Thursday, April 30, 2009

Loren Landau on longer-term effects of humanitarian support in Tanzania

I was just reading a short review of Loren Landau's book, The Humanitarian hangover, which apparently does a nice job of exploring some of the less-noticed aspects of longer-term humanitarian support of refugees and displaced persons. In particular he remarks upon changes in political preferences, and in the salience of vocabulary of national identity, and then also the emerge of lynch-mobs as camp residents are "othered" by local residents, who then see the increased crime in the area as responsibility of the others, and redress of crime the responsibility of the locals, since government refuses to engage. Sounds very similar to processes that are hinted at in the Darfur and also on the Congo and Kenya border zones.

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