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199 results found
Research paper
It takes a village to raise a militia: local politics, the Nuer White Army, and South Sudan’s civil wars
Why does South Sudan continue to experience endemic, low intensity conflicts punctuated by catastrophic civil wars? Reporters and analysts often mischaracterise conflicts in the young country of South Sudan as products of divisive ‘tribal’ or ‘ethnic’ rivalries and political competition…
Background report
South Kivu: identity, territory, and power in the eastern Congo. Usalama Project Report: Understanding Congolese Armed Groups
This report outlines the historical dynamics behind the armed movements in South Kivu, focusing on the period before and leading up to the First Congo War. It concentrates on sources of local conflict but argues that these can only be…
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
Beyond scarcity: Rethinking water, climate change and conflict in the Sudans
This article critiques the emphasis on ‘scarcity’, ‘state failure’ and ‘under-development’ within discussions of environmental security, proposing instead an alternative model of environment-conflict relations.
Research paper
On Exposure, Vulnerability and Violence: Spatial Distribution of Risk Factors for Climate Change and Violent Conflict across Kenya and Uganda
Recent studies discuss linkages between climate change and violent conflict, especially for East Africa, and focusing on whether climate change increases risk of violent conflict. However, little is known about where a climate-conflict link is most likely to be found.…
Background report
CSOs/CBOs and Faith-Based Organizations-Led Peace and Reconciliation Efforts
This policy brief explores the state and role of civil society and community-based organisations and faith-based organisations in peace and reconciliation efforts in South Sudan following the outbreak of violent conflict that began in December 2013. A key reason for…
Background report
Livelihoods, Access to Services and Perceptions of Governance: An Analysis of Uror and Nyirol Counties, South Sudan
This report is one of a series based on qualitative fieldwork conducted by the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium (SLRC) South Sudan team in Uror and Nyirol Counties, Jonglei State, South Sudan in January and February 2013 (prior to the outbreak…
Research paper
‘A situation of security pluralism’ along South Sudan’s borders with the Democratic Republic of the Congo
This article compares two cases of securitization along South Sudan’s border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. By comparing how a security concern – the presence of the Lord’s Resistance Army – was interpreted and responded to, the article…
Research paper
Sons of Which Soil? The Language and Politics of Autochthony in Eastern D.R. Congo
The recent wars in the DR Congo have led to a marked upsurge in both elite and popular discourse and violence around belonging and exclusion, expressed through the vernacular of “autochthony.” Dangerously flexible in its politics, nervous and paranoid in…
Research paper
The Violence of Peace: Ethnojustice in Northern Uganda
Traditional justice, or what this article refers to as ‘ethnojustice’, claims to promote social reconstruction, peace and justice after episodes of war by rebuilding traditional order. Ethnojustice has become an increasingly prominent mode of transitional justice in northern Uganda. As…
Research paper
‘A situation of security pluralism’ along South Sudan’s borders with the Democratic Republic of Congo
By comparing how a security concern along South Sudan’s border with the DRC– the presence of the Lord’s Resistance Army –was interpreted and responded to, the article shows border security practices here are improvised, contradictory and contested, and serve to…
Research paper
Gendered (in)security in South Sudan: masculinities and hybrid governance in Imatong state
Despite the end of civil war in 2005, many people in South Sudan continued to experience deep insecurity and forms of violent conflict. This sense of insecurity was exacerbated by the lack of state protection and perceived injustice in power…
Research paper
Interrupting the balance: reconsidering the complexities of conflict in South Sudan
By the start of 2014, violent conflict had erupted across much of South Sudan following initial violence in Juba on 15 December 2013. The speed with which the fighting has spread raises questions regarding the impact of national-level politics on…
Research paper
When kleptocracy becomes insolvent: Brute causes of the civil war in South Sudan
South Sudan obtained independence in July 2011 as a kleptocracy – a militarized, corrupt neo-patrimonial system of governance. By the time of independence, the South Sudanese “political marketplace” was so expensive that the country’s comparatively copious revenue was consumed by…
Research paper
Rethinking access to land and violence in post-war cities: reflections from Juba, Southern Sudan
It is often assumed that violence diminishes after civil war. In fact, urban areas can turn highly violent. The new forms of violence that can emerge are widespread but poorly understood and have been attributed to a range of factors…
Policy document
Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in The Republic Of South Sudan (R-ARCSS)
This peace agreement, the Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (R-ARCSS), was finalized in September 2018, and marked an attempt to quell violent conflict in South Sudan, and ushered in a ‘transitional…
Research paper
Armed groups and the exercise of public authority: the cases of the Mayi-Mayi and Raya Mutomboki in Kalehe, South Kivu
Some argue the Congolese state remains mostly irrelevant outside its capital or even that there is no such thing as Congo. Others contend there is no lack of state order, but that it is characterised by predatory rule and (privatised)…
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
Military business and the business of the military in the Kivus
Contrary to dominant approaches that locate the causes for military entrepreneurialism in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo predominantly in criminal military elites, this article highlights the importance of the Congolese military’s (FARDC) civilian context for understanding military revenue-generation. It…
Research paper
The Trial of Thomas Kwoyelo: Opportunity or Spectre? Reflections from the Ground on the First LRA Prosecution
The article considers the trial of Thomas Kwoyelo: the first war crimes prosecution of a former LRA fighter, and only domestic war crimes prosecution in Uganda at time of writing. It considers what Kwoyelo’s trial meant for those most affected…
Research paper
Context Matters: The Conventional DDR Template is Challenged in South Sudan
The disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) programme as implemented in South Sudan provides a perfect entry point to study the interaction between an international intervention and local contexts. The article describes and analyses the DDR programme in South Sudan as…
Research paper
Dr Livingstone, I Presume? Evangelicals, Africa and Faith-Based Humanitarianism
Humanitarianism is a principal means through which Northern-based Christian groups intervene into sub-Saharan African states. However, current scholarship neglects the agentive roles played by religious actors in the delivery of mainstream aid. This secularises humanitarian governance, “others” religious actors and…
Research paper
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…
Research paper
Rebels without borders in the Rwenzori borderland? A biography of the Allied Democratic Forces
This article provides a detailed analysis of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan rebel movement that is operating from Congolese soil but so far has attracted very limited scholarly attention. Having its roots in Ugandan Islamic community, it has…
Research paper
Deals and Dealings: Inconclusive Peace and Treacherous Trade along the South Sudan-Uganda Border
Since Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed, its border with Uganda has become a hub of activity. Contrasting developments on the Ugandan side of the border with those on the South Sudanese side, the paper draws on empirical fieldwork…
Research paper
Foreign Aid In Post-Conflict Countries: The Case Of South Sudan
This paper examines the approach to foreign aid being used in South Sudan, and reflects new thinking in providing assistance to post-conflict countries.
Research paper
Doing business out of war. An analysis of the UPDF’s presence in the Democratic Republic of Congo
This paper analyses how Ugandan army commanders have mobilised transborder economic networks to exploit economic opportunities in eastern DRC during the military intervention of the Ugandan People’s Defence Force (UPDF) in Congo’s wars (1996–97; 1998–2003). These networks are the starting…
Background report
‘Land Belongs to the Community’: Demystifying the ‘Global Land Grab’ in Southern Sudan
Sudan is among the global ‘hotspots’ for large-scale land acquisitions. Although most were thought to occur in the country’s north, recent research indicates a surprising number of large-scale land acquisitions have taken place in the South in recent years. Now…
Research paper
Sexual and gender based violence against men in the Democratic Republic of Congo: effects on survivors, their families and the community
Media and service provider reports of sexual and gender based violence (SGBV) perpetrated against men in armed conflicts have increased. However, response to these reports has been limited, as existing evidence and programs have primarily focused on prevention and response…
Research paper
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.…
Research paper
Silencing Distressed Children in the Context of War in Northern Uganda: An Analysis of its Dynamics and its Health Consequences
Children in northern Uganda who are the focus of this article were born and raised in the context of war. The research presented here is based on a one-year ethnographic study (2004–2005) with children aged 9–16 years.
Research paper
Negotiated peace for extortion: the case of Walikale territory in eastern DR Congo
War in the DRC has increasingly been explained as a means to get access to natural resources and as a strategy to get control over informal trading networks linked to global markets. In most of these accounts, the complexity of…
Book chapter
Why humanitarian organizations need to tackle land issues
Humanitarian organizations need to consider land issues for three sets of reasons. First, land crises are central to why humanitarian crises happen, and why they take the form that they do. Second, humanitarian responses, both during the height of crisis…
Book chapter
Going home: Land, return and reintegration in Southern Sudan and the Three Areas
The end of the war between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement in 2005 has generated the return of an estimated 2.4 million IDPs and refugees to Southern Sudan and the three transitional areas (Abyei, Southern…
Research paper
The International Criminal Court and the Invention of Traditional Justice in Northern Uganda
This discusses different forms of justice, as the campaign for regionally and specific traditional justice has done nothing to promote national integration. The commitment of those who assiduously promote it for selfless reasons is worthy of a better cause.
Research paper
The Lord’s Resistance Army in Sudan: A History and Overview
The ongoing peace talks between the Government of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army/Movement (LRA/M) in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, have created renewed international interest in the conflict in northern Uganda. While the negotiations have proved extremely difficult,…
