“Refugees have to … take greater responsibility, take an active role in their own protection.” – Head of Field Office, UNHCR Kasulu143
On the morning of June 20th, 2014, white SUVs reddened with dust parked next to each other in a barren field not far from a small fruit and vegetable market in Nyarugusu. It was World Refugee Day, and blue-hatted aid workers climbed out of the cars, greeting one another and slowly finding their way to a makeshift stage bordering the field. On stage, there were lines of plastic chairs for aid workers and for the guest of honor, the district commissioner of Kasulu, along with a microphone and loudspeakers stacked atop each other. After a march-past by uniformed school children and a brief introduction by the UNHCR mass information officer, various groups of refugees came up to the stage to perform plays, music, and skits about the hardships of refugeehood. Their performances focused on issues affecting the refugee community, and were loaded with moral and disciplinary messages. Finally, it was time for the head of UNHCR’s local office to speak. She had taken the microphone just as a group of Burundian dancers finished their energetic drumming and dance performance, and they knelt in front of her now wearing traditional Burundian costumes and shields, their chests painted.
“It's going to be a long day,” she began. “We want to hear you, and we also want you to hear us.” She wanted to be heard, so in what follows, I reproduce her speech at length. After an extended thank you to the various organizations working with UNHCR as well as the Tanzanian government, she continued:
“I think the theme is One Family Torn Apart by War is Too Many.144 Many years ago if people asked what is a refugee it was hard [to answer]. It was extraordinary to have a refugee standing in front of you. But today… everyone is moving… everyone is running away, looking for asylum somewhere. I think it should disturb all of us. A few years ago we thought refugees and asylum was only in Africa. Today it is not only Africa. There are thousands on the road right now seeking asylum. Normally we can’t celebrate because today is going to remind us of something difficult. This commemoration should also be a day for us to reflect… everybody thinks that the solution is in the hands of someone else… I think we all need to stop one minute today
and understand that where you are sitting now, you have a solution. Because if you don’t
want to see this going on, we have to all be concerned, to see what we can do to stop it, whether here in Nyarugusu or Syria. We recognize you’re human beings, we want to value you and we value you… but this is not an ordinary situation. We thank again Tanzania for giving you this space where you don’t have to run away – it’s getting rare. In our hearts – we have to work in our communities to preserve peace, so we can live like this. I’ve heard a lot of messages here – that the assistance and food is not enough, we have problems in the schools, families, hospitals. I would like to invite you that each one of us we can do something about it. I’m not speaking from [a] speech, I’m speaking from the heart. I’ve been here for eight months. The things in the skits, the questions and problems that were raised have been raised at every commemoration. I’m asking you today. Let’s not meet again in October and November and say the problems. Let’s come together. Mothers, fathers, etc. and let’s sit down and see how we do things better. It is a shame to have many small young girls and boys sitting here pretending to be MPs asking other children who are also asking – they are not playing a game – they are speaking to us. It’s not a play. We laugh and laugh and come back to these stories. Then we meet again, let’s see what we’re doing right. Is it possible? [the crowd is lukewarm] This for me is watching a movie again and again. I find it boring. Let’s change the movie, okay? And let’s give a new job to the children so next time they’ll bring something else. It has been said that this camp started in November 1996. 18 years. With 18 years and all the closures [of neighboring camps] we have a lot of problems here. So we can talk about the problems… if we don’t do anything about them they won’t go away.”
She talked as though dressing down a small child, pausing for effect now and again, before raising her voice indignantly:
“We have tried to show you our commitment. We know this is a protracted situation and we need to provide durable solutions [repatriation, resettlement, and local integration]. If we don’t get you one of these solutions these problems will continue. I want you to know that UNHCR – we are working together to get durable solutions. We thought because the camp has been here for 18 years it is important for us to know who is in the camp, what are your problems, so we’ve gone through this very excruciating exercise to do this. We could have counted you for seven days. But if we didn’t listen to
you, it would be hard for us to bring programs…. Our goal is to have more specific
information about you and your families so we know how we can implement these
solutions. But we also have another commitment, which is to improve services and protection. By July we should be able to implement the data. So this is our aim. We are also trying to improve camp management. Camp management is all of us. Camp management cannot succeed by only one NGO doing it. If anybody tells you that, that person is a liar. Camp management requires all the partners, government administration, UNHCR and refugee leadership – everybody together, that is what we call camp management. Let me tell you one thing I realized. In the plays you’re doing monitoring. If something is not working, we have a coordination meeting, for example, a water problem. We don’t need to hear about it on the day of the refugee celebration – we should have a meeting with TWESA. We don’t want to hear problems. This is not the purpose of World Refugee Day. It is very entertaining, don’t get me wrong. But I would like you to feel that you have another place to talk to us. I want to know there are other forums… now we have to work with all the various parties to bring up the issues… when I say I want to do camp management I am serious. For 10 days we have a delegate from Nairobi to train organizations regarding camp management. Then he’s going to come back to help us to improve… the roles and responsibilities. Mr. MHA we haven’t talked about camp structure. We need a leadership which is accountable, elections. We need leadership to get community participation. I have explained to you – UNHCR will not come and say, take, take, take, or you come and tell us, ‘It’s not good, it’s not good.’ What I want is for us to work together with partners, and the government. We work together. So this is the program I have. One area we’ve put a lot of attention on is GBV. UNHCR doesn’t have the solution for everything. We have partners, we have brought experts, some solar lamps… but you’ll have to do a lot more because you live in this camp. I think it’s a serious problem and [everyone] has to be concerned with GBV. It is very bad to hear new that people have been raped in Goma. But okay, you can say there is a war in Goma. But why [are people getting raped] in Nyarugusu? You have 50 churches! You’re god-fearing people! Why have 400 children been raped in Nyarugusu? You have to work with us. The solution is not going to come only from the community. We also have a commitment to education [here she elaborates on plans to build educational facilities and provide classroom furniture]. We are going to need your contribution [when we build]…. Don’t sit and think that it is the international community that is building a school. Even if we don’t pay you, come help. Mix some cement! It is for your children! We are also committed to improving shelter. By the end of the year we want to be able to construct 2000 houses…. Please [help us]. We are also trying to deal with all the pending cases for asylum seekers [3-5 years]. We have worked on it. NEC [The National Eligibility Commission that reviews applications for asylum] was here last year and they have just finished a session last week. We’ll continue to work on that. Of the areas lacking - on the question of access to UNHCR, especially protection staff… we’ve taken the necessary steps. You have to have access to us. We have put up a list. If it doesn’t work, please tell us. If we all work together, one step at a time… I will close by saying this. It is a serious day today. We’re happy that you are here and safe. We don’t forget that you’ve left your country in difficult conditions. We don’t forget that living in a camp is difficult… we also know and recognize that you have to work with us. And if you don’t work with us, please don’t come and make any plays. UNHCR will come to you… you sit with them under a
So today we honor you as refugees. We think that it is not easy to be refugees. Let’s make the best of the time that we’re here, and ask God to bless all of you.”145
The UN representative’s speech had followed one by the refugee leader of the camp, who made demands relating to food, economic subsistence, education, and basic dignity that were applauded wildly by the audience. I reproduce the former more or less in its entirety to underscore the various humanitarian imaginaries at play. The speech begins with the historical erasure of other large flows of migration, positing this situation as a uniquely contemporary problem. “We recognize you’re human beings, we want to value you and we value you… but this is not an ordinary situation.” Aid workers recognition of humanity often depended on expressing exceptions: allowing refugees to cook food in forbidden areas like the transit center (“after all, they are human beings”), extending them small courtesies, but stopping short of structural improvements.146 Rather than reading this as a full acknowledgment of humanity, we might consider it an extension of the logic of epidermalization, in which black bodies are always already marked as out of place, thus denying their humanness.147 The repetition of exceptionality (“this is not an ordinary situation”) allowed for a different kind of engagement with bodies in humanitarian confinement.
In the previous chapter I showed how the focus on GBV foregrounds the question of human rights in Nyarugusu. The number of survivors who access services and attempt to receive legal help is a measure of the success of GBV outreach programs. What characterizes the new humanitarian rationality in Nyarugusu? How do those who seek protection within its parameters
145 Field notes, Nyarugusu Camp, June 20, 2014 (World Refugee Day) 146 Interview with Protection Officer, Kigoma NMC, October 3, 2014
experience GBV programming? I argue that the GBV apparatus, and the framework of humanitarian aid itself, seeks to push more and more responsibility for flourishing on the refugees themselves, both through moral reform (the repudiation of “harmful traditional practices”) as well as by acquiring knowledge specific to their situation. In other words, they needed to know how to help themselves. Empowerment meant self-reliance and political participation in the arena of development, but in the camp, (along with reporting human rights abuses and buying into the legal human rights regime) community participation and responsibility for one’s own predicament were born from the same discourse.148
What is most salient about the above speech is the exhortation to self-help. The calls to work with aid agencies, take part in humanitarian care work, and recognize that solutions to problems lie with refugees themselves are all part of a logic of humanitarian governance in which humanitarian subjects ultimately bear responsibility. There have been many critiques of the materiality and paradoxes of contemporary humanitarian aid for refugees.149 Michel Agier writes of how refugees have been constructed as the “undesirables” of the world and how humanitarian government operates through policing. He argues that the socialization of camp life can lead to political mobilization, making refugees actors rather than simply vulnerable victims.150
148 See John Friedmann, Empowerment: The Politics of Alternative Development (Blackwell, 1992).
149 Barbara E Harrell-Bond, Imposing Aid: Emergency Assistance to Refugees (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1986), Harrell-Bond, Rights in Exile: Janus-Faced Humanitarianism, David Keen, Refugees: Rationing the Right to Life. The Crisis in Emergency Relief (London: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, 1992), Katerina Rozakou, "The Biopolitics of Hospitality in Greece: Humanitarianism and the Management of Refugees," American ethnologist 39.3 (2012).
150 Michel Agier, Managing the Undesirables: Refugee Camps and Humanitarian Government (Cambridge: Polity
2011).
Jennifer Hyndman has critiqued the idea of self-reliance, community involvement, and “refugee self-management” as articulated by humanitarian agencies, in which increased refugee participation and democratic decision-making would set aid priorities. She argues that any community programs that exclude control of material resources would be meaningless, and that such programs would be in name only and not give refugees any significant power.151 The speech above reproduces the idea prevalent in many discourses of aid and development that refugees have internalized a “culture of dependency.”152 This expectation of self-reliance extends to those vulnerable to gender-based violence as well as its survivors. In what follows I introduce the process of seeking help as a survivor of GBV, as well as the two ways in which refugees are expected to be self-reliant within the context of fighting GBV. Humanitarian aid encourages participatory and community-based approaches, particularly as a vehicle to bring about greater gender parity. Elisabeth Olivius has pointed out the paradoxical nature of such demands, and has shown how the demand for participation functions as a means for governmentality.153 Ilcan and Rygiel have identified “resiliency humanitarianism” as new trend in which refugees must become entrepreneurial, managerial, and resilient, and participate in the government of the camp.154 In Nyarugusu, too, refugees police themselves, lead their communities, are elected to represent their peers’ concerns, and have a refugee government that manages conflicts and relationships. This was not a new phenomenon, however, and had been true of Mtabila and other
151 Jennifer Hyndman, Managing Displacement: Refugees and the Politics of Humanitarianism (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2000)., Chapter Five.
152 See, for example, Gaim Kibreab, "The Myth of Dependency among Camp Refugees in Somalia 1979–1989,"
Journal of Refugee Studies 6.4 (1993), Awa M Abdi, "In Limbo: Dependency, Insecurity, and Identity Amongst Somali Refugees in Dadaab Camps," Refuge: Canada's Journal on Refugees 22.2 (2005).
153 Elisabeth Olivius, "(Un) Governable Subjects: The Limits of Refugee Participation in the Promotion of Gender
Equality in Humanitarian Aid," Journal of Refugee Studies 27.1 (2013).
154 Suzan Ilcan and Kim Rygiel, "“Resiliency Humanitarianism”: Responsibilizing Refugees through Humanitarian
camps in the region. I build on these critiques to show the ways in which such demands for participation play out in everyday interactions, as well as the fact that they do not only focus on decision-making, physical participation, or economic resilience, but on a new moral orientation towards both aid and gender based violence, as well as the acquisition of a specific kind of knowledge.
A 2014 report from IRC details the gender-based violence prevention and response programming that has been running in Nyarugusu since 2010. It explains the scope of activities meant to curb and respond to gender-based violence in the camp: “The Women’s Protection and Empowerment team runs drop-in centers, psychosocial services, legal support, material support, safe shelter and case management and referrals. Income-generating activities for women in the camp include soap-making, batik, and tailoring…IRC’s experience has shown providing women with safe spaces and networks, offering case management and group therapy for survivors of violence, and providing gender-sensitive economic empowerment activities have made a difference in the lives of Congolese women and girls.” 155 The report does note that engaging in trade is limited because of the lack of a market and the need for permits to exit the camp. But what is less clear is that the effort to provide “economic empowerment activities” – in addition to be inflected by gendered norms – didn’t actually work very well.156
I spoke to a number of camp residents who had received various types of vocational training in the camp. Most of them explained that they couldn’t use the skills they’d learned; aid
155 A report entitled “Experiences of Refugee Women and Girls from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC):
Learning from IRC’s Women’s Protection and Empowerment Programs in DRC, Tanzania, Burundi and Uganda,” published in April of 2014, explains the IRC’s role in Nyarugusu: pp. 2
workers provided some income to furniture makers and tailors in the camp, but by and large, the impact of such programs was minimal. I paid a visit to the bare vocational training center behind IRC’s office, where I learned that tailoring teachers don’t get paid. Two students and their instructor talked to me about the program, lamenting the lack of equipment and resources. They had a handful of sewing machines, one inherited from World Vision and five or six donated by IRC. Students learned for six months, but then weren’t able to do anything with their skills because they didn’t have tools. They were not given cloth to practice on, and relied on refugees who needed to have clothes tailored. “We don’t have enough food and we live in a bad environment. Tanzanian staff don’t care about us. They don’t treat us like human beings. They treat us like animals. We’re imprisoned here.” The instructor held up his hands as though they were handcuffed together.157
Kundjo, an IRC peer educator, saw the push towards self-reliance as a positive thing. “The system that IRC uses is to educate people so that they can empower themselves