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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…
Research paper
A trans-scalar approach to peacebuilding and transitional justice: Insights from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Drawing on qualitative data from more than a year of research in the DRC, I argue that while a trans-scalar approach was taken to end violence, it was not applied to transitional justice initiatives. The result was a negative, rather…
Policy document
South Sudan Spontaneous Refugee Returnees December 2021
This overview from UNHCR and the South Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (RRC) presents details about the state of South Sudanese refugees in the region, and specifically, about their patterns of returnees in late 2021.
Research paper
The ‘good life’, personal appearance, and mental health of Congolese refugees in Rwanda and Uganda
Research into mental health and wellbeing recognises the role of positive mental health to enable people to lead healthy and emotionally fulfilling lives. Mental health difficulties continue to be associated with high levels of disability worldwide, and refugees fleeing conflict…
Blog
Bottom-up humanitarian protection: the experience of a young South Sudanese car-cleaner in Khartoum
What kinds of humanitarian protection are available for displaced people living outside of refugee camps? This article explores the forms of safety and protection available to displaced south Sudanese people living in Sudan, including community-based mechanisms such as family and…
Research paper
Who is watching? Refugee protection during a pandemic-responses from Uganda and South Africa
Reflecting on the first 6 months of the pandemic responses in terms of refugee protection, Uganda and South Africa have taken diverging pathways. South Africa used the pandemic to start building a border fence on the border with Zimbabwe, initially…
Research paper
From Rebel to Humanitarian: Military Savoir Faire and Humanitarian Practice in Eastern DR Congo
This article explores the experience of ex-rebels who have become humanitarians in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. It describes how rebel-cum-humanitarians navigate a turbulent political environment, integrating the knowledge they acquired through military experience into a career in…
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.
Blog
Land disputes in South Sudan continue to affect refugees and IDPs
Post-conflict land disputes can seriously disrupt efforts by displaced people to return home. This article examines the different public authorities at play in securing or challenging someone’s right to use or own land in South Sudan. Such cases are often…
Research paper
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…
Working paper
Figurations of displacement in the DRC: empirical findings and reflections on protracted displacement and translocal connections of Congolese IDPs
This working paper is based on empirical research on translocal figurations of displacement in the DRC, and reports findings from eastern DRC, where many internally displaced persons (IDPs) seek refuge in host communities. It explores the central question: “How are…
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…
Research paper
Prevention of COVID-19 in Internally Displaced Persons Camps in War-Torn North Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo: A Mixed-Methods Study
Congolese internally displaced persons (IDPs) had high awareness and fear of COVID-19, but low specific knowledge. IDPs face major barriers to implementing COVID-19 prevention measures: crowded shelters, frequent movements in and out of the camp for work, and lack of…
Research paper
Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Among Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: Post-Conflict Scenario
The ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has triggered sexual and gender-based violence, including rape, sexual slavery, trafficking, intimate partner violence, and sexual exploitation. Gender inequalities and abuse of power experienced by women and young girls…
Research paper
Prevention of COVID-19 in Internally Displaced Persons Camps in War-Torn North Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo: A Mixed-Methods Study
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic poses a grave threat to refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs). This paper examined knowledge, attitudes, and practices with respect to COVID-19 prevention among IDPs in war-torn Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Background report
« Ils sont rentrés chez eux »: the political dimensions of displacement and ‘spontaneous return’ in Faradje, northeast DRC
This paper aims to contribute to the emerging debate on the political dimensions of return by focusing on the sudden ‘spontaneous’ return of 11,6001 Congolese refugees who were forced back from exile in South Sudan to their home areas in…
Research paper
‘I Kept My Gun’: Displacement’s Impact on Reshaping Social Distinction During Return
Drawing on the experiences of men born in Southern Sudan in the 1980s, grew up in a refugee camp in Kenya and later returned to Southern Sudan after the 2005 peace agreement, this article explores the social implications of experiences…
Policy document
Uganda Health Sector Integrated Refugee Response Plan 2019-2024
Written by the Ugandan Ministry of Health, the Health Sector Integrated Refugee Response Plan sets out policies for supplementing service delivery in refugee-hosting communities, to meet the needs of everyone in the targeted areas.
Research paper
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…
Research paper
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…
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
The story of Kitchanga: Spatial politics of presence, refuge and return in North Kivu, Eastern DRCongo
In the Kivu provinces of the Eastern Congo, permanent semi-urban towns emerge from the protracted presence of refugees and internally displaced persons. Using the example of Kitchanga in North Kivu, Gillian Mathys and Karen Büscher (Ghent University) show the importance…
Research paper
Pragmatic Mobilities and Uncertain Lives: Agency and the Everyday Mobility of South Sudanese Refugees in Uganda
This article investigates the pragmatic, everyday journeys of South Sudanese refugees in northern Uganda’s Palabek Refugee Settlement through a mobilities-focused analytical lens. Despite the repatriation of vast numbers of refugees, little is known about the diversity of refugees’ later movements.…
Book chapter
Urbanizing Kitchanga: Spatial Trajectories of the Politics of Refuge in North Kivu, Eastern Congo
This article presents the historical and political trajectory of Kitchanga town in North Kivu, to demonstrate how current processes of urbanization in a context of civil war in Eastern Congo are strongly intertwined with regional politics of refuge. Kitchanga, an…
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.
Working paper
Going home? A systematic review of the literature on displacement, return and cycles of violence
Starting from the complex reality of return, this paper recognizes that cycles of violence, displacement and return are intimately related and often inherently part of one another. This paper offers a critical overview and discussion of scholarly and policy-oriented literature…
Research paper
Everyday Justice for the Internally Displaced in a Context of Fragility: The Case of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
Bukavu is a rapidly growing city in the conflict-affected east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is home to large numbers of internally displaced persons (IDPs). This article looks at these IDPs and explores the strategies they use to…
Research paper
Fettered Self-determination: South Sudan’s Narrowed Path to Secession
The interpretation of self-determination as a vote for secession shaped the state that South Sudan has become since the 2011 referendum. Self-determination, this paper argues, is a democratic political process in which citizens determine their preferred form of statehood and…
Research paper
Population Displacement and Sustainable Development: The Significance of Environmental Sustainability in Refugee–Host Relationships in the Congo−Brazzaville Crises
The Republic of Congo experienced repeated outbreaks of armed conflicts between militiamen affiliated to three main political factions, which affected the socioeconomic fabrics of the Congolese society until late 2000. This paper examines the socioeconomic and environmental impact of interactions…
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.
Research paper
More than mere survival: violence, humanitarian governance, and practical material politics in a Kenyan refugee camp
This paper frames the political import of refugees’ material practices in Kakuma Refugee Camp through critical reflection on Eyal Weizman’s notion of the humanitarian present. To begin, I explore how the production of the refugee camp as a space of…
Research paper
Motherhood and Social Repair after War and Displacement in Northern Uganda
This article considers the relationship between processes of return after mass displacement, and social repair. We look to the everyday as a space of negotiation and renegotiation of social relationships that make life meaningful. The article considers these propositions in…
Research paper
Invisible Labour: The Political Economy of Reintegration in South Sudan
This article considers the 2005–12 Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) programme in South Sudan. Current DDR practice centres on ex-combatants’ reintegration through encouraging entrepreneurship and self-employment and thereby their willingness to take risks and responsibility. However, South Sudan’s DDR programme…
Research paper
The Asylum-Migration Nexus: Can Motivations Shape The Concept Of Coercion? The Sudanese Transit Case
This piece discusses forced migration from a multidisciplinary approach.
Research paper
In the face of war: examining sexual vulnerabilities of Acholi adolescent girls living in displacement camps in conflict-affected Northern Uganda
Adolescent girls are an overlooked group within conflict-affected populations and their sexual health needs are often neglected. Girls are disproportionately at risk of HIV and other STIs in times of conflict, however the lack of recognition of their unique sexual…
Research paper
Dispersal, division and diversification: durable solutions and Sudanese refugees in Uganda
Questions over durable solutions in the social, political and security terrain of southern Sudan and northern Uganda invite recognition that simple delineations between “home” and “exile” are inadequate to understanding displacement and refugee status. Contrary to existing policies assuming an…
