Humanitarian protection and the politics of labelling: the case of displaced Iraqi and Syrian Roma

This chapter examines the relationship between humanitarianism and internally displaced Roma in Syria and Iraq drawing on Didier Fassin's critique of humanitarianism as inextricable from politics and Achille Mbembe's theory of necropolitics. The chapter examines gendered violences committed against displaced Iraqi and Syrian Roma by humanitarian organisations, state institutions, and public narratives through the politics of labelling, exclusion, and erasure. The humanitarian community has been complicit in othering Iraqi and Syrian Roma and contributing to the marginalisation and displacement-induced vulnerabilities these groups experience. The chapter presents the implications of such othering by the humanitarian community in research and practice and calls for a more nuanced approach to both.