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Background Reports
Chiefs’ Courts, Hunger, and Improving Humanitarian Programming in South Sudan
South Sudan has seen the most frequent reporting of localised famine conditions globally between 2013-2020, on average at least one pocket of famine conditions every two months. Focusing on identified famines, however, masks a broader and even more frequent issue…
Journal Article
Competing authorities and norms of restraint: governing community-embedded armed groups in South Sudan
How can international humanitarian actors help to restrain the conduct of armed groups when they violate moral, legal and humanitarian norms? Using qualitative and ethnographic research in South Sudan, this article explores patterns of restraint among the gojam and titweng…
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…
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…
Book Chapter
Taxation, Stateness and Armed Groups: Public Authority and Resource Extraction in Eastern Congo
This contribution analyses the role of taxation in the constitution of authority in the conflict-ridden eastern DRC, where numerous authorities alternately compete and collude over the right to extract resources. Taxation ranges from simple plunder, to protection rackets, to material…
Background Reports
Contesting Authority: Armed rebellion and military fragmentation in Walikale and Kalehe, North and South Kivu
Eastern DRC continues to be plagued by violence and dozens of armed groups. Yet, these groups—and how they interact with their social and political environment—remain poorly understood. This report analyses their involvement in public life in the territories of Kalehe…
Journal Article
The Politics of Rebellion and Intervention in Ituri: The Emergence of a New Political Complex?
This paper aims to place the Ituri conflict into its social setting, arguing the outbreak of violence resulted from the exploitation, by local and regional actors, of a deeply rooted local political conflict for access to land, economic opportunity and…
Journal Article
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…
Journal Article
Violent conflict and ethnicity in the Congo: beyond materialism, primordialism and symbolism
This paper investigates the nexus between ethnicity and violent conflict in the Congo. We make three interlocking arguments. First, that ethnicity is a defining political resource in the Congo’s politics and violent conflicts, which we call ‘ethnic capital’. Second, that…
Journal Article
Armed mobilisation and the nexus of territory, identity, and authority: the contested territorial aspirations of the Banyamulenge in eastern DR Congo
The closely intertwined notions of territory, identity, and authority are at the heart of conflict dynamics in the eastern DR Congo. Focusing on the territorial aspirations of the Banyamulenge community in South Kivu, this article looks at the ways in…
Journal Article
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)…
