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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…
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 –…
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…
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
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…
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…
Background report
“This is your disease”: Dynamics of local authority and NGO responses to Covid-19 in South Sudan
Drawing on interviews and observations conducted in South Sudan in 2020-21, this report explores how South Sudanese NGOs and local government actors responded to the Covid-19 pandemic. The authors argue that unfilled local government positions undermined the Covid response in…
Background report
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…
Research paper
Lives Interrupted: Navigating Hardship During COVID-19 Provides Lessons in Solidarity and Visibility for Mobile Young People in South Africa and Uganda
The COVID-19 pandemic has upended assumptions about livelihood security. The authors examine data from young women and men in South Africa and young female sex workers in Uganda to explore the inequalities and hardships experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic and…
Research paper
Hidden Tales of Ebola: Airing the Forgotten Voices of Ugandan “Ebola Nurses”
Uganda experienced three Ebola outbreaks between 2000 and 2012, the largest and most destructive occurred in the Gulu region in 2000. This outbreak occurred during the rainy season when malaria rates were highest, thus complicating the diagnosis. As the outbreak…
Research paper
Fieldwork through the Zoomiverse: Sensing Uganda in a Time of Immobility
With the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, research collaborations that involved multiple sites or institutions were challenged by travel restrictions and the switch to online communication. This article is a reflection by two longtime collaborators, Richard Vokes and Gertrude Atukunda.…
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
Deadly secret: situating the unknowing and knowing of the source of the Ebola epidemic in Northern Uganda
This article critically examines the unknowing of the source of the Ebola epidemic in Northern Uganda, in 2000/1, by asking how this unknowing has been achieved and has shaped the disease situation. This article follows the author’s informants’ explanation that…
Research paper
Experiences of persons in COVID-19 institutional quarantine in Uganda: a qualitative study
Quarantine has been adopted as a key public health measure to support the control of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in many countries Uganda adopted institutional quarantine for individuals suspected of exposure to severe COVID-19 to be placed in institutions…
Research paper
Is we they? A cross-cultural study of responses to COVID-19 updates in Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda
This article delineates the material relations, routines and sensorial responses inhabited by people in Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. It grounds views on a discourse of behavioural change while exploring how Ugandans, Kenyans…
Research paper
Who is watching? Refugee protection during a pandemic-responses from Uganda and South Africa
Reflecting on the first 6 months of the pandemic responses in terms of refugee protection, Uganda and South Africa have taken diverging pathways. South Africa used the pandemic to start building a border fence on the border with Zimbabwe, initially…
Research paper
Institutional vulnerabilities, COVID-19, resilience mechanisms and societal relationships in developing countries
COVID-19 pandemic challenges could be utilised as an opportunity to reform government institutions to develop resilience measures that would potentially meet contemporary and future challenges. This article highlights that the current approach of institutions has failed to meet societal need.…
Research paper
COVID-19 and Its Related Stigma A Qualitative Study Among Survivors in Kampala, Uganda
COVID-19-related stigma is gradually becoming a global problem among COVID-19 survivors with deleterious effects on quality of life. However, this social problem has received little attention in research and policy. This study aimed at exploring the COVID-19-related stigma among survivors…
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…
Blog
The Logic of Contesting States During a Crisis: Revelations from Uganda’s COVID-19 Fight
This piece examines state legitimacy during the COVID-19 pandemic in Uganda. It examines various contestations to this legitimacy, such as the Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST) student strike. The strike reveals how state institutions condition(ed) public indifference with…
Blog
“Escaping from Quarantine” from Quarantined: My Ordeal in Uganda’s Covid-19 Isolation Centers
Ugandan intellectual and philosopher, Jimmy Spire Ssentongo has painted a behind-the-scenes picture of how the Ugandan state handled the coronavirus disease. While the Ugandan president praised self and staff for putting the coronavirus in check through the state’s isolation centres,…
Blog
When ‘a People’s War’ Turns Against Them: Reflections on Uganda’s ‘War of the Wananchi’ against COVID-19
With the incumbent President facing a critical election in early 2021, the truths over COVID-19 in Uganda became highly contested, as measures announced in the name of the people against COVID-19 began to double as interventions against the spread of…
Research paper
Maternal Vaccination in Uganda: Exploring Pregnant Women, Community Leaders and Healthcare Workers’ Perceptions
This research used qualitative methods to explore pregnant women, community leaders, healthcare workers, and programme managers’ perceptions of maternal vaccination in Kampala, Uganda. The authors found that public health messaging should target all community members, including partners and parents of…
Blog
The many faces of the COVID-19 mask in Eastern DRC
The introduction of the mask during the COVID-19 outbreak changed daily life in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and took many faces. From state repression in the city of Goma, to fear of the unknown in rural areas, the mask…
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.
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
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
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…
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…
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
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…
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.
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
Perceptions and Vulnerability to Climate Change among the Urban Poor in Kampala City, Uganda
Climate risks and vulnerability continue to disproportionately affect the urban poor given their constrained adaptive capacity. This paper examines the urban poor’s perceptions and vulnerability to climate change in Kampala through structured interviews and focus groups with randomly selected households…
Background report
Will the Impact of the Pandemic on the Expected National Output Persist?
This Weekly Review, from June 3, 2021, contributes to the debate on how COVID-19 could affect economic growth in South Sudan. It addresses two related questions: What channels would transmit the COVID-19 scarring effects to the output? What can public…
Background report
COVID-19 and the Political Transition in South Sudan
This Policy Brief assesses the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic has hampered the political transition in South Sudan and how political actors have responded to the crisis in terms of their responsibilities implementing the Agreement on the Resolution of…
