Risk-Management and the Fortified Aid Compound: Everyday Life in Post-Interventionary Society

Abstract

The politicisation of aid has made helping others increasingly dangerous. The fortified aid compound is now ubiquitous throughout the global borderland. It has become the signature architecture, for example, of the UN integrated mission. In examining these developments, the article first looks at the potential for UN field-security training to normalise risk-aversion and the necessity, even desirability, of defensive living. Using the example of Sudan, the wider implications of aid bunkering, including its overlaps with such global trends as urban splintering and the proliferation of gated-communities are also examined. The fortified aid compound is symptomatic of the deepening crisis within the development-security nexus.