Myth of International Protection: War and Survival in Congo: 43 (California Series in Public Anthropology)

by SEYMOUR (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2019

  $28.34

  In this viscerally intense, ethnographically-based work, Claudia Seymour, a former child protection advisor for the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, chronicles the heart-wrenching stories of children she attempted to help in the Democratic Republic of Congo--children who lived in neighborhoods destroyed by war, those living on the streets in poverty and destitution, and those living with AIDs but abandoned by their parents. Seymour shares her personal journey, one that begins with the will to do good yet ends with the realization of how international aid contributes to greater harm than good. The idea of protection and universalized human rights is turned on its head as Seymour uncovers the complicities and hypocrisies of those serving in the aid world--that in its promotion of inalienable human rights it was ignoring the complex historical and socio-economic dynamics that lead to the violations of such rights in the first place. The Myth of International Protection offers a new perspective to reframe how the world sees the DRC, and urges global audiences to consider their own roles in fueling the DRC's otherwise endless violence.