The humanitarian theatre: drought response during Ethiopia's low-intensity conflict of 2016

Abstract

This article aims to rekindle the debate on the politics of aid in the increasingly common – yet still under-studied – authoritarian and low-intensity conflict settings, detailing the case of Ethiopia in 2016, when a 50-year drought coincided with a wave of protests and a state of emergency. During four months of qualitative fieldwork in 2017, state, civil society, Ethiopian and international actors were approached – from humanitarian headquarters to communities in the Amhara, Oromiya and Somali regions. Research participants relayed stark discrepancies between the humanitarian theatre's ‘frontstage’, where disaster responders showcase an exemplary response, and its ‘backstage’, where they remove their frontstage masks and reflect on the information, the decision-making monopoly of the state and the intrusion of conflict dynamics into the humanitarian response. In humanitarian research and in policy, a collective conversation is necessary on where to draw the line between respect for governments’ sovereignty and the intrusion of humanitarian principles.

Disaster Governance in Conflict-Affected Authoritarian Contexts: The Cases of Ethiopia, Myanmar, and Zimbabwe

“…The data were thematically analyzed in two phases, following Braun and Clarke (2006). First, contextspecificities, historical pathways, and nuances were drawn out for each case (see Desportes, 2019;Desportes, 2020;Desportes et al, 2019). Second, contrasts and similarities were sought across cases (e.g., by revisit- Notes: Participant numbers refer to individual in-depth interviews, except for the counts of community members, who sometimes participated in focus groups.…”

“…Emphasizing the 'disaster as lens' over the 'disaster as catalyst' approach, some scholars have stressed that disasters reveal rather than disrupt social struggles and inherent inequities (Cuny, 1983), relationships between actors (Pelling & Dill, 2006), and political narratives (Venugopal & Yasir, 2017). This is particularly true in LIC settings, where political power and the distribution of rights are already contested before the disaster and where emotions and accusations often override facts that are difficult to assess (Desportes et al, 2019;Hutchison, 2014). Referring again to Olson (2000), disaster responders may gain or lose in legitimacy and power because of their actions but also because of how their actions and motivations are framed or 'explained.…”

“…The present article draws on one year of qualitative fieldwork in Ethiopia (focusing on the 2016 drought overlapping with protests and a State of Emergency), Myanmar (focusing on the 2015 Cyclone Komen response and explosive identity politics), and Zimbabwe (focusing on the 2016-2019 drought coinciding with intense socioeconomic and political turbu-lences). A first phase of analysis described the uniqueness of the individual cases in three separate publications on Ethiopia (Desportes, Mandefro, & Hilhorst, 2019), Myanmar (Desportes, 2019), and Zimbabwe (Desportes, 2020). This article presents the results of the second phase of analysis, where the different contexts were brought "together and into the same analytical frame," allowing us to "think with insights from elsewhere" (Robinson, 2016, p. 193-194).…”

Frictions of implementing EU humanitarian aid in Greece (2016–2019)—the Emergency Support Instrument and its practical ramifications

“…Humanitarian aid actors are embedded in "aid-society relations" (Hilhorst 2016), sociopolitical negotiations, geopolitical considerations, and economic interests whose origins lie primarily in colonial, imperialist, or missionary efforts of the global North in the global South (Roth 2015). At the same time, such actors must be able to act on different and at times contradictory stages if they have to satisfy various demands (e.g., donors, national governments, international organizations, their own organizational agendas) simultaneously (Desportes et al 2019). These at times conflictive negotiation processes can be observed on the practical level as "frictional encounters" (Björkdahl et al 2016: 4).…”

Governing the Humanitarian Knowledge Commons

“…As the case study shows, networked power relationships can incentivise (self)censorship towards certain framings and narratives. Desportes, Mandefro, and Hilhorst (2019) highlight the resulting split between on the record and off the record humanitarian communications in Ethiopia. As per these examples, a network lens moves away from the rational actor model.…”