Fostering Ethnic Reinvention

Abstract

The provision of international humanitarian aid, far from being a neutral intervention in the forced migrants communal identity, is an especially directive intervention characterised by a set of standard procedures. Some micromechanisms within such procedures act as to foster ethnic reinvention together with empowerment of certain groups and individuals among the refugees. In the following article the case of the Somali Bantu refugees is analysed and ways inter-gender relations are strongly affected by the process of receiving aid during forced migrations are described. The very organisational procedure through which humanitarian aid is provided act as empowering and disempowering groups and individuals among the migrants; such procedure often pushes inter-gender power imbalances.