Imposing Aid: Emergency Assistance to Refugees

Abstract

This book represents an opportunity to see beyond the starving child image of the refugee. Every year relief budgets climb and humanitarian agencies proliferate in response to media appeals to save yet another population of starving, helpless refugees. But what happens after the cameras leave? What is the impact of the millions which are spent? What is the effect of the work of the humanitarians who are propelled into the field, and to whom are they accountable? Imposing Aid provides an independent appraisal of an assistance programme mounted by international UN and voluntary agencies in response to an emergency influx of refugees. The refugees in question were the Ugandans who spilled out over the Sudan border from the early months of 1982, but the findings have far reaching implications for policy throughout Africa and beyond. The data presented includes interviews with 6000 households, both in camps and with the greater number who struggled to survive outside the aid umbrella. The findings of the research are all the more disturbiing as this particular assistance was considered to be one of the more successful.