Aid providers in the Horn of Africa have always struggled to adapt their systems and models to the simple fact that people move from place to place. Delivering aid in remote areas normally involves establishing long supply chains that rely on populations being in places where they can be relatively easily ‘accessed’. The refugee and IDP camps of the region, many of which were constructed as temporary locations for the provision of food or shelter, are an obvious symbol of this tendency.
But, the idea of populations being fixed in one place works against the intrinsic mobility in their lives; from pastoralist groups moving with their animals to grasslands for grazing, to seasonal farm labourers moving annually for work. Movement is often a survival strategy that helps people to seek refuge from conflict, food shortages or the coercive control of the state. Borders are also central to these strategies. Recent research by the Rift Valley Institute has shown the importance of the social capital created by the transnational networks that operate across borders, and how borderland populations use it as a critical component of their livelihood strategies.
Political actors have been alive to these contradictions for years, and the aid community has long experience of how aid can be used to push populations towards, or away from, particular places in support of political agendas. The COVID-19 response opens up a new front in these longstanding tensions, one that needs urgent consideration if aid delivery is not to be implicated in long-term harm.