The Cultural Problematic in Narratives of Violence against Women and Girls in South Sudan

Our research points to the need for social and gender norm change approaches to be better contextualised within the political economy and through applying a nuanced critique of the role of culture in normalising many forms of VAWG. In addition, greater involvement of young people is critical as a behavioural tipping point is beginning to emerge in this group.

MONUSCO’s Mandate and the Climate Security Nexus

If we translate the debate on the climate security nexus to a more operational level, we inevitably arrive at the question of whether and to what extent the fight against climate change should be included in the mandate of current and future UN peacekeeping missions. MINUSMA was the first peacekeeping mission for which the mandate was explicitly extended to include climate security aspects, and a climate security expert is now appointed within the framework of the UNSOM mission in Somalia. In this policy brief, we apply the debate to the largest UN peacekeeping operation in the world so far, namely MONUSCO in DRC.

Beyond solidarity and mutual aid: Tension and conflict in burial groups in rural Uganda

Drawing from ethnographic data collected between 2012 and 2014 and January and June 2018 in Luwero district, Uganda, this article questions the romanticised depiction of burial groups as a means of enhancing social support, a sense of solidarity and mutual aid. The authors found that the felt sense of identity and belonging for members is not shared across community members, and that solidary relations between members and non-group members in the community are fraught with tensions and conflicts.

National policy development for cotrimoxazole prophylaxis in Malawi, Uganda and Zambia: the relationship between Context, Evidence and Links

Several frameworks exist to analyse factors which influence the uptake of evidence into policy processes in resource poor settings, yet empirical analyses of health policy making in these settings are relatively rare. National policy making for cotrimoxazole preventive therapy in developing countries offers a pertinent case to apply a policy analysis lens. Comparative analysis was conducted in Malawi, Uganda and Zambia. We applied the ‘RAPID’ framework, and conducted in-depth interviews across the three countries to examine the influence of context, evidence, and links between researchers, policy makers and those seeking to influence policy processes. Each area of analysis was found to have an influence on the creation of national policy on cotrimoxazole preventive therapy (CPT) in all three countries. This analysis underscores the importance of considering national level variables in the explanation of the uptake of evidence into national policy settings,

Introducing rapid diagnostic tests for malaria into registered drug shops in Uganda: lessons learned and policy implications

Malaria is a major public health problem in Uganda. Current policy recommends introduction of rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) to facilitate effective case management. However, provision of RDTs in drug shops raises new issues, such as adherence to RDTs results, management of severe illnesses, referral of patients, and relationship with caretakers. This study examine the impact of introducing RDTs in registered drug shops in Uganda to document lessons and policy implications for future scale-up in the private health sector. A cluster-randomized trial introducing RDTs into registered drug shops was implemented in central Uganda from October 2010 to July 2012, and then evaluated for lessons learned and policy implications. The study found that introducing RDTs into drug shops was feasible and it increased appropriate treatment of malaria with artemisinin-based combination therapy. It is anticipated that the lessons presented will help better implementation of similar interventions in the private sector.

Data value and care value in the practice of health systems: A case study in Uganda

In anthropology, interest in how values are created, maintained and changed has been reinvigorated. We interrogate concerns about relationships between data collection and patient care by following a pilot study in Kayunga, Uganda aimed at improving the collection of health systems data. Through ethnographic research (July 2015 to September 2016), we observed that measurement, calculation and narrative practices could be assigned care-value or data-value and that attempts to improve data collection transferred ‘data-value’ into health centres with little consideration for its impact on care. We document acts of acquiescence and resistance to data-value by health workers and describe rare moments when senior health workers reconciled these two forms of value, and care-value and data-value were enacted simultaneously. Our analysis suggests data-value and care-value are not necessarily conflicting. Actors seeking to make changes must, however, consider local forms of value and devise interventions that reinforce and enrich existing ethical practice.

Unsafe “crossover-use” of chloramphenicol in Uganda: importance of a One Health approach in antimicrobial resistance policy and regulatory action

Since the introduction of antibiotics into mainstream health care, resistance to these drugs has become increasingly widespread. Policy decisions to mitigate the development of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) are hampered by a lack of surveillance data on antibiotic availability and use in low-income countries. This study collected data on the antibiotics stocked in human and veterinary drug shops in in Luwero, Uganda. Focus group discussions with drug shop vendors were also employed to explore antibiotic use practices in the community. Focus group participants reported that farmers used human-intended antibiotics for their livestock, and community members obtain animal-intended antibiotics for their own personal human use. Human consumption of chloramphenicol residues through local animal products represents a serious public health concern. A One Health approach is required to understand the wider impact of community antibiotic use and improve overall effectiveness of intervention policy and regulatory action.

Life in the buffer zone: Social relations and surplus health workers in Uganda’s medicines retail sector

Despite their critical role, medicine sellers are often excluded from health systems and policy research. In this paper, we ask ‘what happens to the conceptualisations of a health system when medicine sellers and their practices are foregrounded in research?’ We respond by arguing these sellers sit uncomfortably in the mechanical logic in which health systems are imagined as bounded institutions, tightly integrated and made up of intertwined and interconnected spaces, through which policies, ideas, capital and commodities flow. They challenge the functionalist holism running through complex adaptive systems (CAS) approach. Drawing on ethnographic research from Uganda (2018–2019), we propose that health systems are better understood as social fields in which unequally positioned social agents (the health worker, managers, patients, carers, citizens, politicians) compete and cooperate over the same limited resources.

A Disaster for Whom?: Local Interests and International Donors During Famine Among the Dinka of Sudan

The 1985–88 famine amongst the Dinka is described and shown to have been rooted in the long term exploitation of the south by northern Sudanese and international interests. This process of exploitation served, and continues to serve, important functions for particular groups. Some of the ways in which the 1985–88 famine was functional – for the central government, the army and merchants – are outlined and the implications for relief operations considered. It is argued that international donors had considerable “room for manoeuvre” which they could have used to adopt more effective policies. They only did so after the worst of the mortality was over.

Divisive ‘Commonality’: state and insecurity in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Northern donor policies relating to building a common future and building peaceful states and societies go to the heart of national and international security agendas. This article critiques the concept of commonality between donors and recipients and within recipient countries. It argues the policies are problematic from the perspective of security theorising, both in their mooted ‘commonality’ and in terms of the political intervention they imply. Historically, security has been competitive and founded on compromise rather than commonality, and the internal legitimacy of states has been contested domestically, rather than ‘built’ from outside. Using the example of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the article argues the ahistorical assumptions of these policies and the activities they license have entrenched specific forms of insecurity. There have been some returns to the donors and implementing partners but also costs, which had not been calculated,

Participating in Development? Refugee protection, politics and developmental approaches to refugee management in Uganda

This article examines an attempt by the government of Uganda and UNHCR to implement a developmental ‘Self Reliance Strategy’ in response to the needs of 188 ,000 long-term Sudanese refugees and their hosts in Uganda, and analyses some of the conceptual, political and practical issues arising from it. It contends that conditions of extreme insecurity in the north, and the fact that refugees in Uganda do not enjoy freedom of movement, undermine from the outset prospects for a successfully integrative and developmental approach to refugee assistance. It argues the rights and well-being of refugees in Uganda are subordinated to the government’s wider political objectives in relation to Uganda’s internal conflict, and with respect to its relations with the international donor community. It concludes that, while developmental approaches promise advantages in protracted refugee situations, ways must be found of ensuring the protection and socioeconomic needs,

Dispersal, division and diversification: durable solutions and Sudanese refugees in Uganda

Questions over durable solutions in the social, political and security terrain of southern Sudan and northern Uganda invite recognition that simple delineations between “home” and “exile” are inadequate to understanding displacement and refugee status. Contrary to existing policies assuming an unproblematic repatriation of Sudanese refugees from their protracted exile in Uganda to a “post conflict” Sudan, the emerging reality is that multiple strategies of survival, self-protection and development are being employed. This paper, drawing on long-term research in several Sudanese refugee settlements in northern Uganda since the mid-1990s, explores the variety and ingenuity with which refugees address challenges to livelihoods, identities and security with a portfolio of responses which render the notion of a straightforward cross-border movement “home” largely notional.

Between a camp and a hard place: rights, livelihood and experiences of the local settlement system for long-term refugees in Uganda

Drawing on qualitative research with refugees in and outside formal settlements, this article challenges characterisations of Uganda’s UNHCR-supported refugee settlement system as un-problematically successful. It shows that by denying refugees freedom of movement, the settlement system undermines their socio-economic and other rights. Refugees who remain outside the formal system of refugee registration and settlement are deprived of the refugee status to which they are entitled under international law. The article questions the conventional opposition between refugees living in and out of refugee settlements in the Ugandan context, revealing a more complex and interconnected dynamic than is often assumed.

Sudan’s elusive democratisation: civic mobilisation, provincial rebellion and chameleon dictatorships

Sudan experienced two inspirational popular uprisings that brought down military dictatorships, but the ‘Arab Spring’ passed it by. This paper analyses social movements and armed resistance within the dualistic structure of Sudan’s centre and periphery. A pattern of alternating military and parliamentary government has been superceded by a militarised political marketplace, in which patrons and clients bargain over temporary loyalties, alongside secessionist movements and a residual urban civic activism. The paper examines the popular uprisings of 1964 and 1985, examining their short-term success but long-term failure, and reviews the last 20 years’ of abortive efforts to stage a ‘third intifada’, noting the difficulties of simultaneously pursuing civic uprising and armed insurrection, and of aligning the objectives of liberal democracy and ethnic self-determination.

Introduction: Making Sense of South Sudan

This introductory essay to a selection of African Affairs articles on South Sudan documents the critical contributions of empirically rich and analytically rigorous research, highly relevant to understanding South Sudan’s crisis, led by South Sudanese scholars. This contrasts with journalism and advocacy on South Sudan, which has been notoriously ill-informed and simplistic.

South Sudan: The price of war, the price of peace – a graphic story

In December 2013, South Sudan erupted into civil war as President Salva Kiir’s army battled rebel forces led by former Vice-President Riek Machar. Tens of thousands were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced. This cartoon tells the story of the conflict and the dynamics of the political marketplace that determined the direction of the peace talks.

Peace and the security sector in Sudan, 2002–11

This paper examines how contests over military control were played out during peace negotiations and in the implementation of agreements (including the manipulation or violation of the terms of agreements) in Sudan between 2002 and 2011.

Comparing peace processes: Sudan

This chapter examines how contests over military control were played out during peace negotiations and in the implementation of agreements in Sudan between 2002 and 2011.

Lugbara “Religion” Revisited: A Study of Social Repair in West Nile, North-West Uganda

This thesis explores processes of transitional justice as post-war social repair. It interrogates the multifarious quests through which Lugbara people of north-west Uganda seek to rebuild their intimate relationships and social lives, with recourse to explanations and therapies for suffering and misfortune. Scholars have recently found in such socio-cultural processes, potential resources that could restore communal relations and assist post-war recovery. This thesis critically appraises this contention. Whilst scholars are invested in abstracting metaphysical meaning to map causal relationships, Lugbara people are simply seeking answers to misfortunes which continue to befall them as individuals, families, and collectives: enquiring about what issues are following them, and how addressing wrong acts may heal bodily suffering and social wounds. Through multi-sited ethnography, this enquiry explores how quests to “follow” suffering are structured amid unfolding post-war projects to revive and resist notions of Lugbara personhood and sociality premised on patriarchy and seniority.

Geographies of Unease: Witchcraft, Mobility and Insecurity in an African Borderland

This thesis explores processes of transitional justice as post-war social repair. It interrogates the multifarious quests through which Lugbara people of north-west Uganda seek to rebuild their intimate relationships and social lives, with recourse to explanations and therapies for suffering and misfortune. Scholars have recently found in such socio-cultural processes, potential resources that could restore communal relations and assist post-war recovery. This thesis critically appraises this contention. Whilst scholars are invested in abstracting metaphysical meaning to map causal relationships, Lugbara people are simply seeking answers to misfortunes which continue to befall them as individuals, families, and collectives: enquiring about what issues are following them, and how addressing wrong acts may heal bodily suffering and social wounds. Through multi-sited ethnography, this enquiry explores how quests to “follow” suffering are structured amid unfolding post-war projects to revive and resist notions of Lugbara personhood and sociality premised on patriarchy and seniority.

From crisis to context: Reviewing the future of sustainable charcoal in Africa

Is charcoal a sustainable energy source in Africa? This is a crucial question, given charcoal’s key importance to urban energy. In today’s dominant policy narrative – the charcoal-crisis narrative – charcoal is deemed incompatible with sustainable and modern energy, blamed for looming ecological catastrophe, and demanding replacement. We argue that charcoal needs to be considered within its historical, social, and environmental contexts to better understand its present and the emergent pathways to sustainable energy futures. We draw upon research that is raising questions about both the charcoal-crisis and the sustainability-through-formalization narratives to argue for a new narrative of charcoal in context. This approaches charcoal as a politically, ecologically, and historically embedded resource, entailing significant socio-ecological complexity across diverse historical and geographical conjunctures, and calling for new agendas of interdisciplinary research with an orientation towards sustainability and justice.

‘Drought as War’ in Northern Uganda: Exploring the Complex Relationship Between Climate Change, Scarcity, and Conflict

That climate change will increase the incidence of violent conflict is a common claim made by both policymakers and climate change activists. I aim to question and critique the simplistic assertion that climate change will cause increased violent conflict, showing how the relationship between climate change, scarcity, and violent conflict is neither straightforward nor unidirectional. Moreover, as the evidence to support the ‘scarcity–conflict’ thesis is disputed and contested, the multidimensional relationships between conflict and scarcity are overlooked. I argue that it is imperative to explore the inverse relationship: how conflict influences scarcity in an environment of climate change, with a focus on vulnerability.

From violent conflict to slow violence: climate change and post-conflict recovery in Karamoja, Uganda

In literature examining climate change as a potential factor in violent conflict, violence is generally conceived as a readily-apparent, time-bound event. Conversely, the ontologies of slow violence emphasize the insidious ways in which environmental change can, itself, impart violence. This chapter examines how the impacts of climate change acts as a form of slow violence in Karamoja, Uganda. Karamoja is simultaneously recovering from years of violent conflict while experiencing intensifying impacts of climate change – most clearly, extreme climatic variability and longer, more intense dry seasons. Drawing upon mixed-methods, I demonstrate that the impacts of climate change are contributing to new forms of localized conflict while also threatening measures of human security. Reflecting the severity of these manifestations of slow violence, residents of Karamoja regularly drew direct comparison between past incidence of deadly armed conflict and the attritional, insidious threats of climate change on individuals’ agency,

Charcoal power: The political violence of non-fossil fuel in Uganda

Charcoal is important in Africa due to its centrality to urbanization. Despite this, the politics of charcoal remain largely unexplored. This article asks how political power shapes charcoal production and how charcoal as an energy source shapes political power through an in-depth study of charcoal extraction in northern Uganda. It argues charcoal production, and its particular destructiveness, should be understood as a continuation of the violence of the 1986–2006 war between the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Ugandan government. Based on long-term fieldwork in northern Uganda, the article draws a distinction between the politics of small-scale household production and of large-scale industrial production. By focusing on the political violence of industrial charcoal production, we argue that orthodox academic and policy narratives about the charcoal industry in Africa can be qualified, and new questions can be raised concerning broader narratives of energy modernity and global energy politics.

From disaster to devastation: drought as war in northern Uganda

This paper proposes a shift from the concept of disaster to one of devastation when dealing with the destructive consequences of climate change. It argues that today, a discourse of climate-change disaster has become dominant, in which present disasters are seen as harbingers of future of widespread climate disaster, products of a global nature in upheaval. The paper contends one needs to go beyond the series of dichotomies that the climate-change disaster discourse relies upon: future/past, global/local, natural/social. To frame climate disaster as a product of global climate change, and conflict the product of those climate disasters, is to occlude the forms of environmental violence and experience of climate change among disaster-affected communities. Through an exploration of the drought in Uganda, the paper asserts disaster should be understood as embedded within ongoing, longstanding, multiscalar processes of devastation produced by histories of human engagement with the environment,

Legacies of Violence: The Communicability of Spirits and Trauma in Northern Uganda

How may the spread of the biomedical concept ‘trauma’ as well as cen spirits in Northern Uganda be understood as part of syndemic processes of situated concerned responses to violence? In this chapter, we examine legacies of mass violence for individuals, families and the social worlds in which they live and try to recover. Starting from the situated concerns of persons and families, we suggest that trauma and cen are contested, accepted, or simply ignored to deal with mindful ‘dis-ease’ in post-conflict situations. We are intrigued by the possibility that trauma, and post-traumatic stress disorder in particular, are ‘communicable’, and spreading globally. This transmission can be understood in terms of transformations in sensibilities and interventions emanating from the Global North and the appropriation of these within local political and cosmological worlds, incdluing cen, the spirits of the resentful dead, which also seem to be increasing as a legacy of violence.

Use of Services among Female Sex Workers Receiving a Comprehensive HIV Enhanced Prevention Intervention in Kampala, Uganda: A Cross-sectional Study

We estimated the prevalence and factors associated with the use of a dedicated HIV prevention, care, and treatment service for female sex workers (FSWs) in Kampala, Uganda. Between October 2017 to January 2018, we conducted a cross-sectional study among FSWs at a dedicated clinic. We defined use as the use of the HIV prevention, care, and treatment services by FSWs at least once within the past six months. We used the log-binomial model to determine the factors associated with use of services. Eight hundred and seventy-four women were included in the analysis. The overall prevalence of use of clinic services was 81%. At adjusted analysis, use of clinic services was independently associated with being HIV positive and being treated for STIs in the past three months. The prevalence of use of clinic services was high. Dedicated services for FSWs are required to support their use of HIV and STI care.

The Ambiguity Imperative: “Success” in a Maternal Health Program in Uganda

Global health programs are compelled to demonstrate impact on their target populations. We study an example of social franchising – a popular healthcare delivery model in low/middle-income countries – in the Ugandan private maternal health sector. The discrepancies between the program’s official profile and its actual operation reveal the franchise responded to its beneficiaries, but in a way incoherent with typical evidence production on social franchises, which privileges simple narratives blurring the details of program enactment. Building on concepts of not-knowing and the production of success, we consider the implications of an imperative to maintain ambiguity in global health programming and academia.

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