Slow neglect in Kasai: Humanitarian time, everyday waiting and the politics of futures

Protracted humanitarian crises are often described as neglected, yet the temporal organisation of neglect remains poorly understood. This article examines how neglect is produced and lived in postconflict Kasai in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by focusing on the interaction between institutional and everyday time. Drawing on a qualitative multi-temporal ethnographic study that combines life history interviews, temporal mapping workshops, participant observation and document analysis, the article explores how residents narrate long periods of waiting, repeated cycles of displacement and return, and futures that never fully materialise. It also reconstructs how institutional calendars, eligibility windows, programme closures, and shifting crisis labels shaped these experiences from the side of humanitarian and administrative practice. The analysis shows how humanitarian project cycles, bureaucratic delays, funding volatility and shifting crisis labels generate patterned experiences of abandonment and narrow the range of imaginable futures. Neglect emerges as a form of slow neglect rooted in temporal misalignment rather than simple absence of aid, with significant implications for debates on humanitarian governance and temporal justice.