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Case study
SSHAP learning note: Building a localised approach
This learning note shares insights, experiences and lessons from SSHAP's approach to the localisation of its operational responses in sub-Saharan Africa.
Report
Conflict-sensitive returns and integration in South Sudan
This research aims to provide a stronger understanding of the risks and opportunities associated with ‘returns’ and ‘integration’ in South Sudan, as well as highlight opportunities for conflict-sensitive (re)integration and early solutions activities.
Blog
A widow’s story of survival and humanitarianism in the Sudans
The story of Nyapuottek, a widow from the Sudanese war, illustrates how fraught it can be to navigate changing relations during times of conflict and migration, and how such struggles can intersect with humanitarian initiatives.
Article
A critical juncture for Sudan’s democratic transition
An expert commentary describing how international pressure is essential to reach an agreement that establishes a credible civilian government.
Infographic
Crisis in Sudan: Note on displacement from Sudan to South Sudan ar
This infographic summarises the insights from a recent briefing note on displacement due to the crisis in Sudan.
Research paper
Producing democracy in armed violence settings: Elections and citizenship in Eastern DRC
The article analyses how the 2018 elections in the DRC contributed to a further opening of the democratic space and shared expressions and sentiments of citizenship. Through an ethnography of the electoral process in the South Kivu province, we investigate…
Research paper
The longue durée of short-lived infrastructure – Roads and state authority in South Sudan
Road-building, followed by road runi and rebuilding, have been a cyclical feature of development in South Sudan. This article focuses on two internationally funded roads built around independence to explore their meaning for central government, and for people living along…
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
Humanitarian Shapeshifting: Navigation, Brokerage and Access in Eastern DR Congo
This article examines the experience of Congolese humanitarians negotiating access with armed groups in eastern DRC. It describes how humanitarians become shapeshifters: they play different roles for different audiences as a tactic of social navigation in a context of uncertainty.…
Research paper
Humanitarian Fables: Morals, Meanings and Consequences for Humanitarian Practice
This article describes how events are turned into fables in humanitarian organisations. It explores how these fables circulate, the lessons they come to embody and their influence in maintaining an organisational status quo. The article argues that such stories teach…
Book chapter
Civil Society and Peacebuilding in the Kivu Provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo
This chapter explores how effective or not has civil society been in ending armed conflict and building sustaining peace in Kivu provinces via the use of seven civil society’s peacebuilding functions. The findings are drawn from desk research, mainly exploring…
Research paper
A man never cries: barriers to holistic care for male survivors of sexual violence in eastern DRC
While we know that most male survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) do not have access to care, little attention has been devoted to a systematic analysis of why this is so. Drawing…
Research paper
Love, Sex, and Exchange in the Context of Peacebuilding in the Democratic Republic of Congo
The narrow framing of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (SEA) and the United Nations Zero-Tolerance Policy inadequately accounts for the range of sexual interactions in peacekeeping contexts and obscures the wider social contexts within which sexual decision making occurs. We draw…
Research paper
“Maybe we should take the legal ways”: Citizen engagement with lower state courts in post-war northern Uganda
Lower state courts are the focus of both international and national access to justice policies and programs but remain understudied in Uganda. Drawing on 3 years of ethnographically informed research on citizen engagement with a busy magistrates’ court in post-war northern…
Background report
Aid Seen from the Bottom: Community realities and representations of aid in Eastern DRC
Africa’s Great Lakes region has been plagued by deadly armed conflicts for almost three decades, resulting in internal and international displacement. Marked by issues of governance, natural resource management, land grab- bing, and food insecurity, Eastern DRC is at the…
Background report
Aid Seen from the Bottom: Community realities and representations of aid in Eastern DRC
This report investigates community perceptions of the actions carried out by NGOs working to address intersecting crises in Eastern DRC, in Kalehe and Uvira (Ruzizi Plain) territories. These two areas are characterized by a significant presence of humanitarian, development and…
Background report
Vacuum Governance in Eastern DRC: Understanding the Social, Economic and Security Dynamics of Shabunda
Vacuum Governance in Eastern DRC: Understanding the Social, Economic and Security Dynamics of ShabundaThis report investigates the social and security dynamics in Shabunda territory (Democratic Republic of the Congo). Located in westernmost South Kivu province and bordering Maniema province, Shabunda…
Briefing
One year after the coup: What next for Sudan’s Juba Peace Agreement?
This briefing considers the changing political situation in Sudan, exploring how the relationship between two key factions in the conflict has complicated discussions around the formation of a new political arrangement in Sudan.
Research paper
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,…
Research paper
Sexual violence against men in conflict and post-conflict settings: A qualitative research methodology
This article describes the research design and the strategies employed in qualitative research with South Sudanese male refugee survivors of sexual violence who have resettled in two communities in Uganda since the onset of the 2013 South Sudan conflict.
Research paper
“Tokowa po ya ekolo”: The Military Body Within the Congolese Army
This article explores the conceptualization of the body among former Congolese soldiers living as refugees in Johannesburg. The article draws on extensive fieldwork in Johannesburg, South Africa and employs the concept of deterritorialization and reterritorialization to explain the bodies of…
Research paper
Peace Starts with Peace of Mind: Study of the Intersection between Postconflict Trauma, Peacebuilding and Economic Development in Northern Uganda
This study examines an intervention implemented by TPO Uganda in northern Uganda addressing mental health challenges, conflict mediation and economic empowerment. The research consisted of 23 individual in-depth interviews and 16 focus group discussions, supported by a quantitative questionnaire completed…
Research paper
A Reason Not to Belong: Political Decentralization, Intercommunal Relations, and Changing Identities in Northeastern Uganda
Based on oral history fieldwork in Abim, Meyerson documents these changes in sociopolitical identification among the Ethur. In doing so, he demonstrates how political decentralization has become a venue for the combination of international discourses of indigenous rights, national notions…
Research paper
Lakes as Rebellious Landscapes: From ‘Fishing Rebels’ to ‘Fishy State Officials’ in DR Congo
This article discusses the frictions that emerge when the management of Virunga National Park in eastern DR Congo tries to retake control of Lake Edward through infrastructural and military interventions. These interventions not only encounter resistance from multiple rebel groups…
Research paper
A Perturbed Peace: Applying Complexity Theory to UN Peacekeeping
Drawing on experience working and conducting fieldwork in the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this article argues that UN peacekeeping operations should view themselves as actors within the complex conflict ecosystem, looking to enable transformational…
Humanitarian Needs Overview: South Sudan 2022
This document is consolidated by OCHA on behalf of the Humanitarian Country Team and partners. It provides a shared understanding of the crisis in South Sudan in early 2022, including the most pressing humanitarian need and the estimated number of…
Research paper
Conflict, epidemic and faith communities: church-state relations during the fight against Covid-19 in north-eastern DR Congo.
The present article seeks to go beyond such oft-documented instrumentalization of churches for public health purposes. It discusses a more fundamental and general dynamic: the relationship between religious denominations, the State, and health authorities in a fragile context marked by…
Research paper
Becoming Secondary Survivors: Exploring the Effects of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence on the Health and Well-Being of Families in Northern Uganda
The enduring consequences of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) and its catastrophic effects on the health and well-being of survivors has been well documented. However, there is a dearth of evidence on the impact of CRSV on families of survivors who…
Policy document
South Sudan United Nations Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF) 2023-2025 Results and M&E framework
This document presents the results of a strategic prioritization workshop focused on aligning National Development priorities of South Sudan with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The resulting framework will be used to track and monitor the country’s SDG progress…
Research paper
Researcher Effects in Survey-Based Research: Insights from Research in South Sudan
The article contributes to the literature that argues that researcher effects also occur in quantitative research. It shows that in policy-relevant research reflexivity is necessary to strengthen research results. Researchers working in conflict-affected, impoverished environments, and donors requesting evaluation and…
Research paper
Hiding in plain sight: IDP’s protection strategies after closing Juba’s protection of civilian sites
When civil war broke out in South Sudan in 2013, people from the Nuer minority ethnic group became targeted by government forces and sought protection in United Nations peace-keeping bases which expanded and became known as Protection of Civilian sites…
Briefing
Sudan: Humanitarian access snapshot
This briefing note gives a snapshot of the humanitarian access situation in Sudan following the start of fighting in April 2023 as well as some insights into the overall humanitarian access situation since the military takeover in October 2021.
Report
Sudan: Update on the humanitarian situation with a focus on the impact on healthcare
This thematic report provides an update on the impact of conflict on Sudan’s healthcare system using a secondary data review of public sources.
Briefing
High food prices, flooding and inter-communal clashes continue driving high needs
A Sudan food security outlook update describing different drivers of food insecurity among a range of vulnerable population groups.
Briefing
Protection analysis update
This update analyses priority protection risks and recommendations with findings based on an analysis of protection monitoring actors and assessments by the Protection Sector, its AoRs, protection partners and reports produced by other agencies.
Article
Egypt: Police target Sudanese refugee activists
This Human Rights Watch article describes the political conditions and recent experiences of Sudanese refugees in Egypt which may shape how current Sudanese refugees are treated in the country.
