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Research paper
What Happened to Children Who Returned from the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda?
This article draws on research carried out in 2004–06 and from 2012 to 2018, and compares findings with other publications on reintegration in the region. It argues that implementing best-practice guidelines for relocating displaced children with their immediate relatives had…
Research paper
Low Prevalence of Intestinal Schistosomiasis Among Fisherfolk Living Along the River Nile in North-Western Uganda: a Biosocial Investigation
This article asks: why is the prevalence of S. mansoni so low among fisherfolk in northern Uganda? Taking a biosocial approach, it suggests that the mass distribution of drugs, free of charge, has had an impact. However, the low prevalence…
Research paper
Understanding Perceptions on ‘Buruli’ in Northwestern Uganda: A Biosocial Investigation
This article explores perspectives on Buruli among fisherfolk in northwestern Uganda along the River Nile, where the ulcer has previously been documented. The findings are based on a long-term ethnographic study of health, healing and illness in this region, and…
Research paper
The ‘Other Diseases’ of the Millennium Development Goals: Rhetoric and Reality of Free Drug Distribution to Cure the Poor’s Parasites
A massive programme is now underway to treat the parasites of the poor in Africa via integrated vertical interventions of mass drug administration in endemic areas. The approach has been hailed as remarkably effective, with claims that there is now…
Research paper
De-Politicizing Parasites: Reflections on Attempts to Control the Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases
Large amounts of funding are being allocated to the control of neglected tropical diseases. Strategies primarily rely on the mass distribution of drugs to adults and children living in endemic areas. The approach is presented as morally appropriate, technically effective,…
Research paper
Border Parasites: Schistosomiasis Control among Uganda’s Fisherfolk
It is recognized that the control of schistosomisais in Uganda requires a focus on fisherfolk. Large numbers suffer from this water-borne parasitic disease; notably along the shores of lakes Albert and Victoria and along the River Nile. Since 2004, a…
Research paper
Resisting Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases: Dilemmas in the Mass Treatment of Schistosomiasis and Soil-Transmitted Helminths in North-West Uganda
A strong case has recently been made by academics and policymakers to develop national programmes for the integrated control of Africa’s ‘neglected tropical diseases’. Uganda was the first country to develop a programme for the integrated control of two of…
Does Mass Drug Administration for the Integrated Treatment of Neglected Tropical Diseases really work? Assessing Evidence for the Control of Schistosomiasis and Soil-Transmitted Helminths in Uganda
Less is known about mass drug administration [MDA] for neglected tropical diseases [NTDs] than is suggested by those so vigorously promoting expansion of the approach. This paper fills an important gap: it draws upon local level research to examine the…
Research paper
The Violence of Healing
This essay discusses violence and healing in response to war, drawing attention to the idea that violence and healing are often closely interconnected, and what may be judged to be violent acts can be expected to play a crucial role…
Research paper
Justice at the Margins: Witches, Poisoners, and Social Accountability in Northern Uganda
Recent responses to people alleged to be ‘witches’ or ‘poisoners’ among the Madi of northern Uganda are compared with those of the 1980s. From 2006, a democratic system for dealing with suspects was introduced, whereby those receiving the highest number…
Research paper
Quests for Therapy in Northern Uganda: Healing at Laropi Revisited
This article presents a case of diachronic ethnography. It examines quests for therapy among the Madi people of northern Uganda. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in and around the small trading centre of Laropi; originally in the…
Research paper
Deworming Delusions? Mass Drug Administration in East African Schools
Recent debates about deworming school-aged children in East Africa have been described as the ‘Worm Wars’. The stakes are high. Deworming has become one of the top priorities in the fight against infectious diseases. Staff at the World Health Organization,…
Book chapter
Life Beyond the Bubbles: Cognitive Dissonance and Humanitarian Impunity in Northern Uganda
International humanitarians work within bubbles. Humanitarians rely on rules and norms—from laws or principles, to religious and biomedical values, to best practice and ethical guidelines. The rules and norms create apparently coherent and predictable spaces.
Background report
Crisis Responses, Opportunity and Public Authority during Covid‐19’s First Wave in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan
Discussions on African responses to Covid-19 have focused on the state and its international backers. Far less is known about a wider range of public authorities, including chiefs, humanitarians, criminal gangs, and armed groups. This paper investigates how the pandemic…
Research paper
Rejection and Resilience: Returning from the Lord’s Resistance Army in Northern Uganda
This article focuses on young people who returned from the Lord’s Resistance Army in northern Uganda, mostly as children, over ten years ago. Supporting normative models of resilience has exacerbated deprivation of the most vulnerable.
Research paper
Therapy in Uganda: a failed MHPSS approach in the face of structural issues
The past 30 years have seen an unprecedented rise in attention towards the mental health of conflict-affected populations. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the burden of mental disorder among conflict-affected individuals may be as high as 22% and…
Research paper
Vigilantes, Witches and Vampires: How Moral Populism Shapes Social Accountability in Northern Uganda
Strange murders have occurred in northern Uganda. Blood is said to have been removed from the victims, and there are tales about child sacrifice and terrifying witchcraft. An ‘election’ was organised to select the culprit, known as ‘Mr Red’, and…
Research paper
Conceptual Resilience in the Language and Lives of Resilient People: Cases from Northern Uganda
This special issue explores post-conflict recovery in northern Uganda from the perspective of survivors themselves. Normative notions of resilience are widely critiqued as reductive, depoliticising and simplistic. Although the papers here, based on ethnographic methodologies, are largely sympathetic to this…
Research paper
Moral Spaces and Sexual Transgression: Understanding Rape in War and Post Conflict
Evocative language describing rape as a ‘weapon of war’ has become commonplace. Although politically important, overemphasis on strategic aspects of wartime sexual violence can be misleading. Alternative explanations tend to understand rape either as exceptional — a departure from ‘normal’…
Thesis
After rape: justice and social harmony in Northern Uganda
This thesis explores responses to rape in the Acholi sub-region of northern Uganda, based on ethnographic research in two villages. Northern Uganda has been at the heart of international justice debates in the context of ongoing conflict between the Lord’s…
Research paper
Humanitarian Remains: Erasure and the Everyday of Camp Life in Northern Uganda
The impacts of protracted displacement can be understood through the spatial and material afterlives of war. This article examines leftover aid rations, archives, former displacement camp sites and even unmarked graves as evidence to better understand what happens when people…
Blog
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.
Blog
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.…
Research paper
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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,…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
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…
Blog
“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,…
Blog
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…
