Paper details
| Paper authors | Imri Schattner-Ornan |
| In panel on | The politics of negotiating with authoritarian regimes |
| Paper presenter(s) will be presenting |
In-Person / |
Abstract
Ethiopia is in many ways a classical authoritarian regime, with very limited tolerance for international humanitarian agencies. It is a state characterised by extreme bureaucracy, where the power of the official stamped document is supreme. This paper explores the practices of working closely in refugee camps with the Ethiopia Administration of Refugees and Returnees Agency (ARRA), a federal authority mandated to manage refugees and the agencies aiding them in Ethiopia. It is a reflection based on field experience and looks specifically at how international humanitarian agencies can create a space and acceptability for their work with ARRA’s constraining culture, but how this constant negotiation comes with a price.
The paper explores how authoritarian regimes try to reduce humanitarian agencies to service provider roles and how a culture of dependency on official, yet obscure documentation, creates an atmosphere of uncertainty and defensiveness, requiring the implementing organisations to always “check” their position and actions. At the same time, the paper aims to look at how building field-based relations can counteract these authoritarian tendencies, without claiming that any field-based discussions can transform the core interaction between humanitarian agencies and a state authority.
