2006; see also Pirotte and Poncelet 2002) rightly highlight the fact that the Catholic and Protestant missions, here understood as the architects of the ‘archetypical child’ – perceived as passive, dependent, and innocent and later embraced by contemporary NGOs, were already in operation before the Belgian colonization, that is to say, during the Congo Free State. According to these authors (2006: 68 – 9, see also Kakudji 2007: 76 – 7), the Catholic missionaries made use of an ‘all-round’ evangelization, that included the formation of a spiritual life according to Christian principles, Western acculturation, and an improvement in local living conditions. 11 Giovannoni et al. (2004: 101) proposed that there is a difference between NGOs and associations in Kinshasa. The term ‘association’ refers to some self-funded entities locally organized by Kishasa inhabitants, with objectives that are close to the needs of their members. The authors admit a certain ambiguity in this differentiation; nevertheless, NGOs are characterized by a structure mostly geared towards drafting projects in line with the international agenda in order to obtain funding. A distinction of this kind is also acceptable for Lubumbashi. 12 It is important to remember that at the beginning of 1990, Mobutu’s Zaire was isolated from the international community. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent disappearance of the Soviet threat no longer made it necessary for Western powers to collaborate with the Mobutu regime. In particular, the sudden break in the bilateral agreements with France, Belgium and the United States created a brusque reduction in the aid forthcoming from this (nation-to-nation) cooperation, halting the flow of funding for the country’s humanitarian emergencies. However, in order to get the funds into the country, the international community tended to bypass the public authorities, for the reasons just mentioned, establishing direct relationships with the local offices of nongovernmental organizations (Giovannoni et al. 2004: 100).

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13 It is interesting to note that for this author the two different types of intervention take parallel paths and have developed two distinct meanings for the concept of humanitarianism. While emergency humanitarianism was predominant until the 1990s, alchemical humanitarianism has gradually come into play over the last 20 years, managing to avoid directly addressing ‘humanitarian’ topics and preferring to use terms such as ‘cooperation’ and ‘development’. Even more relevant for our hypothesis is the superimposition of the two types of intervention that occurred at the end of the Cold War. Barnett notes that this overlap has reshuffled, not without creating confusion, the two distinct concepts of humanitarian intervention (Barnett 2011: 11). 14 Between 1985 and 1997 the general conditions of the country worsened dramatically due to a series of concomitant factors, amongst which were the structural adjustments undertaken from 1985 to 1995. In particular, it is worth remembering that in this period the Congolese state allocated 34.27 per cent of public spending to the institutional sector, 15.60 per cent to security and only 3.12 per cent to social expenditure. In 2001, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) stated that 75 per cent of the Congolese population suffered from malnutrition, one third of children under 5 were underweight, while 38 per cent displayed stunted growth. Education and schooling also underwent a brutal worsening in this period. For example, the schooling rate, which was 56 per cent in 1995, decreased to 52 per cent in 2001. As regards secondary school, the situation was even worse: 24 per cent for boys and 13 per cent for girls. 15 The ASBL founded by the Salesians in 1994 was named Œuvre Maman Marguerite (OMM). It regrouped under one single body, 12 different centres run by the congregation or affiliated to it. The ASBL is partly financed by the congregation, but receives substantial support from international funders on presentation of international cooperation projects through the ASBL’s Salesian Project Office (Bureau sale´sien de projets). Like all the other organizations of this type, the OMM is equipped with a network of communication media to help spread its work and raise public, local and international awareness of its activity: blogs, newsletters, information brochures and websites. See the ASBL website: www.omm.be. 16 As well as the CRC, the Democratic Republic of Congo has ratified other international conventions directly or indirectly linked to children’s rights. Among the most important we must no doubt mention the Charte africaine des droits et du bien-eˆtre de l’enfant which the Congolese government claims to have ratified on 28 March 2001. However, the African Union stated that, up to 2008, they had never received the complete documentation required in order to recognize the Congo’s ratification of the charter (IBCR 2008: 139). 17 See Journal Officiel de la Re´publique De´mocratique du Congo of 12 January 2009: ‘Loi n. 09/001 du 10 janvier 2009 portant protection de l’enfant’, Art. 62. 18 It is curious to notice that, while the Committee for the Protection of Children’s Rights was urging increases in social spending, particularly on the basis of the ratification of the CRC, other international institutions (such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank) imposed austerity measures and structural reforms going in the opposite direction: privatization of strategic economic sectors and cuts in social spending. With this in mind, we must remember that, in the 1990s, about 50 per cent of the national budget available to the government went towards paying the country’s debts with the same international institutions whose loans were used to carry out the structural reforms. 19 Several studies observed that a paradoxical situation had arisen in Lubumbashi: when the NGOs and the centres (maisons d’accueil) were exerting themselves to rescue and stabilize street children, the increased humanitarian offering allowed these children to work out city

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itineraries for themselves, going from reception centres to shelters to assistance programmes, while continuing to work on the streets (Kakudji 2007; Kaumba 2005). Since 2007, the Provincial Government has been associated with the new governor Moise Katumbi Chapwe, a well-known Katanghese businessman and political figure who made his fortune in the fishing, mining and transport between the Congo and Zambia. In the colonial period the ville blanche was differentiated from the cite´ indige`ne and the camps of the Union Minie`re du Haut Katanga workers. The former ville blanche, once the residential district of Western expatriates and off-limits to the local population, corresponds to the present-day city centre. The cite´ indige`ne neighbourhoods were designed for the African population and separated from the city centre. Finally, the workers’ camps were a reality unto themselves in which UMHK workers led their lives under the aegis of a private company. For an analysis of how the politics of ‘zero tolerance’ spread throughout the world, see Wacquant (1999). In addition to these, other initiatives were undertaken for the redevelopment of the city centre, for example: the requirement for all vendors to paint the walls of their premises white and red, the redefinition of urban roads, a parking ban for taxis in certain areas of the city, public transport regulations, the cleaning-up operation targeting the city centre known as ‘Ville Sans Sachets’, and eventually the construction of a new square and a fountain in the centre of the city. On the other hand, something new in ‘Lubumbashi European City’ was the use of witchcraft imagery on billboards to raise awareness of the issues of order and public safety. While the previous mayor simply stated ‘shipende buchafu’ (‘I do not like filth’), the authorities who have been in power since 2006 erected a huge billboard above the Kasenga tunnel, one of the symbols of urbanity in Lubumbashi (Dibwe 2002), which reads ‘buchafu ni buloji’ (‘filth is witchcraft’). A. Tshonga, Moise au Centre Kasapa, Lubumbashi 20/09/2009: http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v¼fpQOCg7R-2Y. See Plan d’action triennal (2007-10), Division des Affaires Sociales, Province du Katanga, 2009. See Journal Officiel de la Re´publique De´mocratique du Congo of 12 January 2009: ‘Loi n. 09/001 du 10 janvier 2009 portant protection de l’enfant’. Article 4: All children are equal under the law and enjoy the same rights and protection. Article 6: The best interests of children are to be of paramount concern in all decisions and measures taken in relation to them. Children’s best interests are understood as those that safeguard their rights at all costs. Children’s age, health status, family environment and the different aspects of their situation are to be taken into account, along with their mental, emotional and physical needs. See Journal Officiel de la Re´publique De´mocratique du Congo of 12 January 2009: ‘Loi n. 09/001 du 10 janvier 2009 portant protection de l’enfant’. Two considerations must be made in this regard. The first concerns the justice for minors required by Law no. 09/001. Article 63 specifies that the placement of children in educational and care centres must be preceded by the approval of a judge. To quickly exit from the impasse of the non-applicability of the law (the law existed, the juvenile courts did not) the national government had to speed up the process of the establishment of juvenile courts and the appointment of suitable judges. Lubumbashi was chosen as a pilot city and the first section of a juvenile court on national territory was inaugurated in the Katangese capital.

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31 From this point of view, the methodology of the Salesian educational approach is very precise. The Salesians follow the practices and procedures developed by the congregation over years of work with children around the world. With regard to Bakanja Ville, the working method adopted follows three main steps: the social survey (enqueˆte sociale) recording the children’s identity and the family environment from which they come, a process of reconciliation/negotiation with the family, reinsertion into the family and into society. Concerning the broader educational approach, this consists of four main stages: reception, accompaniment, training and finalizing (Meert 2007).

Bibliography Ballet, J., Dumbi, C. and B. Lallau, 2009, ‘Enfants sorciers a` Kinshasa (RD Congo) et de´veloppement des E´glises du Re´veil’, Mondes en de´veloppement, 146(2): 47 – 58. Barnett, M., 2011, Empire of Humanity. A History of Humanitarianism, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Bureau International des Droits des Enfants (IBCR), 2008, Profil des droits de l’enfant de la Re´publique De´mocratique du Congo, Montre´al. Coalition des ONG des droits des enfants (CODE), 2008, Rapport alternatif et e´valuatif de la mise en œuvre par la Re´publique De´mocratique du Congo de la Convention relative aux droits de l’enfant, Kinshasa. Connolly, M. and J. Ennew, 1996, ‘Introduction: Children Out of Place’, Childhood, 3(2): 131– 45. De Boeck, F., 2000, ‘Le “deuxie`me monde” et les “enfants-sorciers” en Re´publique De´mocratique du Congo’, Politique Africaine, 80: 32 – 57. Dibwe dia Mwembu, D., 2001, Bana Shaba abandonne´s par leur pe`re. Structure de l’autorite´ et l’histoire sociale de la famille ouvrie`re au Katanga 1910-1997, Paris: L’Harmattan. ——, 2002, Les identite´s lushoises, Lubumbashi: Presses Universitaires de Lubumbashi. Ennew, J., 2003, ‘Difficult Circumstances: Some Reflections on “Street Children” in Africa’, Children, Youth and Environments, 13(1), http://cye.colorado.edu. Fassin, D., 2012, Humanitarian Reason. A Moral History of the Present, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Fetter, B., 1976, The Creation of Elisabethville (1910 – 1940), Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. Giovannoni, M., Trefon, T., Kasongo, J.B. and C. Mwema, 2004, ‘Acting on Behalf (and in Spite) of the State: NGOs and Civil Society Associations in Kinshasa’ in Reinventing Order in the Congo. How people respond to State failure in Kinshasa, T. Trefoil, ed., London and New York: Zed Books. Hacking, I., 1999, The Social Construction of What?, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Kabarhuza Hamuli, B., 2002, Donner sa chance au peuple congolais. Expe´riences de de´veloppement participatif (1985 – 2001), Paris: Karthala. Kabongo Mbaya, P. B., 1991, ‘Protestanstisme zairois et de´clin du moboutisme. Ajustement de discours ou rupteure de strate´gie’, Politique Africaine, 41: 72 – 89. Kahola, O. and B. Rubbers, 2008, ‘Entre collaboration et confrontation: l’ambivalence des rapports pouvoirs publics et enfants de la rue a` Lubumbashi (RDC)’, Autrepart, 47: 25 –41. Kakudji, A., 2007, ‘Enfants en situation de rue et actions des ONG a` Lubumbashi. La reconfiguration de l’enfance au Katanga’, Rapport de l’Observatoire du Changement Urbain, Lubumbashi: Universite´ de Lubumbashi. Kaumba, L., ed., 2005, Les enfants de la rue au Katanga, Lubumbashi: Presses Universitaires de Lubumbashi. Meertz, E., 2007, Les ‘Œuvres Maman Marguerite’ dans la province du Katanga, unpublished document.

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Merlier M., 1962, ‘Le Congo, de la colonisation belge a` l’inde´pendance’, Chaiers libres, 32/33: 219. Nieuwenhuys, O., 1996, ‘The Paradox of Child Labor and Anthropology’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 25: 237– 51. Nkuku Khonde, C. and M. Re´mon, 2006, Strate´gies de survie a` Lubumbashi, Paris: L’Harmattan. Ntambwe, B.N., 1979, ‘L’enseignement sale´sien et son impact au Shaba (1911– 1949)’, Proble`mes sociaux zaı¨rois, 124/125: 147– 56. Petit, P., ed, 2003, Me´nages de Lubumbashi entre pre´carite´ et recomposition, Paris: L’Harmattan. Pirotte, G. and P. Marc, 2002, ‘E´veil des socie´te´s civiles en milieu urbain et organisations non gouvernementales: les exemples de Cotonou et Lubumbashi’, Autrepart, 23(3): 73 – 88. Poncelet, M., Pirotte, G., Stangherlin, G. and E. Sindayihebura, 2006, Les ONG en villes africaines: e´tudes de cas a` Cotonou (Be´nin) et a` Lubumbashi (RDC), Louvain-la-Neuve: Academia Bruylant. Poretti M., Hanson, K., Darbellay, F. and A. Berchtold, 2013, ‘The Rise and Fall of Icons of “Stolen Childhood” Since the Adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child’, Childhood, http://chd.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/04/09/0907568213481816. Rosen, M.D., 2007, ‘Child Soldiers, International Humanitarian Law, and the Globalization of Childhood’, American Anthropologist, 109(2): 296– 306. Rubbers, B., 2006, ‘L’effondrement de la Ge´ne´rale des carrie`res et des mines. Chronique d’un processus de privatisation informelle’, Cahiers d’e´tudes africaines, 181(1): 115– 33. ——, 2007, La reconfiguration de l’enfance au Katanga, rapport de l’Observatoire du Changement Urbain, Lubumbashi: Universite´ de Lubumbashi. ——, 2013, Le paternalisme en question. Les anciens ouvriers de la Ge´camines face a` la libe´ralisation du secteur minier katangais (RD Congo), Paris: L’Harmattan. Scheper-Hughes, N. and C. Sargent, 1998, ‘Introduction’ in Small Wars: The Cultural Politics of Childhood, N. Scheper-Hughes and C. Sargent, eds, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Verhaegen, B., 1967, ‘Les re´bellions populaires au Congo en 1964’, Cahiers d’e´tudes africaines, 26(7): 345– 59. Wacquant, L., 1999, ‘La Mondialisation de la Tole´rance Ze´ro’, Agone: Philosophie Critique, Litte´rature, 22: 127– 42. Wyness, M., 2000, Contesting Childhood, London and New York: Falmer Press.

CHAPTER 7 THE POLITICS OF INTERNATIONAL AID THE IMPACT OF LOCAL POLITICS AND INTERNATIONAL PRIORITIES ON AID ALLOCATION IN YEMEN Alexandra Lewis

Introduction Yemen is a fragile state that has maintained a ‘least developed country’ classification since its formation in 1990,1 with on-going conflicts and repeated natural disasters forming only a part of its intricate tapestry of humanitarian challenges. The entrenchment and escalation of political crises in Yemen have led to the parallel emergence of what David Connolly has termed ‘protracted relief’2 as a new dimension of underdevelopment, resulting in the long-term sustenance of so-called ‘emergency’ assistance packages within specific regions (such as the former southern and the northern peripheries). In 2010, Yemen was the 19th largest recipient of official humanitarian aid worldwide, with donations amounting to 2 per cent of its gross national income for that year alone, yet unable to reach those governorates that were most in need of relief (Global Humanitarian Assistance 2013). Safety of humanitarian staff, relative underfunding in terms of aid-to-needs ratios, and a lack of state cooperation were the most important obstacles to effective intervention during the first two decades after the unification of Yemen, until the Arab Spring of 2011 shifted media attention to other contexts and suspended aid delivery through the Yemeni government (Pilapil 2011). Misinformation and corruption have also played a role in undermining

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aid effectiveness, with the pre-2012 regime manipulating reports on terrorist movements and internal conflicts in the country in order to shift donor aid delivery prioritization towards more overtly militaristic agendas. In particular, former President Ali Abdullah Saleh is known to have ‘cynically manipulated Saudi fears of Shia unrest on the Yemen– Saudi border to raise cash and munitions to prosecute his war’ against Houthi combatants (Hill 2010: 5). Conversely, in 2015, Saleh switched sides, aiding the Houthis in their struggle to take power in Yemen in the face of Saudi intervention, indicating his continued capacity to play off rival interests to secure power. International and regional donorship in Yemen have become highly politicized, sparking conflict and contributing to a delegitimization of the state. Now that the country has entered a phase of uncertainty, with the launching of a National Dialogue Conference in 2013 aimed at bringing about a reformed governance system and Federal State in 2014 and then being heavily contested in 2015, there is a need to investigate the narratives and impact of foreign assistance, particularly with a view to understanding whether humanitarian and development packages are part of the solution or part of the problem. The transition of protracted relief challenges and the changing narratives of humanitarian assistance in Yemen in 2015 and beyond will likely remain poorly understood from the perspective of traditional conceptions of humanitarianism in complex emergencies. Many of these traditional definitions are dated, positing humanitarianism as linked to a humanitarian space that emerges from a commitment to human rights and operates according to a politically neutral set of operational guidelines, in isolation from other, more politicized, aid strategies. They do not take into consideration the emergence of new donors, the lack of independence of the humanitarian sector, and the consequent shifting of policy priorities within the international community in their analyses of contexts that, like Yemen, have become dependent on protracted relief. These misconceptions need to be resolved if Yemen’s on-going transition to federalism and continuing peace negotiations are to produce a change in security and development circumstances.

The language of humanitarian assistance3 Post-conflict transitions and protracted emergencies are a high priority area for international donors and organizations working to increase global development and foster positive progress towards the United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Apart from the immediate risks to

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human life, man-made and natural disasters, particularly in conflict-affected contexts, have been known to: perpetuate ‘economic strife and poverty’; ‘lead to regional instability’; and, ‘provide potential haven[s] to terrorist groups’ (Weiss 2004: 119). Immediate assistance packages delivered as part of the humanitarian response phase have variously prioritized sectors including: delivery of primary education for school-aged children; food assistance; water access; shelter provision; the supply of essential medicines; primary and secondary healthcare services; and, safety. As such, humanitarian aid is associated with meeting basic needs. Other types of aid are generally targeted towards supporting or expanding state structures, building community sustainability and disaster preparedness, peace-keeping, or peace-building, in some cases under the form of military funding, supply or support. International aid in post-conflict transitions has been administratively segregated into two categories in order to better target assistance, specifically addressing humanitarian needs in the short term, and supporting national development via institution (and capacity) building in the long term. These two approaches signal the difference between post-crisis relief and recovery. ‘Studies have found that although post-conflict countries’ absorptive capacity is low during roughly the first three years after the end of violence, it tends to double by the end of the first decade’, therefore development assistance targeting recovery necessitates a decade-long strategy, during which relief may be used to safeguard the local population (Weiss 2004: 123). This administrative division has been translated in some instances into a division between bilateral and multilateral assistance, whereby humanitarian aid may be delivered either through local government structures or without them, but development assistance is channelled into state-building with the notable exception of initiatives aimed at developing the infrastructures of civil society organizations (CSOs) or non-governmental organizations (NGOs) (usually with a broader nation-wide development purpose in mind). As Dorothea Hilhorst and Bram J. Jansen argue, the notion of a ‘humanitarian space’ in human emergencies has dominated the international aid sector since the 1900s, and has been used to allow humanitarian organizations to provide for immediate community needs while maintaining a sense of neutrality and independence, as actors that are politically separate from development programmes, local governments, warring parties, and competing donor priorities (Hilhorst and Jansen 2010: 1118). Some authors have argued that operating outside of government channels is essential to preserving political independence (Pasquier 2001), placing special emphasis on the need for NGOs to operate separately from international military actors who have

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increasingly been adopting humanitarian roles (Heath 2011). Others have prioritized delivering humanitarian relief through the state, either to achieve local legitimacy or so as not to undermine the relevance of the state for local communities (Karim 2006). In practice, debates about ‘who owns’ early recovery run the risk of ‘creating more division, rather than greater unity’ (Bailey and Pavanello 2009: 4) and significant ethical dilemmas have divided the international community – with disagreement over the issues of aid impartiality and neutrality resulting, for instance, in the infamous split between the Red Cross and Me´decins Sans Frontie`res (Tong 2004). In the aftermath of the Cold War, bilateral development assistance in challenging contexts such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen has been widely associated with ‘propping up not only weak but often wholly corrupt regimes’, or with highly politicized strategies of democratization or stabilization (Dorff 1996). Meanwhile, humanitarian aid practitioners have continued to work around fundamental principles of unbiased assistance (Weiss 1999), in line with the doctrine that ‘Humanitarian assistance is deeply linked with the individual’s right to life, which stands at the centre of modern human rights law’ (Heath 2011: 438). What reads like a straightforward relationship on paper, however, is virtually never that simple in practice: in many fragile and war-affected contexts, the reality that humanitarian and development programmes operate in tandem for decades, combined with the fact that neither human rights law nor human rights are themselves neutral constructs, has meant that assistance packages are highly politicized, regardless of their nature. This is found to be particularly true in protracted relief environments such as Yemen, where the language of humanitarianism can and does conflict with local values. As Antonio Donini puts it: ‘Humanitarian ideals have the potential to unite, but humanitarian practice very often divides’, in the sense that ‘the universality issue underscores a real and often damaging clash between the value systems of ‘locals’ and ‘outsiders’ (Donini 2012: 1). In the Yemeni case, as will be argued over the following sections, this tension is reflected in the conflict between local values and international ideals, which are perceived by local communities as part of an unwelcome Americanized, or sometimes British, interventionist strategy, designed to undermine Islamic values. More generally, the tension between insiders and outsiders in aid design is further mirrored within the humanitarian system itself, compounding the issue of negative local perceptions of humanitarian actors in complex emergency scenarios. Andrea Binder and colleagues write that

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a serious imbalance characterises the international humanitarian system. Most of the international governance mechanisms where humanitarian assistance is discussed and shaped, such as donor support groups or the [Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development]’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC), are closed circles of primarily Western humanitarian donors. States like China, Russia, Saudi Arabia or Brazil, all of whom have increased their humanitarian assistance provision, do not take part in these fora. (Binder, Meier and Steets 2010: 4) In some cases, these exclusionary practices are reflected not only in the attitudes of established donors to so-called ‘new donors’, but above all in the attitudes of established donors to aid recipients. Thus, aid recipients have virtually no influence on global aid design strategies that will be extremely relevant in dictating future international approaches to their countries, while new donors will have very little influence. Despite the rise of new donors within international aid, humanitarian assistance, situated as it is with a framework of human rights protection and provision for needs, continues to be linked at its core to Western development priorities, with the language of aid evoking ideological alignment with a liberal interventionist model. ‘The language and principles of humanitarian space are strategically or tacitly used by different actors to advance or legitimize their respective interests, projects or beliefs. This is not a new development’ (Hilhorst and Jansen 2010: 1118). While fundamental agreement may be found with regard to food distribution, there is likely no such thing as a ‘universal’ model of humanitarian priorities, particularly where matters of aid delivery prioritisation are concerned. Furthermore, by tipping states into crises of aid dependency and protracted relief, large-scale humanitarian interventions do not always yield positive consequences. Del Castillo notes that aid dependency is particularly dangerous for poorer countries, in which aid can often account for up to 50 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) (Del Castillo 2008). Antonio Donini concludes that ‘there is no situation where humanitarian action is totally principled and allowed to operate as such’ (Donini 2012: 1). Despite the implicit doctrines of independence, neutrality, and universality or impartiality that are built into the language and framework of international humanitarianism, understanding the crisis of protracted relief that is currently impacting Yemen means acknowledging the reality that humanitarian intervention is not an isolated subset of broader aid delivery mechanisms in the country. Mirroring similar challenges in other conflict-

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affected contexts across the world, the division between humanitarian and development aid in Yemen is rarely questioned yet is largely arbitrary and fails to reflect the fluidity of the local environment.

The Yemeni context The Yemeni case study is a complex one, given the multiple and simultaneous political crises4 that have become interlinked and entrenched since the country’s unification in 1990. Since that time, Yemen has faced one civil war in 1994, eight wars in its northern peripheries (2004– present), a violent transition in the 2011 Arab Spring, a large-scale emergent terrorism movement (2001– present), and growing calls for separatism in the south of the country (2007– present). The 2010 Failed States Index classes Yemen as being in danger of imminent state failure, ranking it at number 15 of its 60long list of fragile states (Foreign Policy and the Fund for Peace 2010). Yemen is also one of the poorest countries in the world: 42.8 per cent of the population of Yemen lived below the poverty line on less than $2 per day in 2010, and poverty is said to have increased to over 60 per cent in 2011 due to the disruption of industry and employment during the Arab Spring (AlWesabi 2011). More recent statistics have been difficult to confirm in light of Yemen’s growing instability. These challenges are aggravated by: extremely weak infrastructure; high levels of corruption and social inequality; and, a shrinking resource base, with the dwindling of oil and natural gas supplies now one of the country’s leading economic challenges. Prior to 1990, the Yemeni territories were divided between the Yemen Arabic Republic in the north, and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen in the south. Today, the two administrations have merged fairly ineffectively, with implications for the political legitimacy of the ruling state and for the coherent distribution of the rule of law in the country. In the far north, in a region combining the Sa’ada-Hajja-Amran-Al Jawf governorates, some tribal communities see themselves as having been marginalized from development processes due to their religious affiliations. They fought six wars against the Yemeni state between 2004 and 2010, which are interchangeably referred to as the Houthi or Sa’ada conflicts. Since 2011 – due to the emergence of violence throughout the rest of the country – these governorates have increasingly fallen back on tribe-based self-administration, as a rejection of state interference in their territories. In 2015, they pushed south across the country, forcing the incumbent president to flee Yemen in March of that year. Despite the evident violent competition between Yemen’s leaders, the current ruling regime, established in 1994 with a change of president taking

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place for the first time only in 2012, continues to be generally associated with the leadership of the former Yemen Arab Republic in the north and therefore suffers from poor legitimacy in South Yemen also. In the south, it is widely believed that shared oil fields and agricultural resources have been exploited by the state to develop northern infrastructure, leading to the emergence of al-Hirak al-Janubi (the Southern Secessionist Movement), a civil protest movement that was heavily repressed by former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Radicalization of political opinions throughout the country, combined with Yemen’s strategic location between the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, has resulted in al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) relocating its base of operations to the southern governorates. AQAP and the associated Ansar al-Sharia movement form a core element of regional terrorist activities. These issues came to the fore in 2011, when the Arab Spring resulted in violent reprisals against public demonstrations across the country. President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi took the lead in a reforming ruling government in 2013, allowing Yemen to enter a new period of transition. However, with the Arab Spring having: split the Yemeni army in two; brought tribal competition into the mainstream political arena; and brought a new degree of urgency to settling the Sa’ada and Hiraak conflicts – all signs indicated that this transition would not be a peaceful one if the National Dialogue failed to satisfy all parties. The federal divisions proposed in Yemen in 2014 were immediately contested by multiple parties. In 2015, this led to civil war.

Social inequality, competition for resources and lack of access to basic services Key stresses on Yemen’s socio-economic environment stem from its rapidly increasing population and continuously shrinking resource base, with food, fertile land, water and oil being consumed at rates that dramatically exceed their realistically sustainable usage. Weak resource management and wasteful resource extraction practices compound these challenges, resulting in: nationwide conflicts over resource distribution between North and South Yemen; increased intra-tribal competition and violence; uneven development between urban and rural areas; and, physical confrontation between and within families. Oxford Analytica writes that ‘the most pressing issues that Yemen will have to deal with in the near future are the loss of oil reserves and the depletion of its water table’, with underground water reserves shrinking by a total of 8 metres per year in some parts of the country (Oxford Analytica 2009) and an overall water deficit of 1 billion cubic metres per year

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(Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2010). This high rate of water depletion stems from Yemen’s lack of surface water. At certain times of the year, ‘rainfall creates intermittent surface water flows through otherwise dry streambeds’, also known as Wadis (Negenman 1997: 66). However, at the peaks of its dry seasons, Yemen is officially estimated as having no surface water sources. While the government of Yemen is exploring other viable alternatives to non-renewable water usage, such as constructing desalination plants along the southern coastline, to date such projects have proven too costly to implement. Unreliable rainfall patterns and the increasing availability of water mining technologies in Yemen have pushed many farmers to abandon the terracing of their fields (a traditional practice for collecting rainwater) and switch to using underground water for their irrigation needs.5 A lack of coordination between farmers and others using the same underground water supplies, poor mining practices, corruption, and a lack of legal infrastructure to protect underground reservoirs have led to the frequent collapse of underground caverns and consequent contamination of water supplies (World Bank 2010). A lack of capacity to manage rainfall effectively, and a lack of built and maintained rainwater collection systems have also left Yemen extremely vulnerable to both flooding and drought. Yemen’s oil sector – the backbone of its struggling economy – is facing similar challenges, which have been aggravated by ineffectual domestic policies and destructive external economic trends. Oxford Analytica (2009) writes that Yemen’s oil exports [...] have declined steadily over the past five years. The 75% drop in oil revenues in the first half of 2009 was a devastating blow. Though international oil prices have largely recovered from their initial decline following the global financial crisis, it is the decline in output in Yemen that is of most concern. Most experts believe that oil will run out by 2017, but the 2009 figures suggest this could happen sooner. The inability of the Yemeni state to capitalize on oil revenues is linked to its internal policy of oil subsidies, whereby Yemenis are able to purchase oil at an extremely low rate in order to maintain their businesses. The Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation states that these ‘Fuel subsidies absorbed on average 27% of the total [public] expenditures during 2006 – 08’ (Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation 2009). Liquid natural gas extraction has been listed as a potential substitute for the oil sector. However, what has become clear in recent years is that Yemen’s

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single export-based economic model is unsustainable. This realization has led both the Yemeni government and its international and regional partners to channel their combined efforts into the development of three ‘promising sectors’, namely agriculture, tourism and fisheries.6 Prospects for tourism enhancement in Yemen are limited by the country’s international reputation for conflict, violence and terrorism, while the agricultural and fisheries sectors are extremely vulnerable to resource scarcity and increased competition (both within Yemen and externally7). Yet the need to cultivate Yemen’s oil and non-oil exports is heightened by two further and inter-connected resource deficits; those of food and arable land. Yemen’s climate is extremely changeable and prone to desertification. Arable land accounts for only 2.91 per cent of land in Yemen (New Agriculturalist 2010). The availability of arable land is shrinking due to ‘[i]ncreased drought frequency, increased temperatures, and changes in precipitation patterns’ (Environment Protection Authority 2009). The quality of arable land is also deteriorating as a result of over-use and poor agricultural practices. Land and water resources are a leading cause of violence and conflict in Yemen. For the government, ‘modernizing ownership and proprietorship rights, improving dispute resolution procedures, and ensuring appropriate issuance of land titles in order for land to be used as collateral in lending’ are top priorities, not only for stabilizing the country, but for developing its economy and virtually non-existent banking sector (Environment Protection Authority 2009). The source of many of Yemen’s land and water challenges is qat farming, which accounts for the greater part of the country’s agricultural production. Qat is a relatively hardy, easy-to-grow cash-crop, and the only legal narcotic available in the country. It has replaced most forms of agricultural productivity in Yemen. Most importantly, it has replaced local food production, resulting in protracted food crises. In 2010, the World Bank wrote: ‘Yemen has one of the highest malnutrition rates in the world. Data from the Family Health Survey (FHS) of 2003 indicate that 53.1 per cent of children under 5 are stunted, 45.6 per cent are underweight, and 12.4 per cent are wasted’ (World Bank 2010: 14). Extreme poverty and lack of state capacity negatively impact the ability of Yemeni citizens to access basic services. This access is further restricted by severe social inequalities: between the rich and the poor; between urban and rural, as well as central and peripheral areas; between landless people, nomads and land owners; between different groups of migrants; between tribal and religious groups; and, between genders.8 Given that basic services include healthcare, education, social welfare and protection, these social inequalities have serious

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implications in terms of maintaining poverty levels and prolonging uneven development conditions, a primary source of conflict and political unrest in Yemen. Pervasive social inequalities and poor service provision prevent marginalized groups from lifting themselves out of poverty, by denying them various forms of social opportunity. Yemen was ranked 160th out of 186 countries in the 2012 Human Development Index (HDI) (United Nations Development Project 2013). While it has shown some level of improvement in its development indicators over the past decade, it continues to be affected by poor healthcare, education and welfare service levels. In 2010, public health expenditure in the country accounted for only 1.5 per cent of GDP, while education represented 5.2 per cent. This came following on a prolonged period of deteriorating security that saw funds for public spending diverted towards the development and supply of the country’s military, while the global economic crisis resulted in a significant reduction in donor aid and remittances (United Nations Development Project 2011). Some advances have been made in public school systems over recent years. Government efforts to lower the cost of education through subsidies – particularly for young girls who are often denied such services due to engrained gender inequalities – have succeeded in raising net enrolment rates, which, according to the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (2009), increased from 52.7 per cent in 1990 to 75.3 per cent in 2008. However, total school registration and student retention numbers remain low.9 Poor retention rates are linked to the reality that the education sector in Yemen has failed to attract quality professionals, leading to very poor levels of student engagement in the classroom.10 Extreme levels of poverty mean that many children work to support their families, rather than attending school. The World Bank estimates that every person in Yemen between the ages of 15 and 65 who is in employment actually supports at least four others who are not, meaning that employment is no longer a valid means of overcoming poverty, as salaries are often not sufficient to raise a single individual out of deprivation (World Bank 2007). In practice, this means that, rather than attending school, young girls often stay home to help their families by attending to farms, collecting water and caring for younger siblings, while school-age boys go out in search of work.11

Humanitarian aid and its reception in Yemen On the surface and on paper, the international humanitarian response strategies in Yemen that are channelled through the UN are addressing the

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challenges overviewed in the previous sections.12 Emergency relief packages overlap with development assistance, often within the framework of the eight MDGs, which, given their prioritization of education accessibility, health and gender in particular, prompt the merging of many short-term relief programmes with long-term UN development targets. However, both before and after the recent political transition, humanitarian assistance has been seriously constrained by: issues of safety, restricting the movements of international humanitarian staff; relative under-funding in terms of aidto-needs ratios; and, a lack of state cooperation with multilateral and bilateral aid delivery agencies. Of equal importance, particularly under the leadership of former President Saleh, has been the role played by the distribution and manipulation of information, with the Yemeni government retaining chief responsibility for reporting on the safety and accessibility of the various governorates up until 2011, creating serious barriers to the mobility of international organizations in Yemen by denying international staff access to some crisis-affected communities. In 2011 and 2015, insecurity also led to the widescale evacuation of international staff and the closure of foreign embassies in Yemen, complicating matters further. Lack of state cooperation with international humanitarian aid delivery has stemmed both from political justifications and from the very language of humanitarian action itself, which is built upon a framework of legal obligations to protect and uphold human rights. Yemen is a signatory of many human rights instruments and conventions; however, its agreement to uphold liberal values has not been effectively integrated into domestic policy or national governance. Yemen’s Constitution, as drafted in 1990, guarantees equal rights to all citizens. Yet, in practice, women’s rights have been known to be undermined in the course of legal proceedings, particularly with regard to family rights and property law (International Security Sector Advisory Team 2010). Issues of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading punishments are likewise often ignored in practice, while instances of forced labour and child recruitment into the armed forces continue to undermine Yemen’s commitment to human rights principles (Human Rights Watch 2010). Yemeni laws and legislation are riddled with contradictions, which are, thanks to the legacy of British common law systems in South Yemen, left to the discretion of judges to resolve. The legally-binding decisions of judges in North and South Yemen are sometimes quite different from one another, based on competing tribal and religious values, leading to poor consistency and reliability within legal frameworks across the country.13 The framework of international humanitarian aid, which is founded upon human rights

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principles, does not mesh well with domestic laws or with local, and national, governance models. At the community level, this framework can be perceived as deliberately confrontational, undermining Yemeni values and imposing an alien liberal democratic model. Hardline supporters of Sharia-based systems of governance are especially critical in this regard. Today, the humanitarian model (apparently representing a Western manipulation of Yemeni politics) is actually blamed for many of the challenges that Yemen faces (Mawry 2013). Associations with Western agendas had a delegitimizing effect on President Saleh’s regime, resulting particularly in a rejection of national ‘anti-Islamic’ policies by the Houthis. They have also proven contentious for the transition government and for the National Dialogue (Mawry 2013). In the meantime, liberals, including Yemeni youth movements, see government commitments to humanitarian principles as empty promises, with human rights principles generating heated debates and violence in some cases. These issues come to the fore every time the international community pressures the Yemeni state to pursue humanitarian action. Additionally, tensions become elevated when communities that are identified as being in need of assistance by the international community are left without sufficient aid. Priority areas that have proven extremely difficult to access include Sa’ada and its surrounding governorates, as well as the southern areas of Abyan, Ta’iz, and Lahij among others, affected by man-made and natural disasters. Before 2011, Sa’ada could only be accessed via the sub-contracting of local staff, because of strict security-based restrictions on the mobility of international staff in Yemen (based on government recommendations).14 However, this sub-contracting technique is a relatively new practice in Sa’ada, which has, due to a long period of isolation from development and humanitarian programming, experienced a rise in antiWestern sentiment; by virtue of their association with Western programmes, the safety of local staff may also be compromised, leading them to take on all the risk of such ventures. A wide array of UN and affiliated agencies interviewed in 2010 noted that they had been unable to gain permission from the Yemeni state to travel to the governorate and deliver aid to internally displaced persons (IDPs) in particular, and this may have contributed to tensions among displaced communities.15 Nonetheless, reports of the obstacles to travel that have created this contemporary history of underdevelopment in Sa’ada have been treated with scepticism by in-country practitioners: information restriction in Yemen has a long history of undermining the effectiveness of foreign interventions, with former President Saleh having heavily restricted the presence of international press officers and journalists in

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his country, routinely expelling foreign media agents during peaks of political instability (Finn and Webb, 2011). Due to a lack of effective monitoring capacity in conflict-affected governorates, prior to 2011, international stakeholders also voiced concerns about the inefficiency and duplication of those projects that they were able to deliver in Sa’ada and elsewhere. Interestingly, amid the chaos that enveloped the rest of the country as a result of it, the Arab Spring has contributed to dramatic improvements in the situation in the far north, stabilizing the Sa’ada-Hajja-Amran-Al Jawf area by enabling it to operate on the basis of principles of self-administration and local governance. This presented a truly unique opportunity for the international community to engage with Sa’ada to deliver on humanitarian priorities and foster positive development, but a failure to do so effectively led the Houthis to once again take up arms after 2014. The National Dialogue provided a window of opportunity in this sense for reconciling Houthi grievances, due to the incumbent government’s stated commitment to building national reconciliation and cohesion by incorporating Yemeni voices that have hitherto been excluded from the mainstream political arena. The failure of the National Dialogue to effect such change can be attributed to a lack of political will at the state level and to poor negotiation skills among the Houthi elites, for whom war has become more profitable than diplomacy. The real winner of the National Dialogue’s failure in 2015 was Saleh, whose loyalists began anticipating his return to power as early as 2013 (Al Jazeera 2013), leading to concern that much of the progress generated by the Arab Spring and the National Dialogue could be overturned by a return and entrenchment of authoritarianism in future. Even in the aftermath of political crises, regional donors have had much more success in reaching problematic areas than international ones, due to their less restrictive programming guidelines. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Kuwait ‘lead the way among Arab nations in terms of providing development assistance’ and also in terms of offering humanitarian aid across the Middle East (Riddell 2013: 20). Though these and other regional donors tend to focus primarily upon bilateral development support packages, their work in Yemen has included emergency relief, particularly through nutrition support and food donations. In 2009, the ‘UAE gave 98 per cent of its humanitarian aid to Pakistan, Palestine and Yemen’, making Yemen a prime recipient of regional aid donorship (Riddell 2013: 20). The effectiveness of such assistance has been undermined, however, by a lack of cooperation and communication between regional and international donors and organizations, leading to a duplication of effort in some instances, and stalled or inadequate aid distribution in

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others. These issues seem to be quite strongly linked to competing narratives of humanitarian and development assistance, with regional donors tending to view Western assistance packages as overly prescriptive and international donors viewing regional aid as insufficiently accountable (West Asia North Africa Forum 2009). In the case of both international and regional donorship, however, humanitarian agencies routinely face difficulties in implementing aid due to their lack of legitimacy at the local and national levels. This is related to the reality that multiple donors, including Saudi Arabia, the United States and the United Kingdom, are negatively associated with unpopular political agendas. International donors also remain cautious about cooperating with a Yemeni government that they seem to see as corrupt and unstable. Though bilateral commitments have been on the increase since the removal of President Saleh, President Hadi’s government was only legitimized via a restricted election and it is yet to be seen how his regime will fare in an open democratic competition. Prior to President Hadi taking office in Yemen, there was a fundamental mismatch between needs and aid delivery, in terms of both humanitarian and development assistance, and it is important that donors place greater emphasis on delivering and distributing the assistance that they pledge. At the 2006 London Consultative Group meeting, US $5.7 billion was pledged to Yemen, of which less than 10 per cent had been distributed by 2010.16 While some of this gap can be accounted for by bureaucratic stalling and international fears of local corruption, most of it represents a failure by donors to meet pledges. Furthermore, weak capacities have prevented the Yemeni state from effectively utilizing funding received in the past, so that there is a need for real capacity building in Yemen, that goes beyond personnel training.

Other assistance frameworks and the challenge of protracted relief Humanitarian aid accounted for only 7.3 per cent of all assistance delivered to Yemen in 2010: 10.1 per cent was targeted towards ‘governance, peace and security’; 35.2 per cent was earmarked for ‘public service provision’; 37.1 per cent was for ‘other country programmable aid’ (i.e., direct bilateral assistance that can be programmed by the donor at recipient country level); and, the remaining 10.3 per cent was allocated towards ‘other non-country programmable aid’ that included unspecified bilateral assistance (Global Humanitarian Assistance 2013). These contributions were inclusive of aid provided by established international donors and emerging regional ones.

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A wide variety of assistance frameworks have been implemented in Yemen, but the most prominent ones that are worth mentioning are: those that deal with international development by implementing programmes aimed at fostering progress towards the eight MDGs; regional cooperation and integration networks such as the Friends of Yemen Group and the Gulf Cooperation Council; United Nations capacity-building initiatives that prioritise state reform; and, stabilization strategies. A number of projects that transcend these categories may be grouped together under the heading of European Union interventions in Yemen, prioritizing the three main areas of ‘democracy, civil registry and decentralisation’ (European Commission 2012). Humanitarian assistance comprises only a small segment of the broader aid environment in Yemen, with many donors playing multiple, and sometimes conflicting, funding roles. What the donation figures do not provide is an indication of the degree to which humanitarian donors are also involved in highly politicized interventions in Yemen. The United States of America, which contributed US $18 million to Yemen in 2010 (Global Humanitarian Assistance 2013), has commissioned wide-scale counterterrorism programming that is immensely unpopular in South Yemen, and faces allegations by Wikileaks of secret bombings and other devastating military campaigns (Booth and Black 2010). The United Kingdom, which contributed US $16 million in 2010 (Global Humanitarian Assistance 2013), is involved in an intrusive and security-centric stabilization strategy under the auspices of the Stabilization Unit, and is also taking the lead in European Union police training and reform in Yemen.17 In doing so, it will become associated with law enforcement institutions that are heavily militarized and have been accused of repressive, authoritarian tactics. Saudi Arabia pledged US $3.25 billion to Yemen in 2012 (Peel 2012), but has a long history of military action in the country, including intervening in the Houthi conflict. Furthermore, international donors in particular are associated with their roles in other countries across the world as well: in Yemen, Western powers are particularly vulnerable to associations with their parallel activities in Iraq and Afghanistan – both hugely unpopular interventions. Afghanistan specifically has been seen by many Yemenis as being ideologically twinned with their own country, first through its struggle against communism, and then through its citizens’ rejection of the War on Terror. Yemeni fighters have combated in Afghanistan for decades, and relative Western military successes in Afghanistan have led to the large-scale return of very bitter, destabilizing, Yemeni extremists to their home nation

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to act as spoilers in international interventions (Schanzer 2004: 520). This has also fed into negative perceptions of regional interventions in cases in which neighbouring donors, such as Saudi Arabia, are seen to be aligned with Western interests. Even mainstream political narratives have been affected by tensions regarding donorship roles. In the National Dialogue, the Islamic Party of Liberation in Yemen, a group with growing national appeal, was extremely vocal about the dangers of ‘Western meddling’ in the country, highlighting a need for the Yemeni government to ‘put an end to Westernisation’ through the establishment of an Islamic state (Mawry 2013). The equivalence of common grievances with Western values in Yemen is a disturbing trend, stemming from complex and contradictory Western roles in the country and contributing to a rejection of all foreign intervention, including humanitarian engagement. These trends are not universal in the country: Yemen is politically diverse, with prominent socio-political divides. However, a rejection of Western interventionism is a recurring theme that ought not to be underestimated, and similar trends are evident across the Red Sea in Somali-speaking regions, as well as elsewhere in the Middle East.18 The humanitarian and development challenges that have overrun Yemen may have become aggravated and more extensive in recent years, but they are not new phenomena. Donors and aid agencies working in the country have been actively involved in emergency relief, peace-building, conflict mediation, military support, capacity building and development programming almost since the state’s formation, and they are no longer seen as impartial actors. Through their association with humanitarian space and humanitarian intervention, they have compromised the neutrality of humanitarian assistance – had such a thing ever been possible within a human rights-based framework in any conflict-affected context (and not just in Yemen). Occasionally, this connection has been known to improve the reception of international humanitarian efforts on the ground. Ibrahim Sharquieh notes that ‘The international community played an undeniably significant role in facilitating the departure of President Saleh’ in 2012, for instance, contributing to the temporary rise of liberal narratives in Yemen and increased support for female education and mobility (Sharqieh 2013: 21). More often, however, the connection between humanitarianism and multisector donorship has created serious obstacles for humanitarian staff, particularly in terms of safety and legitimacy: prior to the Arab Spring, the international community had worked closely with Saleh, undermining their credibility in the eyes of some and validating it in the eyes of others. These

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ambiguities have impacted the reception of humanitarianism. There is a need therefore to recognize the historic contextualization of humanitarian aid, and to see it as representing a facet of protracted relief, even more so than of emergency relief: this re-categorization acknowledges that recipients no longer view humanitarianism as independent of other assistance frameworks.

Conclusion Hilhorst and Jensen argue that: ‘Humanitarian space denotes the physical or symbolic space which humanitarian agents need to deliver their services according to the principles they uphold’ (2010: 1117). This space is fundamentally used by international actors to provide for basic human needs in emergencies, delivering items and services that are considered to be essential for human welfare and survival – items and services that are generally thought to be universally recognized as essential. In practice, however, humanitarian goods and the language of humanitarianism tend to be informed by Western liberal valuation systems or ideologies, and aid recipients are rarely consulted when it comes to determining their ‘basic needs’. The concept of a humanitarian space, ‘which separates humanitarian action from its politicised environment, is widely used in policy documents and academic texts, even though empirical evidence abounds that this space is in fact highly politicised’ (Hilhorst and Jansen 2010: 1117). Yemen offers a prime example of a country in which the language of humanitarian intervention is neither neutral nor universal, and humanitarian action is deeply politically intertwined with the broader landscape of international and regional intervention, as well as with local conflicts. Yemen is not the only such case, though it is an important one. ‘Historically, Yemen has often been the site of proxy battles among foreign powers, from Pan-Arabists to communists’ (Schanzer 2004: 517), and rising instability has generated heightened levels of distrust of foreign intervening powers. Though limited progress has been made (particularly in the areas of education and healthcare), severe obstacles have inhibited development. Perceptions on the ground of international donors and international organizations have been key limitations in this sense, along with a distinct trend towards the politicization of aid in the eyes of the Yemeni public – a basic consequence of the securitization of international interventions. The acceptance and lack of acceptance of humanitarian aid is further affected by the long-term sustenance of so-called ‘emergency’ programming, which is compromising the independence of humanitarianism by

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intertwining it with other development narratives, while also tipping the country ever further into cycles of aid dependency. There is a need to acknowledge this fusion of programmes, in that positive integration could actually lead to more long-term thinking in humanitarian assistance, to date designed to operate for a maximum of three-to-five years, but in reality repeatedly re-launched in various forms since Yemen’s unification. Evidence suggests that many Yemenis are growing increasingly frustrated with their continuing dependence on aid: they would prefer to see a humanitarian strategy linked to long-term development, encouraging self-reliance instead of hand-outs. The lack of agency granted to aid recipients in Yemen is a key contributing factor in the rise of such sentiment, as are the prescriptive nature of Western interventions and the politicized nature of regional ones.19 Ultimately, however, frustration has built up over time and is a product of the protracted relief phenomenon. Sustained approaches that perceive humanitarianism as based on a neutral and universal narrative are inaccurate in protracted relief contexts, in which the extended presence of international staff fundamentally integrates them into the country’s political tapestry as active and interested political actors. Maintaining narratives of neutrality undermines the effectiveness of humanitarian strategies by overlooking the challenges that they face, particularly within the context of Yemen’s protracted ‘crisis and relief’ cycle. Meanwhile, the segregation of humanitarian and development agendas in particular is counter-intuitive, leading to a lack of effective planning towards ending the phenomenon of protracted relief in Yemen and thereby generating an over-reliance on foreign assistance in a country that continues to depend on charity and an importbased economy, despite its high availability of land and labour. Raymond Apthorpe writes that: The characterisation of aid simply as kindness to strangers (with a focus on the kindnesses) is more of a miss than a hit (not least with its strangers). It says too much as well as too little, because speaking different languages and having different cultures and religions, strangers come in different garbs and are not equally made welcome (or for that matter unwelcome). Help may be withheld depending on who is helping, or not go to those who most need it, or come only with strings that tie and bind more than rescue. (2012: 1557) The alleged neutrality of humanitarianism functions as a pretext for interventions that are often confrontational and unpopular. Greater humility

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is required in complex emergencies such as that in Yemen, where the reality on the ground is that help may be needed – but is not always wanted. Unless awareness of these issues is integrated into humanitarian aid programming in Yemen, it is likely that foreign assistance will do more harm than good in the long term.

Notes 1 Prior to 1990, Yemen was divided into two states: North and South Yemen. 2 Expert Consultation, October 2010. 3 Special thanks are due to Jennifer Weatherall for her assistance with definitions used in this section. 4 These can be linked to challenges arising from a lack of state legitimacy, poor economic development, and a lack of social equality – each of which has resulted in increased conflict and the rise of potentially and actively violent social movements. 5 Stakeholder Consultation, Food and Agriculture Organisation, 14 August 2010. 6 Stakeholder Consultation, Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, 15 August 2010, interview led by Professor Sultan Barakat, University of York. 7 Based on recent fieldwork that she conducted in Somaliland, the author has found that tensions between Somali and Yemeni fishermen abound due to disputes over fishing rights in shared Gulf of Aden and Red Sea waters. Conflict is aggravated by the presence of foreign fishermen in the area, particularly from East Asia, with competition leading to over-fishing and diminished fish availability. This damages the potential for sustainable livelihoods in the region and compounds resource scarcity and poverty on both sides of the Gulf. 8 Stakeholder Consultation, United Nations Population Fund, 14 August 2010. 9 Stakeholder Consultation, United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, 15 August 2010, interview led by Dr David Connolly. 10 Stakeholder Consultation, Ministry of Education, 17 August 2010. 11 Stakeholder Consultation, United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, 15 August, 2010, interview led by Dr David Connolly. 12 However, aid distribution was severely disrupted between 2011 and 2012 due to rising instability and deteriorating security, which resulted in a stalling of bilateral aid delivery in Yemen and the wide-scale evacuation of international staff from the country. 13 Stakeholder Consultation, United Nations Development Project, 14 August 2010. 14 Stakeholder Consultation, International Organisation for Migration, 18 August 2010. 15 Stakeholder Consultations carried out between 17 and 19 August 2010. 16 Stakeholder Consultation, Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, 15 August 2010, interview led by Professor Sultan Barakat, University of York. 17 Stakeholder Consultation, Nicholas Hopton, British Ambassador to Yemen, 22 July 2012. 18 These observations are drawn from the author’s recent field work in Yemen, Somaliland and elsewhere. 19 These observations are drawn from independent surveys carried out by the author with Arab Spring protesters and leaders of Yemeni youth movements in 2011 and 2012.

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Bibliography Al-Wesabi, S., 2011, ‘More Economic Woes in Waiting for Yemen’, Yemen Times, 12 September. Al Jazeera, 2013, Dancing on the ‘Heads of Snakes’, 16 March. Apthorpe, R., 2012, ‘Effective Aid: The Poetics of Some Aid Workers’ Angles on How Humanitarian Aid “Works”’, Third World Quarterly, 33(8): 1545– 59. Bailey, S. and S. Pavanello, 2009, Untangling Early Recovery, London: Humanitarian Policy Group. Binder, A., Meier, C. and J. Steets, 2010, Humanitarian Assistance: Truly Universal? A Mapping Study of Non-Western Donors, Berlin: Global Public Policy Institute. Booth, R. and I. Black, 2010, ‘WikiLeaks Cables: Yemen Offered US “Open Door” to Attack Al-Qaida on its Soil’, Guardian, 3 December. Del Castillo, G., 2008, Rebuilding War-Torn States: The Challenge of Post-conflict Economic Reconstruction, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Donini, A., 2012, ‘Humanitarianism, Perceptions, Power’, in In the Eyes of Others: How People in Crises Perceive Humanitarian Aid, C. Abu-Sada, ed., New York: Me´decins Sans Frontie`res, Humanitarian Outcomes, and NYU Center on International Cooperation. Dorff, R.H., 1996, ‘Democratization and Failed States: The Challenge of Ungovernability’, Parameters, 26(2): 17 – 31. Environment Protection Authority, 2009, National Adaptation Plan of Action, Sana’a: Republic of Yemen. European Commission, 2012, The European Union Announces Further Support for Democratic Transition in Yemen, 7 August. Finn, T. and W.L. Webb, 2011, ‘Yemen Expels Four Foreign Journalists Amid Fears of Clampdowns’, Guardian, 14 March. Foreign Policy and the Fund for Peace, 2010, Failed States Index, Washington, DC: The State Group. Global Humanitarian Assistance, 2013, Yemen, http://www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org/. Heath, J.B., 2011, ‘Disasters, Relief, and Neglect: The Duty to Accept Humanitarian Assistance and the Work of the International Law Commission’, International Law and Politics, 43: 419– 77. Hilhorst, D. and B.J. Jansen, 2010, ‘Humanitarian Space as Arena: A Perspective on the Everyday Politics of Aid’, Development and Change, 41(6): 1117– 39. Hill, G., 2010, Yemen: Fear of Failure, London: Chatham House. Human Rights Watch, 2010, All Quiet on the Northern Front? Uninvestigated Laws of War Violations in Yemen’s War with Houthi Rebels, New York. International Security Sector Advisory Team, 2010, Key Issues and Challenges for the Rule of Law in Yemen, Sana’a. Karim, F., 2006, Humanitarian Action in the New Security Environment: Policy and Operational Implications in Afghanistan, London: Humanitarian Policy Group. Mawry, Y., 2013, Yemen Parties Say West Behind National Dialogue Campaign, Press TV, 15 March. Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, 2009, Report on the Mid-Term Review of the 3rd Socio-Economic Development Plan for Poverty Reduction 2006– 2010, Sana’a. Negenman, T., 1997, ‘Evolution of Water Resources Management in Yemen’, in Groundwater Management: Sharing Responsibility for an Open Access Resource, Nairobi: International Livestock Research Institute. New Agriculturalist, 2010, Country Profile – Yemen, WRENmedia. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 2010, Humanitarian Response Plan for Yemen 2011, New York. Oxford Analytica, 2009, Yemen Country Report: A Report Produced for UNICEF MENARO, Oxford. Pasquier, A., 2001, Constructing Legitimacy, Seminar on Politics and Humanitarian Aid: Debates, Dilemmas and Dissension, London: Overseas Development Institute.

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Peel, M., 2012, ‘Saudi Arabia Pledges $3.25bn Aid to Yemen’, Financial Times, 23 March. Pilapil, L.-A., 2011, ‘US Cancels Massive Aid for Yemen after Uprisings’, Manila: International Development Business, 11 April. Riddell, P., 2013, ‘Islam as Aid and Development’ in Handbook of Research on Development and Religion, M. Clarke, ed., Northampton: Edward Elgar. Schanzer, J., 2004, ‘Yemen’s War on Terror’, Orbis (Summer): 517– 31. Sharqieh, I., 2013, A Lasting Peace? Yemen’s Long Journey to National Reconciliation, Doha: Brookings Institute. Tong, J., 2004, ‘Questionable Accountability: MSF and Sphere in 2003’, Disasters, 28(2): 176–89. United Nations Development Project, 2011, Yemen: Common Country Assessment, Sana’a. ——, 2013, Indices and Data, Human Development Reports, http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/ hdi/. United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, 2009, Mid-Term review Report: 2007– 2011 Programme of Cooperation, Sana’a. Weiss, M.A., 2004, World Bank Post-Conflict Aid: Oversight Issues for Congress, Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service. Weiss, T, 1999, ‘Principles, Politics and Humanitarian’, Ethics and International Affairs, 13(1): 1 – 22. West Asia North Africa Forum, 2009, Report of the First Annual West Asia-North Africa (WANA) Forum, Amman: West Asia and North Africa Forum. World Bank, 2007, Poverty Assessment in Yemen, Sana’a: The World Bank Group. ——, 2010a, Assessing the Impact of Climate Change and Variability on the Water and Agriculture Sectors, and the Policy Implications, Sana’a: The World Bank Group. ——, 2010b, Yemen Quarterly Economic Review, Sana’a: The World Bank Group.

CHAPTER 8 A SOVEREIGN FOR ALL THE MANAGEMENT OF REFUGEES AS NATION-STATE POLITICS Sophia Hoffmann

Introduction Steadily growing numbers of refugees, and the equally steady chorus of lament about their suffering from charitable organizations, have become a ubiquitous feature of global politics. Each year, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and its affiliate organizations announce additional thousands of displaced, while reminding us that the plight of pre-existing refugee populations remains inadequately addressed. The figures are mind-boggling, as are the images of the world’s refugee camps, in which populations in the hundreds of thousands have become the norm. Far from temporary shelters, many camps have become permanent structures, euphemistically referred to as ‘protracted crises’, in which second and third generations of refugees are born and raised. Most actors place the blame for this depressingly entrenched situation on instances in which the ‘normal’ order of politics has broken down: war, civil conflict or natural disasters have lead governments to fail in protecting ‘their own’, that is to say their citizens, who have consequently been forced to flee and to seek ‘protection’ elsewhere. ‘Protection’ has become a key catchphrase for humanitarian agencies tending to the well-being and livelihoods of refugees. Humanitarians mobilize the concept to explain their programmes, which secure minimum conditions of health and survival for refugees, but do not enable them to develop a self-sufficient life beyond food aid and vocational training courses. Originating from the text of the 1951 Refugee Convention,

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which broadly refers to the duty of governments to prevent the political or racial persecution of citizens on domestic territory, protection today translates into the guarantee of basic physical existence. Despite the increasingly normalized global network of refugee camps and populations, and the attached humanitarian and political apparatus, the existence of the displaced is continuously portrayed as exceptional and as a sign that ‘ordinary politics’ have broken down. Humanitarian agencies are at the forefront in perpetuating this belief. There appears to be little willingness or ability to understand seeking refuge and displacement as an inherent feature of the international system, as a necessary and logical result of the way modern sovereignty is exercised in both the domestic and the international contexts. As this chapter will show, humanitarian discourse and the implementation of humanitarian programme consistently reproduce a form of nation-state politics that not only elevates the state as the most privileged political actor, but also justifies and naturalizes the exclusion of outsiders and non-citizens from the body politic. Humanitarian agencies do not just defer to this form of sovereignty, but actively reproduce and enforce it, even in contexts in which local integration of refugees is occurring without state interference. UNHCR and refugee management NGOs reproduce a political order in which participation in political life, and access to human rights, depends on being an officially recognized member of a national body politic. Thus humanitarian actors, while assuaging the suffering of refugees and other outcasts, are complicit in the enforcement and diffusion of a political order that causes these people’s continued displacement.1 Thus, the first aim of this chapter is to show that the vast majority of humanitarian agencies engaged in refugee management are part and parcel of the politics that produces refugees as outcasts. On the contrary to what is often assumed, these NGOs do not threaten nation-based state sovereignty, but uphold it as the correct and natural way of organizing society, on the basis of very specific assumptions about the political relations on which state sovereignty should be founded. Dependent on liberal notions of representative democracy contained in the UN charter, humanitarian refugee management operates as if representation, citizenship and governments of national unity formed the basis of state sovereignty everywhere around the world. Crucially, it is only within this liberal logic/politics of state sovereignty that the systematic exclusion of outsiders constitutes a key element of governance for the maintenance of the state. In those states in which state sovereignty is not produced via a (mythical) national unity embracing population, government and territory, with state power being mobilized via other, non-liberal, forms of governance, the refugee-as-excluded-citizen paradigm of humanitarianism

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frequently does not hold, and is not a crucial element of governance for the reproduction of the state. Many, if not most, humanitarian operations are carried out in such states, i.e. in post-colonial contexts in which the normative linking of state sovereignty to representative nation-based politics and citizenship is a false assumption and contradicts political reality. This link emanates as a hegemonic, international norm from the UN system, which guides and channels most humanitarian aid, especially aid targeted at refugees (indeed the UN’s core institutions such as its General Assembly and ambassadorial corps are based on this norm). In the present chapter, I argue that by behaving as if representative, national citizenship formed the basis of state sovereignty in the political contexts of humanitarian operations globally, and by basing their refugee management programmes on this assumption, humanitarian organizations introduce distinct parallel politics of state sovereignty into the post-colonial countries in which they operate. In this manner, not only do humanitarian operations result in overlapping, hybrid or graduated state sovereignty (as has been recognized by a number of authors, including Aihwa Ong and Michel Agier), but they may also act as a mechanism translating the liberal norms and techniques of governance on which state sovereignty ‘should’ be based, from the metropolitan homeland of humanitarianism into the post-colony (Ong 2006; Agier 2007). This is particularly relevant and politically important with regard to refugees, given that the non-liberal, non-national and even non-representative politics encountered in some post-colonial states may offer refugees a better chance of integration into a political community than the harsh restrictions and exclusions operated by the liberal democracies of the North Atlantic. The diffusion of the ‘liberal’ way of systematically marking and excluding refugees as outsiders and non-citizens, may be regarded as a further means by which humanitarianism, in its recognized role as a structure of global governance, shapes post-colonial contexts on the basis of norms originating in the North Atlantic metropolis. With regard to refugee management, this structure operates in two broad steps. First, a situation of mass migration is identified as a crisis, and the receiving states are identified as not adequately resourced, or governed, to handle this crisis in a way that could adequately meet the ‘needs’ of the refugees. Frequently, other political and/or economic threats and risks emanating from the migration population are identified, such as potential for conflict spill-over, conflict with the host population, or an overwhelming of limited public infrastructures. On these grounds, funding campaigns are initiated and the entry or expansion of existing humanitarian operations are negotiated with the governments of the receiving states. The key effect of this

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first step is that receiving states are identified as inadequately or insufficiently governed to maintain an acceptable standard of state sovereignty in a situation of mass immigration, and this in turn is understood as the natural justification for necessary humanitarian intervention (for one of the most well-known elaborations of this process, see Duffield 2001). The second step occurs during the actual running of the refugee aid operation, in which the lives of refugees are viewed in light of humanitarianism’s abstract and standardized assumptions about what it means to be a refugee – regardless of context. Here, UNHCR and its partner organizations, whose functioning is dependent on the cooperation of donor states, approach, manage and offer differentiated futures to the migrants under their care, through techniques of governance that create parallel processes of state sovereignty on the territories of the host state. This may occur, as has been well documented, through humanitarian quasi-sovereignty over refugee camps, but also via mass resettlement programmes or, in a more networked fashion, through the decentralized servicing of dispersed ‘urban’ refugees living in cities. Through its particular and distinct vision of where refugees should be located in a sovereign state’s body politic, and its operationalization of this vision, humanitarianism introduces into its areas of operation the normative assumptions and actual ways of engaging in politics that lay the bases for state sovereignty. The second, related, aim of this chapter is to foster a different way of thinking about state sovereignty than is frequently implied by much of international theory and ‘common sense’ political science. If we are to understand how humanitarian organizations may be agents of state sovereignty, and the ways in which humanitarianism spreads a particular politics of state sovereignty that may result in layered or graduated sovereignty, we need to understand sovereignty itself as a contingent form of politics infusing everyday life – rather than as a central source or form of power. Thinking about state sovereignty as a hegemonic political order that relies on a dominant political imaginary positing the state as the most privileged political actor and being reproduced through countless actions and practices of daily life, enables us to understand that it is not simply enforced by state might or state institutions. In contrast, the pervasive values, norms and identities of state sovereignty also shape the assumptions and practices of non-state agents, who may act to perpetuate the sovereign state, creating domestic spaces in which overlapping, at times even contradictory, techniques of governance emerge. All of this results in a privileging of the state, as well as in the creation of distinctive relationships of power, opportunity and domination. Crucial to any ‘problematization’ of state sovereignty is an understanding of how it operates to structure both the arena of international politics and that

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of the domestic. The functioning and structure of the international arena depends on a (once again mythical) understanding of states as nationally unified entities, with clearly demarcated borders, territories and populations that may be represented by diplomats who carry forward a single unified voice of sovereign government. Since the founding of the UN as the quintessentially liberal and leading world diplomatic hub, the principles of national, democratic and popular government have become closely linked to state sovereignty, as the ideal form of governance for maintaining it. Together, these principles form a globally hegemonic ‘ideal-type’ of state sovereignty, upon which the shape and power of all states is/should be based. States whose domestic reality does not match this ideal type are frequently categorized as aberrant members of the international community, yet within international diplomacy their ambassadors are accepted as representative of their ‘nations’, and the ambassadors themselves usually maintain the fiction by paying lipservice to this governance of the international, even if it does not reflect the way state sovereignty is enforced within their domestic sphere. Thus, the domestic sphere is in certain ways intrinsically linked to a state’s successful participation in international politics, yet, obviously, not every government in the world mobilizes liberal governance techniques to create sovereign state control over the domestic sphere. In the domestic spheres of many different countries, the state apparatus may wield its arsenal of bureaucracy and violence in line with a variety of forms of power to ensure its position as the domestic’s most powerful and privileged actor. It is in this peculiar tension, or gap, between the internationally accepted ideal-type of liberal sovereignty – to which state representatives must at least pay lipservice during international diplomatic activity – and the diverse and far messier political reality of domestic sovereignty, that we may situate the transformative potential of the humanitarian approach to state sovereignty, which closely mirrors the liberal ideal-type. The chapter comprises three main sections. The first gives a short empirical overview of global humanitarian efforts focused on refugees, to demonstrate their significant scope and depth. This initial evidence about how refugees are managed by humanitarian agencies with the UNHCR at the helm is followed by a second, theoretical section that presents a way of thinking about modern sovereignty that goes beyond the state, specifically framing it as a particular political order upheld by both state and non-state actors. This section provides a brief literature review of key critical analyses of state sovereignty that have emerged from Foucauldian international relations theory, anthropology and political geography, followed by a more in-depth analysis of how humanitarianism relates to the hegemonic ideal type of state sovereignty.

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By analysing the legal premises, the models of intervention/implementation and the rhetoric of the UNHCR-induced industry of refugee management, in this section I argue that humanitarianism views politics through the prism of the population–government–territory trinity, and governs refugees according to this logic. By positing national unity and a representative state government that protects its citizens as the natural and normal basis for state sovereignty, humanitarian agencies promote a form of government that relies on the systematic exclusion of non-citizens for its reproduction, and therefore contains within itself the constant production of refugees. The third and final section provides an example of how spaces of overlapping sovereignty emerged in a complex humanitarian operation focused on managing Iraqi migrants in Syria. This example uses the results of ethnographic research to demonstrate how precisely and through which governance practices, the introduction of humanitarian refugee management into the post-colonial context of Syria worked, and the situations of overlapping state sovereignty it created.

Humanitarian management of refugees To get a sense of the size and structure of the global humanitarian operation targeting refugees and the displaced, an understanding of the work of UNHCR, the UN’s lead agency on all matters related to refugees, is crucial. Both the global refugee management system, and its local manifestations, are significantly shaped by the political rationality contained in the statutes and modus operandi of UNHCR.2 UNHCR officers will point out that the agency depends in most of its work on the willingness and interests of host and donor countries, for example regarding the question of whether to build camps or focus on local integration in the case of a refugee crisis. Yet the rigid structure of UNHCR’s programmes, its strict definitions of refugee and vulnerability categories and its blanket approach mean that it does not offer significant flexibility in its operations. UNHCR operations around the world resemble each other strikingly, relying on the same concepts, definitions, options and technologies. These are laid out in dozens of legal and operational documents as varied as the following sample selection: the UNHCR Resettlement Handbook, which details the procedures through which refugees are identified, selected and submitted to third country resettlement programmes; the UNHCR Guidelines on International Protection, which inform officers about how certain, personal characteristics of refugees may qualify them for refugee status; the UNHCR Protection Training Manual for European Border and Entry

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Officials, designed to train officials in legal aspects, but also to sensitize them to the perspective of those fleeing violence and poverty; or Livelihood Planning in UNHCR: Operational Guidelines, which demonstrates UNHCR’s growing focus on issues of development. The latter includes particular framings of refugee economies (‘self-reliance’), or of refugee knowledge and property (‘livelihood assets’) and suggests steps that UNHCR officers should follow when designing assistance programmes, such as sorting a refugee population according to wealth and knowledge, household size and so on. These documents provide a glimpse into the particular epistemology of the humanitarian gaze, according to which people who happen to move across territory that straddles an international border become fitted with a peculiar and complex political and social identity that makes them targets for humanitarian concern: they become ‘refugees’, ‘stateless’ or, if they have not crossed a border, ‘internally displaced persons’. In addition they may become a ‘female-headed household’, an ‘older’ person, an ‘unaccompanied minor’ or an ‘urban’ refugee. In line with the UNHCR categories, they may receive the identity of a ‘climate change refugee’, ‘torture victim’ or ‘victim of genderbased violence’. Or they might become an ‘exclusion case’, because a refugee status determination interview finds them to be ineligible for UN assistance (UNHCR 2003). Assignment to each of these categories, of which many more exist, opens up a pathway with different opportunities and choices. A single female may qualify for more food and cash assistance than a single male. An older refugee may be prioritized for resettlement; while a person with a severe health risk may find this to help or hinder her resettlement case, depending on the approach taken by the resettlement country. The peculiar humanitarian perspective on suffering, including the understanding that greater suffering merits additional help, results in a particular distribution of services to those whom the initial sorting and categorising identifies as in greater need. These very tangible outcomes related to the sub-category that every refugee who approaches an international humanitarian agency is fitted with, emphasize the power contained in humanitarianism’s own forms of bordering and excluding. The extent of humanitarian management of refugees is significant both in terms of numbers of people, geographical spread and local depth. UNHCR estimates of the global population under humanitarian care amount to a minimum of 25 million people (as a comparison, the population of the UK is around 63 million people). Of these, around 7 million (about the population of Switzerland) have lived in camps for longer than five years, situations that humanitarian organizations refer to as ‘protracted crises’, and some human rights organizations call the ‘warehousing of refugees’ (USCRI 2013). While

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camp environments differ significantly, nearly all contain restrictions on freedom of movement and limitations on basic rights, and there is no legal limit on the duration of encampment for refugees. Humanitarian responses to refugee crises are occurring in 126 countries, amounting to around 60 per cent of all states (UNHCR 2013). In Africa, all but a handful of countries host international refugee management operations, yet no OECD country does so (although UNHCR is present in these countries as an organization that advises and campaigns on asylum policy). Currently, the largest humanitarian refugee response operations are taking place in Afghanistan, Chad, Columbia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, Iraq and Sudan. Nevertheless, UNHCR is governed through the UN general assembly, all of whose members provide officers to the agency’s executive committee and other governance bodies on a rotational basis. The total number of jobs provided by the sector is difficult to estimate. UNHCR has around 8,000 employees, while the Danish Refugee Council, one of the largest NGOs specializing in assistance to refugees, counts approximately 10,000 employees and volunteers (DRC 2012; UNHCR 2013). Considering that for most humanitarian NGOs, refugee work only represents one element in a wider portfolio of projects, it is a conservative estimate to assume that humanitarian refugee management employs as many people as a midsize, multinational company, with a global workforce of around 30,000. The money that keeps the humanitarian management of refugees afloat, paying for tents, food rations, health centres, vocational training courses; the salaries of both local and foreign staff; compounds, satellite phones and the vast bureaucratic machine that backs up field operations, is provided by voluntary donations, a mixture of government and private funding. Governments provide the bulk of UNHCR’s continually expanding budget, which stood at a record USD 3.59 billion in 2012, with the majority coming from a small group of top donor states that in 2010 were the United States, the European Commission, Japan, Sweden and Norway (UNHCR 2011). Much of this money is channelled on to UNHCR’s implementing partners, who also raise money independently, this being one of the reasons why it is so difficult to disaggregate and calculate expenditure on humanitarian refugee management worldwide.3 Other organizations are mainly privately funded, such as Me´decins Sans Frontie`res, which provides health services in many refugee camps around the world and had a 2011 budget of EUR 220 million, receiving over 90 per cent of its funds from private individuals (MSF 2013). While UNHCR’s contractual arrangements with partner organizations can be surprisingly ad hoc, partners cannot, in their operations, veer from

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UNHCR’s understanding of flight, vulnerability, needs and protection. This understanding is set out in documents such as Protecting Refugees: A Field Guide for NGOs, in UNHCR’s series of annual reports Working in Partnership, or Partnership: An Operations Management Handbook for UNHCR Partners. An interesting, if now somewhat out-dated, critical perspective on UNHCR’s partnerships is provided in a 1997 evaluation report Review of UNHCR Implementing Arrangements and Implementing Partner Selection Procedures, which highlights that the lack of consistency in its work with partners has been an important concern at UNHCR, as has interest in developing a more streamlined system. The intense centralization of a process that affects people across the globe in an extremely wide range of social, cultural and political contexts is itself remarkable and already points to the homogenising, normsetting effect that UNHCR-led refugee management processes have in their countries of operation. UNHCR’s work not only extends horizontally. The agency prides itself in its ability to reach deep into local contexts, via its partnerships with local NGOs. UNHCR’s website states: ‘UNHCR’s local partnerships give it an unmatched presence on the ground. More than 75 percent of the UN refugee agency’s NGO partners are local organizations’ (UNHCR 2013). The directory of partner organization lists nearly 1,000 NGOs, ranging from tiny local organizations such as the Association of Ethiopians Educated in Germany to large global players such as Oxfam or Save the Children (UNHCR 2013). UNHCR’s emphasis on its cooperation with local NGOs demonstrates the belief, widespread in the humanitarian sector, that working with local partners increases the legitimacy, justness, sustainability and safety of humanitarian intervention. Creating local employment, rather than highlypaid foreigners, and working through existing local channels rather than possibly wasteful and damaging duplication, is considered to reduce the risk of being perceived negatively by local populations, and increase the chance that the humanitarian project will have a lasting, positive impact on the local economy and society (Anderson 1999). Yet there is a different aspect to working with local partners that is more relevant for the purposes of this chapter, because it points to a mechanism through which humanitarianism acts as a vehicle for the spreading of political norms. Embedding humanitarian projects in local structures does not necessarily just mean that the humanitarian project will be conducted according to local interests. It also creates the possibility that the political rationality of humanitarian refugee management, its particular knowledge and techniques of power, may permanently influence the political contexts of its areas of operation. This may include, on the one hand, knowledge-related

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aspects, such as how outsiders are perceived, or how the citizen– state relationship is understood, and on the other hand, relate to practices (or techniques) of power, such as for example the use of individualized biodata collected in IT databases. As argued in this chapter, the political rationality of humanitarianism is closely aligned with modern, liberal nation-state sovereignty, which contributes to the continued reproduction of refugees and displaced people as outcasts and which, while it may exist on paper, is in fact often weakly implemented in the states in which humanitarian operations take place. Via the close cooperation between UNHCR, international NGOs and local partners, the norms and modus operandi of nation state politics are diffused into post-colonial environments.

The analytics of sovereignty The daily production of state sovereignty through varying techniques of rule The previous section set out some of the key empirical elements of the global structure of refugee management. The focus now turns to the theoretical approach to sovereignty discussed in this chapter, as a prelude to explaining how humanitarian programmes function as a form of nation-state sovereignty that reproduces the exclusion of refugees. The most frequently encountered account of state sovereignty as told by international law, the UN charter and much political and international analysis, is that it is an element of the state, both emanating from it and possessed by it. During the twentieth century the academic debate around sovereignty broadly focused on its sources (located in the state), and how to identify them. Decisive decision-making power was considered a key identifier of sovereignty, just as military might was often understood as a basic necessity. Similarly, recognition by other states was often considered crucial (Schmitt 1985; Schmitt and Ulmen 2003; Krasner 2009; Morgenthau et al. 2006). Later, authors emphasized the importance of shared norms and behaviour for such mutual recognition, and theories of rationality and of the likeness between states and people informed understandings of cooperation among sovereign states. Further forms of psychological analysis were drawn on to explore what Steven Krasner, one of international relations’ most famous theorists of sovereignty referred to as ‘Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy’ (Bull 2002; Krasner 1999; Keohane 2005). Common to all these approaches is the view that, at its most basic, a sovereign state consists of a bordered territory, a defined population and government and that these three elements stand in a natural relation of unity towards each other. These variations on a

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similar epistemology and ontology of state sovereignty thus broadly consider the state to be the only possible, distinct and separate source of sovereign power, which flows hierarchically from a central institution of government through various state apparatuses down into society. Despite the considerable academic energy focused on state sovereignty, (including a much more varied and creative field of analysis of domestic sovereignty), few significant theoretical inroads have been made into the question of how the internationally dominant standard (or ideal) of state sovereignty has related to, confirmed or complicated the variety of domestic arrangements on which state sovereignty can be built. One significant contribution in recent years has come from political anthropologists identifying the nation as a crucial concept that links domestic to international sovereignty, and referring to the ‘national order of things’ in the ‘hegemonic topography’ of the international system (Malkki 1995; Appadurai 2003; Mountz 2011). This imagined (inter)national order of things is, on the one hand, deeply cultural and thus necessarily reproduced in the local, but on the other hand global in its significance. The locally occurring practices that create the ‘imagined community’ of the nation by sorting people into citizens and outsiders are connected to the global division of territory into sovereign states: conceptually via the idea that international sovereignty emanates from national self-determination and unity, and physically, via the practices states are expected to implement (such as controlling their borders, or protecting their citizens). A further important ‘connector’ between the international standard of state sovereignty and the myriad forms of its domestic implementation are the social and economic areas that are subject to international regulation and intervention – such as trade, customs controls, migration and security policy. A small, but significant body of political anthropology literature shows that the translation of the norms and practices emanating from central, metropolitan hubs such as the World Trade Organization, the International Organization for Migration or the World Bank into post-colonial domestic contexts results in overlapping, or as anthropologist Aihwa Ong refers to it, ‘graduated’, neo-liberal state sovereignty (Ong 2006; Lillie 2010; Ashutosh and Mountz 2011; Chalfin 2010). In this chapter I aim to show that international humanitarianism acts as another of these ‘connectors’, a form of quasi-regulation regarding the treatment/management of a certain type of person (a refugee/displaced person) and a certain type of suffering. Because this ‘regulation’ is based on the expectations and the imagined shape of the body politic of liberal nationbased state sovereignty, it replicates the exclusion of non-citizens inherent in such a vision.

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Approaching state sovereignty from this perspective clearly includes a very different understanding of what it is, what it consists of and how it is reproduced over time. In this chapter, state sovereignty is understood as a historically contingent form of political organization, within which the state is elevated to the rank of most privileged political actor. Rather than considering sovereignty as something that is immanent to the state and emanating from it, state sovereignty is here regarded as a set of hegemonic assumptions about how human society should be organized, and the related, myriad, everyday practices that translate these assumptions into lived reality. In addition to the ideas of political anthropologists alluded to above, this approach follows theoretical innovations developed primarily within the sub-disciplines of critical international relations and political geography. Its proponents argue that state sovereignty should be understood as embedded in, and conducted through, everyday life via varied forms of power that may be more or less violent, may include bio-political techniques as well as spectacular state cruelty, yet always produce and rely on a type of governmentality on the basis of which subjects become understood and governable (Ismail 2006; Doty 2007; Hopgood 2006; Cornelisse 2010; Ferguson and Gupta 2002; Hansen and Stepputat 2005; Ong 2006).4 A small, but growing number of studies demonstrate that ethnographic research is a highly appropriate method for developing an understanding of the beliefs and quotidian practices through which state sovereignty is embedded in social relations. Such research, which often focuses on issues or sites where the presence of state sovereignty is relatively visible, such as international migration, humanitarianism, borders or international organizations, relates minutiae from apparently mundane life experiences to the (re)production of sovereignty (Weizman 2007; Wedeen 2008). State sovereignty is not viewed here as a clearly defined form of authority, but as an always-continuing process, in which a certain system of rule is reproduced through the subtle interplay of latent coercion, discipline and self-control. For example, Mark Salter uses an ethnographic approach to explore how state sovereignty is present in the encounters between passengers and immigration officers at international airports. Arguing that establishing control over international mobility has been as crucial for the formation of modern states as controlling mobility within domestic territory, he documents the bureaucratic demands through which this control becomes a lived and physical reality for airport passengers: These regulations against joking and small talk train travelers to selfpolice their speech and behavior to present a low-risk profile toward the

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authority figure. The ritual of obedience, confession, and examination thus binds the mobile subject to the sovereign, but does not accord him/her rights. Intention cannot be garnered from the risk profile, the biometric data, or the documentary trail itself and so interrogation remains a crucial part of the bordering/admission process. (Salter 2006: 182) Here, sovereignty is shown as a way of life in which the strongly distinctive behaviour of airport passengers has become naturalized, in the sense that it is not questioned but accepted as a normal aspect of moving across a territory that happens to straddle an international border. Passengers do not have to be consciously reminded of the existence of a sovereign authority; rather, they live sovereignty through the movement of their bodies, the actions they undertake to obtain passports and visas and their ritualized and submissive conversations with border guards. A further convincing example of this line of thinking and research is provided by the work of anthropologist Brenda Chalfin (2008, 2010). Chalfin conducted long-term research at Ghana’s international airport on ‘how the aura of sovereign ultimacy is sustained and internalized’ by customs agents, who ‘configure, replicate, and renew the ability to rule’ and ‘come to be known and felt as a source of rule over others’ (2008: 152). Chalfin argues that by adopting a research perspective that looks at more than official administrative procedures, and observing the actual practices through which regulations are implemented in human encounters, ‘the “sovereign” as subject, symbol, and sentiment as well as a system of sanction [. . .] opens up to investigation’ (ibid.). Chalfin’s focus on borders, widely recognized as a crucial element in the sovereign edifice, also emphasizes the challenging role played by migrants – mainly defined as such by the fact of having crossed a state border – in the daily performance of sovereign practice. Transnational actors, suggests Chalfin, present the greatest challenge to the distribution of state authority and therefore become the targets of special interventions. State sovereignty, Chalfin suggests, is produced through the intimate knowledge that state agents collect about the mobile citizenry, which allows them to translate abstract regulations into concrete techniques of governance, shaping the travellers’ field of action. Considering state sovereignty in light of this variety of techniques of rule also helps us appreciate its function as a system of meaning, used by humans as a filter for structuring and understanding the world. As referred to above, the dominant assumptions about state sovereignty are connected to a set of fundamental social and spatial concepts, including territorial control, the existence of a population of united citizens (ideally a nation), and a unified

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government. Crucial to their maintenance is the constant application of certain categories, definitions, exclusions and constructions of people(s) and spaces, which are created through innumerable daily-life events and encounters. Importantly, these events and encounters do not have to involve state institutions, but are frequently enacted by public and private non-state actors. The values, categories and signs of state sovereignty function as today’s hegemonic structure of political thought and action, leaving little room for imagining anything outside of their rationality. Humanitarian sovereignty A key effect of the political rationality of state sovereignty is the belief that no piece of the globe’s surface can exist outside of sovereignty, while individuals without a sovereign identity cannot be accounted for, or only with great difficulty. This may frequently be observed in the situation of people without sovereign affiliation. In a world in which an individual’s identity and rights of personhood often depend on being formally recognized as a citizen of a sovereign state, lacking a ‘personal’ sovereign through which to conduct the necessary bureaucratic and legal procedures of daily life, can have devastating effects. Thus, the daily-life reality of refugees and the displaced often shatters the abstract, seemingly picture-perfect, way in which state sovereignty divides the world’s territory and people into sovereign spaces and nations, highlighting how this ideal translates into a far messier physical reality. Refugees and the displaced reveal the unwelcome truth that national homogeneity and state sovereignty (key ideas upon which the liberal justification for state sovereignty rests), claim their own victims, given that this system can only remain stable thanks to the constant exclusion of outsiders – a prerequisite to maintaining a stable and peaceful ‘inside’. To a large extent, humanitarian refugee management was created to address the – unexpected from a Wilsonian perspective – phenomenon of large numbers of people whom nation-based state sovereignty had left stranded outside of any political community. From the perspective of the UN charter and international law, sovereign nation states are considered islands of peace: there may be war between them (which the UN was created to help prevent), but the natural situation inside states, after all supposedly based on a harmonious unity between territory, population and government, is one in which citizens enjoy the protection of their government and cannot become the victim of uncontrolled persecution or attack. The UNHCR website’s summary of ‘protection’ is instructive in this regard. It states:

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Governments normally guarantee the basic human rights and physical security of their citizens. But when people become refugees this safety net disappears [. . .] They have no protection from their own state – indeed it is often their own government that is threatening to persecute them. If other countries do not let them in, and do not protect and help them once they are in, then they may be condemning them to an intolerable situation where their basic rights, security and, in some cases their lives, are in danger. The protection of 33.9 million uprooted or stateless people is the core mandate of UNHCR. The agency does this in several ways [. . .] On the longer term, the organization helps refugees find appropriate durable solutions to their plight, by repatriating voluntarily to their homeland, integrating in countries of asylum or resettling in third countries. (UNHCR 2013) The vision of the world political order presented here is that of the classic, liberal ideal of national state sovereignty, in which, as long everything is ‘normal’, population, government and territory stand in symbiosis, producing a situation of protection. Refugees, who have lost this protection, do not have an automatic right to access a territory outside of their home state: for this to happen, foreign governments must give their consent. Only a sovereign protector can guarantee human rights, which remain inaccessible to the ‘uprooted or stateless’. Interestingly, the text makes no mention of the fourth long-term solution offered by UNHCR to an increasing number of refugees: permanent residence in a camp. The 1951 Refugee Convention acknowledges the apparent aberration that governments may fail to protect all of their citizens, and came as an afterthought or a hindsight to the assumptions of state sovereignty, once it had become clear that the rapid-fire creation of independent nation states in the early twentieth century did not precisely create islands of peace, but often led to large-scale forced displacement, as the new ‘nations’ sought to rid themselves of any foreign elements. The horrific culmination of this national logic in the Jewish Holocaust and large-scale deportation of people in Eastern Europe was the push that led to the ratification of the convention and subsequent founding of UNHCR. From its initial creation, UNHCR was designed to act as a stopgap sovereign to those who did not have the sovereign affiliation considered so crucial to human existence in international law. UNHCR’s goal was and is to restore this sovereign affiliation to the people under its care, by helping them return to their country of origin, integrate into their host state or resettle to a

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third country. The general yardstick for whether a person has successfully obtained a sovereign affiliation is a legal guarantee of residency and other rights, ideally in the form of official citizenship. Yet as long as such affiliation remains out of reach, which from the sovereign state perspective places persons into a spatial and political limbo, UNHCR is charged with acting as their protector. The organization is placed at the tension between the assumption that every person must have a sovereign to be able to exercise their rights and live an independent life, and the necessity for nation-states to exclude outsiders in order to uphold a stable, sovereign identity. Thus, UNHCR’s solution to the crisis of the displaced is the reinsertion of sovereign-less people into the system of sovereignty. Here we may observe that the organization operates fully within the logic of modern state sovereignty, as this seemingly natural order is viewed as the only option for people to live an autonomous life and be part of a political community. Yet as the unwillingness of governments to cooperate often prevents the goal of obtaining a ‘sovereign for all’, the agency, with the help of the growing international non-governmental humanitarian sector, itself has become a quasi-sovereign, and ultimate arbiter over the encampment of refugees and the provision of international aid. Thus, both the refugee convention and its implementation by humanitarian agencies reflect and embody the exceptionality of refugees, ignoring the permanent ‘work’ carried out by refugees and other outcasts in maintaining the national topography of the international system, which requires the constant exclusion of a set of outsiders. Consequently, humanitarian action fails to understand and address the fact that refugees and displaced are not an aberration within the politics of modern sovereignty, but are integral to it; and offers as solutions to the plight of the displaced only those afforded by state sovereignty, which, however, will necessarily never be complete for all. Arguably, the enormous growth of the humanitarian sector, its growing presence in public space (both in donor countries, and in countries of intervention) and the growing ubiquity of its discourse and concepts, is in fact leading to a solidification and reification of the figure of the refugee/ displaced as a political trope, against which the peaceful situation of those ‘inside’ sovereignty may be constantly compared and justified. While the particular images deployed by humanitarian organizations to illustrate the identity and situation of refugees speak far louder than words in this regard, a quote from the Danish Refugee Council’s website may serve as a demonstration: We understand ‘durable solutions’ as any means by which the situation of refugees can be permanently and satisfactorily resolved, enabling

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them to live normal lives. Durable solutions can be voluntary repatriation, local integration or resettlement. In Denmark, DRC assists refugees in all aspects of integration as well as asylum procedures. Internationally, DRC actively participates in supporting the protection of refugees, and promoting durable solutions for conflict-affected populations. (DRC 2013) This quote presents as given fact that refugees require intervention, and some form of correction, in order to lead ‘normal’ lives. Refugees are implicitly presented as standing outside the normal, as extraordinary forms of existence. Echoing UNHCR’s approach, the only durable solutions imaginable require formal accession to a state and reference is made to the Danish state and its sovereignty as represented through asylum law. The juxtaposition of the phrases ‘any means’ and ‘all aspects’, with the following qualifiers of ‘durable solutions’ and ‘asylum procedures’, emphasize the impression that little remains beyond what DRC presents as the reality of refugee life. These typical quotes present refugees’ need for protection as an unquestionable and natural fact, which goes hand in hand with their exclusion from access to services considered normal and justified for citizens. By implicitly opposing the existence of refugees to that of the ‘normal life’ of non-refugees, not only is migration itself pathologized, but the idea that refugees stand outside the body politic, do not possess political agency and the ability to represent themselves, is confirmed. Similarly, the supremacy of states is confirmed via the emphasis on governments as the final arbiters of refugee fate and the humanitarian remit. The formal rhetoric of refugee aid organizations does not challenge, but rather confirms the liberal ideal of state sovereignty: states are presented as clearly distinct and separate sovereign territories, whose borders mark changing forms of rule, national identity and citizen – government relations. The frequently-occurring odd situation of refugee camps, which very obviously problematizes this classic ideal, is accepted without question; the interstitial location of these camps – physically present on domestic, sovereign territory, yet conceptually located halfway between domestic and international space – is not queried, and UNHCR’s status as quasisovereign is accepted as the intervention designed to re‘normalize’ the life of camp inhabitants. Although UNHCR was created to end the existence of populations cast outside sovereignty, in actual fact the agency and its humanitarian partners are integral to the perpetuation of the exclusion of refugees, as a central

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governance strategy aimed at creating the political conditions for liberal state sovereignty. Yet, as alluded to in the introduction to this chapter, this argument needs to be extended in order to understand the effect of humanitarian refugee management in many of the post-colonial domestic contexts in which it operates. Frequently in these contexts, the formation of national representative politics as the basis of state sovereignty remains weak, or even non-existent. As has been amply described in writings about postcolonial state sovereignty, a variety of characteristics shared among many post-colonial contexts – such as, inter alia, the hangover of colonial institutions, strong sub-national social identities, a fragmented, dependent economy and violent conflict – mean that the maintenance of state power over the domestic sphere is not created by means of the liberal governance techniques imagined as ideal by UNHCR and the international community more broadly (Hansen and Stepputat 2005; Tascon 2002; Denham and Lombardi 1996). In these situations, the exclusion of outsiders in order to enforce an imagined, nationally homogeneous community, does not figure among the key techniques of power through which domestic state sovereignty is produced. Given that the imagined existence of a national community of united citizens is not a crucial strategy for legitimizing the state, refugees (and other ‘outsiders’) may be fluidly integrated into the body politic, without threatening the basis of state sovereignty. Here, the particular application of state sovereignty characterising humanitarian refugee management is at odds with the prevalent political context in which it unfolds. As outlined above, humanitarian refugee management applies its inherent perspective on sovereignty and refugees as a blanket approach to all its operations. Yet as UNHCR and its partners prevalently operate in post-colonial contexts, in which the exclusion of outsiders has not always (yet) become a hallmark of domestic sovereignty, with states relying on other power strategies to ensure their supremacy, the introduction of UNHCR’s way of identifying, categorising and aiding refugees according to their humanitarian identity, may actually serve to introduce the systematic exclusion and marking as different of refugees. The following, and final, section, based on long-term research conducted among Iraqi migrants in Syria, serves to highlight this point by means of a small number of examples.

Humanitarian refugee management of Iraqi migrants in Syria In 2010, Syria was providing refuge for hundreds of thousands of Iraqi migrants. The continuing deterioration of the security situation in Iraq after the US-led invasion in 2003, made worse by the onset of sectarian war in Iraq in

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2005, had led to an enormous increase in Iraqi migration to Syria from 2006 onwards. During 2007, UNHCR registered an average of 15,000 newly arrived Iraqis in Syria per month (UNHCR 2009). One result of this development was a rapid expansion of UNHCR’s operations in the country. In the space of one year, UNHCR’s existing, tiny office with a handful of employees expanded into one of the organization’s largest operations worldwide, with multiple sites across Syria. UNHCR’s budget for Syria rose from around USD 1.4 million in 2007 to around USD 130 million in 2009, a staggering increase for any institution to manage (UNHCR 2007; UNHCR 2009a). Consequently, by 2009, 13 international NGOs had become established in Damascus as partners to UNHCR; around half a dozen church organizations (with international links) and a small number of private or less official international organizations operated independently (UNHCR 2009a). As the Syrian government had previously prohibited the establishment of foreign NGOs, this opening to international humanitarianism was an unprecedented change in the country, spurred on by a complex development in politicaleconomic thinking among the political leadership. The move nevertheless remained contested, reflected in significant, continuing suspicion of NGOs by the authorities and strong restrictions on their activities (Di Iorio and Zeuthen 2011). No public register existed for organizations working with Iraqi migrants and, despite increasingly streamlined bureaucratic registration processes, INGOs were still obliged to maintain various channels of communication with the state to obtain authorization for their activities (Kraft 2008). In the course of field research, I collected varying levels of information on ten very different INGOs as well as on UNHCR itself. Close observation of the humanitarian operations aimed at Iraqi refugees clarified that, despite the broad remit of the concept of protection, in practice it translated into a concern for the physical welfare of refugees and a focus on those matters that would enable them to become economically self-sufficient: education and access to jobs. Apart from health, the key areas of operation of NGOs in Syria were the building of schools, the offering of remedial classes for Iraqi children and vocational training courses for youths and adults. Interestingly, this translation of protection blended out any questions of political protection, in relation to which the Refugee Convention was first drawn up. This transformation or rather expansion of protection may be understood as related to the expansion of humanitarian intervention as a mode of governance that depoliticizes the ‘beneficiaries’ of aid across the globe. In Syria, this change made it surprisingly easy for humanitarian actors to (co)operate in a context marked by severe political repression and widespread, serious human rights violations by state authorities.

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As the following examples will show, the particular governance exercised by humanitarianism in Syria was a combination of the exclusions contained in the sovereign ideal of the territory – population– government nexus, and of liberal forms of rule emanating from the metropolitan centres of liberal democracy in Europe and the American North-West (Barnett 2001; Hopgood 2006; Duffield et al. 2001; Kuperman 2008). In the Syrian context, this was particularly relevant and visible, given that, unlike what was assumed, implicitly, by the humanitarian actors, the Syrian government did not mobilize bureaucracy to clearly categorize Iraqis as migrants, and Iraqis were not slotted into defined bureaucratic procedures that would stringently produce them as foreign citizens, as the ‘outside’ of sovereignty. Syria is a post-colonial state, whose government has also long promoted the principle of pan-Arabism, according to which there exists a supra-national affinity between all Arab people, who ideally should live in a situation of political unity. While a detailed analysis of the Syrian state lies outside the remit of this chapter, a number of key features of relevance to migration contexts will be examined here. As was the case in other areas of state rule in Syria, Iraqis’ relationship with the Syrian state depended on individual characteristics, rather than on standardized regulations, and was treated as political, rather than technical. Rather than rely on pervasive bureaucratic processes to distinguish clearly between national and foreigner, Syrian authorities enforced the same, essential ‘red lines’ of behaviour for Iraqis as they did for Syrians, or other foreigners. Whether a person was permitted to continue residing on Syrian territory depended much more on their observance of ‘red lines’ than on the colour of their passport, and the same principle applied to Iraqis. Considered from the perspective of the ‘sovereign ideal’ of the nation state, this was in any case remarkable, especially given that Syria and Iraq were not enjoying particularly positive inter-state relations nor had they signed agreements on the free movement of people between the two countries. However, as many analysts of Syrian politics have noted, this close intertwining of personal and political relationships was a standard and longstanding aspect of the way the Syrian government selectively mobilized the state’s power to ensure its survival (Perthes 1995; George 2003; Pierret 2009; Bassam 2012). This combination produced a degree of permanent insecurity in the Syrian domestic sphere, given that no person living on Syrian territory (whether in possession of Syrian papers or not) could ever know when an ‘official’ rule would be applied or waived. To the extent that this permanent insecurity and fear functioned as a key element in maintaining the Syrian state-government complex in control, the notion of ‘protection’ as the duty of a government to prevent political persecution on its territory was illogical in

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Syria, given that the entire building of domestic sovereignty relied on the latent persecution of anyone expressing open criticism of the government. (While the focus of this article does not allow for a delving into the current severe crisis in Syria that developed from the popular uprising in 2011, it may be of interest to note that the Syrian government’s behaviour during this crisis is a logical extension of its previous modus of rule during times of public acquiescence.) Nevertheless, as shown by the experience of Iraqi migrants, this form of politics has also opened up areas of freedom within daily life, especially for migrants, that ‘liberal’ politics would have restricted. As a result of the relatively lax handling of official prohibitions and bureaucratic exclusions (and aided by the cultural and linguistic similarities with the host community), Iraqi migrants were able to integrate remarkably organically into the social and political fabric of the Syrian body politic, as was highly visible in the lively Iraqi communities that had sprung up in Damascene suburbs. Despite abundant signs of Iraqi labour and investment for example, international humanitarian organizations continued to operate a strict, conceptual distinction between Iraqi and Syrian populations in ‘need.’ This was explained and justified by pointing to the ‘official’ restrictions placed on Iraqis, such as an official prohibition to work, which, as the humanitarian literature frequently pointed out, forced Iraqis into the ‘informal’ economy, in which they were vulnerable to exploitation. Yet, as was easily observed from the Syrian political context, and learned from conversations with Iraqis, neither was the ‘official’ work prohibition enforced, nor was the distinction between ‘informal’ and ‘formal’ labour truly valid in the country, where law and regulation held little sway, and were trumped by personal relations and a practice of ‘muddling through’. A key element of the humanitarian effort was UNHCR’s enormous resettlement operation in Damascus, through which Iraqi refugees were selected and submitted for resettlement to countries that had announced the acceptance of a certain quota of Iraqis. As access to Europe or the United States was strongly desired by many Syrians, who chafed at the highly restrictive visa policies towards them, the awarding of this ‘prize’ to thousands of Iraqis introduced a peculiar contradiction to the view that Iraqis’ refugee status placed them in a disadvantaged position. The resettlement operation brought the humanitarian prerogative to decide on the shape of the political community into sharp focus, because it implied decision-making power over who would remain in Syria and who would leave that lay outside of, and parallel to, the decision making of Syrian state institutions (although receiving resettlement states sometimes reserved the right to make decisions about applicants, the first barrier of selection was formed by humanitarian

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clerks). A particular case, which highlighted this situation especially well, concerned the ability of UNHCR’s resettlement programme to extend special protection to homosexual Iraqis. During field research, one research participant, a gay Iraqi man in his early forties, was placed in a particularly dangerous situation after receiving death threats from unknown assailants who attacked him in his apartment. After getting in touch with UNHCR through his network of contacts, this man was resettled within a few months, which, in a context in which some Iraqis waited years to be resettled, was relatively quick. Because homosexuality was in fact outlawed in Syria, and, ‘legally’ and ‘officially’, this man could have been prosecuted and jailed under Syrian law, UNHCR’s programmes subverted his position vis-a`-vis the Syrian state in a striking example of creating a situation of ‘overlapping’ sovereignty on the basis of liberal notions of rule and law. Due to his identity as an Iraqi refugee, which allowed him to build a relationship with UNHCR, the research participant’s homosexuality eventually became a kind of legal bonus, allowing him preferential access to resettlement, a valued prize for thousands of Iraqis hoping to leave Syria in this way. As UNHCR only had a mandate for intervening in Iraqi lives, and could not extend protection to other persecuted or vulnerable Syrians, UNHCR’s activities had an impact on the ordering of the population living on Syrian territory and the shape of the body politic, in line with the ideal of the nation-based sovereign state with a homogeneous population of citizens. UNHCR’s activities led to an imagined ‘disentangling’ of Syrian passport holders, considered the legitimate residents on Syrian territory, and the alien Iraqis, who needed to be managed through international intervention until their sovereignty-disturbing presence had somehow been neutralized. A similar argument could be made about UNHCR’s significant welfare provisions to Iraqis, which continued at a time when the Syrian state was not providing such services to poor Syrians, even those in situations of more desperate need. Further relevant examples concerned the manner in which international NGOs introduced a strict conceptual distinction between Iraqi and Syrian ‘beneficiaries’. For example, NGO project proposals and reports stipulated the percentages of Syrians and Iraqis who would be addressed by a planned project (this relatively standard element, following ‘do no harm’ practices to allow host populations to also benefit from aid, was complicated in Syria, because the government was suspicious of attempts to work with Syrians). This made the national division, a key organizing principle of modern sovereignty, visible and fixed to all involved in the programmes and elevated it to new importance. Particularly in the field of education projects, the distinction

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made between Syrian and Iraqi children, with the latter being described as the reason for the overcrowding of schools, was striking, because the Syrian authorities did not distinguish between Iraqi and Syrian children and youth registering for public school (both were allowed free access, using the same bureaucratic channels). To use the example of the French NGO Premie`re Urgence’s description of its school rehabilitation programme, in an announcement concerning the completion of two new school buildings: These two schools, with a capacity to host 1,050 pupils, will allow the development of a response to the overcrowding of Syrian public schools and will promote the enrolment of Iraqi refugee children. Over 33,500 Iraqi children are enrolled in Syrian schools and over 75% of these are attending schools in the greater Damascus region [. . .]. ‘We are proud of this result and are now eagerly looking forward to the creation of educational programmes with the support of the Syrian ministry for education, with the goal to ensure the future of Syrian and Iraqi children,’ explained Sandra Bachrach, Premie`re Urgence’s chief of mission in Syria. (UNHCR 2010) In this text, Premie`re Urgence is not simply concerned with easing the lives of disadvantaged youngsters, but is also focused on promoting a distinction between Iraqi and Syrian children. The reference to overcrowding and the figures, percentages and locations of Iraqi children imply that Iraqi children are somehow alien to the Syrian education sector, and present it with a problem. Given that the raison d’eˆtre of international NGOs operations in Syria was the presence of ‘alien’ Iraqi refugees, promoting their distinction was in fact existential to these organizations. This observation again shows that the international NGOs engaging with refugee issues were closely bound to the exclusions of a particular form of liberal state sovereignty, rather than standing outside of or even opposing such exclusions. In the Syrian context, what made these INGO practices all the more striking was how they differed from the opportunities for integration that were being offered to Iraqis via Syrian governmental policies. The ease with which Iraqi children could enrol at and attend Syrian schools stood in stark contrast with the portrayal of these children by NGO texts and programmes. The Syrian government did not mobilize elements of the state (in this case the education system) to systematically exclude Iraqis and in this way demonstrate the unity and homogeneity of the Syrian national population. Such exclusions were not an integral part of the repertoire of power through which the Syrian government emphasized the state’s sovereignty. Instead, this sovereignty was created

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through practices of insecurity and violence applied to everyone residing on Syrian territory, whether Syrian or foreign passport holders. These contradictions demonstrate how humanitarian approaches to population management may translate into local contexts, potentially transforming the way governments view and act upon migration and introducing different, more subtle forms of power through which the order of state sovereignty is created and maintained.

Conclusion The key conclusion drawn in this chapter is that humanitarian refugee management applies a strongly codified vision of what the relationship of refugees to sovereign states is/should be, regardless of the local contexts in which it unfolds. Supported by the enormous financial and human resources that it carries, this codified vision acts as a power structure perpetuating a version of liberal state sovereignty that relies on the continuous exclusion of outsiders from the body politic to justify its existence. While humanitarian refugee aid may ensure refugees’ basic physical health, it also, unwittingly, actively promotes political relations ensuring the perpetual construction of refugees as political, social and economic outcasts. This presentation and management of migrants and migration as invariably exceptional, relies on several mythical assumptions perpetuated by humanitarianism about the nature of ‘normal’ politics. The key idea behind these mythical assumptions is that state sovereignty is justified and created by a representative relationship between government and a unified nation of citizens, in which the government acts as a universal representative of national will and a protector of all citizens’ rights. From this perspective, persons who are forced from their homes to ensure their well-being and livelihoods indeed present an aberration, a signal that the ‘normal’ situation of governmental protection has broken down. Also from this perspective, it is considered normal that such forced migrants should not be able to integrate smoothly into the national citizen-community of the state they have fled to; that they be excluded from this community and cast out as outsiders is considered the natural way of sovereign politics. Crucially, these assumptions largely hold in the political context from which international humanitarianism was born – the liberal democracies of the North Atlantic, in which undesired and illegal migrants receive perhaps the harshest treatment in the entire world. Humanitarianism around the globe acts as if this liberal version of state sovereignty, for which the systematic exclusion of outsiders is a key reproductive necessity, formed the basis of state sovereignty everywhere.

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Through this supremely self-confident, but politically naı¨ve behaviour, humanitarianism translates the norms of liberal state sovereignty into its operational contexts worldwide. Yet, as argued throughout this chapter, this vision of state sovereignty based on representation and national citizenship is not recognizable in many of the post-colonial situations in which humanitarian refugee management unfolds today. Here, the domestic sovereign supremacy of the state takes the form of a large variety of techniques of power, which do not always rely on the exclusion of outsiders and the reconstruction of an imagined national community. State power may be contested and not rule supreme over all aspects of communal life, territorial and communal borders may not coincide and social identities beyond nationality may wield considerable power. The government may mobilize the state apparatus in terms of a variety of governmentalities designed to render the population of its territory governable, while the bureaucratic or violent marking of outsiders as outcasts may not belong to its crucial repertoire. In such contexts, freedom and oppression do not coincide with the areas of life that we might expect to be free or oppressed under the political conditions of liberalism, and migrants may be able to integrate into the body politic with far greater ease. Unable to recognize or adapt to these political contexts that depart from its liberal vision, the humanitarian organization creates parallel migrant management structures that translate liberal norms of state sovereignty into the postcolony, acting as another structure through which political beliefs and practices originating in the metropolis are diffused. This was particularly recognizable during the Iraqi mass migration to Syria in the aftermath of the 2003 US-led invasion of the country and subsequent civil war, which I have raised in this chapter as an example. The Syrian government indeed mobilized the threat – and application – of severe violence to maintain certain ‘red lines’ limiting the political expression of Iraqis living in Syria. This threat of violence was applicable, in varying degrees, to anyone residing on Syrian territory, regardless of nationality. But at the same time, the lax application of bureaucratic restrictions with the aim of distinguishing Iraqis from Syrian nationals meant that Iraqis enjoyed extraordinary freedom to establish a new existence for themselves in exile and integrate into the ‘Syrian society’ living on the territory of the Syrian state. This freedom was much more extensive than that of legally ambiguous migrants living in the liberal states of Europe, in which law and rules distinguishing migrants from citizens are stringently applied, barring them from the labour market, investment and education. Syria offered significant opportunities especially for those Iraqis who were able to mobilize strong personal connections, finance and skills,

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because these were the core ingredients of success, rather than the question of nationality and correct bureaucratic procedure. Despite this easily observable Syrian political reality, and despite the welldocumented fact that a government-citizen relation of protection did not form part of it, international humanitarianism operated as if Iraqis in Syria were outcasts from a system of liberal, representative rule. As a result, UNHCR and its partner organizations assumed the role of quasi-sovereign protector over Iraqi life, a logical consequence of the assumption that Iraqis’ situation of flight had resulted in a lack of such protection. In this situation, crucially backed by the millions of dollars in aid money coming through humanitarian channels, the organizations were able to decide on the position and permanence of Iraqis in the Syrian body politic, and create parallel structures of rule that Iraqis had to manage alongside their relationship with the Syrian state. In a striking example of ‘overlapping’ sovereignty, Iraqis in Syria faced two sovereign powers governing their position on Syrian territory according to different logics of power, and affording them different opportunities and restrictions in the course of daily life. In contrast to the Syrian state apparatus, humanitarian programmes mainly mobilized typically ‘productive’ and non-violent forms of rule, by educating Iraqis about their situation as refugees and what they should be concerned about, as well as offering highly selective and particular opportunities for Iraqis that shaped their lives and behaviour into certain directions. By perpetuating beliefs and practices according to which people can only secure their rights through official citizenship of a sovereign state, humanitarian agencies contribute to the construction of refugees as political outcasts, which justifies and explains their warehousing in camps and their marking as exceptional, problematic beings. Humanitarian rhetoric and programming is central to the diffusion of a particular understanding of what the identity of ‘refugee’ contains and means; specifically that refugees are desperate ‘bare lives’ requiring humanitarian intervention in order to be rectified into a sovereign situation. Rather than transporting a form of politics that pathologises forced migration, humanitarian agencies should instead tread carefully in local political contexts and use their resources to support existing, benign forms of integration where these exist.

Notes 1 The term ‘outcast’ is borrowed here from Michel Agier (2010), who uses it to describe the variety of forms of displaced persons who end up in camps due to their displacement. 2 This applies especially to countries in the Global South, who, for a variety of reasons, do not have strong governmental bureaucracies for managing migration.

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3 In 2008, some 25 per cent of UNHCR’s total expenditures were channelled through 636 NGOs, including 162 international agencies and 474 national ones. 4 Foucauldians should note that I consciously avoid using the term ‘sovereign power’ in the Foucauldian sense, due to its potential to cause confusion in this context of this chapter. Whenever this form of power is described, it is paraphrased as ‘spectacular violence’ or ‘power over life and death’.

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INDEX

abnormality, 5, 13, 65 Afghanistan, 2, 4, 6– 10, 13, 22, 23, 58– 60, 62, 63, 65 – 74 agency personal, 64, 86 – 8, 90, 142 political, 163 altruism, 51 Arab Spring, 125, 130, 131, 137, 140, 143 biopolitics, 26, 28, 29, 57, 61, 73 Bush, Laura, 59, 60, 92 carnival, 58, 59, 66, 69 – 71, 73 carnivalesque, 57, 58, 68, 69, 71, 72 celebrities, 3 children, 4, 8, 28, 44, 45, 47, 48, 60, 79, 89– 91, 99 – 123, 127, 133, 134, 165, 169 Christians, 3, 44, 45, 101, 102, 106, 120 Christianity, 33, 52, civilizing, 3, 36, 66, 73 Cold War, 1, 18, 20, 121, 128 colonialism, 49, 53, 77, 89, 103, 118 corporations, 45 – 7, 82 –4 crisis, 2, 19, 22, 25 – 7, 29, 47, 57, 66, 101, 102, 105, 106, 127, 129, 135, 142, 149 economic, 5, 108, 132, 134 refugee, 152, 162, 167 critique, 10, 12 – 14, 18, 29, 34 –6, 43, 50, 63, 78, 94, 95 democracy, 5, 27, 38, 40, 58, 59, 67, 69, 73, 105, 139, 148, 166

Democratic Republic of Congo, 2, 13, 99– 123 democratization, 1, 13, 108, 128 dignity, 11, 45, 60, 78, 84 – 6, 89, 91, 94 donors, 6, 7, 18, 45, 46, 62, 66, 73, 111, 126, 129, 137– 41 education, 6, 59 – 61, 63, 74, 100– 4, 107, 108, 110, 112, 113, 116, 120–3, 127, 133–5, 140, 141, 165, 168, 169, 171 emergency, 5, 19, 23 – 6, 57, 105, 106, 121, 125, 128, 135, 137, 140, 141 Enduring Freedom, 69 Europe, 4, 9, 13, 50, 161, 166, 167, 171 European Commission, 7, 154 European Union, 8, 28, 139 experts, 5, 6, 18, 23, 68, 132 famine, 34, 35, 51 Free Gaza Movement, 41, 42 freedom, 27, 58, 59, 62, 63, 69 – 72, 74, 78, 79 –83, 87, 88, 91 – 4, 116, 154, 167, 171 Gaddafi, Muammar, 36 – 8 gender, 40, 58, 59, 85, 87, 89, 133– 5, 153 Guantanamo, 59, 63 Haiti, 2, 24, 41 – 7, 51, 52 health, 18, 29, 35, 37, 50, 60, 61, 108, 109, 112, 122, 127, 133– 5, 141, 147, 153, 154, 165, 170 hierarchies, 6, 8, 12, 25, 58, 65, 67, 70

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THE POLITICS OF HUMANITARIANISM

human rights, 2, 3, 17, 20, 23, 24, 29, 34 –6, 40, 41, 57, 58, 66 Human Terrain System, 23 humanitarian business, 6 humanity, 2, 13, 27, 68, 69, 72, 86, 93 Independent International Commission on Kosovo (IICK), 20, 21 individualization, 78, 80, 91 international law, 11, 18, 21, 30, 41, 71, 100, 156, 160, 161 Iraq, 8, 22, 23, 51, 52, 128, 139, 152, 154, 164, 166, 171 Kabul, 7, 9, 13, 59, 66, 68, 70 – 4 Kony, Joseph, 47, 48, 51 Kosovo, 20 –2, 24, 28, 29 liberalism, 27, 93, 171 Libya, 22, 24, 30, 36 –8, 51, 52 Lubumbashi, 99 – 101, 103, 106– 8, 110, 111, 113, 114, 118, 119– 22 Me´decins Sans Frontie`res (MSF), 28, 30, 128, 154 migrants, 6, 133, 150, 152, 159, 164– 7, 170, 171 migration, 5, 27, 149, 150, 157, 158, 163, 165, 166, 170– 2 militarization, 13, 19, 21 – 4, 26, 52 military, 5 – 9, 18, 20, 22 –6, 29, 30, 37, 38, 40– 2, 44, 47, 50, 59, 60, 65, 68, 69, 92, 110, 127, 134, 139, 140, 156 Millennium Development Goals (MDG), 73, 126, 135 Monsanto, 42, 46, 47 moral culture, 7 moral ideology, 72 moral sentiment, 70 moral superiority, 45 morals, 4, 12, 18, 19, 24, 26, 34, 62, 63, 71, 78, 101, 103, 109, 119 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), 20, 21, 29, 36 – 8, 51, 68, 71 neutrality, 2, 22, 25, 44, 127– 9, 140, 142 New Life Children’s Refuge (NLCR), 44 NGOs (non-governmental organizations), 5, 6, 8– 10, 20, 22, 28, 42, 44, 59, 61,

67, 74, 86, 87, 99, 101, 105– 14, 116, 118–21, 127, 148, 154– 6, 165, 168, 169, 173 normality, 5, 57 – 9, 63 – 6, 68, 71, 73 normalization, 4, 57, 58, 64, 65, 67, 69, 72, 74 ordinary, 5, 25, 57 –9, 63 – 5, 70, 71 Palestine, 36, 38, 40, 41, 52, 137 peace, 17, 18, 20 – 4, 26, 29, 40, 41, 49, 69, 71, 79, 89, 126, 127, 138, 160, 161 pietas, 2, 17, 18 policing, 22, 23, 26, 73 poverty, 71, 93, 103, 109, 127, 130, 133, 134, 143, 153 privatization, 36, 121 protection, 1, 11, 51, 82, 90, 133, 147, 148, 155, 160 of children, 100, 101, 107– 9, 115, 119 of human rights, 66, 129 legal, 83 of refugees, 160, 161, 163, 165, 166, 168, 170, 172 of women, 77, 85, 87, 88, 94 protracted relief, 5, 125, 126, 128, 129, 138, 141, 142 proxy humanitarianism, 2 – 5 reconstruction, 42, 43, 65, 171 post-war, 4, 6, 7, 58, 61, 62, 67, 68, 70, 71, 73 refugees, 4, 10, 13, 25, 26, 35, 57, 58, 147–50, 152 –7, 161– 3, 170– 2 Iraqi, 164, 165, 167– 9 Palestinian, 38, 39 – 41, 51 responsibility to protect, 13, 19 – 22, 36, 57 right to intervene, 19 – 21, 30, 57 rule of law, 5, 41, 58, 66, 70, 71, 73, 130 Saleh, Ali Abdullah, 126, 131, 135– 8, 140 Salesians, 99, 101, 103, 105, 108, 110– 12, 116–18, 120, 121, 123 security, 5, 6, 8, 19, 21, 22, 26, 27, 61, 62, 79, 90, 110, 113, 121, 126, 134, 136, 138, 139, 143, 157, 161, 164

INDEX solidarity, 2, 70 sovereignty, 1, 8, 24, 29, 44, 46, 57, 62, 84 state, 20, 21, 36, 38, 148, 149– 52, 156– 64, 166– 72 state of exception, 5, 24, 26, 29, 30, 57, 58, 65 Syria, 22, 24, 39, 40, 152, 164– 72 Uganda, 47 – 50, 52 United Nations (UN), 13, 22, 26, 28, 34, 38, 43, 44, 51, 121, 126, 135, 136, 139, 149 United Nations Development Project (UNDP), 134 United Nations Economic and Social Council, 94 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 147, 148, 150–6, 160– 5, 168, 169, 172

177

United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, 109, 143 United Nations Relief and Works Agency’s (UNRWA), 39 –41 United Nations Security Council, 21, 35, 36 United States Agency for International Development (USAID), 7, 46, 59, 62 United States of America (USA), 4, 6, 7, 13, 34, 43, 45, 47, 48, 50 – 2, 60, 70, 82, 120, 138, 139, 154, 167 utopia, 8, 11, 14, 23, 58, 63, 67, 69, 70, 73 war, 5, 6, 18 – 26, 29, 30, 36, 38, 41, 48, 49, 51, 52, 57 – 60, 62, 69, 71, 92, 126, 130, 131, 137, 139, 147, 160, 164, 171 welfare, 27, 33, 36, 44, 52, 100, 105, 107–9, 133, 134, 141, 165, 168 World Bank, 7, 68, 74, 121, 133, 134, 157 World Wars, 1, 17, 34, 39