| Abstract: |
Over the course of the last 60 years more people have been systematically displaced worldwide then ever before in history. Only in the last 60 years have these displaced peoples been formally recognized as refugees, in some cases. Aside from enduring a change of place, the displaced also suffer an adjustment of their recognized rights as they undertake the transition from citizen to refugee, from independence to dependence. Such a transition inspires extreme cultural transformations in individual communities of refugees as their sacred, cultural, and political beliefs, interests, norms, traditions, and values are challenged. What comes of these communities that undergo such rapid and extreme change? Many of them resist their new situation, forming armed movements, they are refugee-warriors. By synthesizing research in ‘refugee science,’ political science, East African political economy, post-colonial history (1950-2001), and ethnographic accounts of some camps in the Great Lakes Region the phenomenal capacity for this abnormal, violent version of the refugee to impact their environment has been proven. Said synthesis reveals how refugee-warriors can be troublesome in and detrimental to their newfound asylum as a sovereign country as well as establishing that the humanitarian discourse that has been designed to manage refugees, globally, is ill-equipped to handle the aggressiveness of refugee warriors. Further findings resolve that weak states allow refugee-warrior movements to thrive, and that in a vicious cycle these states are perpetually weak by either allowing or being terrorized by these militants. |
