People are affected by different kinds of insecurity in the Ituri Province in the northeastern DRC. This article investigates donor-driven attempts to improve security governance there. More specifically, it investigates bottom-up approaches to security governance in Ituri’s capital of Bunia and in Irumu territory. In Bunia people are faced with high levels of violent crime, Irumu is the site of a violent conflict between the Ituri Patriotic Resistance Force (FRPI), an armed group connected to the Ngiti community, and the Congolese army. Involving local non-state security actors in security governance is perceived by international and national actors as a pragmatic way to improve security conditions.
However, we show these bottom-up security governance initiatives have not succeeded in resolving the issues generating insecurity. We argue this is because the drivers of insecurity in northeastern Congo are translocal and too complex for localised bottom-up approaches to significantly change the status quo.
Urbanisation and the Political Geographies of Violent Struggle for Power and Control: Mining Boomtowns in Eastern Congo
This chapter addresses rural–urban transformations in the Kivu provinces, DRC, and more particularly focuses on the complex relationship between dynamics of violent conflict and the emergence of urban mining ‘boomtowns’. Mining towns offer fascinating sites from which to investigate the socioeconomic and spatial effects of a protracted history of violence, displacement and militarisation.
Moreover, this chapter demonstrates how they are interesting spatial as well as analytical starting points from which to study the political geographies of war dynamics in Eastern DRC. It will be argued that the reason why these mining towns evolve into strategic ‘resources’ in violent struggles for power and control is to be found in their urban character as much as in the presence of natural resources.
Between Tags & Guns: Fragmentations of public authority around eastern Congo’s artisanal 3T mines
This essay addresses the current dynamics governing access to artisanal mineral markets in eastern Congo’s two Kivu provinces, an area caught in over two decades of protracted and multi-scalar armed conflict. It examines how public authority is fragmented and (re-)shaped through transnational reform that aims at breaking the presumed link of mining and conflict, and subsequently, how emerging forms of regulation impact on the trans-local negotiation of such authority.
Understanding Armed Group Proliferation in the Eastern Congo
Due to the proliferation of smaller armed groups and the disappearance and scattering of larger rebel movements, the armed group landscape of the eastern Congo has become increasingly fragmented. This fragmentation results from the interplay between the growing engagement of lower-level political actors in militarized politics, the volatility of local conflict dynamics, and counterproductive military policies, including military operations.
Since the end of the wholesale integration of rebel groups into the Congolese national army, military operations have become the preferred strategy to address armed groups. These military operations are not part of wider political processes aimed at convincing armed groups to lay down arms. There is a need to devise policies that focus primarily on armed groups themselves and their political-economic support networks, which should be complemented by army reform and measures addressing conflict dynamics.
Stable Instability: Political settlements and armed groups in the Congo
This report analyses the stability, inclusivity and levels of violence of both the political settlement of the Congo as a whole and of political settlements in the conflict-ridden east. It shows that in each of these political arenas, armed groups and violence play a different role, and examines how these arenas mutually influence each other.
The relative importance of armed groups as either resources or threats to the power of the presidential patronage network shapes its policies towards the east, such as initiatives for military operations or negotiations. These policies influence the role that armed groups play locally.
‘Living between Two Lions’: Civilian Protection Strategies during Armed Violence in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo
This article examines how civilians assess, negotiate with, and in some cases deceive armed actors in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It demonstrates that civilians not only navigate the precarious and unpredictable conditions within armed conflict, but also exploit these conditions to improve their security situations. The ‘self-protection’ strategies analysed aim to prevent, mitigate and confront violent threats that civilians encounter in their daily lives.
This article argues that civilian self-protection strategies are especially prevalent in contexts marked as ‘no peace – no war’. Characterised by prolonged and low intensity violence, ‘no peace – no war’ contexts shape civilian self-protection strategies in three ways.
Courses au pouvoir: the struggle over customary capital in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
This article analyses the production and reproduction of traditional chieftaincy in war-torn eastern DRC through the case of a succession dispute in Kalima (South Kivu). Kalima has seen two decades of political instability and violent conflict involving numerous local, national and regional actors. During this period, the institution of traditional chieftaincy has remained politically salient.
We argue this salience is conditioned by widespread belief in its authenticity and sacredness and by the ethno-territorial imaginary of the Congolese political order. Both are historically produced through rituals, ceremonies and origin narratives that imbue the traditional chieftaincy with charisma and enable customary chiefs to accumulate resources and exercise authority. We call this ability to rule through the notion of ‘custom’, customary capital. We also show ‘customary capital’ does not automatically accrue to chiefs, and it fluctuates over time as different actors move in and out of the capacity to legitimately wield customary capital.
Indirect Rule in Armed Conflict: Theoretical Insights from Eastern DRC
Building on the analogy between armed factions in contemporary conflict settings and states in the making, this paper explores the conditions under which indirect rule emerges in contexts of armed conflict, and the consequences that this governance arrangement has on local governance institutions and legitimacy.
The paper adopts a historical and qualitative perspective, building on fieldwork and interviews carried out in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It provides a theoretical discussion of the strengths and limitations of the comparison between armed factions and proto-states, and develops novel analytical tools to understand ‘indirect rule’ governance arrangements by armed factions.
The many faces of the COVID-19 mask in Eastern DRC
The introduction of the mask during the COVID-19 outbreak changed daily life in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and took many faces. From state repression in the city of Goma, to fear of the unknown in rural areas, the mask in the region generated both suspicion and humour.
Christian Pole Pole Bazuzi, a researcher and one of the founding members and co-directors of Marakuja Kivu Research, shares his thoughts on the imposition of masks, which changed daily life in the provincial capital and the Kivus region more broadly.
Humanitarianism in Uganda: Outcast in your own Home
Through the accounts of Evelyn and Mary’s lives with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), Jacky Atingo and Melissa Parker ask why programmes funded by humanitarian agencies have done little to protect vulnerable people.
Returning from the LRA: obedience, stoicism and silence
Research with Ugandan women and their children, fourteen years after their return from life with the Lord’s Resistance Army, highlights the inter-generational dimensions of war and conflict. Obedience, stoicism and silence enabled their survival, and now shapes their day-to-day lives. Narratives of ‘victimisation’ promoted by humanitarian agencies, alongside advice to ‘forget the past’, while aiming to facilitate social reintegration has ended up perpetuating the returnees’ social isolation.
Maternal Vaccination in Uganda: Exploring Pregnant Women, Community Leaders and Healthcare Workers’ Perceptions
This research used qualitative methods to explore pregnant women, community leaders, healthcare workers, and programme managers’ perceptions of maternal vaccination in Kampala, Uganda. The authors found that public health messaging should target all community members, including partners and parents of pregnant women as well as HCWs, to improve knowledge of and confidence in maternal vaccines.
What it means to be a ‘refugee’ in South Sudan and Uganda
After decades of armed conflict in South Sudan and Uganda, labels of ‘refugee’ and ‘internally displaced person’ fail to reflect the complex realities of the people they refer to. This blog post examines the history of movement across the region’s borders, and argues refugees are not the passive recipients of aid as often presented by humanitarian initiatives.
Lord’s Resistance Army hierarchies survive in peace time
Recent research suggests that the lives of women who have returned from extended periods with the Lord’s Resistance Army greatly vary. This blog post describes how these differences often depend on what kind of authority they commanded with the LRA and the status of their husband, which profoundly affect their experiences of return, with old hierarchies surviving into peace time.
Flattening the curve of Uganda’s coronavirus
The logic of flattening the curve should be treated differently where there are few health services to be overwhelmed, and people need to work in the day to eat at night. This blog post describes how lockdown in Uganda deserves a different kind of scrutiny to those imposed in the global North, especially when suspicions abound of presidential interventions being used strategically ahead of upcoming elections.
Do COVID-19 conspiracy theories challenge public health delivery?
The Ugandan government’s severe response to Covid-19 has encouraged endless debate over the virus’ origins, in the face of unclear global explanations. Conspiracy theories and rumours proliferate, especially in regions with no recorded infections. This blog post explores how local people understand the origins of Covid-19, and whether explanations challenge the delivery of effective public health policies.
In Uganda memories of Ebola spur resistance to COVID-19 public health efforts
Responses to COVID-19 vary across Uganda, with northern regions seeing resistance to public health efforts to enforce quarantine. For some communities the location of isolation and treatment centres, in particular, has caused public outrage, reviving memories of the 2000 Ebola outbreak. This blog post explores the effects and experiences of COVID-19 prevention in Uganda.
How do we measure the effectiveness of lockdown in Uganda against COVID-19?
In regions where state health systems are weak and premature death is common, it is possible for COVID-19 to have swept many parts of the world unnoticed, without the virus’ mass global awareness. This blog post reports from Uganda on the country’s health preparedness and quarantine measures, asking how we might measure the effectiveness of the lockdown for people’s lives and livelihoods.
Dispelling COVID-19 rumours at local levels in Pakwach, Uganda
Rumours can have significant consequences for how local communities engage their health systems, posing problems for epidemic containment which can rely on trust in state actors. This blog post examines rumours associated with COVID-19 in the Pakwach district of Uganda, and the methods Village Health Teams are adopting to dispel them.
Humanitarian diagnostics for sleeping sickness in Uganda
A key impetus for the invention of a Rapid Diagnostic Test (RDT) for sleeping sickness (also known as human African trypanosomiasis or HAT) was the persuasive advocacy for better ‘field ready tools’ by medical humanitarian agencies such as Médecins Sans Frontières. They were engaged in fighting outbreaks of this disease, which is fatal if untreated, in contexts of weakened health systems and mass displacements during the Central African wars of the 1990s.
This piece describes how the effectiveness of diagnostic technologies is inextricably linked to the social infrastructures surrounding them which make disease detection work. Humanitarian crises are particularly complex socio-political settings where diagnosis depends on cooperation across both government and humanitarian systems no matter the infrastructural ‘short-cuts’ new technologies appear to create.
Why is there Need for Long-Term Investment in the Uganda Virus Research Institute, The Home of Zika?
In this post, the authors offer a grounded account of Zika virus, one in which its discovery is an entry point into a broader history of the UVRI and the people who worked there. In doing so, they combine autobiographical and historical narrative, drawing on their experience as an entomologist who has worked at the UVRI since 1965 (Mukwaya) and as a historian who has studied the history of virus research in Uganda (Cummiskey).
When ‘a People’s War’ Turns Against Them: Reflections on Uganda’s ‘War of the Wananchi’ against COVID-19
With the incumbent President facing a critical election in early 2021, the truths over COVID-19 in Uganda became highly contested, as measures announced in the name of the people against COVID-19 began to double as interventions against the spread of COVID-19, and interventions to limit activities of political opposition. This piece examines the declaration of a wananchi (people’s war) against COVID-19 and how ordinary Ugandan citizens would be entangled in it.
“Escaping from Quarantine” from Quarantined: My Ordeal in Uganda’s Covid-19 Isolation Centers
Ugandan intellectual and philosopher, Jimmy Spire Ssentongo has painted a behind-the-scenes picture of how the Ugandan state handled the coronavirus disease. While the Ugandan president praised self and staff for putting the coronavirus in check through the state’s isolation centres, the people under state quarantine presented a different reality.
The Logic of Contesting States During a Crisis: Revelations from Uganda’s COVID-19 Fight
This piece examines state legitimacy during the COVID-19 pandemic in Uganda. It examines various contestations to this legitimacy, such as the Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST) student strike. The strike reveals how state institutions condition(ed) public indifference with regard to COVID-19 response. The students’ strike at MUST was, in fact, a contestation against an exploitative socio-economic and political establishment.
The political economy of landslides and international aid relief: a qualitative investigation in rural Uganda
Linking environmental degradation in Bududa to political, economic, and social factors provides a broader context in which to view risk from landslides in this community, as a critical case in demonstrating how economic globalization benefits some at the expense of others.
The authors employ a ‘structural fieldwork’ approach to explain community member’s thoughts and experiences using critical macro-comparative perspectives relating to political ecology. This is a qualitative study of perspectives from community members on landslides in Bududa, Uganda. Interviews with community members reveal their perceptions of the causes, effects, and aid response to landslides. This research brings attention to how large-scale unequal relationships in trade and international aid increase landslide vulnerability and there are ineffective relief efforts in a particular locale.
‘When I die, let me be the last.’ Community health worker perspectives on past Ebola and Marburg outbreaks in Uganda
This paper describes findings from interviews with health workers from three outbreaks of Ebola and Marburg virus disease.
Geographical versus social displacement: the politics of return and post-war recovery in Northern Uganda
The civil war in Northern Uganda in the period 1986–2006 fundamentally altered former ways of life and created diverse and complex needs. Protracted conflict and displacement create, reveal, and enforce vulnerability, which can undermine resilience. Based on in-depth interviews with internally displaced persons and returnees, both before and after their return to Amuru District and Gulu District, this article argues that war and displacement constitute more than a temporary disruption.
Protection and well-being of adolescent refugees in the context of a humanitarian crisis: Perceptions from South Sudanese refugees in Uganda
Improved understanding of refugees’ perceptions of provision of humanitarian support in these contexts is important to improve design and delivery of humanitarian assistance. Refugee adolescents displaced to low and middle-income countries face a range of adversities.
The authors explored one potential influence on adolescent well-being – the impact of the new influx of refugees from South Sudan on protection risks and well-being of adolescents already settled in Uganda. Themes that emerged indicate that caregivers and adolescents perceived the influx as directly impacting access to basic needs, which had direct and indirect impacts on adolescent psychosocial well-being, for example, educational attainment was impacted due to adolescent hunger while attending school.
Pandemics and soft power: HIV/AIDS and Uganda on the global stage
The COVID-19 outbreak of 2020 threatened years of effort by the Chinese authorities to extend its influence around the world. As with COVID-19, HIV/AIDS presented a fundamental threat not only to countries’ internal social stability and population health, but also to governmental legitimacy and nation-states’ international reputation. HIV, however, also provided Uganda with an opportunity to enhance its global standing, influence international policy, and achieve national reconstruction.
This article seeks to enhance understanding of China’s defensive engagement with global health agencies, and more broadly of the relationship between pandemics and soft power, through an analysis of Uganda’s evolving response to HIV/AIDS. This case study highlights the importance of viewing international affairs from the perspective of the Global South. It argues that the very weakness of Uganda, and the structural marginality of HIV/AIDS, provided the leverage which would in the end deliver radical shifts within global health.
COVID-19, Public Authority and Enforcement
The securitization of health is not a new phenomenon. However, global responses to the 2014–2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa reveal the extent to which epidemic preparedness and response is now shaped by geopolitical concerns.
This commentary describes how enforcement occurs in diverse ways. Comparisons between Uganda and South Africa reveal the importance of analyzing this diversity in relation to past political histories and current socio-political dynamics with a public authority lens. Such an approach also involves reflecting on how past experiences of outbreaks from infectious diseases inform these dynamics.
Moving Toward ‘Home’: Love and Relationships through War and Displacement
This article calls for greater attention to spatial considerations and proposes the concept of movement as an integral dimension of understanding affinal relationships. This observation is derived from reflections on how the experiences of displacement and return in northern Uganda have reshaped constructions of ‘home’ in relation to love and intimate relationships.
Reflecting on ethnographic research over ten years in northern Uganda where a two-decade-long war (1986–2006) occurred, the article examines movements in relationships between public and private spaces against the backdrop of wider societal movements from the spatial moral geography of camp to home. It reflects on how the spatial dynamics of camps entailed profound disruptions to ‘normal’ gendered orderings of life and how ‘home’ is being reconfigured in the aftermath of war.
Challenges to Ebola preparedness during an ongoing outbreak: An analysis of borderland livelihoods and trust in Uganda
Ebola Virus Disease in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was declared a public health emergency of international concern on July 17, 2019. The first case to cross the border into Uganda in June 2019 demonstrates the importance of better understanding border dynamics in a context of Ebola. This paper adopts a political economy approach to contextualize epidemic response programs conducted in moderate- and high-risk border districts in Uganda, through a qualitative study with 287 participants. To that end, our aim was to describe the historical underpinnings of the borderlands context; the role of livelihood strategies in constraining risk avoidance decisions; and the dynamics of trust in authority figures, including health workers.
Experiences of the one-health approach by the Uganda Trypanosomiasis Control Council and its secretariat in the control of zoonotic sleeping sickness in Uganda
Elimination of sleeping sickness from endemic countries like Uganda is key if the affected communities are to exploit the potential of the available human and livestock resources (production and productivity). Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense, the parasite that causes acute sleeping sickness in humans, is transmitted by tsetse flies and co-exists in non-human animal reservoirs.
The study provides unprecedented insights into the stakeholders involved in the application of a One health approach for control of zoonotic sleeping sickness across the most important active human African trypanosomiasis focus in East Africa. This unique study is fundamental in guiding multi-stakeholder engagement if the goal to eliminate zoonotic sleeping sickness is to be realised.
Land is now the biggest gun: climate change and conflict in Karamoja, Uganda
Places that are both recovering from violent conflict and dependent on natural recourses face the overlapping challenges of reducing the risk of recurring conflict, promoting economic recovery, and ensuring sustainable environmental management: all challenges exacerbated by climate change.
This article examines how climate change alters conflict outcomes and vulnerability in Karamoja, Uganda, a region recovering from decades of intense violence. The impacts of climate change, when taken in combination with region-wide changes in land use, have contributed to new forms of localized conflicts including resource-related conflict, theft, and intrahousehold violence.
COVID-19 and Its Related Stigma A Qualitative Study Among Survivors in Kampala, Uganda
COVID-19-related stigma is gradually becoming a global problem among COVID-19 survivors with deleterious effects on quality of life. However, this social problem has received little attention in research and policy.
This study aimed at exploring the COVID-19-related stigma among survivors in Kampala, Uganda. A cross-sectional exploratory research design was used among COVID-19 survivors in Kampala district. Thirty COVID-19 survivors were examined using in-depth interviews. Data obtained were analyzed using thematic approach. The findings of study indicated that COVID-19-related stigma is prevalent. The common form of stigma was social rejection and labeling. Results showed that the survivors of COVID-19 pandemic faced social rejection and community ostracism.
Institutional vulnerabilities, COVID-19, resilience mechanisms and societal relationships in developing countries
COVID-19 pandemic challenges could be utilised as an opportunity to reform government institutions to develop resilience measures that would potentially meet contemporary and future challenges. This article highlights that the current approach of institutions has failed to meet societal need. It draws on results from a qualitative study of a justice institution of Uganda as a case study that explored how institutions coped to maintain societal relationship during the pandemic.
Results suggested that, despite the pandemic challenges, institutions suffer epistemic issues that require critical examination for states to develop policies that would facilitate institutional reform to gain resilience mechanisms needed to meet contemporary and future societal challenges.
