In 1977 Pierre Bourdieu wrote that “every established order tends to make its own entirely arbitrary system seem entirely natural”.[1] In the case of humanitarian protection, that established order has been made up since 2005 of the cluster approach, with…
One of the main obstacles to communities organising to protect themselves is a lack of funding. Often they have a better understanding than outsiders of what the challenges may be, and have innovative ideas for overcoming them, but they lack…
Since the outbreak of civil war in 2011 in Sudan’s South Kordofan and Blue Nile states, the civilian population has experienced intense aerial bombardment and ground attacks. At least 4,082 bombs and missiles have hit predominantly civilian targets including villages,…
The ‘communities’ at the heart of community-based protection are not predetermined. Communities can cohere around any number of shared characteristics, and be more or less inclusive or exclusive depending upon their own internal social norms and power dynamics. Ensuring that…
Uganda is now the third-largest refugee-hosting country on the African continent, home to over 500,000 refugees.[1] In Kampala, Uganda’s capital, tens of thousands of refugees have come from surrounding countries and beyond, melting into city life. I myself am one…
Gihembe camp in Rwanda was established in 1997 to host large numbers of refugees coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC); today it houses 14,295 people,[1] nearly half of whom are under the age of 18. For Gihembe camp…
Our city, Yola, sits on the edge of the Sahara desert, where green turns to brown on maps of the continent. Located in Adamawa state in north-east Nigeria, Yola is both Christian and Muslim and has a long history of…
It is often taken for granted that local communities hosting refugees are composed of settled and established groups of citizens. However, newly displaced populations not only share spaces with or aim to integrate into communities of ‘nationals’ but also into…
For twenty years, from 1986-2006, northern Uganda experienced a long and vicious civil war. Fought mainly between the Government of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), the conflict displaced between 1.5 and two million people across vast swathes of…
In every crisis people find creative ways to protect themselves. Examples include digging trenches in market places in Sudan for protection from aerial bombings; establishing underground schools and medical clinics in Afghanistan and Syria to continue lifesaving services; using radio…