ECAS 2013

This paper exposes the repatriation process of Burundian refugees in Tanzania between 2006 and 2012. Through this case study, the paper tries to break the assumptions about the link between repatriation and peace-building in post-conflict societies. It argues that the hegemonic discourse that promotes repatriation as a step of the peace-building process is part of the neoliberal peace framework, that celebrates the capacities and abilities of individual refugees to reconfigure the post-conflict society, while neglecting the structural factors that conditions the capacity of returnees to influence and reconfigure the post-conflict scenario. In addition, the emphasis on the repatriation solution and the stress on the potential use of refugee abilities in their countries of origin hides how the standard refugee policy of setting refugees in camps in host countries constrain and shape the skills refugees acquire during their exile.

The Nuba Mountains of Sudan is one of the most isolated areas of the country and subjected to long periods of civil war. After the signature of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005, millions of displaced persons started returning to their communities of origin, creating a challenge for the post-conflict recovery. In this paper we aim to contribute to the understanding of the economic and social effects of conflict analyzing a unique data gathered in 8 villages of the Nuba Mountains in 2008, during a short-lived interwar period. In particular, we assess the characteristics of the returnees as compared with the non-displaced population, and find important differences between the groups. Returnees are more likely to have an extended family in the village and have clearer property rights over their land and house. Returned households have fewer assets than those that stayed during the conflict, both in terms of size of the land and livestock ownership, and are less involved in the production of cash crops. Even though returnees have worse economic conditions than stayers, we find evidence that the former tend to have better health outcomes, given they are less likely to have a member of the household affected by serious diseases. We relate this finding to the targeted support received from NGOs, as well as better sanitation habits and other attitudes possibly learned during displacement.

The Angola war lasted approximately forty years, spanning the liberation struggle against Portuguese colonial rule (1961-1974), international interference following independence (1975-1980s), and the nationalist conflict for power and the control over natural resources opposing the two main parties UNITA and MPLA (1980s-2002). In 2002, the arrival of peace made it possible to understand the full scale of the damage: the large destruction of the country's infra-structure, the vast mined territories, the thousands of displaced people, and an ultimately broken society. 

In the aftermath of the conflict, the process of refugee repatriation began and continued until mid-2012. Despite resistance and doubts regarding repatriation, the majority of "official" refugees - mainly those living in camps - are now "back" to Angola. Although many of those who had fled were originally from rural regions, upon returning they resettled in urban environments. 

It is possible to scrutinise some of the reasons for the preference by the returnees for cities rather than their "original" rural "homelands". The guerrilla-like warfare which mainly ravaged villages in the bush making cities safe havens, as well as the displaced Angolans' long stay in "cosmopolitan" refugee camps - an almost urban setting - are among those reasons. Yet, in the long run, the settlement of returnees in cities or urban environments is bound to have deep social, spatial and political consequences.

The paper is the result of fieldwork research carried out along the border territories of Angola and Zambia, as well as in the Meheba Refugee Camp - Zambia.

During the long-lasting war in their country, many Angolans fled violence and insecurity to seek asylum in neighboring countries. There, they spent years or decades in refugee camps. Among the camp refugees were also 'traditional' Angolan chiefs and other local authorities. In the camps, chieftaincy was suspended, though some patterns of chief-follower relations were sustained unofficially. As the war ended in 2002, chiefs and their followers, as most of the Angolan refugees, started their way back in order to resume their position in post-conflict Angola.

As the chiefs resume their local leadership positions, they have to deal with new challenges compared to their pre-flight situation: State authorities, intertwined with the party hierarchy of governing MPLA, claim political loyalty. The people under their leadership have demands shaped by their experiences in refugee camps, where facilities and infrastructure were provided by the international refugee regime and the host states. These requests challenge both chieftaincy as an institution and the individual chiefs - whose position might also be contested by actors who gained influence during the chiefs' absence as refugees. The contribution explores this new interplay between chiefs, people and regional or local state and party authorities. What kinds, or types, of changed chieftaincy in a new social and political context emerge from specific conditions in post-conflict situations? The analysis is mainly based on interview material from fieldwork in Angola, conducted in 2011 and 2012 as part of a research project on the repatriation of local leaders from refugee camps to Angola.