We look at how the EU focus on disaster prevention and relief in the Horn of Africa (HoA) might be seen as a particular form of governance. We find the emphasis on the idea of resilience as the clearest expression of this. The EU’s approach fits both the EU’s own conception of itself as a global actor informed by normative values, but also with the approach of a range of other actors who share a very similar vocabulary and understanding. Wariness of 1990s-style humanitarian intervention in the region has led to a new emphasis on policies of prevention and preparedness where the aim is to shift responsibility onto local actors while remaining in control of developments from a safe distance.
However, our concern is to see how this fits with a wider discourse which is more to do with forms of governance. We find the governmentality approach useful in capturing these shifts in discourse and techniques from a focus on rights, to an emphasis on local responsibility. In particular, we are interested in tackling this issue from the point of view of new ideas that appear to address risks and disaster prevention, but in fact are part of a broader agenda that relates to forms of governance operating from a distance through monitoring, benchmarking and peer-review. In particular, we focus on the increasingly prevalent use of the notion of resilience, a term that is now part of a wide literature from local government to financial organisation to disaster prevention and preparedness. The EU’s SHARE (Supporting Horn of Africa Resilience) programme is one such example. We look at how this is part of a more general approach, but question whether it can be an effective form of intervention.
