This paper examines how gender equality norms are constructed, interpreted and applied in the global governance of refugees. How are they mobilized as governing tools in sites such as refugee camps, and what are the effects? Drawing on postcolonial feminist theory, the paper shows how efforts by humanitarian organizations to promote gender equality in the refugee communities they assist are unavoidably enmeshed in the unequal relations of power that shape the encounter between refugees and humanitarians, and between global positions of marginalization and privilege. In this context, gender equality norms are mobilized and made useful for two major governing projects. First, gender equality is constructed as essential to the efficient management of human displacement. In particular, advancing refugee women’s participation in camp life and camp governance is used as a central strategy to make refugee communities and refugee camps governable. Second, gender equality is constructed as a central aspect of a more long-term project of normalizing the global peripheries, represented as “backward” sources of poverty, conflict, and insecurity. Gender equality is seen as integral to a liberal norm package that should guide the modernization of traditional societies, thereby contributing to rebuilding more developed and stable societies after conflicts and emergencies. The delivery of humanitarian aid to refugees is framed as a “window of opportunity” for the promotion of these changes. Based on interviews with humanitarians working in refugee camps in Thailand and Bangladesh, this analysis focuses on the power effects of these ways of mobilizing gender equality norms as governing tools, and explores how the power dynamics of refugee camps are (re)shaped by humanitarian gender equality interventions.
