Introduction
The political crises in Africa which have led to the growing exodus of people from their homes have become increasingly intractable. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN office responsible for protecting and assisting refugees, at the beginning of the last decade there were less than one million African refugees. Depending on who is counting, the number is up to five million.(Greenfield 1984.) This alarming escalation of numbers began in earnest in 1978. The drought which was particularly severe in Ethiopia since 1982, has also severely affected other parts of the continent, has added yet another dimension to the problem of mass exodus. UNHCR publications often commend Africans' traditional hospitality towards refugees. Many African officials are cynical about such praise. They believe it has simply excused neglect of the problem they face. Most host countries are confronted with unparalleled economic crises on the domestic front and can ill afford the luxury of hospitality. They complain that although Africa hosts half of the world's refugees, the allocation of UNHCR's budget has never reflected this reality. (Rwelamira 1983.) From the point of view of UNHCR there are basically only three 'durable' solutions available for African refugees: voluntary repatriation back to their home country; resettlement in another country; or integration into the host society mainly by establishing them in agricultural settlements in their first country of asylum with the aim that refugees should become economically independent in the shortest possible time. There is little promise that any other African host is prepared to follow the precedent set by Tanzania which granted citizenship to a large segment of its refugee population. (Ayok Chol 1983a.) Resettlement in a third country as a durable solution for African refugees, in terms of the numbers affected, is insignificant. Even if they were to be accepted, there are very few refugees who, unless guaranteed employment, would opt to be relocated in yet another poor African country.Furthermore the mood of industrialised countries towards receiving African refugees from this continent is highly restrictive. The close of the period of anti-colonial wars saw UNHCR achieve a considerable success in repatriating refugees back to their countries of origin. After Algeria, refugees were returned to Guinea-Bisseau, Mozambique, Angola and Zimbabwe. But at the very time refugees were being repatriated back to Uganda following the overthrow of Idi Amin in 1979, many thousands more were spilling out over its borders. Except for the refugees from Namibia and South Africa, civil war continues to be the major cause of exodus for the growing numbers of refugees on this continent. Programmes for the rehabilitation of returnees have been funded for Ethiopia and Uganda; they have been severely criticised. (Crisp 1984; 1984a.) At present, repatriation under circumstances of strict voluntarism involves only a small number. This book is concerned with the third of these 'durable' solutions to the refugee problem in Africa: settlement in the host country. In particular it examines an emergency programme mounted in response to an influx of refugees from Uganda into southern Sudan. Accepting that most African refugees are likely to remain in their country of asylum for a protracted period of time, the objective of the aid programme is to help refugees become integrated and economically self-sufficient. The term 'self-sufficiency' has not been clearly defined, but for the donors of aid and international agencies which distribute it, it has implied the point when refugees have reached a state which permits the withdrawal of aid. For refugees to become economically independent, it is necessary that they be incorporated into the economic system of the locality in which they have settled. Thus assisting refugees represents a special case of a long-term development problem.
There is keen awareness of the failures of the settlement policy, but generally it is assumed that the fault lies not with the aid programme, but with the refugees themselves. Initially, my own research was based on a modification of the widely held hypothesis that refugees are to blame for the failures of the aid programme and for their continued economic dependence. The rural settlement policy itself was not questioned: at the outset I assumed that such a programme provided an ideal basis for taking positive advantage of the potential for social transformation which some believe displaced communities represent. Nor did I initially question the notion that refugees become negatively dependent as had been reported to me by experienced workers in the field. The stereotyped view that refugees everywhere are excessively and unreasonably demanding is too widely accepted for one not to be tempted to believe that it has some basis in fact. I did, however, suspect that a major reason for this psychological dependency might lie in the manner in which relief is given and the supplicatory role which the refugee is forced to assume in the initial period of an emergency. Establishing a rural settlement involves social engineering. My reading of the literature produced by agencies responsible for the policy suggested that the full implications of this reality had escaped attention. Although refugee assistance is concentrated on establishing rural agricultural settlements, few individuals employed by international agencies to administer their programmes have either relevant training or any experience in rural development. This fact has important implications for the implementation of aid programmes. I began this research with the assumption that if, throughout an emergency, allowance was made for the maximum participation of refugees in the organization and administration of their new communities, many of the problems associated with dependency could be mitigated. Participation has become a buzz word in discussions of rural development. Having conducted field work in West Africa since 1967, and having wearied of learning about failed development projects, I began to look for some success stories. Between 1979 and 1981, I visited three communities in Senegal where peasants had organized themselves for 'development'. Although each was affected in different ways, outside political forces - both national and international - were threatening their success. Ironically, often 'aid' was the tool used to de-stabilize the solidarity of these communities. (Adams 1979.) Then I was invited by OXFAM to write an up-date report on the Sahrawi refugees in Algeria. (Harrell-Bond 1981.) Algeria has permitted the Sahrawi complete autonomy in the areas where they have settled; there are no outsiders living or working in their camps. The success of this community in mobilising its own resources to cope with its problems despite its dependence on capital inputs from outside the camps, suggested that perhaps the 'dependency syndrome' observed among refugees elsewhere was the result of the way in which aid is managed by humanitarian agencies. The methodology which was adopted for this research was inspired not only by my experience, but by Andrew Pearse, to whom this book is dedicated. In a seminal paper (Pearse and Stiefel 1979) it was pointed out that what is really needed is research into anti- participatory ideologies. 'Although there are endless examples of directly repressive measures and acts against popular participation, it is the anti-participatory character of ideologies that provide the most persistent control as they mould attitudes and expectations of one group in relation to the others.' (ibid.) The attitudes of humanitarian aid workers towards refugees (and towards their African hosts) are a case in point. This book is not only, in these authors' words, a 'critique of discriminatory ideologies', it is an attempt to show how expensive, ineffective, and wasteful anti-participatory structures are . Aid which is imposed from outside not only usurps the roles of the host, suppresses the creative energy of the refugee who could have been helped to help himself, but provokes responses which are hostile and unproductive for all concerned. (Fanon 1964;1967.)[1] Participation is about empowering the poor to take control of their own lives, about being able to involve themselves effectively in decision-making. At a minimum this requires providing the means to acquire access to information and providing opportunities for people to examine both the external forces which oppress them as well as their own values and beliefs which condition their responses. Only then can the poor begin to devise strategies to combat the forces which oppress them. Our research plan tried to allow refugees to participate both in analysing their situation and in conveying their views about the aid programme. In each settlement I attempted to explain to refugees how aid is organised, who is involved, and what are their rights and duties in relation to the assistance programme. At the end of the survey my team and I reported to settlers what we had learned about their community. Some evidence of the results of this approach may be seen in Appendix V, 'A Report to the Inter-agency Meeting at Kala Settlement', which was written and presented by our research team. Originally I had intended to restrict the study to those refugees within the aid system - that is, to the rural settlement programme. Although unassisted or self-settled refugees are known to be in the majority in most host countries in Africa, and are thought by some to be the more vulnerable (Chambers 1979), the initial decision to ignore them in this research project was related to the objectives of using the data to advise on the policy of agencies and donors. UNHCR directs most material and human resources towards the settlement programme. Thus, I believed improving present approaches to be a high priority for all concerned with the impact of aid. Moreover, the scale of an investigation by one researcher must necessarily be limited. Focusing on the settlement programme appeared to be the most cost-effective approach. Although I knew that only a fraction of refugees in the Sudan were recipients of aid, I believed that all refugees should have access to an assistance programme. The narrowness of my view is demonstrated by the fact that in the list of those who I believed might find the research useful (UNHCR, voluntary agencies, and donor governments), I had not even included host governments ! Perhaps one reason I left them out of the list was that I also believed there is a difference between how government officials and humanitarian agency field staff view the poor. Chambers observed that there are only a handful of researchers who have access to and understanding of the rich and detailed system of knowledge of the poor, but these do not influence development while government organisations and staff who are engaged in development are ignorant of and conditioned to despise that knowledge. (1983:84, emphasis added.) I believed that, by contrast, humanitarians would be eager to close this information gap and that participatory anthropological research ought to be the best means to do this. Therefore the main objective of the study was to assess the quality of the delivery of that aid in the settlements. In short I began this research with many of the same assumptions held by the humanitarian community concerning the best approach to refugee assistance. In particular, I assumed that more aid was needed from outside the country. Although questioning the approach of outsiders, I did not question the need for them to supplement the work of the host government. I believed that humanitarians were honest people of good will. I shared the assumption that aid should be distributed equally among refugees, and that the assistance programme should insist on economic democracy. While having studied and written about the politics of development aid, I too believed humanitarian assistance was a different case. It was the discovery that there are refugees who do not accept the view that rural settlements are the best solution for them, and that most of them have actively rejected aid - in some cases to the point of starvation - that first directed my attention to the self-settled refugees. I learned that refugees are not passive recipients of relief dispensed by assistance programmes that are designed in offices far from the borders they cross. Rather, refugees are an active and dynamic factor in the outcome of all interventions. I concluded it was necessary to widen the scope of the study. There is an urgent need for independent research into the effectiveness of aid programmes. 'In-house' studies of refugee programmes do not question the basic assumptions which lie behind their own policies. Although I shared many of the assumptions of the humanitarian workers, the advantage I had was that as an anthropologist, I was trained to use field research to question them. Moreover, some early experiences during my field-work precipitated the process of questioning the assumptions with which I had arrived in the Sudan. I had not sought permission from the Sudan government to conduct research before I arrived. Originally it had been agreed that I would spend only a short time in this country to become familiar with UNHCR's manner of working, and then move on to Somalia for fieldwork. UNHCR had issued me with an official UN travel certificate and had guaranteed me access to the field. A friend at the Ford Foundation in Khartoum arranged my entry visa. Although more or less formally there on UNHCR business, I nevertheless on arrival went first to the office of the Commissioner for Refugees (COMREF).[2] I was already acquainted with the outgoing commissioner. Discussions with the staff, particularly with the assistant commissioner for refugees, Ahmed Karadawi, helped to put into a wider perspective a great deal of what had already begun to puzzle me in my reading of the documents and in interviews with humanitarian officials in London and Geneva. I then travelled with the new commissioner on a tour of settlements in the east. At each camp, the refugee committee was called and, after introductions, they proceeded to list their complaints and demands. On one occasion when the delegation was too exhausted to continue, I went alone with a Sudanese official to another settlement. I was chatting with a few refugees about changes in family law practices now that they were living in the Sudan. The official asked the settlement committee to join us, and they proceeded to list the deficiencies of the programme. Irritated with this break in an interesting conversation, I asked why they were telling me all this: I had nothing to do with the aid programme. I went on to tell them about the 'good' Sahrawi refugees whom I found extremely reluctant to complain. The committee members retorted angrily, informing me that they did not like their role any more than I did, but what else (other than recite their woes), were they supposed to do when a European visited their camp? Outsiders carry their own expectations of refugees' behaviour into such dramaturgical events, so it is not surprising that refugees play the role expected of them. As one Ugandan explained to me, even the very term 'refugee' is imbued with meaning, assigning a particular role to individuals who decide (or are forced) to accept assistance.
The perceptions of their role held both by refugees and by outsiders, impose serious methodological problems on the researchers. It would be only logical if refugees withheld information in an interview which might jeopardise their material existence. Disparities between empirical data collected in the interviews compared with that available from the agencies had to be constantly examined for their implications. For example, when UNHCR was sure that every refugee had been issued a blanket, and we found 13 people using only one, it was necessary to look further than simply dismissing the respondents as dishonest. These were the sorts of discrepancies which alerted us to the need for a much broader approach. Our investigations into the causes of such small discrepancies also began to indicate that there were alternatives to the official explanations of the situation. We began to see that from the refugees' point of view, the 'aid umbrella' looked very different; in this case it offered very little protection from the elements. Later in our research, we came to see the importance of the missing blankets more clearly and to understand how one large family could come to own only a single blanket. We found that even blankets played an unexpected role in both the economic and the cultural life of refugees, a role that will be described in detail later in the book.
Although the objective of assistance to refugees is said to be their integration into the host community, the term 'integration' has not been satisfactorily defined. For the aid community, those refugees who are not assisted, have not only settled 'spontaneously', but have also achieved 'spontaneous integration', and are thus not in need of assistance. Their success is attributed to the belief that as colonial boundaries intersected established communities, people who fled across a border are welcomed by their kith and kin with whom they share common origins, language and culture. These are important but not sufficient conditions for integration. The most important one is the availability of resources. There has been little research to test such assumptions, but both Chambers (1979) and Hansen (1979) demonstrate that few of such self-settled refugees have achieved economic independence and the burden they impose on already scarce resources mitigates against their security. A very simple definition of integration would be of a situation in which host and refugee communities are able to co-exist, sharing the same resources - both economic and social - with no greater mutual conflict than that which exists within the host community. Such a definition will not stand up to detailed analysis. For a start, the level of conflict may well have increased within the host country as a result of pressure of greater numbers. Moreover, co-existence does not necessarily imply equality of access to resources and even the absence of measurable conflict would not necessarily preclude the exploitation of one group, or segments of it, by another. For example, some highly skilled Ugandans got employment by pretending to be Sudanese, but lacking nationality certificates, they were kept on a very low salary and enjoyed none of the normal protection accorded employees. Despite such reservations, there may be some advantages in adhering to this simple definition. The present lack of agreement on the meaning of the term 'integration' and its general association with 'assimilation' and 'permanence', have created a resistance on the part of both host countries and refugees to any policy which appears to be promoting the absorption of the refugee community into the country of asylum. The fact that is overlooked in these debates is that only a minority of African refugees are presently objects of aid programmes. Most are surviving by dint of their capacity to co-exist with locals under extremely difficult conditions. The data from southern Sudan lends support to the view that were assistance programmes to be directed towards resolving the economic and social deprivations which result from dramatic demographic changes without distinguishing the recipients, then economic, and perhaps even some social 'integration' (and thus the protection of the refugees) could be better achieved. As we shall see, the perception of those refugees under the aid 'umbrella' as privileged led to resentment and an escalation of tension between them and their hosts. Moreover, such an approach would ensure from the outset that aid budgets would have a lasting impact on the host's economy rather than disappearing into the 'black hole' of relief.
There are several arguments for the policy of concentrating assistance to refugees in Africa on the creation of planned agricultural settlements. To attract money, refugees must be visible. It is difficult to count the numbers of self-settled refugees, and even if they could be identified, the policies of most refugee agencies are too inflexible to allow them to devise a programme which would assist a target population which is 'mixed up' with the local community. Given the nature of international aid, host governments have found it impossible to convince donor governments to spend monies earmarked for refugee assistance on expanding the economic and social infrastructure which would cope with such dramatic demographic changes.[3] Distinguishing between victims of mass distress migrations has always been for the convenience of donors, since the immediate physical needs of those who flee across international boundaries are the same as for the internally displaced. In the Sudan this has been thrown into sharp relief by the Sudanese drought victims who have moved from the north and the west in search of food. A separate ad hoc committee was set up to deal with their needs and among other donors, the European Economic Community (EEC) sent a team to devise a long term solution for these involuntary migrants. The plan for Kordafan and Darfur, at least at its earliest stage of formulation (March 1985), was to place them in settlements. However, the leader of the EEC team of experts was very concerned. He knew that there were some 200,000 famine victims congregated in feeding centres in Darfur and Kordafan, but he also knew the numbers of starving were much greater. Once he had his settlements laid out, his problem was going to be how to find the others.[4] Another argument for moving refugees into settlements is the need for security. The most serious protection needs are found among those who have settled themselves around borders and are at risk of attack by the armies of their country of origin. If a host government properly secures its borders against such attacks, it risks military confrontation. As will be discussed in Chapters One and Four, incursions by the Ugandan government's army (UNLA) into the Sudan was the major cause of insecurity for refugees. Sudan's desire to maintain good diplomatic relations with Uganda led them to turn a blind eye on most occasions, even though many Sudanese were also among the victims of these attacks. The possibility that refugees may use their country of asylum as a base for guerilla warfare is the major argument for insisting that refugees are moved away from borders. The OAU Convention specifies that refugees should be located at a 'reasonable' distance from borders, but this distance has been variously interpreted. There are differences of opinion as to whether the settlement policy encourages political organisations among refugees to flourish or whether it serves to neutralise this threat through their total depoliticalization. There is also a general impression that the presence of a refugee population in a host country gives rise to a higher rate of crime. Given the extreme poverty of both guests and hosts, and the competition which arises over the use of increasingly scarce resources, it would not be surprising if this could be demonstrated. The policies of some host governments suggest they may believe that the control of refugees viz a vie law and order, is facilitated by keeping them in settlements. (Ayok 1983.) In Sudan, for example, over the years there have been periodic roundups and removals of refugees from Khartoum to settlements. At the time such expulsions appear to have been an attempt to reduce the number of unemployed and destitute from the streets of the city. However, the round-up which took place before the OAU meeting was clearly for political reasons. Urban refugees are the more politically articulate and those in Khartoum could well have embarrassed their host government by demonstrations. Humanitarian agencies assume that refugees always require relief and that material assistance must come from outside the host country. Moreover, there is a general assumption that left to their own devices, refugees would remain perpetually dependent on relief; outsiders are therefore needed to get the refugees to be self-supporting. The best means of doing this, it is assumed, is to put them into planned settlements in which they can be managed. The importance placed on this mode of assisting refugees is demonstrated by the high proportion of the UNHCR budget for Africa which is spent on settlements. In 1982 it was 58 per cent. (Rwelamira 1983.) There are three stages to the settlement programme. First refugees are given relief aid and transported to camps, to inhabit houses built for them or which they are expected to build for themselves. During the second stage they are provided with land, tools, and seeds, and primary education is organized. During this period refugees are expected to be motivated to work and to get on their own feet quickly, by being told that there will be a gradual reduction in their food rations after the first harvest. In the third stage, aid is withdrawn, on the grounds that refugees should by then be 'self-sufficient' and 'integrated' into the local community. Among the international agencies, there is a general assumption that as most African refugees are from rural areas, they are therefore experienced farmers. This is also the rationale for the policy of concentrating outside assistance, wherever possible, on the establishment of planned agricultural settlements. However, policy makers appreciate the need for the diversification of settlement economies and great effort and finance have been invested in repeated skills inventories and surveys aimed to identify viable income generating projects (e.g. ILO 1982). However, efforts to provide refugees with an alternative or supplementary means of earning a living have achieved very uneven and unsatisfactory results. Given the aim that settlements should bring refugees to a state of self-sufficiency through agriculture, the results have often been disappointing. In fact, seldom has it been possible to withdraw aid. Moreover, when aid has been withdrawn, the refugees' standard of living has sometimes fallen, necessitating the resumption of a relief programme. According to Clark and Stein (1984:6) only thirteen out of 86 settlements in Africa have ever achieved 'durable self- sufficiency'. The responsibility for the failure of the settlement policy has been laid at the feet of the refugees themselves. Representatives of the international humanitarian community usually arrive on the scene of an emergency influx of refugees some time after it has begun. The refugees they encounter are often in extremely poor physical condition. It is necessary to provide food, shelter, water, and medical services, and to concentrate effort on saving lives. During this period it is believed that refugees adopt attitudes and behaviour which impede their progress towards self-sufficiency. These negative responses - usually referred to as the 'dependency syndrome' - are thought to develop when refugees are the objects of relief. The prevalent theory suggests that by the time it is possible to consider longer-term solutions, dependent behaviour has already become entrenched. Among relief organizations, a kind of working hypothesis has developed: the more you give, the more dependent people become. In order to counteract this attitude, various forms of external pressure have been placed on refugees in settlements with a view to encouraging them to take on more responsibility for themselves. Such 'pressures' range from paying 'incentives' to refugees who have built their own houses or sanitary facilities, to the threatened or actual withdrawal of food rations.
One assumption which is shared by both host governments and the international humanitarian agencies is that refugees constitute a problem, a burden, rather than an economic opportunity. Outsiders view African refugees as helpless; as needing outsiders to plan for them and to take care of them. This assumption is the cornerstone of nearly all appeals for funds. Agencies vary in the degree of dignity with which they transmit images of refugees, but all rely on a public which will respond to media portrayal of extreme human suffering and starvation. Observing a collection of UNHCR posters, Martin Barber, Director of the British Refugee Council, commented on the persistent 'psychological reaction to refugees as people for whom "we must do something"'. The posters depicted all the refugees in attitudes of submission or helplessness. 'They were waiting for something to happen. They were holding out their hands. The photographer was standing up and they were sitting down.' While some agencies are becoming quite concerned about the public becoming rapidly satiated with the 'starving child appeal' and funds drying up, the nature of the contemporary refugee problem suggests that this form of marketing of refugees will continue. The packaging of refugees has altered dramatically since the post-Second World War days. Following the war the 'free world' found itself encumbered with a refugee population of an estimated nine million. One document which proposed how they should be assisted welcomed their flight as confirmation of the tyranny of the East. To neglect them would endanger liberal democracy. So, it argued, in the struggle to maintain democratic life in the face of the more 'disciplined solidarity and far-reaching plans of the Kremlin', there was 'no choice but to secure decent conditions of life for the millions of expellees, or face the full consequences of their hostility and its deadly exploitation by the Kremlin.'[5] In this document appeals for assisting these refugees were based not only on immediate political self-interest or the protection of democracy from communism, but on the unique potential for economic growth and the opportunity for 'population integration' afforded by the uprooted. Congested Europe and under-populated and underdeveloped overseas democracies both would benefit. The general lines of co-operation would be fittingly inspired by the principles distinguishing the European Recovery Programme: self-help, mutual help, and American backing where advisable. Indeed, this would be, in terms of human beings, a complement to the economic reciprocal aid of OECD. ... the West would consciously stand for an integration of democratic co- operation in the population field. If the West begins to accomplish this further miracle, it will strengthen hope and confidence among free citizens, and will create them among the vast ranks of the Dispossessed and Desperate - the Refugees. These post-war refugees in Europe were both anti-communist and white. The latter was important, as it was believed that once the receiving countries (Australia, New Zealand, North and South America) were fully convinced of the potential of refugees to fuel their economies (and, in the case of the United States, to provide the 2.5 million civilian labour force required by defence related industries), the 'reception countries overseas will clamour for white population.' Racial bias is further demonstrated in the expression of regret that 'the Union of South Africa with its dangerously small white population is actually calling a halt to immigration'. Today, however, most refugees are not white. They originate from, and are hosted by some of the poorest countries in the world. Even if the racial factor does not bias immigration policy, those countries which opened their doors in the 1950s today suffer relatively depressed economies and high unemployment rates. And there are fewer cases where it is possible to give clear-cut explanations for refugee flows in terms of the 'communist threat'. Furthermore, in some cases, refugee organisations are avowedly 'socialist' and, in the view of donor governments, represent a political danger. What else is left besides human misery and helplessness upon which to base appeals for funds? The image of the helpless refugee, desperately in need, reinforces the view that outsiders are needed to help them. At the international symposium, Assistance to Refugees: Alternative Viewpoints held in Oxford, March 1984 (Harrell-Bond and Karadawi 1984), one refugee related her experience with an aid worker.
Employment practices reflect the imagery of helplessness. In southern Sudan the medical programme was, up to December 1984, run by a European nurse. The refugee medical doctor, who earlier had single-handedly organised a medical programme for the civilians trapped inside Uganda, was allowed only limited responsibility. Two of his Ugandan colleagues who applied to work in the programme were told that their services were not required. Both were employed elsewhere in Africa, one with the World Health Organization. Among the refugees in the south is a former principal of an agricultural college. He was unemployed but the agencies drafted in a number of inexperienced and less- qualified personnel from the US and Europe to run the agricultural programme for refugees. The advertisement for one position of agricultural advisor illustrates the point. The advertisement asked for applicants who would be able to teach Ugandan farmers how to grow sorghum, sweet potatoes, and cassava, whereas the most serious problem the refugees faced was lack of hoes and seeds. Unable to recruit from overseas in time, one agency in the south did employ a professional agriculturalist from within the refugee community as its agricultural co-ordinator. Although holding a degree from Makerere University and formerly responsible for an entire district in Uganda, he was not treated like a professional. He was not entrusted with information concerning the limits of the budget - vital information required for planning. For the first year he was not provided with a typewriter or typist. He was supplied with a motorbike, an extremely dangerous mode of travel; only expatriates were allowed access to this agency's landrovers.
As well as assumptions about the helplessness of refugees, within the humanitarian community there is also the implicit assumption that host government institutions are too weak, and that their personnel are insufficiently trained to manage a refugee assistance programme. It follows from this assumption that outside managers are essential. It also follows from this assumption that host governments lack the ability to contribute to the aid programmes developed by outside agencies for refugees. Unlike the development field where today projects must be negotiated between governments and the foreign 'experts', refugee agencies who devise assistance programmes expect the host government to approve their plans without question. The assumption that host governments lack the capacity to cope with refugee management underlies the funding policies of donor governments and UNHCR. But there is another, contradictory, view that also influences the judgements of many field workers: this is that host governments are not weak or incompetent. On the contrary, they are seen to be remarkably efficient, their main business being to oppress and exploit the poor within their own societies. Thus, for two quite different and mutually exclusive reasons, humanitarians come to view themselves as the best advocates for refugees. (Karadawi 1982.) Whether viewed as incompetent or sinister, government bureaucracy is perceived as an obstacle to the free exercise of charity. For many outside 'experts', contacts with local officials are limited to those instances when a signature is required on a document or when some crisis arises which forces them to turn to local officials for help. As a result, relations between agency staff and host government officials are characterised by mutual distrust, defensiveness, and antagonism. As Karadawi (1982) observed, the relationship between the aid- giving community and the aid-receiving government is 'like an alliance between two parties who agree on goals but eye each other with suspicion'. In the resulting cloud of distrust, 'Their constitituencies are forgotten; the local host and refugees' perception of asylum are hardly taken notice of or involved in decision making.' (ibid.) The system for channelling relief funds supports views that outsiders hold of themselves and of their host government. Very few donor governments will agree to give money unilaterally to a host government. Most funds are directed through UNHCR or NGOs. As normally UNHCR is not an implementing agency, it is the practice for it to contract a voluntary agency to carry out specific projects for which UNHCR supplies the funds. Government offices which are established to take responsibility for refugees are themselves sometimes funded through the UNHCR budget. In the case of the Sudan, many Sudanese are employed in the office of the Commissioner for Refugees (COMREF). They now receive higher salaries than they would in another government office, their wages being 'topped ups through UNHCR support. Thus programmes are designed and implemented in terms of the adage, 'He who pays the piper, calls the tune.' There is another, usually unspoken, assumption that African officials are essentially corruptable, and this assumption influences agency employment practices. During an emergency, whatever their background, almost any white face which arrives on the scene has the chance of a job. One expatriate, for example, who had no appropriate training, was responsible at times even for recruiting medical staff. Since the employing agency did not consult with the Ugandans, who could have scrutinised and evaluated qualifications, many errors were made. The assumption of local corruption leads also to inordinate attention being given to the question of the accountability for government spending. In Sudan, officials from COMREF believe that sometimes visits are made to their private homes to see if there is any evidence that they have been pocketing assistance funds.[6] It is worth noting that no system has yet been devised to ensure that either consultants or agency staff are themselves accountable for the impact of the programmes they design, be it to their own constituencies, to their host governments or to the refugees they purport to assist.[7] In the development field, not only are projects negotiated between governments, but foreign 'experts' are usually required to work with their local counterparts - usually in the latter's office. Moreover, whether or not they exercise it, governments have the right to inspect the credentials of development experts before they arrive. In contrast, relief agencies are not subject to such standards and there are, unfortunately, too few examples where consultative relations have been established with local officials. There is a tendency to avoid any control over dispensing charity and, wherever possible, to 'evade any responsibility to a government bureaucracy. In Sudan, when there was an attempt by COMREF to have a say - to mitigate competition between agencies, to redress the imbalance between wasteful duplication of services in some areas to the neglect of others, or to require some standards of competency of agency personnel - the office was likely to be accused of being "militaristic"'. (Karadawi 1982.)
There is another prevalent misconception about who is bearing the greater financial burden for refugee support. International humanitarians are usually convinced that outside aid covers the greater portion of the costs, but if one ever assessed the value of the land refugees used, one would be likely to find it far exceeds outside donations. Furthermore, most refugees are not assisted and the hosts are sharing their already fragile social services with them. [8] Host government officials in Africa are caught between their genuine concern for the refugees and their wish to honour international agreements to provide asylum, and the increasingly hostile grassroots response from their own impoverished people in refugee-affected areas. In March 1984 the then Sudanese Minister of Interior described the deteriorating relations between local people and refugees in eastern Sudan.
The need for funds to maintain levels of assistance for the needy within their borders and the manner in which refugee programmes are funded has encouraged host governments to try to attract funds with the threat to close their borders and/or force existing populations of refugees out.[9] Instead of recognizing that host countries make the largest contribution to refugee support and are the least able to do so, the humanitarian community implicitly assumes and they (as well as governments which produce refugees) often explicitly express the view that host governments are mercenaries, capitalizing on their refugee guests. As one agency worker put it: 'Let's face it. Sudan can't close her border to refugees ... If she did, she will be shutting out millions of dollars of foreign aid. That is the real name of the game.' (Karadawi 1982.) Disputes over 'the real name of the game' have serious implications for the design and implementation of aid programmes. The near total breakdown in relations between the government and the international agency community in Somalia had its origin in a similar assumption about motivations. Failing to recognise that most of its refugees did not live in assisted settlements, some described the Somali government's attempt to use food aid for its expanded population, in which refugees were indistinguishable from locals, as 'diversion' and 'corruption'. (Mark Malloch-Brown, Alternative Viewpoints 1984.) Journalists are not infrequently fed such allegations by political attaches from the country of origin of refugees. It is easier to repeat such stories than leave the comfortable city and conduct serious investigative journalism. Humanitarian organisations have assumed the role of the 'conscience of the world'. Working as they do in some of the poorest outreaches of the globe, they bring the problems of the suffering to national and international attention. There has been a proliferation of humanitarian agencies since the Second World War, especially over the last two decades. A vast system of patronage has developed within the humanitarian community. (Lissner 1977.) Some of the larger NGOs have promoted the development of smaller, more specialised agencies which they fund through their own budgets. In Africa, indigenous church-based organisations and NGOs are dependent for nearly all their funds on larger international consortiums. Appeals for refugee assistance after the Second World War were overtly political. When, however, the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees was established, its work was defined as being entirely non-political. Nevertheless, political considerations continued to be important in determining the response to a refugee crisis. In 1956-7, when Hungarians fled into Western Europe, although responsibility for organizing and funding the relief operation fell to a great extent upon churches and voluntary agencies, the policies of the cold war still influenced their reception and support. The need to depoliticise refugee assistance may perhaps be the reason why governments originally turned to churches and voluntary agencies whose raison d'etre is humanitarianism. The general assumption of their political neutrality has, no doubt, served to reduce tensions between neighbouring states who have sent or received refugees. This may even be the reason why some donor governments have resisted extending their mandate to include development projects for refugees. This could imply political commitment to the exiled groups by donors who wished to maintain the myth that humanitarianism could be separated from politics. The constituencies of churches and secular NGOs can be a force for political dissent within most liberal democracies and at times they have lobbied against the foreign policy of their home governments. (Lissner 1977.) But the freedom of church groups and voluntary agencies to oppose US policy abroad has been directly challenged by recent developments in Washington. The US government has threatened to withdraw the tax-exempt status of organizations that engage in political advocacy. (Nichols 1984.) In Britain, voluntary agencies are constrained by the Charity Commissioners' declaration 'that the elimination of social, economic, political or other injustices' is outside the permitted scope of 'legal charitable endeavour'.[10] (Diplomats from refugee-producing countries have been known to write to charities which support refugees from Eritrea or Tigrey, etc., reminding them of the provisions of the Charity Act). In fact, since the passing of the US Mutual Defence Assistance Control Act in 1951, and the discussions of the Nathan Report in Britain the following year, both the US and British governments have taken the view that the proper role of state-assisted humanitarian agencies is to be complementary to their foreign policy. (Lissner 1977:97-119) Threats and warnings are only one way in which humanitarian agencies are persuaded to tow foreign policy lines. The growing dependence on government funding has had an even greater effect on discouraging dissent and neutralizing a potential adversary relationship into one of partnership. (Kline 1984.) It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for a humanitarian agency that receives substantial amounts of government money to act as an advocate for an oppressed group whose interests contradict those of either donors or hosts. Political considerations are the hinterland to policy concerning aid to refugees. The danger of the assumption that it is possible to separate politics from humanitarianism is that it prevents an examination of the effects of local, national, and international politics on refugee policy. Ironically, refugees are always more secure if their host has openly antagonistic relations with their country of origin. The 1983 agreement to exchange refugees between Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, following- the revival of warm relationships between the former members of the East African Community, is just one graphic example. Despite the diplomatic rhetoric about humanitarian assistance to refugees not constituting an unfriendly political act, refugees are nearly always the pawns in relations between states. It is an open secret that Afghan refugees are allowed, some say even supplied with, arms, while still under the 'aid umbrella'. Over the years, the offices of the Eritrean independence movements have been closed or allowed to operate freely, depending on the prevailing political climate between the Ethiopian and the Sudan governments. The relationship between organizations claiming to speak for the Oromo and the Somali government is more complex. (Greenfield 1980.) By very definition, refugees represent the eye of many a political storm. Liberal democracies tolerate political diversity and NGOs often illustrate this diversity by the places they select to work in and the people they choose to assist. Refugee communities are themselves factionalized. The first groups of refugees entering Sudan after World War Two from the Ethiopian side included landowners and religious leaders closely associated with the former regime of the emperor. Two British-based agencies have managed to confine their assistance to these conservative groups. The history of refugees in this area is a long one. Some agencies take pride that their political neutrality is demonstrated by the fact that they are able to work on both sides of a border. In truth, within such agencies there are very hot debates as to whether it is right to give legitimacy to whichever regime is thought to be the more oppressive. There was a sharp divergence of views between agencies over the repatriation programme for refugees from Djibouti back to Ethiopia. (Harrell-Bond 1985.) More recently, some international agencies have come in for attack from others for assisting those who have been relocated from the drought and war-stricken Tigrey to Asosa in the south of Ethiopia. The numbers who have escaped into the Sudan support the allegation that the resettlement is not altogether voluntary.
Underlying all such explicit and implicit assumptions concerning the role of humanitarian agencies in assistance programmes for refugees in Africa is the fundamental belief that material aid in and of itself has the power to move populations. Aid, it is believed, can attract people from point a to point b and back again to point a. (Sadruddin Aga Khan 1981.) Humanitarians thus face a dilemma. To prevent mass starvation, aid is obviously needed. Yet to provide assistance risks the danger that yet more people will be attracted across borders. A delicate balance must be struck. Aid should thus be evenly distributed on a per capita basis and assistance should not be so generous that refugees seem better off than their hosts. In practice, the measure of this level seems to be that of the very poorest members of the host society. Too much assistance - and refugees will be encouraged to settle down in the host country. Too little assistance - and the humanitarian community gets a bad name. When repatriation is deemed to be in the political interest of either the country of origin, the host, or the donor governments (who wish to decrease or terminate financial obligations), aid is gradually reduced or cut off and inducements are handed out on the other side of the border. On arrival on 15 July 1984 in Arua, some returnees were issued with a blanket, a panga, a plastic bucket, a basin and a mug. In Djibouti, although refugees were also given 'economic incentives' to return, very few were willing to move. One agency worker thought that the reluctance of so many to repatriate may have been because 'those who returned to Ethiopia had high expectations of the services that would be provided for them ... any resulting feeling of disappointment could be filtering back to those still remaining in Djibouti'. (Lock 1984.) The control of this powerful tool of manipulation has been delegated by donor governments to humanitarian agencies. The questions asked by agencies are: how much, what kind of aid, where, who, and when. What is never questioned is who should make these decisions. The result of the failure to ask this question leads to misallocation of scarce resources, misapplication of aid. If aid were to come from inside the host country, or if management responsibilities were shared with hosts and refugees, the monopoly held by outsiders would be broken. The power struggle between those who give aid and those who receive It is not unlike that portrayed in the book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. (Kesey 1973.) Sheldon Gellar describes this as the 'Ratched-McMurphy model'; with agencies which control development funds taking Nurse Ratched's role.
Those who talk back, like the martyr McMurphy, are likely to incur the wrath of Nurse Ratched, who feels obliged to domesticate or destroy him in order to re- establish her unquestioned authority and regain control of the ward. Standing as they do at this epicentre of political and economic power, like Nurse Ratched, the daily experiences of agency personnel in the field continually confirm and reinforce their views, of themselves, of the helplessness of refugees, of the incapacity of local institutions and officials, and of the function of the distribution of aid. Their isolation and alienation from the local reality shields them from evidence which would contradict their assumptions. (Chambers 1983.) If it is difficult to lure Welsh coalminers with economic incentives to leave their villages for employment in other parts of Britain, how much less likely is it that the meagre rations of World Food Programme, plastic dinnerware, a hoe and a panga [11] would have caused hundreds and thousands of Africans to flee their ancestral homelands and to seek refuge in the Sudan.[12] Like so many other assumptions which remain unexamined, the assumption that refugees are in some sense created by the bounty of aid programmes proves to be an illusion. Taken alone, any one of the assumptions that I have mentioned may not be particularly serious. But taken together, they add up to a view of the refugee world which is distorted. What we are discussing are assumptions which are never (or rarely) explicitly articulated, but which may be seen to be parts of a collective view of refugees and the role of humanitarian organisations in assisting them. Not every person involved in humanitarian work shares these assumptions and many will hotly deny being guilty of believing in any of which have been described. The problem is that all outsiders are part of a society which believes that ours is the most highly evolved, that our values are superior, and that our technical knowledge is the most efficient. [13] Even those who are the most liberal and open to different ways of behaving are, under the stress of a refugee situation, likely to fall back on such assumptions. I noted earlier in the chapter, in the discussion of social engineering (page 2), that the failures of the settlement policy are evident and are widely known, but the cause of the failure is considered to lie with the refugees themselves. However my early experiences in the field forced me to look elsewhere for the cause of failure. One reason why it is so difficult for policy makers to see that the problem may lie elsewhere than with the refugees, is that their assumptions about the nature of the people and the dynamics of the society in which they are working are quite wrong. One is always limited in what one can see by one's beliefs. Since I am arguing that the participation approach is the best way of learning, it is important to consider the methods I used in more detail.
Appendix II contains a description of how the study was presented to the refugees, their responses to the research, and the questionnaires used. Other details of methods applied and problems encountered are described at relevant points throughout the book. Briefly, the research was participatory, action- oriented, and consultative. It went beyond participant observation or applied research, where typically the researcher analyses a current programme and advises the planners. Instead, the study involved members of the community concerned in determining the type of data needed and how it could be obtained. I employed a team of researchers and together we were consciously acting as agents of social change by reporting our findings to the refugees and discussing the implications with them. The report relies heavily on case material and individual statements which illustrate general problems. Refugees were encouraged to help to assess the assistance programme (and themselves) in a number of ways. For example, early in the study I wrote and circulated an essay on some of the current explanations of why programmes fail to bring refugees to a level of economic independence. I asked refugees to reply to these 'charges'. I sponsored an essay contest with some suggested titles aimed at stimulating more reflection on these issues. In each settlement, after concluding the survey, my team and I had a discussion with refugees about what we had learned. The approach was to drop pretences and recognise that all research is influenced by personal values, and to attempt to make these explicit at every step, including project formulation, data collection, and the interpretation of results. (Oakley 1981; Laslett and Rapoport 1975.) The advantage of the participatory method of research is the range of experiences it affords of the dynamic of relationships and interconnections between locals and outsiders. Because of the extreme shortage of staff in Yei in 1982,I was asked to assist the UNHCR programme officer in a wide range of activities. These included helping to select sites for settlements. This task put me in contact with local hosts who sometimes welcomed the refugees, and sometimes expressed resentment towards them. I conducted a census of one settlement for UNHCR and was responsible at times for distributing food. This, and the many other meetings in settlements which I attended (alone or with the programme officer), exposed me to the refugees' perceptions of their experience of asylum, their attitudes towards each other, the locals, and towards the aid programme. For example, I watched a dramatic reversal in the attitudes of refugees when they were moved to a settlement from a selfsettled area. I had met them earlier when they depended entirely on themselves, and was able to observe at first hand the behaviour change from independence to dependency. Living in one settlement in 1982 I was able to get a glimpse of relationships between refugees and the NGOs. Refugees had been told to organise cooperatives which would then be supplied with inputs for income- generation. It was not enough to organise the people who had particular skills; refugees were required to design a project which demonstrated its economic viability. A group of tailors and I tried (unsuccessfully) to assess the market for clothing among the settlers (most of whom had no money), the capital costs, the running costs (labour, raw materials, and transport), and to predict the profit margin, in order to satisfy the NGO of their 'worthiness' for investment. It was while living in this settlement that I first discovered that some refugees believed that I was a spy. The Ugandan refugees were always suspicious of new faces, believing (probably correctly at times) that the Ugandan government regularly sent spies among them. Prior to my arrival in the Sudan, a Swedish nurse, employed by the Sudan Council of Churches (SCC), had visited opposition forces at Midigo, inside Uganda. The SCC dismissed her upon her return to Juba, and she left the country. When, coincidentally, shortly after her visit, the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA) overran the guerrilla base, some refugees were convinced she had passed information to the UNLA, thus accounting for the attack and for suffering the failure of her 'promise' to get medicines to the thousands of civilians who were trapped in this area. Throughout my research, I frequently met refugees who were present at the meeting at Midigo, Uganda, and who were convinced I was the nurse they had met there. The fear that the research was a guise to supply the 'Obote' government with information, always had to be faced in the settlements, but in the self- settled areas suspicions were even greater. Members of the team of assistants were similarly distrusted. After the research was over, the suspicions of some were exacerbated by the false reports of Sudanese, formerly part of the 'Amin' regime, who were drivers for the UNHCR repatriation mission in late September. An economist on my team, a Rwandese, was said to have been seen in a military uniform at a roadblock in Uganda. In fact, he was in my company in Juba at the time. The UNHCR compound was always filled with people with individual problems. I interviewed them for the programme officer and this led me to appreciate the fallacy of the policy of equity. Not all refugees have the same needs. There was no budget for these individual cases and over the weeks I found I had given out fantastic amounts of my own money; eventually I had to adopt the policy of not carrying any money when dealing with such cases. For example, one day a refugee hobbled to the office and lay on a hard bench outside the door, groaning in agony. One hand clutched his belly, the other held out a note from the hospital doctor which informed the office that the patient required emergency surgery for a hernia, but there was no fuel to sterilize the instruments. Could the UNHCR kindly supply the refugee with money to go to the market to buy charcoal and kerosene? Having no relatives around, presumably the refugee was expected to have staggered to the market and then back to the hospital before he collapsed on the table for his surgery. I paid and the Sudanese project manager, present with a vehicle, transported him. The man survived, but again had to return to ask me for money for the special diet the doctor prescribed. In another instance I arranged for the burial of a child who died outside the office. This threw me into contact with the local Protestant clergyman who, early in the morning, still in his pyjamas, responded to my appeal to organize the digging of the grave without cost. (The UNHCR had apparently no budget to cover such expenditures.) Refugees in the hospital were dependent on relatives to feed them. Not only were there no facilities for families to live at the hospital, but food rations were only distributed in the settlements. I met with the Catholic priests who agreed to distribute food to refugees stranded in Yei. When violence broke out among refugees, twice in 1982 involving murders, I travelled with the commissioner of the police who, having no fuel, was dependent on an UNHCR vehicle to move to the scene of the crime. In order to be able to estimate the numbers of refugees likely to enter Sudan and needing assistance, I spent time along the border interviewing refugees, Sudanese soldiers and, at times, those who were on leave from fighting against government forces inside Uganda. Opposition fighters were based inside Uganda, but many had their families either self-settled or in the assisted settlements. In 1982 they followed a rota system which allowed men to come into the Sudan to cultivate for a few weeks. From them I was introduced to the complexities of the Ugandan civil war and was led to explore the various factions within the refugee community. Later, most of them abandoned the battle, to live as refugees themselves. Visits to Kenya and these walks along the border which separated the Sudan, Zaire, Uganda, alerted me to the important commercial links between the three neighbouring states. Coffee originating in Uganda was brought into Sudan via a private road built by a Zairois businessman which passed through the Kaya military base. The advantage to traders was the lower amounts of 'duty' collected by the military compared to those charged by the official customs post at Baze, a few miles north. At the UNHCR office there was a dearth of information at all levels and collecting it for the programme officer fitted my research requirements as well. For example, when refugees began hurling accusations of sorcery at one another accompanied by violence and killings, it was necessary to find out the Sudanese legislation concerning this matter. In 1983, I accompanied a repatriation mission into Arua, Uganda, and was able to investigate the conditions of Ugandans in rural areas near this city. There it was also possible to interview individuals who had repatriated on foot, without the assistance of UNHCR, and to seek their opinion on the wisdom of a general return of refugees to Uganda. I attended meetings that UNHCR organized to co-ordinate the aid programme and I was able to observe what Chambers (1983 :29) has described as the 'Gulfs of incomprehension, even hostility and dislike, [which] exist between disciplines, professions and departments, and between headquarters and the field.' I observed at first hand what he has also noted, that such attitudes separate foreigners and nationals, 'with their distinct life style, access and resources'. And I experienced the results of the 'less clear-cut but more general and enduring cleavage. This is the divide among rural development outsiders, between those who analyse and those who act, between academics and practitioners which Chambers (1983 :29) also pointed out. The research had adopted a participatory model which aimed to encompass all the actors who were part of the assistance programme - at the official level where UNHCR, NGOs, and Sudan officials interacted and at the grassroots level where religious, ethnic and social groups interacted - and to understand the interactions and interconnections between the various groups. But as the research progressed, an important gap in the range of participants became apparent - local Sudanese had not been included from the outset. When I recognized this problem, I began inviting local chiefs and their people to meet refugees and to discuss their common problems, but it was too late to apply this generally. An impediment to involving Sudanese in such discussions, which had developed by 1983, was a growing hostility among local people towards refugees in settlements. Refugees were seen to be recipients of international aid in which local people had no share. This hostility manifested itself in an increase in security problems for refugees, and I regret that I did not use my research as a possible means of encouraging greater dialogue between refugees and their hosts. The question of tensions between hosts and refugees, and between outsiders and their hosts at all levels, will be taken up at several points throughout this book. It is fundamental to the recommendation that assistance to refugee-affected areas should be determined on the basis of demographic changes and perceived needs, rather than focusing on one group within a community which is itself already impoverished. To continue this kind of selective approach to aiding the poor only creates ill-feelings. As one Sudanese official put it, 'Everything UNHCR does for refugees has the effect of putting us against each other.' So closely was I identified with the aid programme that I, too, was accused - at least by two Sudanese - of 'causing trouble between refugees and the locals.' Recognising the acute need for some statistical data to evaluate the programme, when I returned in 1983 I employed a team of assistants. Their involvement in the research extended the participatory method of data collection; through them I was able to glimpse yet another dimension of refugee relationships at both official and grassroots levels.
Anthropology has been under-valued and under-utilized. The power of its methods to produce data to illuminate contemporary issues, however, speaks for itself. As Robert Chambers observed: 'We have moved a long way in the research approach from participant observation to participant organization. Purists may throw up their hands in horror and point to the danger of distortion and propaganda. But in the next decade those outsiders who have the courage and vision for such reversals, and who communicate their experience widely to others, will be at one cutting edge of rural research' (1983 :73.) The problem is how to communicate what I learned and how to represent fairly so many perspectives. In a situation which involved so many conflicting parties and interests I risk offending the feelings of many individuals who saw themselves as doing good. I have great sympathy for them because, as I reveal in Chapter Two, I also thought along the same lines. But the stakes are too high: the other half is dying. Over the next two decades greater amounts of assistance than ever before are going to be required from the rich countries to help the poor in Africa. More and more humanitarian aid workers are going to be propelled into the field to help the victims of natural and man-made disasters. In the interests of those upon whom this aid will either be imposed or bestowed, my reporting must be honest; after all my greatest accountability must be to them. If refugees are not to be placed in double jeopardy, if they are not to become victims of aid as well as victims of disasters, our moral complacency must be punctured. None of them can afford the luxury of our vain posturing. At the same time, and however serious were my efforts to explore a social process from the insiders' point of view, I was always a spectator and as such I was limited by my own categories of thought in what I could see. The picture can never be totally complete. I was, and I remain, an outsider. Chambers also reminds us all that there is 'no complete escape from the way outsiders project their ideologies and values into analysis and prescriptions, but he recommends two antidotes.
Whether or not in the long run, the assistance programme in Yei River District has left people worse off or not is impossible to judge, but no-one could argue that it was not paternalistic. It must be noted that the UNHCR Handbook (1982-3) argues for an awareness of the need to involve and consult refugees in planning, and against a rigid policy of assistance. It recommends sensitivity to the traditions, customs, and even to the tastes of the refugees. It sets standards for the quality and delivery of food and medical services which cannot be faulted. Why were these standards not upheld? Nearly everyone involved in refugee assistance is too painfully aware of its shortcomings: aid is always too late, it is always insufficient to meet the need, and over and over the same mistakes are made. Yet programmes continue to be mounted which are based on the assumptions that led to failure in the past. These are that aid must come from outside, and that outsiders must manage it; that host governments lack organisational capacity, and refugees are too helpless to take responsibility for themselves. Why do these assumptions persist despite all the contrary evidence? It should be recalled that refugees are assisted by people who regard their task first and foremost as humanitarian. Humanitarian assistance is governed by compassion and compassion has its own mode of reasoning. It is the confusion between feeling and thought which causes distortions. Technical assistance which is the aim of development programmes can be evaluated, but compassion is a moral virtue which cannot be measured. It is the moral loading of humanitarian assistance which denies the need for review and which prevents scrutiny. It is not simply that compassion overshadows logic and fact, although it often appears to do so, but rather that the assumptions that lie behind compassion are often based upon false premises. Western notions of compassion tend to be inherently ethnocentric, paternalistic, and non-professional. Many humanitarian aid programmes fail for precisely these reasons; because the logic of compassion is believed to be morally right, it is the reality which must be wrong and which must be bent to conform to a compassionate template. Discussion of aid programmes conducted under the banner of humanitarianism concentrates therefore not on reasons for failures, but on competing claims to moral rectitude. The struggle for moral supremacy can be fierce indeed. Given the unspoken view of their mission, humanitarians ask individuals and governments, out of charity, to give funds to allow them to bind up wounds, comfort the weak, save lives. Compassion expects everyone to agree on the method. Since they are guided by a moral virtue, compassion, any obstacle in the path of carrying out humanitarian objectives must be immoral. And, since the objective is to do good, it is inconceivable that recipients will fail to be grateful.[l4] Outsiders, as Chambers has observed, need imagination to envisage the real and ramifying effects of their actions, they need to think about the causal chain which flows from them. He notes that social science researchers could help by tracing through 'such centre-outwards linkages in the human detail of case studies'. (1983:197). I believe, with Chambers (1983), that the most valid method of presenting such research is through the case study method. This book aims to provide at least a partial description of the personal details of the links in the process of imposing aid. Scholars who read through the following account of the emergency assistance programme for refugees in southern Sudan will see the relevance of theories which have been developed in several related fields. This is particularly the case for studies of involuntary migration and my intellectual debt to a great number of studies which are not cited in this descriptive account will be obvious. Some of these are discussed in Hansen and Oliver-Smith (1982). There is also a body of literature on resettlement schemes resulting from the construction of dams, following natural disasters, and those imposed as part of agricultural schemes. The basic lesson which emerges from all these scholarly studies is that while human societies everywhere are able to adapt, and that migration and resettlement may be one method, the imposition of these solutions, denying as it does fundamental human rights, create more problems than they solve. ____________________ [1] Dependent people cannot usually afford to express their true feelings towards their beneficiaries, nor are the latter accustomed to listening to their views. The majority of the participants at the International Symposium, Assistance to Refugees: Alternative Viewpoints' (Harrell-Bond and Karadawi 1984), held in Oxford were either representatives of African host governments or refugees from the continent. One journalist took me aside the first day asking what was going on. He had never been at a meeting where people were so angry. Aid officials were also apparently shocked at the fury being directed towards them. But after three days of 'catharsis', participants were working together to produce the resolutions and recommendations which appear in Appendix 1. [2] Most outsiders assume UNHCR has complete authority over refugees, and tend to ignore government offices. Local officials resent this and it probably accounts for the difficulties some have in getting those documents which UNHCR cannot issue. [3] In Tanzania a formula has been worked out. If a village has 200 refugee families, some assistance towards supporting the infrastructure of that community is provided. (Dr Benson Nindi. personal communication.) [4] I asked why he wanted to find them. After all, their invisibility meant that they were part of some indigenous social unit anti why did he not simply help everyone who was needy wherever they were ' I also pointed out another danger: Ethiopia is already criticised tor its movements of peasants to settlements in the south. How would he avoid forcing Sudanese into his Settlements? Once so much money had been invested, both the EEC and the government would halve a vested interest in peopling them. [5] The terminology and quotations in this and the following paragraph are taken from a document entitled, Proposal for a new era of emigration', from the files of Clark M. Clifford, Papers of Harry S. Truman, The Harry S. Truman Library I am grateful to Robert Rice 111 who supplied this and other material concerning this period. Some of this discussion appears in Harrell-Bond (1985). [6] Not all share the assumption that white people are Naturally' honest. According to one driver, they are less likely to steal because of their high visibility in Africa. One night in Yei after a settlement foreman had been found guilty of selling used clothing, I asked the driver how he would protect the store. He said, 'Give the key to a white man. He can't sell anything in the market. ' [7] This is also true of academics who act as consultants in development work. Being employed as a consultant brings status among one's peers (and usually extra income). But, unlike the reviews of publications which may affect one's career, reports written for development projects are not subjected to similar professional judgement. Normally they are 'classified' and usually unsigned. [8] A first and very interesting attempt has been made to document the hidden costs to the Sudan of hosting refugees. (Osman and Kurssany 1984.) [9] The example of Thailand is often cited by Sudanese officials. Else Guardian 24 December 1984 reports a recent example of the use of this threat Here the Sudanese commissioner has added his weight to the argument that international humanitarians should find a way to get food behind the battle lines in Tigrey and Eritrea to prevent a greater influx. [10] See an interview with Michael Harris, The Guardian, 5 October, 1984. [11] A panga or machete is a broad heavy knife used in agriculture. [12] Representatives of the Relief Society of Tigrey told me that during the recent exodus from the famine, many Tigreyans had to be persuaded to go to the Sudan. [13] I recently discussed the problems of our implicit racist values with a group of university students about to embark on voluntary humanitarian work in the (so-called) third world I was arguing in favour or allowing people to set their own priorities and against field-workers deciding in advance what is best for those they assist. But,' one young woman interjected, 'even when you give a bicycle to a child, you first teach him how to use it.' Everyone, including the young woman, sat in silence as I quietly reminded them we were not talking about children. [14] At the Oxford symposium participants were served a 'simulated' lunch. That is, they were given the opportunity to taste the ingredients in the World Food Programme's food basket for refugees - beans, rice, oil, and milk. While eating this food, one refugee explained to his companion at the table that they were eating not one meal, but a whole day's ration at one time and, moreover, as he noted, refugees in settlements seldom see all four items at any one time. The response? 'If you refugees do not appreciate what we are doing for you, we should quit.'
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