Paper short abstract:

The paper examines the role of the local staff employed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Afghanistan in articulating intelligibility and in negotiating the legitimacy of the organisation’s norms in the country.

Paper long abstract:

Combining expatriates and local agents having complementary positioning towards the local contexts is crucial for the functioning of the UNHCR's apparatus and allows the organization to intervene in a variety of geographical, cultural, and political contexts. In Afghanistan, local staff accounts for the vast majority of its personnel. Local agents bridge between, on the one hand, the norms, the modes of actions, and the way of conceiving rule of the UNHCR, and, on the other hand, the Afghan context. They ensure most of the interactions with the Afghan interlocutors of the organisation (state authorities, village leaders, media, etc.). Receptors of international norms within the agency, they bear in turn these norms in Afghanistan, for instance when they explain UNHCR's criteria of resource allocation. Conversely, they influence the way expatriates perceive and comprehend the local reality. The temporary stay of the expatriate employees and the severe restrictions of movement they are subject to amplify the intermediary role of their local colleagues. Based on a fieldwork carried out in Kabul between 2007 and 2008, the paper examines the role of UNHCR's Afghan agents in articulating intelligibility and in negotiating the legitimacy of the implementation of the organisation's norms. In Afghanistan, being a local agent of the United Nations entails particularly delicate issues, not only because historically most Afghans have remained largely unfamiliar with international norms, but also because of the controversial nature of external interventions in this conflict-affected country.