Language, education, and power in refugee camps: A comparison of Kakuma Refugee Camp (Kenya) and Thai-Myanmar refugee camps

While there is growing attention to language as a central issue in education for refugees, this policy area still appears to be dominated by an apolitical, technical, and instrumentalist perspective. Through a comparison of language-in-education policies in two refugee camp contexts, Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya and the refugee camps along the Thai-Myanmar border, this paper demonstrates how language policies are always deeply political in nature. In refugee contexts in particular, language policies in education reflect and reproduce existing power dynamics that can exclude refugees from decisionmaking processes about their own future. In Kakuma, language issues in education are decided by the international humanitarianism regime based on efficiency and costeffectiveness over the linguistic rights of the refugee community. Even when refugees are in control in the Thai-Myanmar refugee camps, decisions over the language of instruction are still political choices that serve to exclude many people.

Justification and Critique: Humanitarianism and Imperialism over Time

In his second contribution to this volume, B.S. Chimni sketches a history of international humanitarianism. He explores its complicity with the politics of imperialism which manifests itself in its contribution to the justification of the use of force. While Arnulf Becker Lorca (ch 5) and Lauren Benton (ch 9) address this issue in specific historical contexts—the Spanish-native encounters in the sixteenth century and parts of the nineteenth-century British Empire—this chapter can be read as a step towards writing a critical global history of humanitarianism, a step crucial to constructing an idea of humanitarianism that is not internally linked to the vision of empire. The chapter begins by briefly looking at the meaning of humanitarianism as it has evolved from colonialism to the present times. Subsequently it explores the idea of writing a global history of humanitarianism that would take cognizance of the non-western critique of the notion of humanitarianism. Third, it examines the role of humanitarianism in the era of colonialism in comparison to the practice of contemporary humanitarianism in the backdrop of key features of present world order. Finally it debates how we can integrate power and principles to avoid the complicity of humanitarianism with the politics of imperialism.

Gender, Peace, and the New Politics of Humanitarianism in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

This chapter examines the changing ideas of peace and their connections with the longer history of humanitarianism in the first half of the twentieth century, using gender as an analytical focus. In particular, it explores the international and internationalist contexts of the emerging peace movement and international humanitarianism and their changing character; the gender dimensions of peace-thinking and policies, especially in the context of the League of Nations and the United Nations; and the ways in which feminism was a significant influence on the development of these two international bodies, even as women were sidelined in their operations. In the first half of the twentieth century, these international, intergovernmental organizations had as their central rationale the taming of warfare. The chapter analyzes the extent to which, in each case, they contributed to the institutionalization of new gendered international norms of pacifist and humanitarian activism.

Refugees, Evacuees, and Repatriates: Biafran Children, UNHCR, and the Politics of International Humanitarianism in the Nigerian Civil War

The Nigeria-Biafra war contributed to the rise of post-colonial moral interventionism, ushering in a new form of human rights politics. During the war, relief agencies evacuated 4,000 children from the conflict zones to Gabon and Côte d’Ivoire to protect them from the conflict. This was part of a broader international humanitarian airlift operation that brought relief supplies to the besieged Biafra territory. At the end of the war, most of the children were returned to their homes in Nigeria through an international humanitarian repatriation effort. Ibhawoh examines how state interests and the politics of international humanitarian interventionism manifested in debates about classifying and protecting displaced children, the most vulnerable victims of the conflict.

Embedded Turkification: Nation Building and Violence within the Framework of the League of Nations 1919–1937

This article traces intersections between Turkey's relations with the League of Nations and violent homogenization in Anatolia in the two decades following World War I. It advances the argument that the strife for creating a homogenous population—a core element of Turkish nation building—was embedded in the international order. This is explained on two levels. First, the article stresses the role of international asymmetries on the mental horizon of the Turkish nation builders. The League's involvement in the allied plans to partition Turkey had the organization wrapped up in a mélange of humanitarian concerns, civilizing doctrine, and imperialist interests. Turkish nationalists wanted to avoid those imperialist pitfalls and overcome international minority protection by means of Turkification. They saw international humanitarianism as an obstacle to their nationalist line. Second, the article highlights the ways in which the League itself supported the Kemalists’ drive for Turkification, either directly, especially in the case of the “population transfer” between Greece and Turkey, or indirectly through prioritizing Turkey's sovereignty over minority concerns.

From armed conflict to urban violence: transformations in the International Committee of the Red Cross, international humanitarianism, and the laws of war

The International Committee of the Red Cross traditionally seeks to protect and assist victims of armed conflict. Over the past 10 years, however, the International Committee of the Red Cross and several other major international humanitarian agencies have turned their attention to situations of urban violence that fall short of the international humanitarian law thresholds for armed conflict. This article examines the institutional consequences of expanding the International Committee of the Red Cross mandate to include urban violence, to make a three-fold argument. First, the incorporation of urban violence into its mandate has led to significant and surprising shifts in the organization’s humanitarian boundaries: from eschewing any effort to prevent or reduce conflict and prioritising neutrality and dialogue with all parties to conflict, the International Committee of the Red Cross has begun engaging in violence-prevention and violence-reduction activities, compromising its neutrality and limiting dialogue with some armed groups. Second, because the International Committee of the Red Cross is such an important and influential actor in international humanitarianism, these shifts in its boundaries have the potential to transform definitions of humanitarianism. Third, these shifts may serve to undermine the moral authority of the International Committee of the Red Cross to persuade combatants in international humanitarian law contexts to comply with international humanitarian law, irrespective of the rightness or wrongness of their or their opponents’ goals. Ultimately, then, they may erode the distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello in the laws of war.