Uganda

Fighting Terror Through Justice: Implementing the IGAD Framework for Legal Cooperation Against Terrorism

by Matthew Schwartz

Co-authored with the Task Force on Legal Cooperation against Terrorism in the IGAD Subregion.

East Africa and the Horn face a number of transnational security threats, including terrorism, transnational crime,... more East Africa and the Horn face a number of transnational security threats, including terrorism, transnational crime, and piracy. In recent years, particularly following the July 2010 attacks in Kampala, al-Shabaab has been increasingly viewed as a threat not only to Somalia, but to the greater subregion. Tourism has declined and shipping costs have risen due to the threat of piracy from Somalia. Lawless pockets where government reach is weak, together with rampant corruption, have turned the region into a major transit point for black market financial flows and various forms of illicit trafficking.

Terrorism and transnational crime increasingly threaten security in the subregion of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development [IGAD]. Because of their transnational nature, no individual IGAD member state will single-handedly be able to deal effectively with these threats. As the IGAD Security Strategy adopted in December 2010 makes clear, effective cooperation will be crucial to winning the struggle against terrorism and to ensuring that other forms of transnational crime do not similarly jeopardize the IGAD subregion’s growth, prosperity, and stability.

Capabilities Approach towards Education. The possible use of a holistic approach as policy tool for education in Uganda.

by René Vermeulen

Written as assignment for the course "Writing for Scientific Publication" Research Master Human Geography and Planning Utrecht University.

Education is seen as important for social and economical development. Implementation of Free Primary Education... more Education is seen as important for social and economical development. Implementation of Free Primary Education policies had positive as well as negative outcomes. The capabilities approach towards education brings a different approach to the field of educational policy. This article aims at using an analytical model of the capabilities approach as a holistic approach towards education and analyses to what extent this model can be used in policy practice in Uganda. Thereto, an qualitative study on the basis of one interview has been undertaken. The general conclusion from this article supports the existence of the capabilities approach as a hybrid and holistic perspective on education. Furthermore, it is concluded that the model is not yet used in policy practice. It has found its way into policy as an evaluation tool, but the possible step towards a policy planning tool is still up for debate.

Nursing care of AIDS patients in Uganda

by Bonnie Fournier

2007. Transcultural Nursing, 18(3), 257-264.

This article reports the findings from a participatory action research study concerning the experience of Ugandan... more This article reports the findings from a participatory action research study concerning the experience of Ugandan nurses caring for individuals with HIV illness. Six key informants from government and non-governmental organizations were interviewed using a semistructured format. Six nurses from a large national referral hospital in Kampala, Uganda, participated in 10 focus group meetings during a period of 11 months. In-depth interviews, focus groups, and photovoice were used to collect the data. Findings indicate that nurses faced many challenges in their daily care, including poverty, insufficient resources, fear of contagion, and lack of ongoing education. Nurses experienced moral distress due to the many challenges they faced during the care of their patients. Moral distress may lead nurses to quit their jobs, which would exacerbate the acute shortage of nurses in Uganda. This study provides important knowledge for guiding clinical practice and nursing education in resource-constrained countries like Uganda.

Reconstructing Responsibility and Moral Agency in World Politics

by Joe Hoover

Draft version of article published in 'International Theory', Volume 4, Issue 2 (2012), 1-36.

Assigning responsibility is increasingly common in world politics, from the United Nation’s assertion that sovereignty... more Assigning responsibility is increasingly common in world politics, from the United Nation’s assertion that sovereignty entails a “responsibility to protect” to the International Criminal Court’s attempts to hold individuals responsible for international crimes. This development is welcome but problematic as the model of moral agency that our contemporary practices of responsibility are based on leads to a number of problematic consequences that impede efforts to make world politics more just. In particular, our contemporary practices of responsibility are excessively focused on the obligations of individual and collective actors, at the expense of enabling conditions, and on holding specific perpetrators accountable, neglecting the need for wider social transformations in response to mass violence and suffering. Alternative understandings of moral agency, which better serve international/global practices of responsibility, are possible and here I defend an understanding of moral agency based on the philosophy of John Dewey. The critical insights and practical possibilities of this alternative understanding of moral agency are explored with reference to international interventions in Sierra Leone and Uganda.

Income Generating Activities and Savings Behaviour of Adolescent Girls and Young Women in Karamoja

by Karol Czuba

A series of crises which Karamoja experienced in recent decades has compromised the viability of livelihood strategies... more A series of crises which Karamoja experienced in recent decades has compromised the viability of livelihood strategies on which its largely agropastoralist and pastoralist population had traditionally relied. The paper investigates the effects which this development has had on some of the region’s most vulnerable inhabitants: adolescent girls and young women who participate in BRAC’s Youth Development Programme (YDP). It uncovers the scale of livelihoods transition which has eroded previously well-defined gender roles and forced Youth Development Centre (YDC) members, and many other Karamojans, to become involved in the newly-emerged monetised economy through small-scale income generating activities (IGAs). The paper also considers participation in BRAC’s savings scheme targeted at YDC members who – given the recent emergence of cash economy in Karamoja – currently have little experience of managing financial flows and insufficient capital to expand their economic activities.

With or Without Peace: DDR in Northern Uganda

by Letha Victor

Justice and Reconciliation Project and Quaker Peace and Social Witness, Footnote VI, February 2008.

Co-authored with Julian Hopwood, Chessa Osburn, and Erin Baines.

-
From July to October 2007, Quaker Peace and Social Witness (QPSW) and the Justice and Reconciliation Project... more -
From July to October 2007, Quaker Peace and Social Witness (QPSW) and the Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP) conducted qualitative research with ex-LRA fighters on the subject of peer support and reintegration in northern Uganda. These in-depth discussions revealed a number of pressing insights on how to conduct a peaceful and successful DDR process.

Kill Every Living Thing: The Barlonyo Massacre

by Letha Victor

Justice and Reconciliation Project, Footnote IX, February 2009

Co-researched and co-authored with Boniface Ojok, Ketty Anyeko, Emon Komakech, Geoffrey Odong, Geoffrey Opobo, Evelyne Akullo, and Erin Baines, with the assistance of Lino Owor Ogora and Kyle McCleery.

-

Twenty-six  kilometres  north  of  Lira  town  in  northern... more -

Twenty-six  kilometres  north  of  Lira  town  in  northern Uganda,  a  quiet  displaced  person’s  camp  called Barlonyo lies inconspicuously next to the River Moroto. The tranquil setting belies its horrible distinction as the location of one of the largest single massacres committed by the Lord’s Resistance Army during its 23-year insurgency. In the space of less than three hours on the late afternoon of 21 February 2004, over 300 people were brutally murdered by LRA rebels and an unknown number were abducted.
Camp residents were burned alive inside their huts, hacked to death with machetes, stabbed with bayonets, clubbed with sticks and shot as they fled. The bellies of pregnant women were slit open, their not-yet-formed babies thrown into the fires. Others were abducted and marched north into Acholi-land. Many died in captivity of violence, sickness, or starvation.  The ultimate fate of several abductees remains unknown.
This Field Note documents what happened in Barlonyo on that fateful day when LRA Commander Okot
Odhiambo ordered his soldiers to “kill every living thing.” The victims of Barlonyo beg for justice; not only for the unimaginable acts of the LRA, but the lack of protection afforded the civilian population that day, and in the absence of acknowledgment of what happened there. The Government of Uganda must forward a comprehensive justice strategy that addresses wrong doing and heals the wounds that continue to divide the country.

Abomination: Local Belief Systems and International Justice

by Letha Victor

Justice and Reconciliation Project, Footnote V, September 2007

With assistance from Erin Baines.

-

Local contexts must begin to better inform Western-based approaches to transitional justice; without... more -

Local contexts must begin to better inform Western-based approaches to transitional justice; without them, external interventions often fail to resonate with the values, norms and beliefs of victims. To illustrate this point, this edition of Field Notes focuses on the Acholi concept of kiir, or abomination. Kiir is a transgression of the moral order which is believed to cause serious misfortune, including disease, spiritual haunting and death. Not only has the conflict in northern Uganda created the conditions that have allowed these transgressions to occur; the conflict has also been called an abomination in and of itself. A curse on the people of Acholi and consequent mass displacement are thought to have multiplied acts of abomination as well as reduced the capacity to deal with them: a cleansing ceremony must be performed in order to rectify the impact of kiir.

This Field Note attempts to bring the reader closer to an understanding of local belief systems. Gaining insight into these beliefs can aid international justice systems to better reflect the lived realities of the victim population.

Death does not rot: women of the Lord's Resistance Army

by Letha Victor

MA Thesis, Department of Anthropology, McGill University, 2011

-

From 1986 to 2006, northern Uganda was the site of a violent conflict between the Lord's Resistance Army... more -

From 1986 to 2006, northern Uganda was the site of a violent conflict between the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and the Government of Uganda. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Acholi sub-region in 2009, this thesis examines the narratives of young women who were abducted by the LRA, forced to serve multiple roles in "the bush," and have since returned to civilian life. I explore the supernatural dimensions of the conflict and contend that women were agents of their own survival because they learned to manipulate their physical and cosmological circumstances, both during and after their captivity. At the margins of transitional justice debates, women negotiate their own memories within an intricate web of religiosity. Though forced into marriage, motherhood, and soldiering, only to come home to lives marked by stigma, patriarchy, and poverty, ex-LRA women are complex persons who defy the tropes of "sex slave" and "child soldier."

-

De 1986 à 2006, le nord de l'Ouganda a été le site d'un conflit violent entre la «Lord's Resistance Army» (LRA) et le Gouvernement de l'Ouganda. Basée sur une recherche ethnographique menée dans la sous-région d'Acholi en 2009, cette mémoire de thèse examine les récits de jeunes femmes qui ont été enlevés par la LRA, forcés de servir de multiples rôles dans «la brousse», et ont depuis réintégré la vie civile. J'explore les dimensions surnaturelles du conflit et je soutiens que les femmes étaient des agents de leur propre survie, car elles ont appris à manipuler leurs conditions physiques et cosmologiques, à la fois pendant et après leur captivité. En marge des débats de la justice transitionnelle, les femmes négocient leurs propres souvenirs au sein d'un réseau complexe de la religiosité. Bien forcées de se marier, de devenir mères, et d'être des soldats; rentrées à des vies marquées par la stigmatisation, le patriarcat, et la pauvreté, elles sont quand même des personnes complexes qui défient les tropes «d'esclave sexuelle» et «d'enfant soldat».

‘The Cooling of Hearts’: Community Truth-Telling in Northern Uganda

by Letha Victor

Co-authored with Ketty Anyeko, Erin Baines, Emon Komakech, Boniface Ojok, and Lino Owor Ogora.

Human Rights Review, Volume 13, Number 1, 107-124.

-

Recent national and international debates on truth and reconciliation in Uganda have emphasized the... more -

Recent national and international debates on truth and reconciliation in Uganda have emphasized the importance of incorporating local-level mechanisms into a national transitional justice strategy. The Juba Peace Talks represented an opportunity to develop and articulate sufficient and just alternatives and complementary mechanisms to the international criminal model. The most commonly debated mechanism is the Acholi process known as mato oput (drinking the bitter root), a restorative justice approach to murder. Drawing on 2 months of research in nine internally displaced persons’ camps in 2007, we examine local justice practices in the region of northern Uganda to consider their potential, promise and pitfalls to realizing a successful truth-telling process. We find that although local mechanisms could help facilitate reconciliation in the region, truth-telling is but one part of a conciliatory process complicated by a national context of fear and the complexity of the victim–perpetrator identity at the community level. These locally informed insights help move forward the debate on such mechanisms in Uganda and add useful insights into community processes in the field of transitional justice more generally.

Media Activism, Youth Culture and Human Rights Campaigns for the MTV Generation

by Brian Ekdale

In B. Musa & J. Domatob (Eds.), Communication, Culture, and Human Rights in Africa (pp. 133-152). Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

This chapter looks at an organization called Invisible Children that focuses on the ongoing conflict in Northern... more This chapter looks at an organization called Invisible Children that focuses on the ongoing conflict in Northern Uganda. I wrote about Invisible Children for a couple of reasons: 1) It's a rare example of an organization that was born out of a media production, and the organization continues to be very media savvy. 2) The organization is very successful at attracting young people. 3) The original documentary (called "Invisible Children: Rough Cut") has some significant flaws, and because the documentary has become the foundation of the organization, those flaws have become indoctrinated into the organization's culture and practice.

Northern Uganda: Protracted Conflict and Structures of Violence

by Matthew Kustenbauder

Legal Cultures, Blurred Boundaries: the Case of Transitional Justice in Uganda

by Iris Marchand

Co-authored with Barbara Oomen
© 2007 Reed Business BV, ‘s Gravenhage
In Bruinsma, Fred and David Nelken (eds.): Explorations in Legal Cultures

Legal Cultures, Blurred Boundaries: the Case of Transitional Justice in Uganda

by Iris Marchand

Co-authored with Barbara Oomen
© 2007 Reed Business BV, ‘s Gravenhage
In Bruinsma, Fred and David Nelken (eds.): Explorations in Legal Cultures

Spatial Trends of Poverty and Inequality in Uganda

by Tony Muhumuza

Co-authored with Emwanu, T., D. Kaija, N. Mango, T. Muhumuza, B. Muhweezi, P. Okwi and J.Ouwor

This study presents results of trends of poverty in Uganda between 2002 and 2005. The methodology used was Small Area... more This study presents results of trends of poverty in Uganda between 2002 and 2005. The methodology used was Small Area Estimation (SAE) where data on welfare and population from the national household survey of 2005/6 was combined with that from the most recent national census of 2002. The application of the methodology to the data sets enables estimation of poverty estimates disaggregated down to the sub county level. The results show that welfare generally improved in most parts of the country during the period. However pockets of poverty still existed in the northern and eastern regions of the country due to the instability caused by the war, ecological and topographic factors. The results triangulated with education and health data suggest a method of adding a spatial dimension to key service sectors in Uganda. This would provide a solid base for further applications to guide policy planning in the different sectors. Although the causality issues are not explicitly handled here, the method can be used to study links between changes in poverty and resource availability, national service provision, budget allocations and policy formulation at the local level.

Saving Uganda From Its Oil

by Jason Hickel

2011. Foreign Policy in Focus.

The Tainted Pearl: Stories of War, Tourism and Development in Uganda

by Stan Frankland

13 THE STILL WATERS OF THE NILE

by Stan Frankland

No money, no life: surviving on the streets of Kampala

by Stan Frankland

Pygmic tours

by Stan Frankland