Refugee aid and protection in rural Africa: working in parallel or cross-purposes?

At the extreme it may effectively become a weapon of war as most vividly seen in ongoing conflict in southern Sudan. Many humanitarian aid agencies are increasingly aware of that they must look beyond simplistic responses of offering aid and consider the wider impact of that aid on the underlying problems.

Human rights agencies are also coming to a greater recognition that humanitarian aid plays an important role in enabling the full range of human rights to be upheld, for example ensuring access to people under threat (for a useful summary of the current debate see Minear and Weiss 2000).