[Hygiene is not cleanliness. For a new definition of hygiene promotion in emergency humanitarian aid]

Following the Kosovo crisis, this paper questions the contents of hygiene kits to be distributed to refugees, the definition of hygiene and the hygiene promotion practises in emergency aid work. Hygiene promotion cannot be reduced to cleanness promotion. We have to consider refugees' psychosocial needs and trauma as well as the problems of refugees settlement as a community and of community mobilisation to conceive programmes meeting population's needs and demands. Hygiene promotion should include systematic attempts to implement community services by volunteer refugees. One has to be careful also that the financial mechanisms of aid do not pervert programmation.