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Research paper
‘Living between Two Lions’: Civilian Protection Strategies during Armed Violence in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo
This article examines how civilians assess, negotiate with, and in some cases deceive armed actors in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It demonstrates that civilians not only navigate the precarious and unpredictable conditions within armed conflict, but…
Research paper
Courses au pouvoir: the struggle over customary capital in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
This article analyses the production and reproduction of traditional chieftaincy in war-torn eastern DRC through the case of a succession dispute in Kalima (South Kivu). Kalima has seen two decades of political instability and violent conflict involving numerous local, national…
Background report
Indirect Rule in Armed Conflict: Theoretical Insights from Eastern DRC
Building on the analogy between armed factions in contemporary conflict settings and states in the making, this paper explores the conditions under which indirect rule emerges in contexts of armed conflict, and the consequences that this governance arrangement has on…
Blog
Returning from the LRA: obedience, stoicism and silence
Research with Ugandan women and their children, fourteen years after their return from life with the Lord’s Resistance Army, highlights the inter-generational dimensions of war and conflict. Obedience, stoicism and silence enabled their survival, and now shapes their day-to-day lives.…
Blog
Lord’s Resistance Army hierarchies survive in peace time
Recent research suggests that the lives of women who have returned from extended periods with the Lord’s Resistance Army greatly vary. This blog post describes how these differences often depend on what kind of authority they commanded with the LRA…
Research paper
Geographical versus social displacement: the politics of return and post-war recovery in Northern Uganda
The civil war in Northern Uganda in the period 1986–2006 fundamentally altered former ways of life and created diverse and complex needs. Protracted conflict and displacement create, reveal, and enforce vulnerability, which can undermine resilience. Based on in-depth interviews with…
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…
Research paper
Land is now the biggest gun: climate change and conflict in Karamoja, Uganda
Places that are both recovering from violent conflict and dependent on natural recourses face the overlapping challenges of reducing the risk of recurring conflict, promoting economic recovery, and ensuring sustainable environmental management: all challenges exacerbated by climate change. This article…
Research paper
Legacies of humanitarian neglect: long term experiences of children who returned from the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda
Much has been written about the short-term challenges facing children returning ‘home’ from rebel fighting groups, but little is known about the longer term day to day realities of return. Support for disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) of former combatants…
Research paper
The ‘Nuer of Dinka money’ and the demands of the dead: contesting the moral limits of monetised politics in South Sudan
This article explores the meaning of monetary exchanges in politics and political identities during South Sudan’s armed conflicts since 2013, in order to understand whether shifts in the moral meaning of money in politics confer legitimacy to current governmental configurations…
Research paper
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…
Research paper
The longue durée of short-lived infrastructure – Roads and state authority in South Sudan
Road-building, followed by road runi and rebuilding, have been a cyclical feature of development in South Sudan. This article focuses on two internationally funded roads built around independence to explore their meaning for central government, and for people living along…
Blog
How can ethnomusicology support humanitarian protection research?
This article argues that ethnomusicology offers an important approach to understanding issues of participatory humanitarian safety and protection. Using music and dance as a means to better understand people’s ways of life can give insight into the larger cultural contexts…
Blog
A widow’s story of survival and humanitarianism in the Sudans
The story of Nyapuottek, a widow from the Sudanese war, illustrates how fraught it can be to navigate changing relations during times of conflict and migration, and how such struggles can intersect with humanitarian initiatives.
Blog
Why a South Sudanese NGO had to choose between protecting staff and strangers
This article highlights the risks of working for national rather than international organisations in humanitarian contexts. After the authors’ NGO base was attacked in April 2022, he had to navigate the complex balance between staying safe and saving strangers –…
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 report
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…
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…
Thesis
Ethnogovernmentality: The Making of Ethnic Territories and Subjects in Eastern Congo
In this article I investigate colonial constructions of ethnicity and territory and their effects in the post-independence period in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. The core argument of the article is that the constructions of ethnicity and territory that…
Research paper
Navigating Social Spaces: Armed Mobilization and Circular Return in Eastern DR Congo
This article discusses the social mobility of combatants and introduces the notion of circular return to explain their pendular state of movement between civilian and combatant life. This phenomenon is widely observed in eastern DRC, where Congolese youth have revolved…
Research paper
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…
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…
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
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…
Research paper
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…
Research paper
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…
Research paper
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…
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)…
Research paper
The ‘marketplace of post-conflict assistance’ in Northern Uganda and beyond
A diverse body of different actors and stakeholders offers a multitude of services and assistance for conflict-affected communities in Northern Uganda. There are relational and interactional dynamics between providers of services and intended beneficiaries, where there are often a variety…
Research paper
Family dynamics and implications for young people’s ‘struggles’ in rural areas of post-conflict northern Uganda
The Acholi region in northern Uganda experienced two decades of armed conflict and forced displacement. Based on qualitative field research, this article analyses the role of family dynamics for the educational and livelihood trajectories of Acholi youth in rural areas,…
Research paper
Wartime Captivity and Homecoming: Culture, Stigma and Coping Strategies of Formerly Abducted Women in Post-conflict Northern Uganda
The women formerly abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda find that achieving meaningful reintegration into their communities is a distant prospect despite being the home culture they once shared. The stigmatisation of formerly abducted persons by…
Background report
Where Are The Girls? Girls in Fighting Forces in Northern Uganda, Sierra Leone and Mozambique: Their Lives During and After War
This study contributes to what is currently known about the experiences of girls in fighting forces as distinct from those of boys. It is meant to assist policymakers in developing policies and programs to help protect and empower girls in…
Background report
Ebola in the Context of Conflict Affected States and Health Systems: Case Studies of Northern Uganda and Sierra Leone
Ebola seems to be a particular risk in conflict affected contexts. All three of the countries most affected by the 2014-15 outbreak have a complex conflict-affected recent history. Other major outbreaks in the recent past, inNorthern Uganda and in the…
