The subjects and objects of relief
how local aid workers articulate and remake what it means to be humanitarian
“Allah will help the one who gives. If I have even one Birr [Ethiopian currency], I try to give it to him, the man in need. Most people do this. It is our culture. We share what we have. That is who we are. We are the same people, all of us, the same blood. And when you do this, the people will know. People would see if I was doing this work at [the relief NGO] professionally and not living it. What you are doing and saying in the community, it has to be what you are. If I am not practicing, they will know. … You should not go to a hotel, but you should sleep there with them, and then they will know you are serious.’ Mussa, a Somali man from Ethiopia who works for a European relief organization.
This essay introduces one part of my larger ethnographic project to investigate “humanitarianism” as it is enacted by local aid workers like Mussa in the Somali Region of Ethiopia. In this, I address the following questions: Who is a “humanitarian” — and therefore whose work is deemed vital and benevolent in emergencies? What counts as a “humanitarian” intervention, for aid workers as well as people in communities where crises recur? And finally, how do various forms of humanitarianism evident in the Somali Region differ from and also shape the legally recognized international humanitarian system, governed mostly be international law, wealthy donor governments, and multinational organizations?
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