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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
In the Long Run: Ugandans Living with Disability
Uganda has progressive legislation in place to support the rights of people with disabilities, and has received donor support for special education and community-based rehabilitation programs over the years. Yet while political mobilization and interventions aiming to minimize disabling conditions…
Research paper
The Framing of Malnutrition by Parliamentarians in Uganda
The quest for political commitment to reducing malnutrition in sub-Saharan Africa draws attention to the role of national parliamentarians. Whereas parliamentarians have the authority to ratify legislation, monitor policies and budgets and transform behaviour, little is known about how malnutrition…
Research paper
Schistosomiasis messaging in endemic communities: Lessons and implications for interventions from rural Uganda, a rapid ethnographic assessment study
This study used a rapid ethnographic assessment to investigate sources, nature and perception of schistosomiasis-related health information in three lake-shore communities in Eastern Uganda. Through transect walks, observations, interviews and focus groups, the authors found that although the main source…
Research paper
Poisoning at the periphery: allocating responsibility across the Uganda/South Sudan borderlands
This paper presents ethnographic evidence from three sites across the Uganda/South Sudan borderlands. At each location, procedures to identify alleged poisoners were documented. Novel voting processes were initiated by hybrid local authorities. Addressing widespread anxiety about proximate wrong-doing seemed to…
Research paper
Integrated disease surveillance and response in humanitarian context: South Sudan experience
This paper reviews the progress and outcomes of rolling out IDSR in South Sudan, using epidemiological and program data for 2019-20 to provide detailed assessments of surveillance priorities, core and support functions, and surveillance system structure and quality. Progress has…
Research paper
Spatial accessibility to basic public health services in South Sudan
This article develops a GIS model of spatial health access metrics nationally and sub-nationally in South Sudan. Using publicly available data on health facilities, population, land cover and use, road networks and elevation, the authors found that in 2016 only…
Research paper
Providing health services during a civil war: the experience of a garrison town in South Sudan
This article explores the social and political dynamics of health service provision in and around an important garrison town in South Sudan, during the second Sudanese civil war (1983–2005). Drawing on semi-structured interviews, informal conversations and focus group discussions, the…
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…
Article
Borders areas should be used, not feared, in pandemic responses
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…
Blog
Social media and trust in strangers have grown Uganda’s market for COVID-19 treatments
The COVID-19 pandemic in Uganda has coincided with an ‘epidemic’ of misinformation, spread in part through social media platforms such as WhatsApp. Against a backdrop of unaffordable formal healthcare, this has grown the market for herbal and traditional treatments, with…
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…
Working paper
A retrospective assessment of Covid-19 viewed from Arua Regional Referral Hospital, West Nile Sub-Region, Uganda: Emmanuel Candia in conversation with Solomon Kamurari
The following paper is an interview with Dr Emmanuel Chandia, a Medical Officer at Arua Regional Referral Hospital. He is the emergency care coordinator for the West Nile sub-region and has coordinated the response to COVID-19 at Arual Regional Referral…
Working paper
An enquiry into the use of Covid-19 herbal medicines in Uganda
This working paper explores the use of herbal medicines as reported prevention and cures for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). We focus particularly on interviews with residents of Arua City, West Nile sub-region, Northern Uganda.
Working paper
Indigenous lockdowns: a historical exploration of epidemic containment in Arua District, West Nile sub-region, Uganda
This working paper explores histories of containing epidemic diseases in West Nile, North West Uganda. It focuses particularly on strategies devised since the colonial period among Lugbara-speaking populations in present-day Arua and Maracha Districts to contain disease outbreaks. The paper…
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,…
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…
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…
Research paper
Male partners of female sex workers: The intersectional risk environment of HIV/AIDS in a Kampala informal settlement
This study examined the context and drivers of HIV risk and vulnerability among male partners of female sex workers in Kampala, Uganda, using an “intersectional risk environment” framework.
Research paper
Provider love in an informal settlement: Men’s relationships with providing women and implications for HIV in Kampala, Uganda
This study reports on data from an ethnography (2016–2019) with low-income men in urban Uganda. This study uses gender and power theory to describe how men’s relationships with female sex workers in an informal settlement in urban Kampala, Uganda are…
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…
Research paper
Deadly Flies, Poor Profits, and Veterinary Pharmaceuticals: Sustaining the Control of Sleeping Sickness in Uganda
Efforts to control neglected tropical diseases have increasingly focused on questions of implementation. But how should we conceptualize the implementation process? Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork between 2010 and 2012, in this article I explore efforts by a small-scale public–private partnership…
Research paper
The Priest’s Soldiers: HIV Therapies, Health Identities, and Forced Encampment in Northern Uganda
In this article, I analyze how antiretroviral therapy and associated HIV support programs engendered HIV-based health identities in displacement camps in conflict-affected northern Uganda. Drawing on multisited ethnographic fieldwork I conducted between 2006 and 2009, I argue that these health…
Research paper
“Not Taking it Will Just be Like a Sin”: Young People Living with HIV and the Stigmatization of Less-Than-Perfect Adherence to Antiretroviral Therapy
Global health priorities are being set to address questions on adherence to HIV antiretroviral therapy in adolescence. Few studies have explored young people’s perspectives on the complex host of social and relational challenges they face in dealing with their treatment…
Research paper
Dynamics of Care, Situations of Choice: HIV Tests in Times of ART
In the 1990s, African AIDS programs followed a voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) approach to HIV testing. In the wake of large scale AIDS treatment programs, policymakers opted for routine provider-initiated testing (PITC) with less emphasis on counseling, which led…
Research paper
Routines, Hope, and Antiretroviral Treatment among Men and Women in Uganda
Antiretroviral treatment programs, despite biomedical emphases, require social understanding and transformations to be successful. In this article, the authors draw from a qualitative study of HIV treatment seeking to examine the drug-taking routines and health-related subjectivities of men and women…
Research paper
Challenging the Paradigm: Anthropological Perspectives on HIV as a Chronic Disease
Recently HIV has been framed as a ‘manageable’ chronic disease in contexts in which access to effective care is reliable. The chronic disease paradigm emphasizes self-care, biomedical disease management, social normalization, and uncertainty. Data from a longitudinal study of patients…
Research paper
Barriers of HIV treatment-seeking behavior among youths living with HIV in Uganda: a qualitative study
This study aimed to explore experienced barriers to seek human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) treatment and care among youth living with HIV and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in Uganda. The study demonstrated that barriers to using HIV care included fear of…
