Suchergebnisse

Dying for French Soudan -- Civilization and Africa -- Privateering for France -- Officers and gentlemen? -- Slaving and African warfare -- Conspiracy theories and scandals -- From The heart of darkness to twenty-first-century guilt -- Conclusion : traumatized perpetrators?

AbstractThis article investigates the development of communities of practice in Thai-border Cambodian refugee camps for those international humanitarian workers involved at the frontiers of the Cold War. Under the management of the United Nations Border Relief Operation (UNBRO) and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) these camps brought together various NGOs and volunteers. Their prolonged presence at the border of Thailand enabled an epistemic community to emerge which facilitated the production of knowledge on refugees. Using oral histories and the archives of NGOs, this article investigates the development of an international community of practice in which Europeans played a key role, one which centred on the medical and social needs of refugees at a time of acute political instrumental use of humanitarian aid. The focus of humanitarians' work on genocide and associated trauma, resulted in a clear political awareness that humanitarian aid had been used to maintain Khmer Rouge presence at the borders and that, in the peace negotiations of the early 1990s, it might facilitate their territorial and political return to a position of power.