The Inhumanity of Humanitarian Aid: Gender and Violence in a Kenyan Refugee Camp

Elizabeth Wirtz, Purdue University

Abstract

Humanitarian action constitutes the primary response to refugee crises. Through an in-depth exploration of the lived experiences of refugee women, this dissertation seeks to illuminate the consequences of humanitarian action and challenges relevant actors to critically rethink approaches to problems facing refugees. By examining humanitarian interventions through the lens of those who are positioned as humanitarian subjects—refugees, I show how structural violence is embedded within humanitarian projects and the social fields of the refugee camp. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya that began in 2008, I first explore how humanitarian interventions and refugee policy shape the everyday lives of refugees. I trace the history of international refugee policy to illuminate the state of refugee law today. I discuss the history and rationale behind Kenyan refugee policy, especially encampment policies, as well as how these policies impact the political economy of Kakuma. Because world governments insist on restricting immigration of refugees and humanitarian relief budgets are limited, humanitarian commodities like aid, asylum, and resettlement are scarce resources in high demand. Aid agencies are tasked with determining who is truly ‘deserving’ of these scarce resources. This dissertation explores how the scrutiny involved in delivering humanitarian aid (particularly as it relates to resettlement—as the scarcest and most highly prized aid resource) permeates the humanitarian aid system in Kakuma. In particular, I outline how humanitarian interventions impact refugee women who have experienced sexual and gender based violence, specifically intimate partner abuse and sexual violence, in the camp. First, I discuss how the refugee resettlement process shapes women’s reactions to intimate partner abuse and influences their decisions about if, when, and how to leave an abusive partner. Their decisions are compounded by structural barriers exhibited by overburdened, highly scrutinizing, and inconsistent bureaucratic processes plagued with corruption and manipulation. I found that many refugee women who experience intimate partner abuse are forced to decide between two undesirable outcomes: to leave an abuser and prolong confinement in the camp, or to remain with an abuser in the hope of quickly being resettled to a third country. I examine the ways in which refugee women maneuver kinship relationships and navigate diverse legal systems in reaction to these constraints. I show that the refugee resettlement system binds individual refugees into case files, and in the process, subverts women’s autonomy and ignores their suffering. Within this complex bureaucratic system, women’s abuse is reinforced and their bodies are bound to spaces of violence. Next, I examine humanitarian responses to sexual violence in Kakuma, in particular the way aid and law enforcement employees’ beliefs about sexual violence influence the quality of services provided. I show that a culture of disbelief and patterns of victim-blaming give rise to techniques of scrutiny that are used to analyze claims for special protection and assistance to vulnerable groups. In the case of sexual assault claims, this process is dehumanizing and can often lead to case rejections and thus inaction. Narratives of negative interactions between victims of sexual assault and humanitarian workers are shared among refugee women and deter women from reporting abuse and seeking help from humanitarian organizations. I demonstrate how the humanitarian and legal systems in place to manage refugees can become perpetrators of a ‘second or social rape’ against refugee women. Just like women who experience IPA, women who experience sexual violence are doubly victimized, first by their abusers/assaulters, and then by a humanitarian system obsessed with determining legitimacy and deservingness. Finally, I reexamine humanitarian concepts of ‘vulnerability’, which shape aid programs and the targeted recipients. Humanitarian organizations use the term ‘particularly vulnerable persons’ to identify groups of people in need of additional or specialized assistance. Aid organizations conceptualize vulnerability as based in membership within a pre-set category, such as gender, age, ability, sexuality, ethnicity, etc. I argue for an expanded definition of vulnerability within refugee populations, i.e., vulnerability rooted in the inability to successfully obtain aid from humanitarian agencies, which I term humanitarian-driven vulnerability. Because humanitarian aid is often necessary to survive and thrive as a refugee, the inability to access and receive aid makes refugees extremely vulnerable. The humanitarian system, that itself requires vulnerable bodies to justify its existence, becomes a cause of vulnerability for those same bodies.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Blackwood, Purdue University.

Subject Area

African Studies|Cultural anthropology|Gender studies

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