Summer writing on refugee collective action in Beirut
Refugees are not supposed to be political agents … yet everywhere they are demonstrating political agency.
(Peter Nyers, Rethinking Refugees: Beyond State of Emergency, Routledge 2006, at xvii)
My writing project for this summer, and really, for most of this year, draws on my research with Sudanese refugees and other migrants living in Beirut. It is no secret that this refugee group faces appalling levels of racial discrimination and marginalization, and that their concerns – when compared with larger refugee arrivals – are often sidelined in humanitarian and state responses. For the great majority of Sudanese refugees in Lebanon, the main solution has long been resettlement to a third country.
I’m exploring Sudanese collective action in two forms: on the one hand, the UNHCR-promoted Sudanese refugee committee, and, on the other, the Sudanese protest camp that lasted for about a year and a half on the sidewalk across from UNHCR’s Lebanon office back in 2015-17. I engage with the claims and demands of both the Committee and the Protest, and I interrogate how humanitarian and state actors respond not only to the claims in themselves, but also to the methods used by the different groups.
The Committee
In Beirut, the main objective of the Sudanese Refugee Committee was officially ‘…to further enhance collaboration and consultations with refugees which leads to empowerment and enjoyments of rights.’ UNHCR’s community development approach is considered by the Organization to be part of its protection policy, and although there are many different ways to conceptualize empowerment, UNHCR’s understanding is that:
Power can be defined as the capacity to make informed choices and have the freedom to take action. Empowerment is not something that is “done” to people; it is the process by which individuals in the community analyze their situation, enhance their knowledge and resources, strengthen their capacity to claim their rights, and take action to achieve their goals. At the same time, their capacities and skills are recognized by others. Empowerment requires change at the individual and structural levels.
In my work, I’m interested in examining what sort of collaboration and consultations were envisaged through the establishment of the Committee, and how this was seen to enhance refugee empowerment and the enjoyment of rights. I try to answer questions such as: Where does the establishment of the Sudanese committee fit within UNHCR’s broader policies on community development, refugee participation and empowerment? What scope do refugees and others of concern to UNHCR have to meaningfully shape the terms of this engagement?
The Protest
As in many other contexts where the host state is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, Lebanon has long relied on UNHCR to conduct registration, documentation and refugee status determination (RSD), and to provide assistance and seek durable solutions for refugees. It is not surprising, then, that it is UNHCR Beirut - and not the Lebanese government - that is seen as the target for many refugees’ grievances and demands. In the past decade, these have been articulated through various forms of protests, hunger-strikes and sit-ins.
I’ve closely followed one of these sit-ins, to learn about the protesters’ key demands and claims. What strategies do they use to achieve their goals? And how do these relate to the demands and methods of the Committee? What was UNHCR’s approach to the protesters, and how did the Organization respond to their demands?
Legitimate and illegitimate collective action
Research elsewhere has shown how humanitarian actors tend to promote compliant participation from refugee groups. Olivius’ research with refugee women in Thailand and Bangladesh, for example, suggests that ‘Forms of participation, community organization and collective action represented as desirable are generally those initiated by humanitarian organizations, while those accused of ‘bad’ politicization are forms of participation and activism that pursue agendas defined by refugees.’ In my research, I see these tendencies as well; while showing political agency through participating in a UNHCR-promoted committee was seen as a legitimate activity that was even encouraged by UNHCR, claiming rights through protest was often considered illegitimate. This was arguably so despite that the key demands made by both these groups were often the exact same – the re-opening of closed files and resettlement to third countries.