Refugees: problem or opportunity?

Having followed this narration of the problems of delivering assistance to the refugees in Yei River District thus far, the reader must be asking just how refugees were surviving there. This question cannot be satisfactorily answered by research which focuses only on refugees.

In the absence of independent research concerning refugee issues, policy-makers, as we have seen, have been forced to rely more on beliefs than on empirical data. The debate about whether or not all refugees 'deserved' assistance in planned settlements is a case in point. Chambers (1979) argued in favour of the settlement policy, but Hansen (1979;1982) found that refugees valued the relative autonomy of living among the local community, even when they suffered greater economic deprivation than did those who were in settlements. More recently Chambers (1985) has raised another series of questions which can be answered only by research. He asks whether or not, and under what particular conditions, assistance which is targeted to refugees might serve to further impoverish sections of the host community.

There also are questions which cannot be properly answered by refugee-centric research. As Chambers points out, 'refugee-related research and writing almost always start and end with refugees, with hosts either not considered or treated as secondary or incidental' (ibid.) He goes on to explain that this concentration of research and planning on refugees - on their numbers, on their desperate plight, and on the daunting difficulties in achieving 'durable' solutions for them, presents problems; for no matter how much is done, it never seems to be enough really to help. Chambers (1985) aims to alert his readers to the bias that characterises not only assistance programmes, but also the embryonic field called refugee studies. This bias results from focusing on refugees in isolation from their social field and it leads directly to the neglect of studies of the impact of refugees on their new environment, and particularly their impact on the poorer members of the host community.

My research was also undertaken from a refugee-centric perspective, but it very quickly became apparent that to answer the question of how refugees survive, it was necessary to examine their relationships with their hosts. As is stressed in the discussion of methodology (Appendix II), one learns more about refugees from studies which are not so narrowly defined. One of the unexpected findings of this study and one which resulted from adopting a wider perspective, was that the refugees were making a very positive contribution to the local economy.

What the data suggest is that host governments would be well-advised to view an influx of refugees as an opportunity, rather than as a problem. The change in perspective that is required goes much further than simply recommending that assistance in an area should be targeted on those most in need, and much further than insisting that aid should be available for developing the infrastructure - roads, medical, water, and education services - of the refugee-affected area. The new perspective calls for aid which is 'fine pointed' so that it can respond to the creative energy which is released as people are forced to struggle for survival under new conditions and through new relationships. Assistance should be available to fill in the gaps which arise in the wake of such enormous population movements and to respond to the many new opportunities and problems which arise in a situation which is so dynamic and fluid. This kind of assistance cannot be planned 'in Geneva'.

A review of the results of the research programme leads inevitably, I think, to the conclusion that current approaches to humanitarian assistance must be reviewed. There are three major critical points which emerge from the research project in Yei River District. The first is that assistance programmes cannot be implemented effectively by agencies which are hierarchical and bureaucratic. Second, assistance plans cannot be managed by officials, whether outsiders or hosts, who are unwilling to engage in discourse with the people whom they aim to assist. And the third critical point which emerges quite clearly, is that while assistance plans, projects, and programmes cannot be 'rule-bound', because they must be flexible; that nevertheless, rule-making will be an important aspect of the assistance process. This latter is an important point and one which I will illustrate shortly.

The evidence from YRD suggests that the arrival of refugees in an area could be the opportunity for the positive transformation of the political economy, a transformation which would assist refugees and host alike. The factors which lead to the loss of this opportunity will be evident from earlier discussion of the specific problems caused by the imposition of aid in the district. I now want to specify some of the projects which might have been, but which never were. The objectives of assisting refugees through community development might have been better achieved through such projects. As with all interventions these would also affect the 'political economy' of this areas but they would be interventions in response to grassroots statements of need.

I have already mentioned the local efforts to build a road by hand labour from Kajo-Kaji to tuba. The purpose of this road was to allow the agricultural surplus of one region to be redistributed to an area of food shortage, through Juba market. Investment in bridges, a few lorries, and storage facilities would have had many consequences for both the local host and refugee communities. Improved transport facilities might have permitted returnee Sudanese businessmen and refugee agricultural producers to have had a dynamic effect on the system of control of the Juba market. The market now appears to be dominated by one section of the community, but had the road been built, then some modus vivendi between the entrenched traders and the newcomers would have had to have been achieved. Recall how in the Kajo-Kaji area the solidarity of Ugandan and southern Sudanese broke the monopoly of northerners and forced them out. But because of the near impossibility of gaining access to the Juba market because there was no direct road, all the energy and commercial enterprise of these people were trapped in the Kajo-gaii 'corner' and led to the illegal opening of the Uganda border. This had at least two effects. The first was that the economic benefits of the production of the region spilled over into Uganda and was lost to the Sudan. The second was that, given the continued instability in Uganda, the insecurity of many refugees was increased.

New industries could have been established. The growing demand and escalation of prices for bicycles, for example, suggest that southern Sudan could have sustained the output of an 'assembly plant'. The price of a bicycle rose from £S90 to £S380; in September 1984 it was £S240. All that is required to assemble bicycles is a few tools and the organization of imported components. The number of Ugandans who made their living through bicycle repair suggests there was no lack of expertise to assemble them. Both the road and a bicycle factory would have benefited refugees and hosts alike.

One of the industries which the ODA team recommended should be encouraged in Yei Riser District was bee-keeping. A marketing system was already established, with northern traders plying the roads in their arabia [lorries] to buy honey at collection points. The Sudanese use traditional hives and throw away the Max. The ODA team held the view that Sudanese were not ready to adopt improved hives. But many Ugandans already had the requisite experience. Ignoring the value of the beeswax, the use of improved hives involves at least two other industries - carpentry and tailoring. The refugee population included many skilled carpenters and tailors which the local market could net absorb (McGregor in Wilson et al. 1985.) I have already noted that a Kenyan company was ready to invest its own small resources in such a project and there was no lack of open land for hives. This industry would have been of particular benefit to the vulnerable groups since women, many of the handicapped, and even children can be taught to manage bees. There may also be considerable ecological benefits from increasing the number of bees.[2] Given the evidence, to be discussed shortly, of the ways in which the Sudanese were quick to adopt some of the practices of the Ugandans, it is unlikely that they would have failed to see the value of using improved hives themselves.

I now want to discuss another case where effective assistance would have also required some of the rule-making that I mentioned earlier. Cattle in the district had been wiped out long ago by disease. The Ugandans brought thousands of cattle into the Sudan. Assistance which was flexible enough to respond to opportunity, could have permitted the development of a cattle industry in the district. When the need was known, emergency veterinary services should have been flown in at once. Cattle owners could have been assisted, so that they could retain their herds, instead of being forced to sell them to survive. For once they were gone, these cattle owners had to join the other destitute who left for settlements. Defining pastoral land would have required rule-making, governmental intervention, in co-operation with local leaders. Probably such deliberations would have given rise to another demand: a programme to control tsetse fly in affected parts of the district. Had this been provided, land which had been in use when such programmes were in motion, could have been brought back into production not just for cattle, but also for cultivation.

There were always shortages of fish in the market in Yei. Fish came, as was noted, from Uganda, either directly through guerrilla- protected corridors or through Zaire. In 1984 'Dinka' fish, i.e. fish brought in by Dinka, were on sale in Yei, but prices were high and beyond the reach of most refugees and their 'poorer hosts'. Yei River District is laced with rivers but refugees came into conflict with locals when they tried to fish them. The Ugandan population included thousands of people who had been fishermen. Their strong dietary preferences might have been sufficient to motivate them to develop fish-farming skills and the rivers and streams could have fed the ponds.

The potential for ecological damage caused by such a dramatic rise in population was already obvious in 1982. There was not only the heavy demand for fuel and building materials the agency building programme required bricks which were burnt with wood. Reforestation projects could have been started immediately, as the refugee population included senior foresters. By 1984 tobacco farmers at Mopoko settlement had reason to fear they could not continue growing this cash crop because the trees in that area had all been cut down.

Tree-planting might have contributed in no small measure to preventing disputes between locals and refugees The Sudanese depended to a considerable extent on the wild for game and various foods. The Oxford team found that 'Around many settlements Sudanese have repeatedly requested restrictions on charcoal, brick and rope production as these are denuding the environment. Frequently, these grievances were expressed in supernatural terms...the spirits of trees (especially large ones of certain species), are being disturbed.' (Wilson in Wilson et al. 1985.)

Had nurseries been established in various parts of the districts, they could have provided a 'non-controversial' means for women to have earned an income. Citrus trees, had they been planted even in 1982, could have been bearing fruit by 1985. Although bananas would grow in many parts of the country, there were very few places where they were available. The value of fruit for the diet of the malnourished is obvious. Even if there had been funds to buy fruit for the feeding programmes it was not available.

The agricultural potential of the district has not been fully exploited. Even modest technological changes would result in greater production. Wisely, agriculturalists among the refugees had rejected a proposal for a tractor project proposed by an aid agency. Instead, they recommended animal traction. I have mentioned the great amount of surface water available. In Torit, the Boy Scouts produced a water-powered irrigation pump which would have been suitable for use along some rivers for irrigation. Onions are an extremely profitable crop; since they can be stored they do not represent the marketing problems posed by such vegetables as tomatoes and aubergines, for which seeds were provided. There were never enough onion seeds. According to McGregor, one of the Oxford team, northern traders controlled the sale of all locally produced onions. The others she found on sale were much smaller and came from Zaire. (Wilson et al. 1985.)

All the good arguments against expanding tobacco industries in the world aside, it should be noted that Sudan uses its scarce foreign exchange resources to import 80 per cent of its domestic requirements Sudan used to rely heavily on 'border tobacco', that is, the commodity was smuggled over the border from the West Nile. The National Tobacco Company (NTC) has been encouraging the development of this industry in Yei River District, but the crop is labour intensive and requites experience and training to grow it.

Among the refugee populations there are hundreds of highly experienced tobacco growers, not to mention all the other skills required to manage this industry. In fact, many of the senior staff of NTC today are Ugandans. But because the Asylum Act, stating the rules governing their right to work, had not been disseminated, some of them at least posed as Sudanese. Unfortunately, even though NTC is a private company, it could not respond to the potential growth offered by the arrival of the refugees. It could not afford to import flues, thermometers, fertilisers, pesticides, and additional transport.[3]

What was the main restraining factor which prevented the local community from undertaking such projects for improving their economy? From the government's point of view, the problem is always the lack of foreign exchange. But capital, foreign exchange, is the most valuable resource which humanitarian organisations bring to such a refugee emergency.

'Exploitative' hosts?

Refugee-centrism gives rise to many misunderstandings. The myopia of outsiders leads to experiences which reinforce their views of the hosts as exploiters of refugees. Unfortunately, agency staff only meet host government officials in situations of tension and potential conflict, and they learn about the locals through the complaints of the refugees. Information concerning what is actually going on between hosts and refugees is unavailable to most outsiders.

Early in 1982, when refugees were registering at reception centres along the border and were in the state of health which led to the high number of deaths reported in Chapter Five, many of the local chiefs were reluctant to allow refugees to leave the border areas. As was noted, at Nyori there were even arrests and detentions aimed, we thought, to discourage any refugee migration to settlements. These local people were in Chambers' words, the 'poorer of their hosts'.

Given our refugee-centric perspective, the programme officer and I both dismissed such behaviour as evidence that the hosts were malicious, and that they were exploiting the poor refugees' cheap labour in return for the paltry amounts of cassava upon which the Ugandans were forced to subsist. But on reflection, perhaps the chiefs were being selective in who they insisted remain. The refugees who were detained were not the ill and the starving, but those who had been cultivating there for some time. Many refugees who went to settlements retained their land rights on the border. Only detailed studies of such relationships would uncover what was really going on, but it now seems to me that our initial judgement was too hasty.

For some time the Project Development Unit at Yei has been encouraging coffee growing. Near Wudabi there is a tea plantation. The value of these cash crops has not escaped the attention of wealthy Sudanese from Juba, and some 'absentee landlords' had already established farms in the district. The land near the border is particularly suitable for coffee. Local people do not welcome this intrusion and do not regard the government as having the right to allocate their land. Allowing refugees even temporary rights over land on the border was one means of clearing and bringing unused land under cultivation, making it more difficult for outsiders to assume control. Recall that local people as well as Yei officials resisted the efforts of one Sudanese to force the refugees at Mopoko to be moved from the area which allegedly was for land for his coffee plantation. One unconfirmed story has it that another of these prospective coffee growers from outside the district had built himself a house somewhere in the bush between Morobo and Kaya, and that Ugandans and Sudanese had co-operated in producing certain effects which led him to fear the area was haunted. This example, if it is true, together with information collected by the Oxford team about relations with some Sudanese chiefs, suggest that 'the poorer hosts' may be politically strengthened by the arrival of the even poorer refugees. They welcomed refugees as allies in local conflicts.

Already in 1982 certain types of exchanges were taking place between refugees in settlements and Sudanese who lived in the vicinity. As part of the aid programme refugees were supplied with vegetable seeds not locally available. I learned from Ugandans that the Sudanese were asking to 'borrow' seedlings from their nurseries. And, since many plants were unfamiliar to them, they not only had to learn how to cultivate them, but Ugandans were asked for advice on how to cook them. In 1983 the programme officer required that each settlement donate 15 per cent of its vegetable seed to locals.[4]

When the survey was being conducted at Limuru, I invited the Chief of Kopera Chiefdom to share a meal with the team. He arrived with his subchiefs several hours too early, and in the midst of a meeting with the agricultural advisor and the productivity committees from the blocks. They were discussing their problems which included disputes over land and a fight between locals in the market. The proceedings of the meeting were translated for the benefit of the chief.

According to him this was the first time he had been consulted about the presence of refugees in his chiefdom, the agency staff had dealt with the subchief residing nearby. He recommended that those refugees with land problems should consult him individually, and he would try to resolve their problems. He promised he would sort out the problem of the market which had resulted in violence. He was most interested to know what had happened to the vegetable seed; it turned out that the subchief, present at the meeting, had appropriated it for himself.

The chief, who had so attentively listened to the reports of the settlements' agricultural progress, requested that the agricultural advisor visit his farmers in the area. He commented on the poor quality of the district's extension services and said he was sure that the Sudanese farmers would also welcome the kind of supervision the refugees were receiving. Fortunately, this Ugandan agricultural advisor responded positively, saying that as he had a bicycle, transport would be no problem.[5]

Outsiders who will take the time can not only facilitate such encounters between hosts and refugees, but can use them to pinpoint needs. Research is the best way. This chief pointed out that there was no shortage of land as such, but that large areas in his chiefdom were unusable because of tsetse fly. He was old enough to remember that the British had made efforts to control this pest and that formerly the land was in use. He also explained another source of jealousy between his people and the refugees. Between Limbe settlement and all the way to Kala, there was not one source of uncontaminated water outside the settlements.[6]

A borehole was planned for the nearby intermediate school because refugees had been permitted to attend it. I spent some time with the chief and the principal of that school writing up a project which they then submitted to OXFAM. It promised free local labour for a scheme of shallow wells and protected springs, and requested that the programme be financed and implemented by this agency. If research were institutionalized, as part of the programme of assistance, it would be possible for a researcher to return to learn the results of this encounter. Through consultative relations between agency staff and government officials, it would be possible for the aid programme to capitalize on such opportunities to encourage amicable relations.

That the arrival of refugees and outside agencies was having an enormous impact on the economy could be seen by even the most superficial observation. The market in Yei grew dramatically for example. Initially I dismissed its expansion as simply a response to the artificial and temporary demand created by the agency-financed projects. Items seldom available in Yei in 1982 had appeared by 1983. These included bicycles, mattresses, batteries, torches, stationery, film, and certain imported foods. But the sudden expansion of Baze, a town on the Zaire border, and Kaya, which nestled between the Zaire and Ugandan borders, could not be explained solely in these terms.

It was in Otogo settlement, in 1983, that I became most aware of the scale of the economic impact of refugees on Yei River District. As has been described, refugees were asked to report how many days they had spent doing leja-leja during the preceding seven days, and a cumulative number of working days for each household was recorded. The numbers were so high I became alarmed. I sent a note to the ODA team's anthropologist, asking her just how she would interpret these findings ? Were refugees taking jobs away from the Sudanese, and creating poorer hosts? Were Sudanese simply sitting back and allowing this cheap labour to do their work? Or were the Sudanese opening up more agricultural land?

The two main impediments to economic development in the district identified by the ODA survey were the lack of agricultural labour and the lack of markets. Even in 1983 in some parts of the district Sudanese had no place to buy such basic items as matches, salt, sugar, or tea. Given the refugee-centric focus of my research, I realized that I would not be able to study the changing agricultural practices of the Sudanese in response to the influx of refugees. It was obvious, however, that this explosion in available labour and the evidence that it was being so extensively used, must result in greater production by the Sudanese farmers.[7] Indirect evidence of their greater productivity was the growing demand for such consumer items as bicycles.

Markets

I asked one member of my team, Atima Ayoub, to study the settlement markets and to extend his investigation to include some of those in self-settled areas. His survey was carried out between June and mid- September. In 1984, further data were collected concerning refugee livelihood, and one member of the Oxford team studied the Yei market in considerable detail, collecting further information on the progress of their markets and the income-generating projects funded through the assistance programme from 11 settlements. (McGregor in Wilson et al. 1985.) Both studies of markets are limited by being carried out during the rains and just before harvest began.

Given the failures in the settlement agricultural programme which have already been detailed, it is not surprising to find that many refugees have had to innovate and to develop modes of livelihood which have little or nothing to do with the objectives of those who came to assist them. How were refugees surviving? As one of the Oxford team puts it,

...with initiative, stamina, and foresight to an extent which completely overshadows the aid programme's contribution. Indeed some of the problems refugees are tackling are apparently unperceived by those planning the assistance programme. It is ironic that some survival strategies are disapproved of, or even defined as illegal. (Wilson in Wilson et al.)

The major contribution of the assistance programme for refugees in Yei River District was the indirect injection of capital into the region. How refugees and others used that capital has produced quite a different result than was intended. A major failure of the programme was that it did not take account of the great economic variation which obtained within the district.

Instead it appears that policy-makers believed the planned agricultural settlements of only 3,000+ people should be able to develop self-sufficient economies; the importance of such matters as supply and demand within them or beyond the boundaries of the immediate environment of each settlement had not been considered. Lacking tools, seeds and secure access to a sufficient quantity of agricultural land, many refugees were thrown onto trading while others were forced to rely on wage labour.

There were many disadvantages for those who found themselves depending on the market for their survival. They had insufficient capital and thus depended on the aid package to start trading. Their freedom of movement was threatened by the lack of identification cards or tax receipts, and this problem was compounded by the growing attitude among locals that 'refugees belong in camps.' (Ramaga 1984.) But perhaps most important, they were a highly visible threat to those who controlled the commercial sector.

Every refugee settlement had a market either within its perimeters or just outside. As had already been mentioned, during the survey of the unassisted refugees more than one hundred locations were identified where a market is open at least once a week. The growth of markets in the district was so rapid that still in 1984 despite their interest in collecting taxes, the Yei Rural Council was only aware of 12 markets in the Yei sub-district.

It was noted that the results of both studies of markets in 1983-4 were affected by the season in which they were conducted, it being the leanest time of the year. Moreover, Ayoub found great differences within the district, depending on the extent to which local people were already involved in trading, the time when a settlement had opened, 'i.e. the new ones are still far behind the business world', and the distances between settlements and Yei or Kajo-Kaji.

The plan for each settlement included a 'business' district, and one of the first developments one could observe was the establishment of a market. In 1983 Ayoub made a list of all items on sale in each and the prices which were charged. The number of items on sale ranged from 30 to 75. In addition he found a variety of 'private businesses including: beer clubs, shoe and bicycle repairers' groups, carpenters, hairdressers, blacksmiths, tailors, hotels, etc.' (Ayoub 1983b.) The wider economy of this region aside, the success of the settlement markets was affected by the proximity of another or by its location in relation to established Sudanese markets. As Ayoub put in his report:

... some markets have adverse effects on others. This specially occurs between settlements which are less than five miles away from each other....people tend to be more attracted to the markets of the other....an example...is what is happening between Limbe and Koya, or Roronyo and Logobero, or Mopoko and Gumbari ...although Koya is a mere transit centre, the active business interests of the people has drawn the attention of settlers in Limbe....trading activity in Roronyo is more lively than it is in Logobero. Similarly Mopoko attracts more people than Gumbari. Another factor that influences the prosperity of markets is the trading interests of the local population....e.g. Mogiri and Mondikolo. In this case, both are attracted by Kajo- Kaji market of Wudu....Morsak is likely to suffer another blow [in addition to its proximity to Otogo market] because Ombasi, [a Sudanese market] just four miles away, has a very developed market. (1983a).

The planners failed to appreciate that where there was a Sudanese market, locals would be enraged at having to compete with another one established inside a settlement. Repeatedly the location of markets was a source of controversy between refugees and locals.

Limuru has this problem. Refugees have set up a public market in their business area right inside the camp, and they view this as an advantageous position for their already set up boutiques and hotels. [But]...the authorities prefer to transfer the site to another area some two miles away from the camp. They argued that their choice was more central, a place which both natives and refugees would benefit from. So the settlement officer will have to cope with the disputes; but it should be remembered that [at] the peak of the controversy [there] was a rampant fight at the market place between the conflicting parties....many local authorities are now....trying to gain control of refugee markets. In some cases market dues are collected, and hawkers and traders are taxed. The tax on hawkers and traders is fixed (£S1) per month. As for traders in beer clubs and public markets, amounts ranging from 5pt - 25pt are collected. This money sometimes compensates those who sweep the markets. But the tax from hawkers goes to the government. In Goli. the job of the cleaning of the marketplace is held by a Sudanese and a Ugandan.

Later on, after the survey in Limuru, the decision was taken to situate the market 300 metres from the settlement. In 1984 when McGregor visited this settlement she found that troubles had erupted once again and one man was killed.[8]

Whether located within the settlement or at the site preferred by the locals, the latter were quick to take advantage of the presence of the refugees. Refugees, lacking funds, relied on their few possessions, their rations or other items distributed by the assistance programme, to exchange for such essentials as salt, soap, sugar, tea, and matches.[9] Ayoub found that:

Generally goods sold are of small quantities. The local population brings cassava (raw and flour), ...They also bring wild food like honey, termites, white ants, and mushrooms. Venisons [sic] are also sold stealthily by them, mostly in camps distant from police or game rangers, e.g. Dororolili, Kala, etc. Few [of the] locals deal in hawkery business in which most Ugandan boys [are] specialists. Refugees, on the other hand, deal in both UNHCR plus WFP items or manufactured goods (got from Yei shops). Refugees sales are influenced by season and aids [i.e. assistance] given. One finds that most 'ACROSS-provided' vegetables [i.e. grown from seeds provided by the assistance programme] are not seen in markets until late July or August.

Already few in number, the sheer scale of the settlement populations with their markets led to the collapse of most of the Sudanese rural markets. In 1983 in only two areas did Ayoub find that the Sudanese markets were having a 'greater impact' on settlement markets, and these did not operate daily. These were Ewatoka, located near Wudabi, and Kajo-Kaji; the three settlements nearby, Kunsuk, Mogiri, and Mondikolo, found their markets 'superseded'. (ibid.)

In such areas, as Ayoub said, where there were locals who 'were enlightened long ago', the refugees have simply 'added to [the] commercial advantages reaped by these traders.' Since 'no refugee has capital large enough to compete with these more developed enterprises, it is likely that aspiring businessmen in these areas [will] have to resort to another kind of trade.' On the basis of his data, he recommended that people turn to hotel catering businesses as a means of 'challeng[ing] the native domination of business' or, given individuals' lack of capital, that they should form cooperative businesses. Sadly, Ugandans appear to lack the necessary solidarity to work together in the way that allows some migrant communities to establish an economic foothold.

Ayoub had a great deal to say in his report about one source of income generation and expenditure in the district - alcohol consumption. He attributed the importance of this means of earning cash to the fact that 'beer is [the] refugees' last resort after all his frustrations.' But in camps where he found drinking to be the 'highest' there were no beer clubs. 'All settlements east of Yei - with the exception of Roronyo - fall under this category.'[10] He also found another 'contradiction'. This was that '...in places where drinking rates are highest, one would expect the brewers to get a lot of money. But once again that is not always true.' Why? Because 'drinking on credit is also highest in such settlements.'

In those settlements where the clubs exist, they are either located near the original public markets or ... some distance off, depending on the community development worker's plans. In settlements like Goli, Mopoko, Roronyo, Logobero, Tore, and Otogo, beer clubs exist. In others, beer clubs are apparently non-existent, though drinking is going on heavily. As for drinks like maruwa that need a lot of attention, they are usually drunk from homes so as to cater for its requirements. For those unfamiliar I should explain that maruwa requires constant boiling water to replenish the bowls and clean the tubes from which it is sipped. (ibid.)

Kala, he found, suffered from being a great distance from a town and this causes prices to be much higher. Tea was twice as high and clothing on average cost £S1.500 more per garment. On the other hand, Kala, like Pakula Naima, benefited from the proximity of large concentrations of unassisted refugees whose 'crops are nearly always amongst the first harvested. This has resulted in their crops reaching the market before the assisted settlers' own produce.' In Pakula, for example, at the time of the survey, he found the market 'full of free settlers' produce, e.g. groundnuts, maize, etc. sold very cheaply'.

Ayoub found other industries already underway. For example in those settlements which had plenty of wood available - Dororolili, Pakula and Wudabi - settlers were making doors and other furniture. In Dororolili chairs and tables were sold for £S5, but were cheaper at Wudabi. These items were made and purchased by refugees.

Already in 1983 the problem of transporting vegetables to market was, in Ayoub's view, discouraging the growing of food surpluses which are 'so needed in Juba - even Khartoum'. But it was not just vegetables, 'All production is affected. Right now over 100 bags of charcoal are awaiting transport to market to Yei.... over five sacks of cabbages were stranded in Dororolili. This can discourage interest.' He concluded his report by noting that settlement markets were not altogether an unmixed blessing.

For on the one hand, markets have been welcomed with joy by the locals. They are pleased with the new life brought to their areas. In some areas, the locals even boast of refugees as belonging to them. [But] it should also be remembered, however, that many refugee markets have been scenes of clashes between the people taking part in them - refugees and refugees, natives and natives, or refugees and natives. Often consumption of alcohol is more responsible though.

'Free' settlement markets

The 'political economy' of the Kajo-Kaji sub-district was radically altered by the arrival of the refugees and Sudanese returnees who had been in business in Uganda. I have already mentioned that through a boycott, the northern businessmen had been successfully excluded from participating in the economy of Kajo-Kaji. An apparent modus vivendi has been worked out there between refugees and returnee businessmen, at least as far as the division of areas in which they each operated. Just outside the town were two separate market areas, one entirely controlled by the returnees, the other by refugees who had arrived with capital. There may even have been some specialization, but Ayoub did not study these markets.[11]

He went to Jalimo, a market further inland along the Uganda border where according to the local chief, there were 8,000 people, three-fifths of these being refugees. The refugee population was made up of Kakwa, Lugbara, and Madi speakers. In Jalimo he found a wide range of economic activities which included: shoe and bicycle repairers, butcheries, brewers, hotels, shops, market stalls, hawkers, and tailors. Commodities on sale included produce (mainly food) which was both locally grown and imported from Uganda. Manufactured goods also came from Uganda. Through his description of this market we can glimpse the different economic roles taken by refugees and locals. The latter appear to have retained the upper hand; refugees have specialized in providing services, or are employed by Sudanese.

There were 34 buildings in which businesses could be accommodated. At the time of his study, only 21 were 'operational on a full-scale private basis'. Four of the shops were managed by refugees, but owned by returnees from Wudu (the market near Kajo-Kaji).

Licence is compulsory and this ranges from at least £S40 upwards... regulated [on] the amount of assets in stock. Some of the shops have almost all types of goods found in the most well-stocked shops in Wudu, Kajo-Kaji, or even Yei. There are many goods which have been brought in from Uganda. Products like cigarettes...paraffin, tea leaves, fish, air cured tobacco, and some cloth bear the marks of Uganda, entering through Moyo. Hawker businesses are mainly found in the hands of refugees. The licences for these businesses are fixed at £S7.500. Prices vary little from elsewhere in Yei District except...cloth and fish are more expensive. (ibid.)

Ayoub found nine hotels (i.e. restaurants) which were open on the three market days, with 'fewer than five operational throughout the week.' Three of the hotels were operated by locals, but most of the hotel business was in refugees' hands in buildings rented from locals.

At the moment hotel business[es] are suffering a state of recession. This is because there is not much movement of people within and along the roads. However, there is also enough to eat at the moment as it is the right season for [the] harvest of maize, groundnuts, greens, etc. Necessary commodities like flour, meat, or liquid capital [sic] are also factors which influence hotels in Jalimo. Tea is scarce, but the price is just the same, i.e. 5 pt or 10 pt. A meal of meat ranges from 50 pt to 65 pt a plate. Also other things, e.g. steamed maize, steamed potatoes, cassava, or cakes are sold at prices ranging from 5 pt to 10 pt. (ibid.)

Beer clubs, apparently doing a thriving business, specialized in four types of locally-brewed alcoholic drink. Licences were mainly in the hands of Sudanese, with refugees managing the clubs and supplying the brews. Clients included both 'natives and refugees who mix freely'. The butchery was owned by a local, but he employed two Muslim refugees. Shortages of cattle in the area meant that meat was scarce. To have an animal slaughtered, hawkers had to pay £S3.000 to £S3.500.

The market place, set aside from the shops, was fenced and guarded by local police 'probably to maintain civil obedience and ensure collection of dues'. Market dues ranged from 5 pt to 75 pt depending on the quantity for sale. 'A sack of groundnuts or cassava flour is charged a fee of £S1 - £S2, depending on the market situation.' Some items, he mentions pots, do not accrue fees until they are sold since the likelihood of a sale is more remote.

The Yei market

In 1984,116 interviews were conducted in the Yei market representing 'a 22 per cent sample of a trader population averaging 500 on a full day'. (McGregor in Wilson et al. 1985.) Those who have not seen an African market may find her description useful.

Men and women, young and old, are involved in trading. The market opens at 8 a.m. at which time traders queue outside the market entrance. They pass the tax office in turn, collect a receipt for their payment of market dues. Traders take up their accepted position in the market place, and although there is no formal layout as such, each commodity has its own area and regular traders always return to the same pitch. Stalls are available only for the sale of tobacco or fish....Otherwise sales take place on the ground, vegetables and other goods being laid out on sacks. Scales are not used for measurement...except in the shops of the northern traders (outside the food market); measurement is by means of small tins or glasses. (ibid.)

According to McGregor's survey and her other observations, about 40 per cent of the traders in the market are refugees. In addition to the lingua franca, Juba Arabic, she found 16 other languages spoken in the market.

Although the majority of traders...are Sudanese, the refugees tend on the whole to deal in larger quantities than the Sudanese (especially in the vegetable sector). The role of the Ugandans may therefore be greater than that suggested by their numbers.

The two populations specialise in the types of vegetables they sell and are also segregated within the market. Significantly, McGregor found that 'over the past two years...refugees have moved away from the sale of their own produce or rations to the sale of tomatoes, cabbages, onions and other vegetables imported from Zaire. Such refugees have found their own place in the marketing system and the role they play is often distinct from that of the local Sudanese.' (ibid.)

The source of all goods found in the market revealed that an unexpectedly low percentage of traders relied on produce grown in the locality. McGregor speculates that the lack of locally grown produce in the Yei market may be the result of the farm-gate purchases made by the northerners who transfer it directly to the Juba market. Since the sale of subsistence surplus is limited to an area of not more than two miles in radius, she concluded that Yei does not represent a market demand which would be sufficient to absorb an increased output from the rural areas. Thus, 'The potential for refugees to sell future agricultural surplus in Yei (once 'self-sufficiency' is attained) would therefore seem low.' Of course, her survey was conducted just before harvest begins, so 'the seasonal factor must again be borne in mind - in the dry season the volume of traffic increases considerably and the profitability of marketing ventures consequently changed [prices fall]. Future marketing will also be affected by the withdrawal of food aid.' (ibid.)

Other evidence that growing numbers of refugees are being forced into trading to survive as rations are withdrawn is also suggested by the fact that McGregor found that 54 per cent of the refugees she interviewed had been trading in the Yei market for less than one year. She also found transport to be the major constraining factor on market development.

For refugees to penetrate the Juba market will require official intervention, rule making, at a very high level. McGregor gives an example:

A group-farming project in Limbe settlement tried to sell their own sweet potatoes in Juba. Transport costs were covered by an agency. The northerners in control of the Juba market effectively blocked the sale of these 100 sacks by refusing to offer a fair price. Lack of storage facilities meant that on the third day the refugees were forced to sell at an absurdly low price. (ibid.)

The case of the northerners' control over the sale of onions in Yei has already been mentioned, but they also engage in 'speculative buying, such that entire supplies of maize flour can disappear from the market place. When there is a shortage, these stocks will be sold off at high prices from the northerners' shops.' (ibid.) Obviously one urgently needed intervention, which could be financed by outside aid, is not only a subsidised transport system to the Juba market, but storage facilities for local farmers to enable them to compete with these traders.

Apart from the market, there were other commercial activities in Yei town, but 'unlike marketing where the refugees have acted to transform the system radically, sectors such as carpentry and metal work have not been penetrated by refugees.' (ibid.) This was not, as we shall see, for want of skilled workers. Of the total of 26 tea shops found in central Yei, six were owned by refugees and capital is one of the major constraints for business. (ibid.) McGregor asked refugees how they had overcome this problem. Each tells a story of a struggle for survival and moving on a downward economic spiral.

The Ugandan tea shop owners had all either brought money with them, or had some other form of assistance in establishing their businesses. One had used the profit from a private medical clinic in Yei (in Uganda he had been engaged in medical research), as well as money brought with him. Another had brought a lorry... which he used to generate income by hiring it out and later selling it. One brought money with him, and increased his capital by agricultural wage labour....ln Uganda he had owned a shop and had been a landlord of nine rented houses... and also owned a farm.... Another shop owner was a woman whose husband had given her money which she supplemented with income from handicrafts. Another was an ex-army general and unwilling to give further information.... none of the shop owners had managed to accumulate sufficient capital from sources entirely within southern Sudan.

Tea shops are not the most secure way to make a living. With no water system, delivery from the river must be paid for and 'owners may spend up to £S10 per day on this cost alone'. (ibid.) And food supplies are also a major problem; some owners may be forced to travel to Kaya to purchase maize flour or rice. Rents paid by these refugees range from £S40 to £S70 per month and licence fees from £S15 to £S100 per annum. In addition they had to pay 'health' taxes. Seasonal fluctuations in demand made it difficult to survive. During the rains most people could neither afford the time nor the money to eat at a tea shop. Some also complained that Sudanese resented them; one because he occupied one of the best sites for business. Others claimed to have been harassed or forced to make payments not due.

Unlike other skilled occupations, bicycle repairing in Yei is monopolised by refugees. They have been able to engage in this business because of its informal nature....little is needed besides skill and a spanner to start a business. The majority...set up under a tree and have no overhead costs. Thus the constraints of capital are overcome. (ibid.)

Income generation in settlements

The assistance programme included a budget for income-generating activities in settlements. The programme as it was being implemented during 1982-3 was built around co-operatives. In 1982, and before ACROSS could find a suitable employee to take over the implementation of this budget, SCC's employee, John Yebuga, a Ugandan, had set out guidelines for cooperatives. According to the rules, funds would be given as a loan, and a percentage of profits paid back into what aimed to become a perpetually revolving credit scheme. Refugees responded to this idea, and had begun to plan their commercial activities along these lines. But after John Yebuga's detention, described earlier, ACROSS took over this responsibility.

Its approach to stimulating economic activities was to advise refugees to form co-operatives around particular skills. After proving their seriousness by putting up a building with a lockable door, they were to be provided with funds and/or equipment. I have already pointed out some of the pitfalls of this approach. For many complicated reasons refugees were not motivated to work in co-operatives. For example, time was of a premium to people who were having to do leja-leja or their own farm work for a living. Some businesses (like cobblers) did not need buildings, and refugees resented being asked to build them simply to prove their good faith. Women and the handicapped were largely excluded by this requirement.

ACROSS abandoned Yebuga's loan system in favour of simply giving money or equipment to those co-operatives which qualified. This meant that once a settlement s budget was used up, there were no funds for new ventures. The most able bodied were the first to lay claim to the CD (community development) budget. A loan system has its own inherent discipline and could have been managed by a settlement committee which was answerable to the community as a whole.[12]

Consumer shops were the most popular; some of these co-operatives had more than twenty members. Since the profits earned by a shop were unlikely to support more than one household, it was not worth anyone's time to build the shop or attend the meetings held to keep a group 'co-operating'. In 1984 such a shop at Mopoko earned for its membership of ten a monthly profit of £S40. (McGregor op. cit.)

But among the fundamental flaws in plans for income generation in the settlements was that 'the structure of projects and guidelines for assistance were drawn up with scant knowledge of the economic realities of the environment in which they would operate.' (ibid.) For example, as McGregor discovered, Yei had only five carpentry workshops, each with a maximum of four trained employees. Yet they already were supplying the local demand. In one settlement alone, a cooperative having 12 highly skilled carpenters was funded. They depended on ACROSS and other agencies to buy their total output of desks, chairs, etc. Similarly, Yei already supplied all its own tailoring requirements. As McGregor noted, 'Sale of settlement-produced garments by redistribution to the vulnerables can only continue with long-term agency support. When agencies discontinue buying, workshops will be left to function on their own.' (op. cit.) Settlement businesses could be viable only if they had transport and could break into the Yei market with competitive quality and prices, or if they could manage to penetrate the Juba market with all that this entails. Yet agencies positively discouraged the movement of skilled craftsmen away from settlements.[13]

Another fundamental problem was the failure of the refugee agencies to coordinate their community development with local programmes. In Yei the government had an office established to promote co-operatives in the district. Headed at the time by Vigil Jima, a Sudanese who demonstrated considerable awareness of local problems and who had a team of trained workers, his office was not consulted until much later. Nevertheless, refugees were instructed they should incorporate locals into their CD projects. In fact reports to UNHCR asked for information on how many Sudanese were participating in co-operation and on the school management committees. In Chapter Two I noted how Mr Jima lost some of his staff to the assistance programme when it was recruiting settlement officers, and, in Chapter Six, I mentioned that Sudanese women, (like the refugees) who were 'under' GMT's community development programme, also quarrelled with other women who were in government-sponsored programmes.

By the time ACROSS staff did consult Mr Jima on the legal position of cooperatives established in settlements, he was so angry that he simply told them it was illegal for refugees to form co-operatives, so ACROSS changed the name of their projects to 'community development'. Had a different approach been taken, and since it was not illegal for refugees to belong to cooperatives, injecting funds and encouraging their participation in his (i.e. the government's) programme might have better served the interests of integration.

In 1984, McGregor visited 11 settlements to check on the progress of the income-generating projects funded by the programme. She found some community development projects had collapsed because of leadership problems, but this alone did not explain all their failures. She thought it more likely that because profits were so low, people were compelled to spend their time 'farming or doing causal labour instead of being free to commit their time and effort to CD projects.'In her view, these projects would never be successful unless the profits made them into viable full-time propositions for their members.

In one settlement the CD advisor described the carpentry co-operative as in 'chaos', and people were refusing to co-operate as 'they struggle for profits'. She found the blacksmiths had never built their building so they never qualified for aid. She met one skilled and disabled blacksmith who had set up on his own, but he had 'virtually no tools. Agency protocol prevents aid from being supplied as he is an individual without a structure [i.e. building].' She found that:

...the skilled or dedicated members become disillusioned and leave to set up their own projects. It is notable that much viable economic activity in the settlements has been started without agency support and that such initiatives, if supported, may produce a higher investment return than new projects brought in from outside. For example...individually owned tea shops and consumer shops, functioning without aid are often on a sounder economic footing than agency supported co-operatives...one blacksmith in Mopoko never joined the agency-supported co-operative scheme, but when it collapsed, he set up on his own (i.e. took over the trade) with two hammers, two pliers, and one file brought from Uganda. (op. cit.)

It is not surprising that McGregor questioned the 'long-term developmental potential' of CD!

There has been no attempt to assess the direction refugees themselves take in their efforts to generate income using their own initiative. Instead of identifying such initiatives and assessing the problems faced and channelling aid into these areas, agencies tend to impose their own ideals on the community, supporting projects of their own choice, which are implemented according to rules laid down by the agency. This makes a mockery of the concept of community development. Instead of facilitating development as the community itself deems appropriate and instead of supporting indigenous efforts, the nature of desirable development of the community is determined by the aid donor - by definition a body not belonging to the community in question.

Agency policy towards income generation in the settlements instead of reducing dependency and helping refugees on the path to self-sufficiency, rather increases their dependency. This waste of resources will continue until projects are planned taking into account the economic structure of the district. A more efficient use of resources would be to direct funds into the development of a transport network; this would benefit both refugees and Sudanese alike. (ibid.)

Taxation

From the time refugees began entering the Sudan there was an urgent need to regularize the payment of customs, poll tax, business licences and market fees as they were applied to the Ugandans. Although there was an informal agreement that refugees should not pay taxes for the first two years, or until they had reached 'self-sufficiency', among the unassisted refugees interviewed it was found that 22.3 per cent had paid poll tax (867 or 22.7 per cent did not answer the question). There were no exemptions from market dues or business licences outside the settlements. The problem of importing vehicles has already been discussed in Chapter Four.

When McGregor began her research in Yei market in 1984, she found 'no written material...and much contradictory information was given by different members of the Rural Council' concerning their system of taxation in markets. The arrival in 1984 of a young woman interested in studying markets caused quite a stir in Yei. Security personnel stopped and questioned her 15 times during the first day of interviews! The Rural Council began holding meetings to which she was invited and showed great interest in the results of her research. But she found that:

Despite informal understanding that refugees should not be taxed, there was no interim period of tax exemption... Markets at present unlevied, remain so purely as a result of inefficient administration. The Rural Council was apparently unaware of the existence of many markets. Their figure of 12 markets is a gross underestimation... Markets situated within refugee settlements themselves are defined as illegal, although some such 'illegal' markets were being taxed. (ibid.)

Officially, tax collecters are paid £S75 per month, but she found in practice, once the tax book was full, they were paid 25 per cent of what they had collected. This worked out at about £S45 per month, thus there was an incentive to overcharge. Tax monies were not used to develop the market facilities building more stalls, public pit latrines, fencing and rubbish pits these improvements were supposed to be done by the traders on a self-help basis.

Considerable conflict had arisen over arbitrary taxation in rural markets. In some places only the Sudanese paid taxes, in others only the refugees, in yet others, everyone had to pay up. Not all tax collectors had enough education to keep accounts and assess the tax.

Understandably McGregor was reluctant to release her findings, fearing they would further such irregular practices. But the reaction to her report was quite the opposite to what she expected. Some months later, after a meeting, a circular was sent round, (with copies sent) to the commissioner for the province, the director of the regional Ministry of Regional Affairs and Administration, the resident magistrate, the executive officer of Yei Rural Council, the chief of police, all chiefs and sub-chiefs, and all settlement officers.[14] It laid down the ground rules for market taxes and business licences as they applied to refugees and informed everyone that until a decree was issued by the Regional Ministry of Regional Affairs and Administration, Juba, indicating otherwise, refugees who were living in settlements, are 'exempted from social service tax and other related taxes'. (No:WAC/Y/25 A.1 XR/47.A.1, 19 January 1985.) The notice required all traders to hold a licence, but if refugees only intended to sell within settlements, it would be issued free of charge. Refugees selling their produce in markets inside settlements were also exempted from market dues.

Rule-making in response to changing conditions and circumstances must be an on-going process. These new rules (or the regularising of old ones) obviously favour refugees in settlements to the disadvantage of the unassisted and give them an edge in their competition with Sudanese traders. Without identification cards, which would indicate their time of arrival in the Sudan, and with no means of assessing their economic status, these new rules are likely to have some important consequences for the self-settled. Certainly one may predict that markets within settlements will gain more prominence. Their registered populations may even grow.

There could be further implications of a far-reaching and more sinister type. There are signs, which greatly contradict the spirit of ICARA II (not to mention the OAU Charter), that UNHCR would prefer to limit its protection responsibility only to those refugees under the aid 'umbrella'. The arbitrary definition of those refugees living in Djiboutiville in 1983-4 as 'economic migrants' rather than refugees is a case in point. (Crisp 1984; Harrell-Bond 1985.) It is said that a deal has been struck with the Mexican government whereby only those people living in UNHCR-assisted settlements will be granted refugee status. We have seen, in Chapter Four, how the unassisted refugees, subjected to harassment and murder during the disturbances near Kaya in late 1984, were said to be outside the protective arm of UNHCR. Even when deposited in Goli transit, they were not assisted. In Port Sudan in 1984, only a fixed number of identity cards were issued although it was known that the numbers of refugees were far greater. As Freire (1970) put it, 'Once named, the world in turn reappears to the namers as a problem and requires of them a new naming.'

How were refugees surfing?

In 1984 the Oxford team carried out a livelihood study of a 10 per cent sample of households in four refugee settlements and interviewed 36 households near Panyume. Some of their findings concerning the further impoverishment of the families identified in 1983 as vulnerable have already been discussed in Chapter Six. All but one of the settlements they visited were on the list to be cut off from food aid in December 1984 and, as has been tediously repeated throughout this book, the WFP rations were not getting through once again at the height of the 1984 agricultural season.

They found that refugees in the three older settlements not only still suffered shortage of land, but were actually doing less cultivation than the previous year. Vegetable and groundnut production had been severely affected by drought. The most successful households

...had cleared the little land allocated and then sought further land from relatives and neighbours....about one in ten households...also negotiated privately with local Sudanese for small additional plots, normally only about an acre....These fields are apparently all (cultivated) on a share cropping basis - two fifths of the harvest to the patron was a common figure, but rarely were payments strictly agreed and other gifts of WFP food, tobacco and so on may also be requested. (Wilson 1985a.)

The Oxford team's full report discusses the relative success in obtaining land in terms of the indigenous socio-political structure (which varies widely throughout the district) and the success of refugees to be incorporated into that system. Their findings also support my observation that the intervention of the agency programme severely interferes with the development of the patron-client relations which facilitated that process. However, at Limbe the settlement 'chief' has been remarkably successful in beginning to overcome these problems and it was the view of the Oxford team that refugees in settlements are becoming 'wiser' about their position vis-a-vis locals in the face of the withdrawal of aid.

An important point which their report also confirmed was the willingness of refugees to cultivate if they could get control over land. In each of the households having an adult male they said they 'could manage and indeed required at least two more acres.' However, some added that 'only if food is provided to the settlement to relieve them from agricultural wage labour...will they be able to clear these fields.' The problem of losing land rights to locals has continued around the settlements, but this problem was not encountered in the self-settled areas in 1984.

TABLE 8.1: Settlement livelihood*

* from Wilson et al. 1985

Agency staff are often impatient with complaints that refugees have to travel great distances to cultivate land allocated to them. However, in 1984 the Oxford team found that it was not only the other constraints - lack of tools, seeds, the demands of domestic work - which caused agricultural failure; the problem of wild animals continued. 'Being far from the settlement in a strange land was often ...frightening, and this [fear] was confirmed...by the killing of a refugee woman by a lion near Mambe settlement.' (Wilson 1985a.)

Refugees' survival strategies include, as was demonstrated in Chapter Three, the deployment of members of a household group in both settlements and self-settled areas. As with my own research, the livelihood survey conducted by the Oxford team in the settlements did not take account of possible reciprocal relations between relatives beyond the settlement. The Oxford team did find however that, since 1983, refugees within settlements had begun to develop cooperative relationships which included share-cropping, land-sharing, work parties, and labour employment. Employed refugees were also paying other refugees to do leja-leja for them.

The Oxford team found that most of the households have diversified their approach to survival by working to earn income from several different sources. The results of the survey of three of the settlements are shown in Table 8.1 [15]

Leja-Leja continues to be as, or more, important than cultivation. At times the refugee demand for leja-leja becomes greater than the Sudanese ability to provide it. This was particularly marked at Katigiri which was surrounded by a small and relatively uncommercialised group of Pojulu speakers...who rely on hunting and gathering for a large part of their income. At the time of our visit to Katigiri a drought and WFP delivery failures had created a level of destitution whereby most of the population was dependent on eating leaves without any starch porridge. To obtain work required a 15 mile walk each way to the area of Wonduruba. Most of the refugees could not manage this and the atmosphere suggested that the settlement was about to disperse.[16]

While generally refugees work 'for different employers each time', one virtue of leja-leja which the Oxford team suggests, is the emergence of regular patronage relations. 'In Alero, one-fifth of those doing leja-leja told us that they were fed by their employer and seven per cent were lent a hoe.' (Wilson 1985a.) In the self-settled area studied, they found that leja-leja was becoming less 'exploitative' as refugees were becoming increasingly self-sufficient. (Wilson et a/. 1985.)

Activities which have been combined in Table 8.1 as 'crafts and trades' include some done mainly by women: making mugati, a small deep fried cake from flour, milk powder, and sometimes sugar (obviously relying for supplies on WFP rations), alcoholic drinks, pottery, and mat-making. Refugees also earned from such skilled trades as mending bicycles and shoes, and a number of children earn money by crocheting skull caps, especially popular among the Muslims. Both men and women were involved in petty trading:

One small boy brings paraffin from Yei to Alero market (about seven miles) earning £S5 (£1.50) per week; a female household-head brings cassava from Morobo to Alero market (about 30 miles) twice a week earning £S10 (£3), and another cuts and sells grass locally for building.

One clear observation about all these income-generating activities is that they greatly diversify the household economy. In the Alero sample, only 34 per cent did not have any cash income in addition to agriculture and leja-leja, and 40 per cent had one activity....At times multiple activities were performed by the same person...almost every conceivable economic niche has been exploited. Obtaining capital...was an obvious constraint and to overcome this the selling of aid...and WFP food has been particularly important. (ibid.)

What is most significant about their findings is that except for salaried employment, these income-generating activities were almost without exception organized and the capital raised (diverted from aid) by the refugees themselves. Only a negligible number reported earning income from aid-sponsored projects.

The provision of aid in goods is probably based on the assumption that the programme knows best what aid is needed. When aid is sold in this way, it is often suggested that therefore aid was not needed. On the contrary it would seem likely that aid in cash was what was needed, so that people could meet their needs as defined by them. (ibid.)

The Oxford team found that even during the time of their study, the withdrawal of food aid was having the effect of 'putting people out of business'.

We were told that demand had declined and that they had eventually had to 'eat' the little capital which they had raised with such a struggle. The much lower proportions of people found trading in the self-settled area supports the view that most of these activities ...can exist only because refugees in settlements are subsidized. Indeed much economic activity is really just a way of using otherwise unproductive time to provide a small income...many...[have] given up due to the poor returns. In Roronyo, for example, someone tried to take tomatoes the 15 miles to Yei on foot (along the roadway refugees had cleared themselves), but he 'got tired and sold them cheaply on the way'. Someone else tried to run a small store from this same distance, but found it too arduous to transport supplies. People were also found to have given up mat-making because of the difficulty in obtaining materials. (ibid.)

As Ken Wilson also points out in the discussion of patterns of refugee livelihood, it is a mistake to believe that their degree of involvement in the trading and service economy indicates financial success. It is the visibility of such activities which probably accounts for the misconception. In fact 'the involvement of Ugandans in petty trading and crafts in the district as a whole (whilst the indigenous Sudanese concentrate on agriculture), is probably caused as much by the marginalizing of refugees from agriculture as by their supposed entrepreneurial abilities.' (1985a, emphasis added.)

The Oxford team also conducted a nutritional survey in four settlements (836 children were measured), as well as at Panyume. As noted the latter survey included 270 refugee and 104 Sudanese children. Malnutrition among the refugees in Panyume was higher than in settlements, but in the settlements the rates had doubled since the March 1984 Medecins Sans Frontieres' survey which the Oxford team replicated. The increase in malnutrition was probably due both to the absence of food rations, and to the fact that the survey was conducted during the rains, the time of the greatest shortage. Detailed interviews were conducted with the parents or guardians of the malnourished children identified by the surveys.

Just over half the malnourished came from obviously 'vulnerable' households (that is where one or both parents was physically or mentally disabled, the household female-headed, the child an orphan without adequate support and such like). The others generally came from very poor but not totally destitute households where a variety of factors were identified including maternal lactational failure, serious diseases and, in some instances, parental neglect....The fact that malnutrition rates were higher in the self-settled population seems to reflect that...aid does somewhat alleviate the circumstances of the poorest. (Wilson 1985a.)

The data from one self-settled area is not sufficient to make general statements about the comparative well-being of self-settled refugees either vis-a-vis those in settlements or the Sudanese. However, the team believes that at least for Panyume, their findings 'exploded the myth that self-settled refugees were somehow better off than the Sudanese (they were actually markedly poorer).' (ibid.)

The data from Panyume also revealed how it is overly simplistic to conclude that self-settled refugees are either better off than those in settlements or that they are worse off, 'living in abject misery and somehow too ignorant to come to settlement'. (ibid.) In fact, their circumstances, as was found in the settlements, varied from household to household. However, the team concluded from all of these sources of data, that when aid is withdrawn, those refugees who are now living in assisted settlements could well be much poorer than those who have remained outside them unassisted. They go so far as to predict that the settlements will 'collapse'.

Dodging the issues

The idea that people will abandon settlements when the aid is withdrawn implies that a great deal of effort and expense may have been invested for little return. The Oxford team believes that the

...main reason for this failure [of settlements] to meet the programme s objectives is that the administration of the aid programme is locked into a set of concepts and manner of functioning which renders it...[unable] to identify and respond to the differing needs of the various categories of refugees. Lack of information and understanding concerning what the refugees were experiencing and the social and economic responses of individuals and groups under such stress, meant that it could not be predicted how providing aid would affect their livelihood. Furthermore, under intense time (and other) pressure, officials generally remained in the office and made only formal visits to the 'field'; thus they did not realise how unaware they were of the indigenous economic and political processes occurring and so failed to obtain advice from Sudanese and refugees, let alone devolve sufficient and appropriate authority. Perhaps the overwhelming sense that they were 'doing good' enabled them to dodge questions of their actual impact. The underlying basic assumptions of refugee programmes (and the aid business generally) mean that headquarters' attitudes and inherent agency structure often determine both the level and type of aid provided, and the form of relationship to exist between donor and recipient. This mitigates against true participation, since it tends to involve attempts to structure' the recipients so that aid can be imposed. (ibid. emphasis added.)

Even such limited information on the political consequences of the intervention of outsiders on this district, which already was bearing the burden of the sudden influx of thousands of people, reveals how very dangerous is the ignorance of the contradiction between the stated 'nonpolitical' objectives of humanitarian assistance and the actual political impact of their interventions. All societies under 'normal' conditions are characterised by tension, competition, and conflict. These are usually managed through intricate processes of the exercise of power, influence, and authority. (Adelman 1976.) The extent to which coercion, force, and violence were being exercised in Yei River District revealed how badly out of control the situation was. In a letter from the programme officer about this book, he urged me to remember sympathetically these terrible political constraints under which the humanitarians were operating. But to a very great extent both the failure to understand the political implications of interventions, was contributing to the very problems with which they had to contend. How Yei River District would have adjusted to the transforming impact of the population increase without the outsiders' help will never be known. One of the problems for most Africans is that they are rarely 'allowed' the opportunity to find their own political solutions.

More may be needed than conventional prescriptions

In 1979 Robert Chambers wrote a paper which attempted to examine why, in their studies of the failures of pastoral development schemes, social scientists had neglected the role of the administrator. He points out how powerful is the influence of the administrator on the type of interventions made, interventions 'which so frequently fail or lead to unintended results'. Administrators, he emphasises, are the ones who implement, or fail to implement programmes or policies, and when things go wrong, they blame the pastoralists 'for being ignorant'. The social scientists, he says, then busy themselves to prove just how 'rational' pastoralists are, and how their actions constitute an appropriate adaptation to a hostile environment. But, he points out, 'administrators' behaviour might also be rational, it might be a similarly "rational" adaptation to a different sort of hostile environment.' The 'physical and cognitive' alienation of administrators from the reality of the pastoralists causes them to be particularly vulnerable to belief systems composed largely of myths. The outcome is the co-existence of two belief systems about the same reality. His prescription is training for the administrators to help them overcome their 'anti-nomad' ideologies.

The problem with Chamber's prescription is that the 'hostile reality' to which the administrator has so ably adapted is not simply a myth which can be exploded by training. The ideological and physical alienation are a direct outcome of a development official's own position within a global structure of economic and political inequality.

In the years which have passed since the publication of the Brandt report there are fewer people who would argue against the school of thought which sees the underdevelopment of the poor countries as a dynamic structural process which has its roots 'in the exploitation of one class by another and one state by another'. (Clark 1984.)[17]

Nearly everyone understands how poor countries are further impoverished by the worsening terms of trade, the control of manufacturing by industrialised nations, the massive expenditure on armaments and increasing militarisation. It is becoming obvious even to casual observers that it is the concentration of control over resources (including even information)[18] which is depriving people who are in the greatest need, and which also leads to the necessity to tighten control on their liberty and self-expression.

Underdevelopment, in sum, is not simply a problem of a lack of certain material goods and services by certain people; rather it is a problem of structural imbalances in the world political and economic order. It is not a problem that can be overcome by simply providing people with the means to satisfy their immediate material requirements. Even in those cases where such material assistance succeeds in providing some respite, there is no guarantee that this will lead to an ongoing dynamic process of development while an overall distribution of power remains the same. (ibid.)

While development initiatives have their roots in the charitable concerns of people from industrialized countries, it is no secret that official aid is largely concerned with the economies of the donor countries, that strings are attached to its use, and that aid is used to exert pressure on the internal politics of beneficiary countries. Independent development organizations and humanitarians believe they 'cannot be accused of the same type of motivation; they are not generally linked to political vested interests and do not seek any economic return on their aid.' (ibid., but see Harrell-Bond 1985.) However, as (Clark points out, there are several features of these organizations which, as he puts it, require critical analysis:

1. Few have sufficient understanding of the process of underdevelopment or have any desire to combat the northern-based entities which contribute to this process;

2. Most confine their assistance to material, technical, and educational inputs and emphasise the role of community self-help in the belief that this is sufficient to promote a process of real development;

3. Few provide the political recognition and solidarity desperately required by genuinely popular third world movements and governments;

4. Nearly all are responding not solely to the plight of underprivileged and oppressed peoples but to a need by relatively privileged people...to donate money etc. to 'good causes In that people generally expect some sort of emotional feed-back...or require emotional contact from the outset...organizations publicise their work and establish direct sponsorship schemes in such a way that risks reinforcing stilted views about people in the third world and about the best ways of helping them;

5. As with all organisations, NGOs...develop bureaucratic vested interests with regard to jobs, decision-making roles etc. Few...manage to maintain the flexibility to radically transform their ways of operation or even to call them into question;

6. ...few...have been prepared to admit any substantive control within the organization [to]. ..the people they are endeavouring to assist - although such a transfer of responsibility is one of the main objectives at the project level. (1984:116-8.)

None of these points, however, need to be regarded as negative criticism if one believes that everyone has a right to become involved in tackling the problem of development, regardless of their expertise or awareness; or if one believes that people have a right to steer clear of political issues and remain neutral; that people are right to expect emotional gratification from their charitable involvements; and that it is natural to want to conserve one's own job, even where one accepts that others could do it more effectively; or that it is entirely logical to retain the decision-making power in the hands of the donor (or its representative, the fieldworker), rather than in those of the receiver society.

On the other hand, there is another belief system about the same reality. If one accepts that outside meddling in the affairs of 'third world' countries is a major reason for their under-development; that there are already too many unqualified people setting themselves up as development experts; that projects often build up unrealizable expectations; that political neutrality unless positive - effectively lends support to the status quo; that it allows privileged people to take comfort in their charity, rather than encouraging them to question that privilege; that nobody has the right to make a living from other people's underdevelopment; and if you believe that the use of money is best decided by the user rather than by the giver - then there is room for asking whether the other system of belief is perhaps the real obstacle to development, rather than being the motivating force for good that humanitarians like to believe.

Is 'no strings' better?

I have already referred to the recent publication by Turton and Turton (1984) in which the successful adaptation of a community of pastoralists to a famine situation has been described. They found that the Mursi had 'shown themselves to be both resilient and inventive in the way they have responded, in the absence of systematic outside intervention in their affairs, to the last ten years of drought and hunger.' In fact, the only help they received was the rather accidental distribution of some free food aid which was received at a collecting point by representatives of their starving community and transported by them back to their own people. The lessons which they draw may 'be fairly obvious', but the practical problem these researchers face is how to use their case study to influence relief agency policy. 'We have in mind both the practical problem of information gathering, and "ideological" resistance from the relief agencies themselves.' (ibid. emphasis added.)

In order to achieve by design what was, in this case achieved by accident, one would need information about local conditions which was detailed enough both to give a reliable 'early warning of need and to make a sensible decision about when to cease the emergency food distribution. Information of this sort is, of course, rarely, if ever available, and assuming that there are no insoluble logistical problems, there is likely to be a second obstacle, coming from within the relief agencies themselves, to the rapid organization of 'free relied'

As they say, there is wide recognition of the evils of famine camps but 'this very recognition seems to have led to a growing resistance to the concept of relief "with no strings attached".'

This is seen in the rush of agencies to get out of relief and into 'rehabilitation' and in attempts to link relief, when it is given, to development projects, usually through food-for-work programmes. In the case of the Mursi it can be categorically stated that a food-for-work programme would have been counter-productive. They do not need to be persuaded to do the work necessary to provide for themselves...a food-for-work programme would have produced precisely the situation it was intended to avoid.

The Turtons call the resistance to free relief ideological because it is 'at least partly, based on cultural prejudice: the belief that people such as the Mursi lack motivation and resourcefulness to work out new solutions to the problem of their own economic self- sufficiency.' They go on to call attention to the dangers of the use of the word, 'rehabilitation'. It is

...dangerous because it contains the implicit assumption that the people to be 'rehabilitated' can only be made to stand on their own feet with the help of outside direction. This is a dangerous assumption, if only because the literature on agricultural development is littered with examples of projects which did not achieve their objectives because of a failure to appreciate both the subtlety of local knowledge and expertise and the ability of people to adapt their indigenous social institutions to new circumstances. It is of course, convenient for the development worker to believe that the reason why people are hungry is that they are ignorant and technically unsophisticated, since this makes the task of proposing "solutions", based on supposed superior modern technology, that much easier. (ibid. emphasis added.)

But the problem is not simply imposing solutions based upon superior modern technology. Very few voluntary agencies or even government-sponsored development programmes are today promoting advanced technological development in the so-called third world. Quite the opposite, appropriate technology, informal education, preventative health - these are the buzz words today. Humanitarians may have never thought about how their enthusiasm for 'appropriate' technology for the poor countries of the world may be supporting those very interests they believe themselves to be undermining, the interests which resist and obstruct the transfer of technology to poor countries. Certainly Schumacher did not promote the idea that there were two sorts of 'appropriateness', one for the rich and one for the poor. As McRobie writes in a preface to the posthumous publication of a collection of Schumacher's lectures:

Taken as a whole Good Work rounds off and makes explicit Schumacher's case that the choice to technology is one of the most critical choices now confronting any country, rich or poor. The poor countries must secure technologies appropriate to their needs and resources - intermediate technologies - if the rural masses are to be given a chance to work themselves out of poverty; but the rich countries probably stand even more in need of a new technology, smaller, capital-saving, less rapacious in its demands on raw materials, and environmentally non-violent. The people of the poor countries must be helped to raise themselves to a decent standard of living. We ourselves must also work for a more modest, non-violent, sustainable life-style. That is surely the way toward greater equality between and within nations. (1980: x-xi.)

The micro-chip, for example, has had a revolutionary impact on the societies and economies of the rich countries of the world. Why can not poor countries have access to this (after all, very inexpensive) technology? Lack of a secure power supply may be one answer. Does anyone go on to ask why, in the 1980s, poor African countries still do not have access to secure power supplies? This is an especially relevant question for southern Sudan.

A hydro-electric project at Fula Rapids has been on the books for years It was even included as one of the submissions for funding to ICARA II. At present all of the southern region's electricity supply depends on diesel which is transported 1,800 kilometres from Mombasa, a three week one-way lorry trip. Sudan requested $7m to begin this project to supply the demand for electricity in Juba and on the east bank of the Nile. The report pointed out 'The Fula Rapids project would meet 100 per cent of the electricity demands of Eastern Equatoria at a full-stage development cost of only 21.8 per cent of the diesel-electric costs per kilowat hour, assuming a price of $0.70 per litre of diesel oil.' (para 848.)[19] The report goes on to point out that 'Low cost hydropower would permit industrial development in Equatoria, facilitate irrigation, allow hospitals and schools to be electrified and permit the establishment of elementary telecommunications in the Provinces.' (para 950.)

Development agencies have been working in southern Sudan since 1972. One cannot help asking how far the salaries and travel costs alone of all the employees who have come and gone would have contributed towards the supply of the capital costs for this project.[20] Moreover, even the application of intermediate technology could have long ago harnessed the vast amount of now wasted water power in Yei River District. Water power is not the only energy which is being wasted in Yei River District, and waste of energy is not limited to the district.

Energies

Barring any further cataclysm attracting media attention to southern Sudan by the time this book is published it is likely that most of the assistance programmes will have been withdrawn, the humanitarians will have moved on, and refugees will be working out their own salvation as best they can, without outsiders and without aid. After reading an earlier version of this data, one colleague wrote from Khartoum, 'Though this may really frighten you, the YRD programme is one of the best examples we have of all your recommendations and preferences, especially refugee participation and integration with local communities.' From what I observed in eastern Sudan, this comment is likely to be very true.

Although we have seen the failures of the emergency programme in great detail, we have also seen that while aid was not used in the way it was intended, refugees nevertheless made use of the assistance provided to survive. No doubt many more would have died without it, although we have insufficient data to test even that assumption. We have seen that in at least four settlements the malnutrition rates in 1984 were lower than among children living in the small community at Panyume. Compared to elsewhere in the Sudan, humanitarian agencies are likely to view the operation in southern Sudan as a success.

The very grave danger in writing a book about the failures of humanitarian relief agencies is that it will be taken as a ready-made excuse by those who support them to stop giving their money. Given the present situation in Africa where millions are threatened with death by starvation and where even the most careful predictions suggest that the worst is yet to come, such a reaction would sign the death warrant of untold millions. Africa needs more, not less assistance.

Monsters of concern

Were it not for the fact, that in the foreseeable future the media will continue to bombard the public of rich countries with hard images of human suffering, and that more and more humanitarian energy will necessarily be focused on Africa, it would not be so necessary to carry out such research or to report findings which are so disturbing.

In their study of the Mursi, the Turtons ponder the question of the relative value of aid to people who were victims of famine in south-western Ethiopia. They admit that 'Systematically distributed relief would certainly have saved many lives, especially, one must assume, those of young children.' (1984.) But, they go on to point out, if that aid had been distributed in emergency feeding stations which required people to congregate around them to receive their daily 'hand-outs', the Mursi would have been turned into 'permanent refugees in their own country'. Moreover, that kind of assistance would 'have saved lives at the cost of destroying a way of life - a complex mode of adaptation for which there exists no viable short-term alternatives.' (ibid.) For a very long time, outsiders have been 'helping' Africa destroy their old modes of adaptation. There is not too much evidence to nourish the belief that outside intervention has produced a positive synthesis of the old and the new which makes better use of the energies of both the helpers and the helped.

Even had it been the aim, which it was not, one book is not going to turn off the energy of those whom O'Neill calls the "monsters of concern." They can be called monsters because their doing good, their wanting to save, is done in the interests of experienc[ing] themselves as above or outside the lives of those for whom they care. Their efforts are infected with a kind of superfluity, with doubts concerning truth and reality that have no counterparts in the lives of those for whom they intend to help.' (1975:64.)[21] What sociology can do is to 'secularise' what O'Neill refers to as the essentially 'redemptive tasks of humanity'. For, as he goes on to say, caring is the very essence of our humanity: 'Care...is the domicile of our being together.' (ibid.: 64.) The fault lies with the ideology of compassion, the unconscious paternalism, superiority, and monopoly of moral virtue which is built into it.

The Mursi did receive assistance, the difference was how it was given. In 1979, and again in 1980, the Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (RRC) of the Ethiopian Government set up temporary distribution points on the east bank of the Mago River.

Once the food had arrived by lorry at the distribution point, it was divided into individual loads and given out to all comers, who then carried it back to their home settlements. This procedure was, presumably, adopted out of sheer necessity, there being insufficient staff and equipment available to set up elaborate distribution centres of the 'soup kitchen' variety, but its benefits were obvious (Turton and Turton 1984.)

The Turtons go on to list the benefits of this approach to assistance. First, the food reached the famine victims with maximum speed. Humanitarian agencies are always far too late. In a discussion of the process of famine, Ramgasami (1985) calls upon her own research and that of a number of other studies to show that the 'studies we have today are not of famine at all, but only its terminal phase'; instead accounts begin 'with the moment of state intervention.' She points out how the Famine Code of India (1893), as well as the contemporary 'Scarcity Manuals' used in her country, list among the premonitory signs of famine the 'unusual movement of herds and people', and their 'aimless wandering'. But these symptoms she demonstrates are the symptoms of the final phases of a famine. 'The state, as well as the do-gooders, the voluntary agencies, do not enter the arena until the process is resolved against the victims.' (emphases added.)

Fortunately for the Mursi, the RRC was prepared to respond in a manner which most humanitarians would regard as haphazard, providing food aid to 'all comers' who were the very ones still having sufficient energy to carry the food back to their home communities. Humanitarians are obsessed with concern over counting heads and bags of food to make sure none 'has fallen off the back of the lorry', i.e. fallen into some opportunistic hands.[22] This refusal to trust means that those who are most in need of food, unlike the Mursi, are forced to make the 'long and potentially fatal journey to distribution points.' (Turton and Turton 1984.) They, unlike the Mursi, are forced to remain away from home for long periods just to receive their daily 'handouts' from a feeding station. And, again unlike the Mursi who were allowed to remain at home to use their energies on essential subsistence activities, people at feeding stations are often required to divert their fading energies into food-for-work projects designed by outsiders to 'rehabilitate' them.

As the Turtons point out, had the Mursi been 'rehabilitated' by humanitarian agencies the process would have risked destroying 'precisely those qualities of resilience, technical sophistication, inventiveness and sheer human determination to survive that must be tapped, rather than ignored, if outside intervention in their affairs is to be anything but counter-productive.' Indeed, if humanitarians do not begin to understand that effective aid cannot be imposed, it may well be worse than none at all.[23]

Becoming a 'facilitator'[24]

Is there any role at all which outsiders, can play in refugee assistance or any other kind of 'development' enterprise which is anything but iatrogenic?[25] The quotation from O'Neill, which appears on the frontispiece of this book, points to one of the very great dangers of sociological work. This is that although it has hardly begun to fathom the depths of human injury, it will service ideologies which have come far too soon to conclusions. However sympathetic one might be with reactions of so many from poor countries who in their most vulnerable moments express the wish that all outsiders should simply go home (Erb and Kallab 1975), it would be unfortunate if this were the conclusion drawn from this study.

In March, 1984, at the symposium, Alternative Viewpoints, where many of the participants were African, there was no talk about there being no role for outsiders, or no need for aid. To the contrary, but the resolutions and recommendations of that meeting, which appear in Appendix I, call for quite a different approach. That they were passed by consensus by a group of refugees, government officials, and humanitarian workers reveals just how much can be accomplished by discourse. One might sum up the lesson of that meeting by saying there need to be more opportunities for outsiders to crawl out of their Mercedes and down off their pedestals to listen. (Chambers 1983; Moan 1984.) The appeal of such a reversal in approach to those who fund refugee assistance, will be how much further the money will go. Some of the ways money could be spent to better effect have been noted throughout the book. But more money is needed.

In presenting the findings of this research I opted for the case-study method because it seemed the best way to open a field which has heretofore not been exposed to the hard light of empirical scrutiny from an independent, participatory stance. Every chapter in this book, every topic which was treated (and the very many more which were left out, forgotten, or gone unnoticed to be discovered by the perceptive reader) cries out for 'further research'. The study of forced migration involves economic, social, political, psychological, ecological legal, and even technological issues of such theoretical importance that it is a wonder that scholars have neglected this field for so long. (Baker 1983 :vii.) A great deal of the existing literature on refugees is not based on research and many theoretical discussions rely only on official, in-house reports. Much of it is filled with jargon, terminology borrowed from policy-makers, but not reexamined. A first task is to clear these away. Some researchers have almost by chance, as in my own case, seen the relevance of the study of refugees to their other theoretical interests, or have included refugees because they happened to appear within the populations they were already researching. Others' fieldwork, limited by lack of funds, is all too brief to allow them to make the contribution to the field which is so urgently needed.[26] Excellent studies have been conducted by scholars who worked as agency consultants and so were unable to publish their findings. There are those who have begun to apply their research skills to this field of study and to test the power of theories derived from various disciplines, but there remain so many questions - conceptual, theoretical, and methodological - that the most appropriate reaction at the end of a research project is that of Portnoy's doctor, 'Now we may perhaps to begin.' (Roth 1969.)

While the work of the student of society is to 'instruct the world in the very thing [it] learned from the world', O'Neill goes on to caution us about our relationship to that world which we attempt to 'instruct'.

Sociological care is not paternalism. It does not righteously diminish the responsible growth and variety of opinion that it will surely meet. It is not parastic. Yet it is nurtured only in belonging to others. It seeks community without wanting to dominate the community. Sociological care is mutual; it remains active only in giving and being given life. Sociological care is not simpering. It is not exercised from empty need, or from loneliness. It is a musical response to a dance. Sociological care is not burdened. It does not work from obligation. Nor from guilt or any self-abasement. Wild sociology sings the world. Yet it always has a particular task, a local need, a definite work to do, not wasted in vain generality or empty intentions. Wild sociology never ceases to learn from what it believes it knows. (ibid. :71)

These 'beautitudes' might also be applied to the humanitarians' work.

Earlier in this chapter, I quoted one of my assistants who observed that refugees do not know who [or what] is the cause of their suffering. Refugees, he said, are in a confused situation. Like refugees, what we all need, researchers and humanitarians alike, is consciousness of our situation.

I do not choose to conclude this book with another list of prescriptions to be applied - the errors of imposing aid and the reversals necessary to alter the situation have already been too clearly articulated in the voices and painful experiences of the refugees - except to underline the fundamental prescription which is implied by the title of this book. Imposing aid can never be successful. And if this course is pursued further, humanitarians will only continue to contribute to the breakdown of societies which in turn will call for greater and more terrifying methods of controlling them.

I have argued in the introduction that it is the moral loading of issues which has prevented humanitarians from scrutinizing their work. The researcher's role is to 'secularise' that virtue, to expose the fallacies and wrong premises upon which it has been operating in relation to refugees and other victims of forced migrations.

Specific prescriptions, actions, can only be determined when humanitarians are convinced through the logic of morality of becoming facilitators, to use their resources, money, skills, influence, and energy, to facilitate those changes in the circumstances of the poor which the poor themselves have determined as the next best thing for them to do. In the final analysis, it is those whom we wish to help to whom we must be finally accountable. Researchers can be facilitators too, by lending their skills to the poor and powerless, to work out together just what may be the next best step. It was Andrew Pearse who first helped me to understand that this was a proper role for research. But none of this good work can be done in an atmosphere of distrust, it cannot be, as O'Neill puts it, 'a solo'. Our work cannot be properly alive in us unless it begins in the deepest trust towards others to understand, and to reciprocate the care which we intend.

___________________

[1] Taken from a comment made by one of my team at our last meeting together. His exact words: 'I think that UNHCR has a big task to tell the refugees what it is they are doing. Because if they give them what they have and the refugees do not know, do not understand their system, it is worse than none at all. So I think that the problem between the refugees and the agencies that assist them, is a case of understanding.' Another, speaking on the same topic, said, 'What I think the research did was to inform the refugees about their obligations to UNHCR ... what they could and could not expect. Refugees do not know who is the cause of their suffering. Refugees are in a confused situation. What they need is a consciousness about their situation.'

[2] The cost to start up a unit of 500 hives together with all the necessary auxiliary materials required was estimated by Muhoria and Associates, a private Kenyan company, to be $US14,285 and would pay for itself in less than two years. As this company reported in a letter to the Commissioner for Refugees, Khartoum, it had been doing research on the potential of the African wild bee 'as an instrument against desertification together with its other income-earning products' in Tanzania, Kenya, Sudan and Uganda. It observed that not only was bee-keeping a source of income, but that its pollination aspect would produce value over and above the income from its products. (30 December 1983). The International Bee Research Association, Buckinghamshire, UK, has recently reported that in Rumania, in 1977, it was found that 'the annual value of' honey yielded per hectare of robinia forest was half as great as that of timber yield produced. The indirect benefits of apiculture to fruit and seed production through pollination is often much greater than the value of honey produced. (The European Timber Trends and Prospects, No.IV (in press).)

[3] The government has thus far neglected to impose the rule, and NTC does not include tree planting in its programme for expanding tobacco.

[4] Doubtless such inputs had the effect of improving the diets of the Sudanese who cultivated the vegetables. Moreover, Sudanese who were interviewed by the Oxford team at Panyume reported that they began eating breakfasts because they had seen the Ugandans taking this early meal. Ugandans were also influencing the farming practices of the Sudanese through leja-leja. Ugandans plough deeper and often told me the Sudanese were lazy because they 'only scratched the surface of the soil. Defending the Sudanese, I explained that it was their pattern of shifting agriculture, of only using the most fertile areas, which allowed them to farm in this way. Digging deeper may not, in fact, be the best way to handle all the soils in the district, but many Sudanese are apparently now following this practice because it saves time weeding.

[5] I say 'fortunately' because in the course of ODA's study of their area, the Sudanese near Limuru had complained of the arrogance of the Ugandan clinic staff which discouraged many of them taking advantage of these new services.

[6] In theory, boreholes in settlements were supposed to be available for local use as well. This was quite unrealistic. Locals usually lived too far away to make use of them. If they lived near a settlement and tried to use one of the wells, they would find a long queue most hours of the day and night. Refugees viewed the wells as their own property.

[7] And indeed when a more detailed study was conducted at Panyume, evidence that locals were expanding acreage under cultivation emerged (Wilson in Wilson et al. 1985.)

[8] '...the refugees seized this opportunity to demand the transfer of the market back to a central location (using the argument that the disabled could not otherwise participate in trading).. . Tensions continue Refugees claim that locals move with knives in the market-place and that there have been unofficial arrests. (McGregor op. cit.)

[9] This may account for the few items owned by the households where Ayoub made complete inventories of all material possessions.

[10] Only further research could explain this phenomenon! However, the programme officer strongly opposed the sale of alcohol in settlements.

[11] That there was some specialization was evidenced by the fact that the whisky on sale at Kajo-Kaji was only available from the returnees' shops. It came from Uganda and obviously the returnees were more likely to be able to deal with the UNLA which was selling the commodity, than were refugees! Returnees maintained at least one brothel in this market, the women refugees.

[12] The programme officer 'found' some money in his own budget for CD and he and I experimented with a loan system as a way of stimulating income-generation. I was instructed not to mention the availability of the money, but to identify possible good credit risks. For example, one man who together with his brothers in Uganda had owned a transport company which plied the Arua-Kampala road asked me how he could get money for a bicycle so that he could start trading. I sent him to the programme officer who loaned him the necessary money. He signed a contract to repay within six months. Within two, he was able to pay back the loan. I sent many others. One was a Bunyoro living at Wudabi. He had managed a saw mill in Uganda and said that if he had some simple hand equipment, he could produce boards from the enormous quantities of wood near that settlement. Timber for building was always in short supply. A widow from Limbe asked for a loan to set up a tea shop on the Yei-Juba road.

[13] In 1982, when Goli carpenters wanted to begin production, ACROSS was reluctant to supply them with tools at that time, lest they abandon agriculture and set up business in Yei. By 1983 the head of this co-operative had managed to escape and find work in Juba. Field staff often resented refugees who they thought were unwilling to conform to the programme s expectation that all make their living primarily from agriculture. But such highly skilled people can make a more positive contribution to the economy through the use of their training. One of my assistants for example, an economist who could speak French, was not allowed to go to Juba to look for work. Later when I intervened and took him myself, a French company asked him why he had not come months earlier when they were recruiting. He was also offered a job teaching at a secondary school in Juba. However because relationships between this refugee and agency staff were so fraught, and because Ugandans thought he was a spy, his future in the Sudan was insecure. Eventually the Canadians resettled him. What is ironic is that he wanted to remain in Africa to study the economic impact of refugees on their hosts.

[14] The notice also included strong warnings to 'game scouts and youth associations' and chiefs were asked to warn their people that the 'practice of charging travellers both refugees and nationals will not be tolerated...' (ibid.)

[15] I do not include the results from Alero where all the sample was not interviewed, but it is interesting to note that far fewer, 39 per cent, earned income from leja leja and more, 11 per cent, hold salaried employment. This settlement was one of the newer ones, established in late 1983 and was close to Yei: 26 per cent were taking advantage of the Yei market to sell charcoal. The other settlements were farther away and lacked transport (and perhaps by this time, trees!). Alero residents had been allocated one acre of land: 63 per cent had cleared and planted it, 11 per cent had only cleared it, 11 per cent said they had 'started', and 16 per cent had not made significant attempts.

[16] See the description of Katirigi's earlier problems in 1983 on pages 383 and 386, of Appendix 11.

[17] Adrian Clark conducted a study for Euro-Action Accord (EAA), an independent development organization, on the question of Africanization of their staff. He included a discussion paper in his report which represents his personal views and not necessarily those of EAA. I have drawn heavily upon this paper. I thank EAA for permission to quote (and paraphrase) this internal document. That such discussions go on within agencies is a positive sign that many are prepared to question the premises from which they work. That they are not publicly debated reflects the financial insecurity which all voluntary agencies suffer. Approaches to aid will only change when there is also an independent-minded public prepared to support them.

[18] Humanitarians are usually more interested in literacy programmes than they are, for example, in teaching English or French. I was asked to address a group of students planning to go to 'do development' in the 'third world'. Some were very critical of those who respond to advertisements for English teachers, since only the elite will benefit'. One Ugandan whom I had invited along asked them how Africa could ever advance if it did not have access to the information available only in European languages.

[19] Recall that development agencies are almost the only source of diesel in the south. Sudan's foreign exchange crisis is so severe that normally it cannot afford to supply it

[20] Lachenmann and Otzen point out that there is no problem of funds for relief; in fact there is sometimes too much money available and that agencies try to hold over some of these funds for longer term needs. The failure to educate the public on the long-term needs of people in poor countries keeps agencies dependent on the Starving child' appeal, and makes it more difficult for the funds which clearly are available to be transferred to projects which have lasting value. These authors also criticize the authoritarian nature of aid programmes which nips 'self-help in the bud'. They refer to the process as the 'helper mak[ing] a vassal of the person he is trying to help.' (1981 :81.)

[21] I recall a recent meeting of church-based agencies on the problems of hunger. In a panel discussion concerning approaches to aid I was asked if I believed in an 'interventionist God or....' Since my theology failed me on the first part of the question I cannot remember the other type I might have believed in and I was too intimidated to remind the audience that the question would have little immediate relevance to the hungry they wanted to help either.

[22] Those who saw a recent BBC film concerning the relief operation in western Sudan may recall one aid worker using this phrase to describe the shortfall of one or two bags of grain between the time the lorry left Khartoum and arrived at a feeding station. The commentator felt obliged to tell the viewers that the missing food had actually turned up the following day.

[23] I Research such as that reported by the Turtons could actually be extended to test the question of whether imposed aid is worse than none at all. Although they assumed the Mursi suffered great loss of life, at least among the children, they did not test this assumption.

[24] American. from 'to facilitate'.

[25] '(Of disease) caused by process of medical examination or treatment'. The Concise Oxford Dictionary Seventh Edition (1982).

[26] One notable exception is the anthropological study of a locality in Athens-Piraeus where between 1922-24 Asia Minor Greeks were settled.(Hirschon 1976.) This case deserves attention as it presents an opportunity to examine sixty years of settlement experience, the effects of policy, and other long-term issues.