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Research paper
Deworming Delusions? Mass Drug Administration in East African Schools
Recent debates about deworming school-aged children in East Africa have been described as the ‘Worm Wars’. The stakes are high. Deworming has become one of the top priorities in the fight against infectious diseases. Staff at the World Health Organization,…
Book chapter
Life Beyond the Bubbles: Cognitive Dissonance and Humanitarian Impunity in Northern Uganda
International humanitarians work within bubbles. Humanitarians rely on rules and norms—from laws or principles, to religious and biomedical values, to best practice and ethical guidelines. The rules and norms create apparently coherent and predictable spaces.
Background report
Crisis Responses, Opportunity and Public Authority during Covid‐19’s First Wave in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan
Discussions on African responses to Covid-19 have focused on the state and its international backers. Far less is known about a wider range of public authorities, including chiefs, humanitarians, criminal gangs, and armed groups. This paper investigates how the pandemic…
Research paper
Rejection and Resilience: Returning from the Lord’s Resistance Army in Northern Uganda
This article focuses on young people who returned from the Lord’s Resistance Army in northern Uganda, mostly as children, over ten years ago. Supporting normative models of resilience has exacerbated deprivation of the most vulnerable.
Research paper
Reluctant Representatives of the State: Teachers’ Perceptions of Experienced Violence (DR Congo)
My qualitative research in South-Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo suggests that teachers link experienced violence to their role as state representatives. Three elements evoke the militia’s distrust: literacy, cell phones, and mobility. Reportedly, militias assume that teachers use these elements…
Background report
Competing Networks and Political Order in the Democratic Republic of Congo: A Literature Review on the Logics of Public Authority and International Intervention
This CRP synthesis paper presents an overview of shifting dominant narratives on the Congo wars and the major findings of a systematic qualitative literature search on conflict and violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in relation to the…
Book chapter
Urbanizing Kitchanga: Spatial Trajectories of the Politics of Refuge in North Kivu, Eastern Congo
This article presents the historical and political trajectory of Kitchanga town in North Kivu, to demonstrate how current processes of urbanization in a context of civil war in Eastern Congo are strongly intertwined with regional politics of refuge. Kitchanga, an…
Research paper
The Politics of the Second Vaccine: Debates Surrounding Ebola Vaccine Trials in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo
Two experimental Ebola vaccines were deployed during the tenth Ebola epidemic (2018–20) in the DRC. International debate ensued about the value and ethics of testing a second vaccine in an epidemic context. This article examines how this debate unfolded among…
Research paper
Humanitarian Fables: Morals, Meanings and Consequences for Humanitarian Practice
This article describes how events are turned into fables in humanitarian organisations. It explores how these fables circulate, the lessons they come to embody and their influence in maintaining an organisational status quo. The article argues that such stories teach…
Research paper
Humanitarian Shapeshifting: Navigation, Brokerage and Access in Eastern DR Congo
This article examines the experience of Congolese humanitarians negotiating access with armed groups in eastern DRC. It describes how humanitarians become shapeshifters: they play different roles for different audiences as a tactic of social navigation in a context of uncertainty.…
Research paper
From Rebel to Humanitarian: Military Savoir Faire and Humanitarian Practice in Eastern DR Congo
This article explores the experience of ex-rebels who have become humanitarians in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. It describes how rebel-cum-humanitarians navigate a turbulent political environment, integrating the knowledge they acquired through military experience into a career in…
Background report
Guidance for Applied Cross-National Research in Under-Resourced Countries: Lessons from a Gender-Based Violence Intervention in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Via a personal account of our experiences in conducting a study on a gender-based violence intervention in Congo, we share our lessons and offer recommendations (e.g., using multiple methodologies) for conducting applied cross-national research. We hope that as a result…
Research paper
Borderlands, Identity and Urban Development: The Case of Goma (Democratic Republic of the Congo)
This paper challenges traditional studies that explore border sites from a central or capital city perspective. Focusing on expressions of identity in the border city of Goma, it illustrates how the struggle for political, social and economic control affects local…
Blog
The story of Kitchanga: Spatial politics of presence, refuge and return in North Kivu, Eastern DRCongo
In the Kivu provinces of the Eastern Congo, permanent semi-urban towns emerge from the protracted presence of refugees and internally displaced persons. Using the example of Kitchanga in North Kivu, Gillian Mathys and Karen Büscher (Ghent University) show the importance…
Research paper
Therapy in Uganda: a failed MHPSS approach in the face of structural issues
The past 30 years have seen an unprecedented rise in attention towards the mental health of conflict-affected populations. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the burden of mental disorder among conflict-affected individuals may be as high as 22% and…
Research paper
Vigilantes, Witches and Vampires: How Moral Populism Shapes Social Accountability in Northern Uganda
Strange murders have occurred in northern Uganda. Blood is said to have been removed from the victims, and there are tales about child sacrifice and terrifying witchcraft. An ‘election’ was organised to select the culprit, known as ‘Mr Red’, and…
Research paper
Conceptual Resilience in the Language and Lives of Resilient People: Cases from Northern Uganda
This special issue explores post-conflict recovery in northern Uganda from the perspective of survivors themselves. Normative notions of resilience are widely critiqued as reductive, depoliticising and simplistic. Although the papers here, based on ethnographic methodologies, are largely sympathetic to this…
Research paper
Moral Spaces and Sexual Transgression: Understanding Rape in War and Post Conflict
Evocative language describing rape as a ‘weapon of war’ has become commonplace. Although politically important, overemphasis on strategic aspects of wartime sexual violence can be misleading. Alternative explanations tend to understand rape either as exceptional — a departure from ‘normal’…
Thesis
After rape: justice and social harmony in Northern Uganda
This thesis explores responses to rape in the Acholi sub-region of northern Uganda, based on ethnographic research in two villages. Northern Uganda has been at the heart of international justice debates in the context of ongoing conflict between the Lord’s…
Research paper
Humanitarian Remains: Erasure and the Everyday of Camp Life in Northern Uganda
The impacts of protracted displacement can be understood through the spatial and material afterlives of war. This article examines leftover aid rations, archives, former displacement camp sites and even unmarked graves as evidence to better understand what happens when people…
Research paper
Lessons learned from implementation of a national hotline for Ebola virus disease emergency preparedness in South Sudan
The authors conducted a descriptive analysis on quantitative data from call logs reflecting 22 weeks of South Sudan’s Ebola alert hotline, along with thematic coding of qualitative data collected routinely. The hotline was set up during the preparedness phase of…
Research paper
Assessment of infection prevention and control readiness for Ebola virus and other diseases outbreaks in a humanitarian crisis setting: a cross-sectional study of health facilities in six high-risk States of South Sudan
This study uses data from a structured questionnaire to assess the readiness and capacity of 151 health facilities across six states in Couth Sudan. It found that facilities most lacked a coordination committee structure (13.19%), guidelines and SOPs (21.85%), vector…
Research paper
Analyses of the performance of the Ebola virus disease alert management system in South Sudan: August 2018 to November 2019
This research paper analysed the performance of the Ebola alert management system, established in response to the Ebola outbreak in DRC in August 2018. EVD alerts reported in South Sudan in 2018-19 were anlaysed using quantitative and qualitative data. Strengths…
Policy document
Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) Preparedness and Readiness Update for South Sudan Update: #002 (13 November 2022)
Government of South Sudan/WHO-produced weekly summary of changes in the situation regarding EVD case incidence, public health preparedness and readiness, challenges/gaps and recommendations.
Policy document
Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) Preparedness and Readiness Update for South Sudan Update: #004 (27 November 2022)
Government of South Sudan/WHO-produced weekly summary of changes in the situation regarding EVD case incidence, public health preparedness and readiness, challenges/gaps and recommendations.
Policy document
Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) Preparedness and Readiness Update for South Sudan Update: #003
Government of South Sudan/WHO-produced weekly summary of changes in the situation regarding EVD case incidence, public health preparedness and readiness, challenges/gaps and recommendations.
Background report
Community Approaches to Epidemic Management in South Sudan: Lessons from local healthcare systems in tackling COVID-19
Recognising the long experience and knowledge South Sudanese people have of infectious diseases and their responses, this research documents the various community infectious disease management strategies employed in the Yei, Juba, Wau, Malakal, Aweil West and Rubkona areas. Such responses…
Research paper
Using feminist ‘reflexive practice’ to explore stress and well-being of local researchers in South Sudan
This article shares key findings and offer personal reflections on and suggestions for improving gender-based violence research using feminist methods. The authors reflect that while they themselves valued the sharing of personal reflections on emotional challenges that the research team…
Research paper
Participatory Ethnographic Evaluation and Research: Reflections on the Research Approach Used to Understand the Complexity of Maternal Health Issues in South Sudan
How can contextualised data be collected in a short time in conflict-affected sites? This paper shows how a Participatory Ethnographic Evaluation and Research (PEER) approach can overcome many of the challenges of conducting research in such conditions. Here, the authors…
Research paper
Mental health in South Sudan: a case for community-based support
Based on personal reflections of the authors who were engaged in mental health and psychosocial support programmes in South Sudan between 2013 and 2016, this article illustrates the constraints and challenges facing the sector at the time. The authors emphasise…
Research paper
Measuring health system resilience in a highly fragile nation during protracted conflict: South Sudan 2011–15
Complementing real-time data with survey data collected in South Sudan at independence (2011) and following 2 years of protracted conflict (2015), this study constructed and then compared a resilience index and stress index. Overall maternal, neonatal and child health coverage…
Book chapter
“Économie de la débrouille à Kinshasa informalité, commerce et réseaux sociaux” fr
Comment, dans un contexte de crise économique et sociale durable, les citadins réinventent-ils les moyens de leur survie à Kinshasa ? C’est à cette question que cet ouvrage s’attache à répondre. On y trouve une description ethnographique minutieuse des dispositifs…
Research paper
War, Displacement and Rural–Urban Transformation: Kivu’s Boomtowns, Eastern D.R. Congo
This article addresses rural–urban transformations in the war-torn Kivu provinces. The spectacular growth and development processes of fast-expanding boomtowns in Kivu’s rural areas serve as an entry point to investigate the relationship between conflict, displacement, urbanisation and development in Eastern…
Research paper
Authority that is customary: Kitawala, customary chiefs, and the plurality of power in Congolese history
This paper uses the history of the religious/healing movement Kitawala in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a lens to explore the relationship between forms of state-sanctioned “customary” authority and alternative nodes of “authority that is customary.” Focusing on three…
Research paper
The Politics of Return: Understanding Trajectories of Displacement and the Complex Dynamics of ‘Return’ in Central and East Africa
This introductory essay reflects on what studies of return can tell us about the ‘life cycle’ of conflict and displacement dynamics in war-affected Central and East Africa, with particular focus on Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, and Uganda.
Research paper
Home Is Where the Heart Is: Identity, Return and the Toleka Bicycle Taxi Union in Congo’s Equateur
While many ex-combatants in the DRC continue to be re-recruited into militia groups, one group that has reintegrated successfully is the Toleka—a several-thousand-strong group of ex-combatants who returned (or remained) in the provincial capital of Mbandaka (Equateur province). The Toleka…
