The Politics of Suffering. Nell Gabiam

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СКАЧАТЬ It also suffered significant destruction. Reports of starvation among the few remaining inhabitants made headlines in the summer and fall of 2013 (Al Jazeera 2013; UNRWA 2013a). In May 2013, Ein el Tal, one of the camps targeted by the Neirab Rehabilitation project and a major focus of my fieldwork, suffered a fate somewhat similar to that of Yarmouk: its entire population was ordered to leave by Syrian rebels who occupied it and declared it a military zone.

      One cannot fully grasp the implications of the current war in Syria for Palestinian refugees without having a clear understanding of the refugees’ sociopolitical status in Syria before the war. Drawing on my prewar ethnographic research, this book captures a crucial historical moment through its account of life in three Palestinian refugee camps. These sites are now inaccessible to researchers and will remain so for some time, but the insights afforded by my research into camp life, the Palestinian experience, and the shift in UNRWA’s approach to aid, along with what this shift says about wider changes in humanitarianism globally, extend beyond the immediate context of prewar Syria.

      In fact, the notion that development, as opposed to minimal relief assistance, should be part of the international response to refugee crises has been gaining traction in the past twenty years in the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which is the main organization that assists refugees worldwide (UNHCR 2003).¹ The unfolding Syrian refugee crisis has placed renewed emphasis on development as a form of refugee assistance. This renewed emphasis has important policy implications in terms of global refugee assistance. The unprecedented number of Syrian refugees (estimated to be nearly 4.2 million as of October 2015), the expectation among the international community of a drawn-out Syrian war, and the pressures that the crisis is exerting on the resources of Middle Eastern host countries have led the United Nations to devise a Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan for 2015–2016 (UNHCR and UNDP 2015).² Known as the 3RP and sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and UNHCR, the plan is presented as a “paradigm shift in the response to the [Syrian] crisis by combining humanitarian and development capacities, innovations, and resources” (UNHCR and UNDP 2015:6). UNRWA, given its experience as a humanitarian agency that now vocally promotes development in refugee camps, was a major participant in the discussions that led to the establishment of the 3RP (interview with UNRWA employees at the agency’s Amman headquarter, March 23, 2015).

      An UNRWA employee involved in the coordination of the response to the Syria crisis summarized why UNRWA is at the forefront of global discussions about lessening the divide between humanitarian and development aid when addressing refugee crises:

      I think, at least in terms of the Syria crisis, there’s the realization that humanitarian funding doesn’t stretch and that the crisis is stretching . . . this has led to all sorts of conversations about tapping into development funding and that there has to be a spectrum. We can’t just do this or do that. . . . So I think there’s recognition that we can no longer afford to be compartmentalized and the funding shouldn’t be compartmentalized either. . . . So [the realization is basically that] we need development funding in Syria today. And now people are kind of looking around and saying Ok–who can do development? And UNRWA is quite well placed. (Interview, March 22, 2015)

      Contrary to what one might assume, then, UNRWA’s experimentation with large-scale, sustainable development in the last ten years has not been an ill-fated, fleeting adventure. Rather, it is symptomatic of profound and ongoing global shifts in humanitarian assistance to refugees: as protracted refugee situations become the norm rather than the exception, emergency humanitarian aid and development assistance are becoming intertwined in ways that compel us to rethink the meaning of refugeehood as well as the meaning of the refugee camp in the twenty-first century.

      From Humanitarianism to Development

      No single definition of the term humanitarianism exists, and humanitarianism’s boundaries have historically been fluid (Calhoun 2008; Feldman 2007a). In the 1990s, with the end of the Cold War and the apparent increase in intrastate conflict, humanitarianism went through significant transformations, and the issue of where to draw its boundaries became the subject of intense debate (Barnett and Weiss 2008; Calhoun 2008; Chandler 2001; Kennedy 2004; Rieff 2002; Terry 2002). Since the late 1980s, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) definition of humanitarianism–predicated on “the impartial, independent, and neutral provision of relief to those in immediate need because of conflict and natural disasters”–has ceased to be the industry standard (Barnett and Weiss 2008:5). Humanitarianism can now be understood to include an entire range of activities, including development, human rights, democracy promotion, gender equality, peace building, and even military intervention (Barnett and Weiss 2008; Calhoun 2008; Chandler 2001). Still, aid agencies distinguish humanitarian aid from development aid. Humanitarian aid tends to be associated with the attempt to alleviate suffering and save lives in an “emergency” situation that typically emanates from natural or man-made disasters or organized violence (Calhoun 2008; Fearon 2008). Development aid is generally associated with improving the normal state of affairs (Fearon 2008).

      Development defined as “improving the normal state of affairs” is not entirely new to UNRWA. Established in 1949, the agency made its initial purpose not just to provide emergency relief assistance but also to promote large-scale socioeconomic development in its areas of operation. However, for reasons that will be explained in greater depth in chapter 2, by the late 1950s it had given up the development aspect of its mandate but has since then engaged in targeted interventions such as education and small loan programs that fall under the definition of development. What is new today, however, is UNRWA’s comprehensive embrace of development as the main ideology through which it frames its assistance to Palestinian refugees. The key concepts that informed the agency’s development approach during the implementation of the Neirab Rehabilitation Project were “sustainability,” “capacity building,” and (refugee) “self-reliance.”

      UNRWA’s shift must be understood partly as the result of a severe funding crisis that the agency was facing at the turn of the twenty-first century. To address this crisis, it organized a conference in June 2004 in partnership with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) (UNRWA 2004). Held in Geneva, the conference featured sixty-seven countries and thirty-four intergovernmental organizations. Shortly afterward, in 2005, UNRWA finalized a “Medium Term Plan” that had been the subject of review and discussion at the conference. It presented the plan as an effort “to restore the living conditions of Palestine refugees to acceptable international standards and set them on the road to self reliance and sustainable human development” (UNRWA 2005a:2).

      A second factor accounting for UNRWA’s recent reforms is the broader global policy shift that is taking place in refugee assistance, especially when it comes to protracted exile. UNRWA’s purported transition toward a more developmental approach in Palestinian refugee camps follows a broader reform process in the UN. Since the 1990s, UNHCR has taken steps to incorporate development in its policy on durable solutions for refugees (UNHCR 2003).

      A third factor responsible for UNRWA’s recent reform process is the Oslo peace process or, rather, the post-Oslo climate. An obstacle that had stood in the way of UNRWA engagement in large-scale socioeconomic or infrastructural projects in Palestinian refugee camps was opposition (to varying degrees) from Arab host states. Officially, the main host states–Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria–consider the camps as temporary spaces housing refugees until they are able to exercise their right of return to their Palestinian homes. The advent and subsequent failure of Oslo seems to have ushered in a shift among the host states, which appear to be more flexible regarding attempts to comprehensively improve camp conditions (Al Husseini and Bocco 2009; Oesch 2014). It must be noted that these shared policies toward large-scale improvement projects in Palestinian refugee camps have not translated into identical policies on the legal status of refugees. In the 1950s, the Jordanian government extended Jordanian citizenship to its Palestinian population and the Syrian government extended СКАЧАТЬ