On the Fringes of Aid: Humanitarian Organisations and Sudanese Refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 1966–1972

Abstract

Thousands of Southern Sudanese refugees fled southward into the Orientale province of the Democratic Republic of Congo in the late 1960s. This article examines the challenges posed by fragmentary archival sources from humanitarian organisations, and a small number of interviews, for understanding the actions of Sudanese refugees as they entered a province already battered by civil war. Expatriate staff struggled to negotiate with the Congolese and Sudanese governments, who both wanted to limit the threat of rebels. Furthermore, the particular goals and recordkeeping methods of humanitarian organisations post major challenges for interpreting the sources. However, oral testimonies of former aid workers and refugees demonstrate that Sudanese refugees did clearly shape their journeys and how they negotiated with refugee assistance programmes. This article thus offers new perspectives for researchers on the value and pitfalls of various individual humanitarian agency records.