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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
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
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
Contesting the militarization of the places where they met: the landscapes of the western Nuer and Dinka (South Sudan)
Decades of violent conflict and elite wealth acquisition have created a common rupture in shared landscapes between communities of the western Dinka and Nuer (South Sudan). Since the government wars of the 1980s, people from both Dinka and Nuer communities…
Research paper
‘That thing of human rights’: discourse, emergency assistance, and sexual violence in South Sudan’s current civil war
One of the most widely covered aspects of the current conflict in South Sudan has been the use sexual violence by rival factions of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) and other armed groups. While this has had the positive…
Report
Localising humanitarian aid during armed conflict Learning from the histories and creativity of South Sudanese NGOs
This report moves beyond abstract assumptions and global-level debates to understand the reality of the struggles and strategies of local and national organisations during complex emergencies. We focus on the histories, politicoeconomic dynamics and everyday realities of South Sudanese NGOs…
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…
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,…
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,…
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…
Field notes
The Bukavu Series: Toward a Decolonisation of Research
This is a collection of blog posts produced by 30 researchers based in eastern Congo and Europe, where writers critically reflect on the research they’ve done and explore ethical dilemmas when conducting research in conflict-affected areas.
Briefing
Beyond Anarchy: Property, Precarity and Land Governance in Urban Congo
In the brief, we argue that these references to “anarchy” and “disorder” should not to be taken at face value. Instead, they are produced through daily practices of land governance.
Research paper
Aguu: From Acholi Post War Street Youth and Children to ‘Criminal Gangs’ in Modern Day Gulu City, Uganda
This paper analyses the origin and evolution of the Aguu, a group of street youth/children labelled as a criminal gang operating in the streets of Gulu, Uganda. Based on a series of interviews, focus group discussions, participant observations, archival work…
Background report
Roadblocks ‘at the rhythm of the country’: Predation and beyond in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo
This report analyses the phenomenon of roadblocks in South Kivu, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Departing from a socio-anthropological approach, the report argues that roadblocks are sites where a variety of state and non-state actors interact with each…
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
Constructed Anarchy: Governance, Conflict, and Precarious Property Rights in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Land issues are at the heart of the Congolese conflicts. Land issues have mainly been analyzed as a rural phenomenon. More recently, however, scholars have shown that land issues are crucially important in urban areas as well. In this Congo…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Background report
Crise foncière et réponses des acteurs en République Démocratique du Congo fr
À l’Est de la République démocratique du Congo, le foncier est un réceptacle de violence, participant structurellement à la fragilité de la cohésion sociale. Bien que l’État congolais, les acteurs non étatiques et les bailleurs de fonds se soient engagés…
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…
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…
Research paper
Transitional Justice and Political Economies of Survival in Post-conflict Northern Uganda
This article explores the interplay between transitional justice and ‘everyday’ political economies of survival in post-conflict Acholiland, northern Uganda. It advances two main arguments. First, that transitional justice — as part and parcel of conventional liberal peacebuilding packages — promotes…
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…
Research paper
‘Somehow This Whole Process Became so Artificial’: Exploring the Transitional Justice Implementation Gap in Uganda
This article explores a key challenge in contemporary international efforts to promote transitional justice (TJ) in nontransitioning, conflict-affected states: the ‘implementation gap,’ in which policies are designed and funded but neither enacted nor implemented. Findings based on long-term qualitative fieldwork…
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
“This mine has become our farmland”: Critical perspectives on the coevolution of artisanal mining and conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
The debate on conflict minerals in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been widely documented by the international media, government and non-governmental agencies and academics. In recent years, a variety of international initiatives have been launched to curb…
Research paper
The counterinsurgency/conservation nexus: guerrilla livelihoods and the dynamics of conflict and violence in the Virunga National Park, Democratic Republic of the Congo
The growing militarisation of nature conservation has refocused attention on the relations between counterinsurgency and conservation. This contribution analyses how these two phenomena entwine in the Virunga National Park, located in the war-ridden east of the Democratic Republic of the…
Research paper
Multi-layered Security Governance as a Quick Fix? The challenges of donor-supported, bottom-up security provision in Ituri (DR Congo)
This paper investigates ‘multi-layered’ security governance arrangements developed in the restive Ituri province in north-eastern DR Congo, where different forms of insecurity affect people’s lives on a daily basis. It looks more specifically into ‘multilayered’ security governance in Ituri’s capital…
Thesis
Finding peace amongst restless and unatoned bones: a dialogue on Bumúntú from the Democratic Republic of Congo
This thesis invites the reader on a journey to Kamina, the capital of the Haut-Lomami province, DRC, to engage in a dialogue on humanness, violence and peace from another angle. Using the concept of Búmùntù (authentic Personhood) from the Luba…
Research paper
Reintegrating former fighters in the Congo: ambitious objectives, limited results
Current scholarly works in International Relations grew increasingly preoccupied over the effectiveness and programmatic failure of international assistance, especially with regard to issues pertaining to the ‘security–development’ nexus and the post-9/11 ‘securitization’ agenda. Complex Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) programmes…
Briefing
Implementing DDR in settings of ongoing conflict: the organization and fragmentation of armed groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
This Practice Note draws lessons from the multi-party context of the DRC and from the experiences of former members of three armed groups.
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
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…
Briefing
Returning to Society: Insights from a Survey on the Return and Reintegration of Former Combatants in South Kivu
This Congo Research Brief contributes to a better understanding of sponteneous return processes of ex-combtants. Its conclusions are based on a survey on the return of former combatants which was carried out in the province of South Kivu. The survey…
