Drawing on Judith Butler’s Frames of War and the concept of grievable lives, this paper examines how armed actors manipulate humanitarian aid to create hierarchies of suffering and legitimacy. Focusing on Southern Sudan during the Second Civil War, it shows how the Sudan People’s Liberation Army financed its resistance through a criminalised economy in which humanitarian aid was diverted, taxed, or stolen and resold at inflated prices. Civilians were framed as beneficiaries of liberation while being materially embedded in an exploitative wartime economy.
The paper traces how criminal economies mediate access to aid and shape the recognisability of suffering, exposing the entanglement of humanitarianism with militarized economies and rebel governance. Comparative cases from Bosnia and Afghanistan demonstrate how such framing renders some lives visible and others expendable. It argues that diverted and politicised aid reinforces war economies and legitimises those controlling distribution, undermining humanitarian commitments to universality and shared precarity.