Love and Liberation: Humanitarian Work Ethiopia's Somali Region

Carruth provides an alternative vision of what "humanitarian" response means in practice—not driven by International Humanitarian Law, the missions of Western relief organizations, or trends in the aid industry or academia but instead by what Somalis call . is structured by the cultivation of lasting relationships of care, interdependence, kinship, and ethnic solidarity. Samafal is also explicitly political and potentially emancipatory: humanitarian responses present opportunities for Somalis to begin to redress histories of colonial partitions and to make the most out of their political and economic marginalization. By centering around Somalis' understanding and enactments of , Carruth offers a new perspective on politics and intervention in Africa.