Aiding Conflict? The Implications of Humanitarian Cash and Voucher Assistance for Host-Refugee Relations in Lebanon

Abstract

This thesis is concerned with the impact of humanitarian cash and voucher assistance (CVA) on everyday economic and social relations between host and refugee communities in Lebanon. Literature that explores the unintended consequences of humanitarian aid, called the ‘paradox of aid’, has focused on existing conflicts. They have neglected the possible unintended impacts of aid on local peace and conflict dynamics between hosts and refugees. The host-refugee relations literature, in turn, acknowledges aid as a factor for possible community tensions but explores relations from the viewpoint of either the refugee or the host community. As interventions permeate relational community life, this thesis offers a combined perspective. Likewise, while CVA has become the preferred modality to provide humanitarian assistance, evaluations have predominantly measured output and outcome rather than possible unintended consequences. Focusing on Lebanon, this ethnographic study attempts to fill this gap. The United Nations and their partners are implementing one of the world’s largest cash programmes in Lebanon. Syrian refugees represent about 30% of the population, making it a country with one of the highest host-refugee ratios in the world. The thesis combines semi-participant observation and semi-structured interviews during field research in Majdal Anjar in Lebanon from October 2017 until July 2018. It advances our understanding of both host and refugee communities’ everyday experiences of living together in a deeply divided society affected by humanitarian interventions. In order to go beyond the limitations of the literature and gain a more nuanced and holistic understanding of the role of CVA in host-refugee relations, I connect debates around humanitarian impacts, everyday economics and everyday peacebuilding. This thesis makes three significant contributions to these debates. First, it reveals a dissonance between a linear conflict-free understanding of humanitarian aid as a driver for economic growth and the complexity of individual everyday experiences of peace and conflict elicited by the more intangible perceived socio-economic impacts of aid. Second, I develop the concept of perceived horizontal inequalities linked to the targeting process of humanitarian CVA in host-refugee contexts. The findings show that it requires broadening to incorporate procedural justice alongside the hitherto emphasis on distributive justice. This shifts the focus from outcomes of resource distribution to the decision-making processes behind those outcomes as a vital factor influencing host-refugee relations. Third, I expand the concept of everyday peace rooted in local agency by adding a socio-economic frame interwoven with local power dynamics through a conceptual lens of everyday economics. CVA helps create and shape a peace that belongs to the relatively affluent and influential actors in society. The more vulnerable community members work for an everyday peace out of ‘obliged tolerance’. The powerful benefit from this peace and uphold the structures that support it. The main contribution is an understanding that CVA, like other aid resources, is a paradox that shapes and creates everyday economic interactions embedded in a local socio-economic and political relational context. If CVA is the humanitarian future, then an understanding of its socio-economic implications is vital if humanitarian aid is to nurture everyday peace economies.

Date of Award	9 Sept 2020
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Tim Jacoby (Co Supervisor) & Birte Vogel (Main Supervisor)