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Paper short abstract:

Drawing on multi-sited fieldwork in Northern Somalia/Somaliland, this paper explores how some previously temporary, kinship-based initiatives have dramatically scaled up their assistance by shifting into permanent, formal legal-bureaucratic entities.

Paper long abstract:

Recent work has begun to explore alternative and non-Western formulations of humanitarianism, including community-based and diasporic aid. Drawing on multi-sited fieldwork in areas of contested political order in Northern Somalia and Somaliland, I suggest that recent attempts at international humanitarian reform through localisation and resilience have brought diasporic, community and international humanitarian actors into a closer orbit. It is not only that multiple humanitarianisms (co)exist in the Somali territories. It is also that they collide on the ground, with blurred boundaries and birthing new practices and forms that emerge ‘betwixt and between’. Most notably this is evident in how some previously temporary and trust-based kinship initiatives have shifted into more permanent, formal legal-bureaucratic entities. I give the example of a small segmentary kinship group that instituted itself as an NGO in order to better manage diaspora funded development at the village level. This provoked proximate genealogical groups to follow suit, creating their own NGOs. Over time, these smaller NGOs were assimilated into a larger, transnational entity that scaled up kin-based assistance to a large genealogical unit that spread across western Somaliland, Djibouti and eastern Ethiopia. This particular NGO has since become a powerful developmental actor by inscribing the structures and norms of Somali genealogical kinship within the organisational structures and material practices of international humanitarianism. I conclude that the apparent decline of liberal humanitarianism may signal the emergence of increasingly hybrid forms of humanitarianism that assimilate some liberal humanitarian structures, values and institutional forms whilst discarding others.