Cross-border assistance to IDPs: law and localisation in the delivery of ‘quiet aid’

RSC Public Seminar Series, Trinity Term 2026
Series convened by Associate Professor Catherine Briddick and Dr Uttara Shahani

About this talk

Humanitarian access constraints are a growing problem in IDP contexts. In countries including Gaza, Myanmar, Sudan, Syria and Ukraine, ruling or occupying regimes have restricted aid access to parts of their territory in an attempt to weaponise aid to undermine political opposition. Where access is denied internally, cross-border assistance from neighbouring states can become a crucial alternative route. Much of this work is delivered as low-profile, locally-led and negotiated ‘quiet aid’. Such assistance can be an aid lifeline but it also requires navigating multiple overlapping regulatory domains in international and domestic law, including border controls, banking regulations, organisational registration and financial compliance requirements in multiple country contexts. These legal regimes inform different opportunity structures for cross-border assistance and establish different risks for the frontline aid actors involved. This seminar will examine the implications of how international aid practices and ways of working can either exacerbate or mitigate the risks of cross-border assistance, ultimately highlighting both the necessity of supporting ‘quiet aid’ modalities and of doing so in a conflict-sensitive way.

About the speaker

Kirsten McConnachie is Professor of Socio-Legal Studies at the University of East Anglia, a Research Associate at the University of Oxford's Refugee Studies Centre and a Senior Research Associate of the University of London's Refugee Law Initiative. She is a series editor for Berghahn Books series in Forced Migration  and an editorial board member of Social & Legal Studies and Journal of Human Rights Practice. She has published on topics including the history and management of refugee camps; the role of non-state armed groups in refugee protection; legal pluralism and non-state justice systems; legal anthropology and informal governance; forced migration in southeast Asia; and the role of victims in transitional justice. 

Professor McConnachie is the author of Governing Refugees: Justice, Order and Legal Pluralism (Routledge 2014) and co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Socio-Legal Theory and Method (Routledge 2022) and Landmark Cases in International Refugee Protection (Hart 2026). She has a long-standing research interest in Burma/Myanmar and is currently working on a British Academy funded project on humanitarian assistance to IDPs, in collaboration with Amporn Jirattikorn (Chiang Mai University), Anne-Meike Fechter (University of Sussex) and TheHILLS Myanmar.

The seminar will be followed by drinks in the Hall.

Registration not required.

All enquiries should be directed to rsc-outreach@qeh.ox.ac.uk