The Politics of Refugee Relief

The Syrian civil war is now well into its sixth year and there seems to be no end in sight to the conflict. For the country’s 6 million refugees, return to Syria remains a distant hope. In the face of such bleak realities, Syrian refugees living in the Middle East have shown resilience and fortitude. Perhaps most striking is the defiance of the aid providers and humanitarian organizations whose mandate is to protect and care for refugee populations. These organizations often fail to accommodate refugees’ tenacious efforts to reconstruct their own lives. Such shortcomings—which in many ways are built into the nature of refugee response systems—have at times compelled refugees to turn to overt and even contentious modes of resistance. What do these refugee-led protests tell us about our existing system of humanitarian response?