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.
