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Article
Hiding in plain sight: IDP’s protection strategies after closing Juba’s protection of civilian sites
This article examines how former Protection of Civilian site (PoCs) residents are staying safe and protecting themselves after the United Nations Mission in South Sudan's (UNMISS) handing over of the PoCs to the Revitalised-Transitional Government of National Unity (R-TGoNU).
Article
Negotiating faith in exile: learning from displacements from and into Arua, North West Uganda
Humanitarians have recently championed faith actors as valuable resources in delivering humanitarian aid. This paper explores how faith has been entangled within the dynamics of two spatially connected crises: Ugandans fleeing post-Amin reprisals in the mid-1980s, and South Sudanese fleeing…
Article
Protection and containment: surviving COVID-19 in Palabek refugee settlement, Northern Uganda
Humanitarian assistance is framed around ‘protection’. Deciding whom to protect and against what is not straightforward, particularly during a pandemic. This article critically explores containment and protection by focusing on refugee self-protection in Uganda.
Article
Community self-protection, public authority and the safety of strangers in Bor and Ler, South Sudan
Protection is not simply something done or delivered to people by states, humanitarian organisations and armed peacekeepers. We use interview data from communities in Bor and Ler, South Sudan, long affected by conflict, to show how attention to the relationship…
Article
Humanitarian protection activities and the safety of strangers in the DRC, Syria and South Sudan
Many contemporary humanitarian organisations derive their legitimacy from their claims to protect civilians. Yet, what these organisations do in its name includes a diverse and contested range of activities that are often far from what global publics and affected populations…
Article
The safety of strangers: the realities and politics of protecting civilians in times of war
Recent wars have brutally shown that civilians are not safe. This is despite high-level global commitments and multi-billion-dollar humanitarian spending to keep civilian strangers protected. The high civilian death tolls in recent armed conflicts are prompting new questions about how…
Corruption and “culture” in anthropology and in Nigeria
This article examines the publication and reception of a book about corruption in Nigeria as a form of ethnographic evidence that is useful to interrogate the fraught relationship between the concepts of culture and corruption. The evidence points to multiple…
Conserving Nature, Transforming Authority: Eviction and Development at the Margins of the State The Niokolo-Koba National Park, Senegal
This dissertation examines two distinct but interrelated processes of displacement experienced by the evictees of the Niokolo-Koba National Park, based on fieldwork (2004-2005) in the Tambacounda region of South-Eastern Senegal.
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
‘And Then He Switched off the Phone’: Mobile Phones, Participation and Political Accountability in South Sudan’s Western Equatoria State
This paper investigates the impact of mobile phones in situations of political contestation or conflict. According to theory, mobile phones could play a positive role in building a more accountable government, and with that, contribute to statebuilding. We examine to…
Report
A Hard Homecoming: Lessons Learned from the Reception Center Process in Northern Uganda: An Independent Study
This independent report has been commissioned by USAID and UNICEF to examine assumptions and evidence about the needs and experiences of children and adults who have been forced to serve under the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), and have subsequently escaped,…
A summons to the magistrates’ courts in South Africa and Uganda
The expansive literature on law and justice across Africa emphasizes why people do not use lower state courts. Consequently, a striking lack of attention is paid to how and why people do engage with lower state courts. Drawing on a…
