History of Global Arms Transfer, 13 (2021), pp. 31-42

Under One Tent: Towards a Localizationof Humanitarian Assistance beyond
Western Universalis†
By SHINYA KONAKA*
The purpose of this paper is to introduce a research project on humanitarian aid
on humanitarian aid and its intersection with the resilience of nomadic peoples in
East Africa, with additional reference to the works of Binalakshmi Nepram. The
aim is to shed new light on the issue of humanitarian aid, an undertaking that is infact highly multifaceted, from the standpoint of area studies. It will be illustrated
with two cases: usage of rationed items by nomadic peoples and social networks
driven by women. Both cases reveal that crisis support at the community levelcan be conceived of as an imperceptible ‘inner shelter’, as opposed to the more
visible types of support brought in from outside the community. Therefore, it canb e a rg u e d t h a t t h e ‘ u n i v e r s a l i s m ’ o n w h i c h t h e w o r l d ’s c u s t o m a r yhumanitarianism and humanitarian aid are premised is nothing more than aWestern-style understanding of those practices, regarded as the only correct
norm. By making heard the voices of peoples that have been ignored or
marginalized in the past, area studies strives to gradually pave the way towards a
future universality that overcomes the current universalism imposed on the nonWestern world by the logic of the powerful.
Against the backdrop of the world’s attention on the devastation wrought by the 1984
famine in Ethiopia, nomadic societies in East Africa became the first to receive
humanitarian food aid in a systematic fashion on a global scale. They constitute some of
the world’s poorest people, whom the endeavour to reach has become known as the ‘Last
Mile’, living where famine- and starvation-related humanitarian crises, extreme poverty,
low-intensity conflict, and climate change, along with the associated humanitarianassistance, are becoming the norm. Most of these people rely on, and are affected by,humanitarian aid to a greater or lesser degree. However, is the delivery of humanitarian aid
and its receipt and consumption a one-way street?
Area studies researchers do not simply choose topics according to their own interests, but
are drawn to issues that are important to the people indigenous to the areas where they are† This paper is based on that presented by the author at the online symposium ‘Past, Present and Future of
Humanitarian and Development Aid: Rethinking the Aid Sector’ with Binalakshmi Nepram on 4 Feb. 2021. The
significant comments from participants are appreciated. This paper partially includes revised content previously
published as Konaka, ‘Introduction: the articulation-sphere’, ‘Articulation’, ‘Local-global articulation’,‘Complementary relationship’, and ‘Towards a new model’. This work was supported by the JSPS KAKENHI
Grant Numbers 18H03606, 25257005, 24651275, and 20401010, and Research Funds of University of Shizuoka.
The author would like to thank all the informants in the East African pastoral societies for their collaboration.
* Author’s affiliation: Shinya Konaka, Professor, School of International Relations, University of Shizuoka.

31

SHINYA KONAKA
conducting their research. The research project introduced in this paper arose out of theauthor’s surprising discovery that a conflict had occurred in the mountains behind apeaceful village where he had been conducting research for many years, and to whichinternally displaced people had fled. After securing the cooperation of researchers fromvarious fields in Japan and abroad, the resulting project (JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number
25257005) was launched in 2016 for the purpose of localizing humanitarian assistance fornomadic societies in East Africa. A successor project (JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number
18H03606) was subsequently launched in 2018 with a focus on resilience in African
nomadic societies; it is ongoing.
The research makes some reference to the works of Binalakshmi Nepram along with thecurrent ‘rethinking aid’ movements.1 Nepram is a founder of the Manipur Women Gun
Survivors Network that was formed in an attempt to help women whose lives have beenchanged dramatically because of the gun-related killings of their husbands, fathers, or sons,be it by state or non-state actors or unidentified gunmen.2 It seems likely that the researchpresented below and her works have some points in common, which in turn are related to
the rethinking aid movements.

I THE UNIVERSALITY GAP
The origins of humanitarianism as a Western concept date back to the eighteenth century.3
However, after two World Wars, humanitarianism has evolved into an international regime.
Since the 1990s, many international humanitarian aid standards have been established on
the premise of universalism. Humanitarian assistance requires that affected peoples betreated fairly, regardless of nationality, race, or religious beliefs. However, it is difficult toescape the conclusion that most humanitarian aid standards themselves have ahomogenizing effect on human diversity.4
Nonetheless, at specific local sites, humanitarian aid is neither a universal nor acultureless phenomenon. Even when immersed in the most fundamental undertaking of
human beings aiding their fellows, humanitarian crises and humanitarian aid sites are also
evidently replete with a variety of differences and disparities.
It is a given that there is a gap between East African nomads and global north people innearly every respect: economic wealth, language and culture, and even the very
environment in which the global north people live. It is this gap that inadvertently places
Western aid-givers at an overwhelming advantage simply because the ‘other side’ is in sucha position of weakness. Paradoxically, the dispensation of humanitarian aid among fellow
human beings must take place in the midst of the invisible gaps that exist between different
peoples in the actual field. Nevertheless, area researchers strive to get as close as possible
to local residents through field surveys. These researchers have spoken the local languages,
slept in the same places, and eaten the same food. They have tried to think and behave likethe people of the areas they study.
When area researchers think of human beings, they do not think of people as uniform andperceive them in a colour-blind manner; rather, they seek to always assume the existence ofspecific people living in a specific environment in a specific region, and recall many
1 Enomoto, ‘Racism in the development and humanitarian sector’.
2 Nepram, ‘Indigenous women’, pp. 118–9.
3 Minn, ‘Toward an anthropology’.
4 Malkki, ‘Speechless emissaries’.

32Under One Tent: Towards a Localization of Humanitarian Assistance beyond Western Universalis
different faces. Can we rethink our assumptions about humanitarian aid from theperspective of those people? In general, people in global north tend to view aid in a
perfunctory manner, without fully imagining the world on the receiving end of it. However,is it possible to re-evaluate humanitarian aid from the other side, from the side of the local
people who are its recipients?
As specialists in area studies, the researchers contributing to the project outlined below
have arrived at the view that through thorough consideration of and reflection upon human
differences, we can unveil a reimagined sense of universality and, from there, create a newmode of humanitarian aid provision. The aim of the project to hand is to shed new light on
the issue of humanitarian aid, as an undertaking that is in fact highly multifaceted, from thestandpoint of area studies.
The major findings made through this project to date have already been published in a
special feature in an English-language academic journal in 2017. 5 Later, a Japanesetranslation of a book containing additional content building on this special feature was also
published. 6 Two field cases from Baringo and Samburu County in Kenya serve toilluminate the direction that might be taken by humanitarian aid beyond Western
universalism heading towards its localization for non-Western groups worldwide.
Nevertheless, limitations to the two projects below must be acknowledged. One major
limitation is research area. Whether the scope is applicable to other indigenous
communities facing humanitarian crises beyond East Africa remains unknown. This paper
makes a brief reference to the case of indigenous communities in Northeast India facing
humanitarian crises, as reported by Binalakshmi Nepram in Manipur, and points to thecommonality of both areas.

II CONFLICT CASES IN NORTH-CENTRAL KENYA
A series of conflicts erupted in 2004 in north-central Kenya when a politician from the
Pokot ethnic group incited youth to attack neighbouring ethnic groups – the Samburu,
Tugen, and Ilchamus – resulting in mutual retaliation. This led to tremendous damage,including homicide, injury, livestock raiding, and torching of houses and household items,
and resulted in many internally displaced persons (IDPs). The author has published several
articles in Japanese and presented several papers elsewhere on this conflict.7 Thus, thisconflict is only briefly outlined here.
The conflict between the Pokot and the Samburu was the first to break out in 2004.
According to a survey by the author, the death toll from the conflict amounted to 590. The
number of IDPs was estimated at more than 22,000 by the Internal Displacement
Monitoring Centre (IDMC).8 This conflict has been reported by several reserchers9 but has
been neglected both by national and international organizations, with the exception of the
IDMC and the Red Cross. The IDMC10 lists a ‘lack of information’ and the ‘neglect ofconflict-induced IDPs’ as distinctive attributes of the conflict.
5 Konaka and Sun, ‘Localization of humanitarian assistance’.
6 Konaka, Sun, and Ohta, ‘Humanitarian assistance’.
7 Konaka, ‘Significance of field research’, ‘Reconsidering spatiality’, and ‘Pastoral livelihood’.
8 IDMC, ‘I am’, p. 33.
9 Greiner, ‘Unexpected’, ‘Guns’; Okumu, ‘Conflict’; Holtzman, ‘Killing’. Greiner, ‘Unexpected consequenc-

es’, ‘Guns, land, and votes’; Okumu, ‘Conflict over Ltungai’; Holtzman, ‘Killing your neighbors’
10 IDMC, ibid, p. 33.

33

SHINYA KONAKA
The media and international organizations have pointed out various factors as the primarycauses of this conflict, including traditional cattle-rustling activities and clashes over scarce
resources due to recurrent drought related to global climate change. However, research datacollected by the author from informants of the area contrast sharply with these factors. The
conflict was caused by a politician, ‘X’, from the Pokot, who inflamed the parochialism of
the local people in order to gather votes. In 2000, before the conflict, he had made anelection campaign speech as a prospective Member of Parliament claiming that the present
land of the Samburu had once belonged to the Pokot. He also promised that the land takenfrom the Samburu would be distributed to the local supporters of the Pokot as a reward. He
incited local administrative chiefs and local Pokot to continuous violence. The more raids
he initiated, the more politically popular he became. On the strength of this ‘election
campaign’, X was elected as a Member of Parliament (MP). The Samburu and Pokot had
maintained good relationships and shared grazing land with one another, especially during
the drought, until the politician intervened.
Acting as their patron, MP X supplied local people with hundreds of smuggled automatic
rifles from Uganda and funds, ordering them to raid their enemies’ livestock. Then, local
people bribed local police officers with the funds and used the weapons to raid livestock.
Livestock was sold at the market or butchery. About 40 per cent of livestock sales went to
MP X. The proceeds were used in turn to purchase weapons on the black market.
In 2009, this conflict between the Pokot and the Samburu was mostly over, apparently
due in main part to political pressure exerted by the internal security minister. Anotherreason was the powerful defence and counterattack by an impregnable clustered settlementof the Samburu that had purchased four bazookas from corrupt Kenyan police. Their defeat
by this settlement led the Pokot to abandon their invasion.
When the Pokot realized that the Samburu were a formidable opponent, they shifted theirattention to the neighbouring ethnic groups, the Tugen and Ilchamus. From 2005 to 2013,
these two groups came under heavy attack from the Pokot. The death toll among the Tugenwas 22 and the Ilchamus, 10. About 10,000 Tugen and Ilchamus were displaced.11

Ⅲ TENTS: A SPHERE OF ARTICULATIONIn November 2012, immediately after the outbreak of the conflict in Baringo County, the
Red Cross distributed resources such as tents, water containers, tableware, cooking utensils,
blankets, and maize flour as emergency relief supplies to the persons displaced by it. It is
the use of the tents by the internally displaced persons of the Tugen and Ilchamus that isparticularly salient to a more insightful understanding of truly ‘universal’ humanitarian aid.
Tents were deployed in three ways: First, worn-out tents were used as roofing materials
for resettlement housing (photo 1). Second, tents were used to erect a livestock enclosurefor young goats and sheep (photo 2). Third, worn-out tents were used to construct roofs,
applying techniques used when organizing grazing camps (photo 3).
Of course, these tents were originally distributed by the humanitarian aid organization toprovide temporary shelter for the internally displaced. However, as these tents became
worn within about three months, the recipients, who endured displacement for longer
periods than that, began acquiring shelter in forms other than tents through various means.
This is because many nomads have the skills and knowledge to erect their own shelters
11 Report in NATION, 9 Jan. 2014.

34

Under One Tent: Towards a Localization of Humanitarian Assistance beyond Western Universalis

Photo 1: Traditional House of Tugen
Photograph by the author, 8 September 2013.

Photo 2: An Enclosure of Young Goats and Sheep
Photograph by the author, 9 September 2013.

Photo 3: Grazing Camp Style Temporary Hu
Photograph by the author, 10 September 2013.

using natural materials, mainly plants, that grow in the areas in which they take up
residence. In essence, the tents that were distributed were not necessarily meaningful as
relief supplies that could completely replace the nomads’ homes. However, the natural
materials normally used by the nomads are insufficient to prevent rain infiltrating theirhomes; internally displaced persons are well aware of the water resistance of tents and useworn tents primarily as roofing material for their dwellings and livestock sheds. Thissuggests that while residing in shelters, internally displaced persons of nomadic origin wereusing the resources distributed by the humanitarian aid organizations in ways not expected.
Thus, this field research revealed surprising aspects of humanitarian aid provision. Thesemismatches in the intentions of the giver and the lateral repurposing of the recipient may
be perceived as a conflict between the global aid regime and local traditional cultures. We
can speak of the intermediate realm between the universal and the local in which thisinterchange takes place as the ‘articulation sphere’. However, the articulation sphere is nota synonym for a pure, traditional, coherent, static, discrete, and homogeneous culture. On

35

SHINYA KONAKA
the contrary, the articulation sphere entails the hybridity, discontinuity, incoherence,
dynamism, non-discrete nature, and heterogeneity of culture. Therefore, what is at issue inthe articulation sphere is the various cultural, political, and circumstantial phenomena, as
experienced by the aid recipients, that are already affected by global humanitarian aid andthat arose ‘post-change’, as opposed to culture in the traditional sense. Stated differently, it
is not the unique aspects of local traditional cultures themselves that need more attention
when providing humanitarian aid, but rather the uniqueness of the combination of the
global and the local. This can be labelled the ‘articulation sphere approach’.

Ⅳ WOMEN IN PATRILINEAL CONTEXTSThe members of the Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network in Northeast India are skilled
at making handloom and handicraft items, which Binalakshmi Nepram praised in her
lecture as ‘magic in their hands’.12 It also forms part of the intangible knowledge that has
kept them alive in spite of the extremely difficult circumstances of conflict. What the worksof the Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network reveal is the potential of women’s
networks under conditions of humanitarian crisis. The everyday commodities used bydisaster victims are often referred to as ‘non-food items’ by humanitarian aid practitioners.
However, the means by which such items are obtained by disaster victims is not yet wellunderstood. In this section, a breakdown of how the 23 most indigent households among
the nomadic internally displaced persons of the Samburu in Kenya acquired theirminimum-level necessities is provided through an inventory survey of householdcommodities.
Table 1 shows 2011 data concerning the social relationships between Kenyan Samburu
nomadic internally displaced persons and members of the surrounding community who
provided them with household items such as clothes, dishes, and cooking utensils. The
wives’ brothers accounted for the highest percentage at 36.6 per cent. This was followed by
the wives’ sisters, who accounted for 23.4 per cent of the total. Together, the wives’
brothers and sisters accounted for 60 per cent of supporters from the local community.
Table 2 shows the relationship between nomads who were internally displaced persons andthe local residents who gave gifts to them, by relationship, for new household goods
obtained between 2011 and 2014. Here, we can see that the wives’ sisters accounted for thehighest percentage, 36.4 per cent. What is clear from these findings is that the relationships
between internally displaced nomads and the local residents who provided them withhousehold items are driven in a significant fashion through women.

12 Nepram, ‘Plenary intergenerational dialogue’.

36Under One Tent: Towards a Localization of Humanitarian Assistance beyond Western Universalis
Table 1: Relationships between Local Donors of Household
Commodities and Pastoral Samburu IDPs, Kenya, 2011
RelationshipReal Number

Percentage

Wife’s brother

64

36.6%

Wife’s sister

41

23.4%

Clanmate15

8.6%

Wife's mother9

Husband’s brother

7

Neighbors

7

Husband’s mother

6

Daughter

6

Husband’s sister

4

Maternal uncle of husband

4

Friend4

Wife’s father

2

Paternal uncle of wife

2

Son’s wife

2

Maternal grandmother of wife

1

Husband of daughter

1

Total

175

5.1%
4.0%
4.0%
3.4%
3.4%
2.3%
2.3%
2.3%
1.1%
1.1%
1.1%
0.6%
0.6%
100.0%

This trend for women to serve as a conduit for support seems to be related to thehusband-centred virilocal marriages associated with paternal exogamy in nomadic Samburu
society. In Samburu families, where kinship is traced patrilineally, marriage partners arechosen from outside the same patrilineal kinship group. Additionally, after marriage, thebride typically leaves her parents’ home to live in the village of her husband’s relatives,
whom she will not know beforehand. As a result, the husband will live in the samecommunity as his brothers, whereas the wife will live in a community far away from bothher brothers and sisters. As such, if a married man faces a situation where he must fleefrom conflict, it is likely that his brother’s household also has to flee as well, as they will
likely reside in the same area. By contrast, the man’s sisters who left home for marriage are
more likely to be living in other areas away from their brother, and thus are more likely to
be unaffected by the conflict. Their network of social relationships can serve as a safetynet.
In Samburu society, even in times of peace, brothers and sisters of wives often visit one
another’s households to greet one another and exchange gifts of money, food, andhousehold goods. In this society, it is essentially the wives who have custody and control of
the household’s supply of resources, and as such, on these occasions of giving, it isinevitably the wives, rather than the husbands, who will receive such household goods.
For these reasons, it is likely that relationships based on linkages driven by women were
central in the sharing of household goods with internally displaced persons. In general, a37

SHINYA KONAKA
Table 2: Relationships between Local Donors of
Newly Obtained Household Commodities from 2011
to 14 and Pastoral Samburu IDPs, Kenya
RelationshipReal Number

Percentage

Wife’s sister

16

36.4%

Husband’s mother

4

9.1%

Son

4

9.1%

Wife’s mother

4

9.1%

Clanmate4

9.1%

Husband’s brother

2

4.5%

Husband’s friend

2

4.5%

Suitor to husband’s sister

1

2.3%

Husband’s sister

1

2.3%

Father (within household)

1

2.3%

Brother of wife’s mother

1

2.3%

Wife’s friend

1

2.3%

Election campaigner

1

2.3%

Wife’s brother

1

2.3%

Daughter

1

2.3%

Total

44

100.0%

stereotypical image prevails of men holding patriarchal power in nomadic societies,13 andthis can lead to the view that patrilineal kinship is important as a safety net in humanitariancrises. The results of the survey, however, reveal the opposite is the case, and that there is aneed to pay heed to the importance of woman-driven social linkages. It is important to notethat even in nomadic societies, which have been said to be patrilineal, the network of social
relations through women has the potential to become the key to local humanitarian aid.

Ⅴ ‘INVISIBLE’ NETWORKS
With the above in mind, what kind of humanitarian aid can be derived from the results ofthese field surveys? What this project has revealed is that nomadic peoples have devised
their own self-help systems in the face of humanitarian crises.
This implies that the very concept of protection for victims of humanitarian crises needs
to be questioned. The protection narrative presupposes a stereotypical image of victims ofhumanitarian crises as helpless, vulnerable, miserable, dependent, and bound by patriarchy.
What this project has revealed, however, is that protection for victims of humanitariancrises is not limited to external circles, and that there is indeed a sphere of ‘invisible
shelter’ within and between nomadic communities.
13 Hodgson, ‘Rethinking pastoralism’; Rigby, ‘Persistent Pastoralists’, ‘African Images’.

38Under One Tent: Towards a Localization of Humanitarian Assistance beyond Western Universalis
Sada Mire, a Swedish-Somali archaeologist who in the past was a refugee herself, madean important point at an international conference on this project.14 While people are left
with very little in the way of material things in nomadic life, much is instead preserved in
the form of intangible knowledge. Knowledge of how to erect a dwelling and fashion
everyday necessities is preserved through practice, and it was this very knowledge thatenabled Dr Mire to survive when she became a refugee. Everyday items may become
unavailable and unattainable at any time during nomadic living, and as such it wasnecessary to preserve the know-how to recreate such items when needed. It is thus clearthat there exists a level of ‘invisible humanitarian aid’ created by recipient displaced
peoples themselves, together with the local people, during humanitarian crises that iscategorically distinct from the humanitarian aid provided by international organizations.
The woman-driven network of social relations, a key element in the acquisition ofhousehold goods by nomadic internally displaced persons as described earlier, is anotherexample of this ‘invisible humanitarian aid’. It is not limited to East African nomads; thesame type of phenomena can be found among indigenous communities around the world,
as Nepram asserts: ‘Indigenous Peoples around the world strive to be in synergy withnature. They depend immensely on the available natural resources, yet at the same timecomprehend the value of these resources for the survival of their future generations.’15
The sphere of support at the community level can be referred to as ‘inner shelter’, as
opposed to the visible types of support brought in from outside the community, such asmaize as food aid, tents, and emergency medical supplies. This inner shelter is not as
discernible as those items. Rather, the inner shelter in this context possesses thecharacteristics of being fleeting, highly fragile, and elastic, but nonetheless resistant tocrisis scenarios. Rather than the traditional culture and society itself, it is the ‘mutations’that have been produced by the changes in norms following disasters and crises which are
the precise focus of the articulation sphere approach. This area has been overlooked bythose working in the fields of development and humanitarian aid, as well as by area studies
researchers conducting field research.
At the same time, however, when a community is threatened by a humanitarian crisis, it
is rather unrealistic to conceive of a model of humanitarian aid provided solely by membersof that community, without any external intervention. The macho image of displaced
people that irresponsibly glorifies them as ‘strong and resilient refugees’ is merely the flipside of the image of displaced people as vulnerable pointed out earlier. Rather, such people
have barely survived through their dependence on social and environmental networks ofinterdependence, as illustrated by the meagre inventory of household items sourced by
Samburu women in tables 1 and 2. What is advocated here is a complementary combinationof the inner shelter created by nomadic communities and the outer shelter created byexternal intervention. The articulation sphere method is an avenue along which to pursue
this more inclusive and two-way humanitarian aid delivery.

14 Mire, ‘Comment 2’.
15 Nepram, ‘Indigenous women’, p. 110.

39

SHINYA KONAKA

Ⅵ CONCLUSION
In light of the above discussions, it can now be seen that there are necessarily invisible
forms of humanitarian aid manifesting in various parts of the world. While these modes ofaid provision have not garnered significant attention to date, they are unique to each region.
We can see that the universalism on which the humanitarianism and humanitarian aid on
which the world’s customary humanitarianism and humanitarian aid are premised is
nothing more than a Western-style conception taken as the only correct norm and imposedon the non-Western world.16 This is by no means to advocate a return to reliance on a graspof the traditional culture of each region. What this project has attempted to accomplish is aliberation from and expansion of the current form of Western universalism, which sees
Western norms as the only ‘correct’ norms, to a truly ‘universal’ universalism that can
include the concerns and ideas of non-Western regions through re-assessment of what has
traditionally been considered a universal form of humanitarian aid. Of course, this is not tosuggest there are necessarily problems with Western norms, but that they must be
understood as one set of a variety of norms that exist around the world.
This project, which advocates humanitarian aid from the standpoint of area studies, will
be a step towards a new universalism that can affirm the diversity of the world as it is, in aworld filled with regional diversity. By making heard the voices of peoples that have been
ignored or marginalized in the past, area studies strives to gradually pave the way towards
a future universality forged through the collision of regional diversities, overcoming thecurrent universalism imposed on the non-Western world by the logic of the powerful.
Binalakshmi Nepram mentioned in her lecture that ‘to change is to look around your own
locality’.17 Her attempts and those laid out above can be said to be a part of the movementof placing the local residents and the potential of their diverse forms of self-help first. Bothattempts share common ground. It is to be hoped that continued discussion presenting
humanitarian aid from local perspectives will be a small step towards a new common
horizon of humanitarianism.

16 Donini, ‘Humanitarianism’.
17 Nepram, ‘Responding to rising armed conflict’.

40Under One Tent: Towards a Localization of Humanitarian Assistance beyond Western Universalis
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