Humanitarianism, Violence, and the Camp in Northern Uganda

Abstract

This article shows how international humanitarianism and state violence developed a sustained relation of mutual support during the civil war in northern Uganda. This collaboration was anchored in the archipelago of forced displacement camps, which at the peak of the war contained about a million people, and which were only able to exist because of, first, the violence of the Ugandan state in forcing people into them, preventing people from leaving, and repressing political organisation in the camps; and, second, the intervention of international humanitarian aid agencies, which fed, managed, and sustained the camps for over a decade. The consequence was that state violence and international humanitarianism each depended on the other for its own viability.

Notes

 1. David Rieff, A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis (New York: Simon & Schuster 2002).

 2. Michael Ignatieff, Warrior's Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience (New York: Metropolitan Books 1998) p.23. See also David Chandler's discussion of this ‘misanthropy’ in ‘The Road to Military Humanitarianism: How the Human Rights NGOs Shaped a New Humanitarian Agenda’, Human Rights Quarterly 23/3 (2001) pp.678–700.

 3. See, for example, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace, 1995: With the New Supplement and Related UN Documents (New York: United Nations 1995); Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity Press 1999).

 4. The literature on this is immense; for an early account, see Jules Lobel, ‘American Hegemony and International Law: Benign Hegemony? Kosovo and Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter’, Chicago Journal of International Law 1/Spring (2000) pp.19–36; see also David Chandler, From Kosovo to Kabul: Human Rights and International Intervention (London: Pluto 2002).

 5. See the discussions in Mary B. Anderson, Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace – or War (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers 1999); and Fiona Terry, Condemned to Repeat? The Paradox of Humanitarian Action (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2002), in addition to the works cited in notes 8–11 below.

 6. See the works cited in notes 75 through 80 below.

 7. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 1998) pp.133–34. From a less metaphysical angle, the writers on global liberal peace have also addressed this question; for example Michael Dillon and Julian Reid argue, ‘the radical and continuous transformation of societies that global liberal governance so assiduously seeks must constitute a significant contribution to the very violence that it equally also deplores’, see Michael Dillon and Julian Reid, ‘Global Governance, Liberal Peace, and Complex Emergency’, Alternatives 25/1 (2000) p.118.

 8. Alex de Waal calls this the ‘regressive empowerment of aid’, see Alex de Waal, Famine Crimes: Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press 1998) p.136.

 9. There is an extensive literature on this; two prominent books are Mary B. Anderson, Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace – or War (note 5); and Fiona Terry, Condemned to Repeat? The Paradox of Humanitarian Action (note 5).

10. See, for example, Ataul Karim, Mark Duffield, Susanne Jaspars, Aldo Benini, Joanna Macrae, Mark Bradbury, Douglas Johnson, George Larbi and Barbara Hendrie, Operation Lifeline Sudan: A Review (Nairobi: UN 1996); Larry Minear, in collaboration with Tabyiegen Agnes Aboum, Eshetu Chole, Kosti Manibe, Abdul Mohammed, Jennefer Sebstad and Thomas G. Weiss, Humanitarianism Under Siege: A Critical Review of Operation Lifeline Sudan (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press 1991); African Rights, Food and Power in Sudan: A Critique of Humanitarianism (London: African Rights 1997); David Keen, The Benefits of Famine: A Political Economy of Famine and Relief in Southwestern Sudan, 1983–1989 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1994); Human Rights Watch, Civilian Devastation: Abuses by All Parties in the War in Southern Sudan (New York: Human Rights Watch 1994) pp.174–89.

11. For a devastating critique of this phenomenon, see Zoë Marriage, Not Breaking the Rules, Not Playing the Game: International Assistance to Countries at War (London: Hurst 2006).

12. See Chandler, From Kosovo to Kabul (note 4) pp.21–52.

13. Marriage discusses a similar trend with regards to the RPF in Rwanda, see Marriage (note 11) pp.71–93.

14. I make an extended argument for the legal liability of humanitarian agencies in northern Uganda in Adam Branch, ‘Against Humanitarian Impunity: Rethinking Responsibility for Displacement and Disaster in Northern Uganda’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 2/2 (2008) pp.151–73. Some of the material comprising the Ugandan case study here is derived from that article.

15. For background on the war in northern Uganda, see Sverker Finnström, Living with Bad Surroundings: War, History, and Everyday Moments in Northern Uganda (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2008); Tim Allen, Trial Justice: The International Criminal Court and the Lord's Resistance Army (London: Zed Press 2006); Adam Branch, ‘Neither Peace nor Justice: Political Violence and the Peasantry in Northern Uganda, 1986–1998’, African Studies Quarterly 8/2 (2005) pp.1–31.

16. ‘1,000 displaced die every week in war-torn north’, UN Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), 29 August 2005. See also OCHA/IRIN, ‘When the Sun Sets, We Start to Worry …’ An Account of Life in Northern Uganda (Nairobi: January 2004), in particular the ‘Foreword’ by Jan Egeland, U.N. Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.

17. For a major account of the government's instrumentalisation of humanitarian aid, see Chris Dolan, Understanding War and its Continuation: The Case of Northern Uganda, PhD Thesis, Development Studies Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London (2005).

18. ‘Official discourse’ is from Finnström (note 15) p.99. Chris Dolan demonstrates how the international community's exclusive emphasis on children's rights led to the demonisation of the LRA; see Chris Dolan, ‘Which Children Count? The Politics of Children's Rights in Northern Uganda’ in Lucima Okello (ed.) Protracted Conflict, Elusive Peace: Initiatives to End the War in Northern Uganda, Accord 11 (London: Conciliation Resources in collaboration with Kacoke Madit 2002) pp.68–71.

18. ‘12 Die in UPDF Protected Villages’, Monitor (Kampala), 30 October 1996.

19. I have explored the strategic and symbolic logic of LRA violence in, respectively, Branch, ‘Neither Peace nor Justice’ (note 15) and ‘The Roots of LRA Violence: Political Crisis and Politicized Ethnicity in Acholiland’ in Tim Allen and Koen Vlassenroot (eds) The Lord's Resistance Army: War, Peace and Reconciliation (London: Zed Press/African Arguments forthcoming).

20. ‘Girls Escape Ugandan Rebels’, BBC News Online, 25 June 2003, online at < http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3018810.stm>, accessed 10 Jan. 2004.

21. Gérard Prunier, ‘Rebel Movements and Proxy Warfare: Uganda, Sudan and the Congo (1986–1999)’, African Affairs 103/412 (2004) p.359. The ICC's intervention has also bought into this official discourse and further reinforces it; see Adam Branch, ‘Uganda's Civil War and the Politics of ICC Intervention’, Ethics and International Affairs 21/2 (2007) pp.179–98.

22. William Reno, ‘Uganda's Politics of War and Debt Relief’, Review of International Political Economy 9/3 (2002) p.428.

23. Information from World Bank website for Uganda, online at < http://web.worldbank.org/BSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/AFRICAEXT/UGANDAEXTN/0,menuPK:374947∼pagePK:141132∼piPK:141107∼theSitePK:374864,00.html>, accessed 15 Dec. 2006.

24. ‘Cautious Welcome for G8 Debt Deal’, BBC News Online, 12 June 2005, online at < http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4084574.stm>, accessed 15 Nov. 2009.

25. USAID website, online at < http://www.usaid.gov/locations/sub-saharan_africa/countries/uganda/>, accessed 12 March 2006.

26. ‘US Lists ADF, LRA as Terrorists’, New Vision (Kampala), 8 December 2001.

27. ‘Uganda pledges to support USA in combating terrorism’, New Vision, 12 December 2001; Ambassador Brennan termed an LRA attack a ‘pure terrorist act against humanity’ (‘US Ambassador Condemns LRA Rebel Attack in the North’, Radio Uganda, Kampala, 10:00 GMT, 21 March 2002).

28. ‘USA Given $3M to Fight Kony’, New Vision, 10 January 2003.

29. ‘Interview with General Wald’, BBC News Online, 23 March 2004; quoted in Christian Aid (UK), Politics of Poverty: Aid in the New Cold War (London: Christian Aid 2004) p.29.

30. ‘12 Die in UPDF Protected Villages’, Monitor, 30 October 1996.

31. United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs (UNDHA), Humanitarian Situation Report on Uganda (4 December 1996), online at < http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Hornet/irin_120496.html>, accessed 15 Nov. 2009.

32. World Food Programme, Weekly Review, Report 47/1996 (29 November 1996), online at < http://iys.cidi.org/humanitarian//wfp/96b/0021.html>, accessed 15 Nov. 2009.

33. For example, until late 1996 Uganda was generally only mentioned in WFP Weekly Reports in the context of the conflicts in neighbouring countries, but from late 1996 onward it appeared in those reports every week due to internal displacement; see the reports, online at < http://iys.cidi.org/humanitarian//wfp/>. This was confirmed through confidential interviews with NGO national staff, Gulu Town, May 2003.

34. There is a brief mention of the debate in Robert Gersony, The Anguish of Northern Uganda: Results of a Field-Based Assessment of the Civil Conflicts in Northern Uganda (Kampala: USAID Mission 1997) pp.34–6. See also UNDHA, Humanitarian Situation Report on Uganda (15 March 1997), online at < http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Hornet/irin_31597.html>, accessed 15 Nov. 2009.

35. See, for example, UNDHA (note 31). See also WFP, Weekly Review, Report 6/1997 (7 February 1997), online at < http://iys.cidi.org/humanitarian//wfp/97a/0005.html>. WFP had established a sub-office in Gulu Town by March 1997; WFP, Weekly Review, Report 12/1997 (21 March 1997), online at < http://iys.cidi.org/humanitarian//wfp/97a/0011.html>, accessed 15 Nov. 2009.

36. UNDHA (note 31).

37. OCHA, Consolidated Appeal Process: Uganda 2005 (Geneva: OCHA 2005).

38. OCHA, Consolidated Appeal Process: Uganda 2005 (Geneva: OCHA 2005) For a comprehensive list of the projects and their budgets, see OCHA, Consolidated Appeal Process: Uganda 2005: Projects (Geneva: OCHA 2005).

39. WFP, Emergency Report 41 (8 October 2004), online at < http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/JCDR-65KT9Y?OpenDocument>, accessed 15 Dec. 2006.

40. ‘IDPs Cost Donors $200 Million Annually’, Daily Monitor (Kampala), 27 March 2007.

41. Hugo Slim, ‘Doing the Right Thing: Relief Agencies, Moral Dilemmas and Moral Responsibility in Political Emergencies and War’, Disasters 21/3 (1997) pp.244–57.

42. Nicholas Stockton, ‘In Defence of Humanitarianism’, Disasters 22/4 (1998) pp.352–60.

43. ‘WFP Assistance to Internally Displaced Persons: Country Case Study of Internal Displacement. Uganda: Displacement in the Northern and Western Districts’, cited in Dolan (note 17) p.307.

44. ‘WFP Assistance to Internally Displaced Persons: Country Case Study of Internal Displacement. Uganda: Displacement in the Northern and Western Districts’, cited in Dolan (note 17) p.307

45. ‘WFP Assistance to Internally Displaced Persons: Country Case Study of Internal Displacement. Uganda: Displacement in the Northern and Western Districts’, cited in Dolan (note 17) p.307

46. ‘WFP Assistance to Internally Displaced Persons: Country Case Study of Internal Displacement. Uganda: Displacement in the Northern and Western Districts’, cited in Dolan (note 17) p.307

47. ‘WFP Assistance to Internally Displaced Persons: Country Case Study of Internal Displacement. Uganda: Displacement in the Northern and Western Districts’, cited in Dolan (note 17) p.307

48. IRIN (note 16); OCHA/IRIN (note 16).

49. See Dolan (note 17) pp.207–14.

50. Confidential interviews, Gulu District, March and May 2003.

51. Confidential interviews, Gulu District, March–April 2003.

52. Confidential interviews, Gulu District, March–April 2003

53. Confidential interviews, Gulu District, March–April 2003

54. See Acholi Religious Leaders' Peace Initiative (ARLPI), Let My People Go: The Forgotten Plight of the People in the Displaced Camps in Acholi (Gulu Town: Gulu Archdiocese 2001) p.12; Finnström (note 15); and Amnesty International, Breaking the Circle: Protecting Human Rights in the Northern War Zone (London: Amnesty International 1999).

55. Confidential interview, World Bank official, Gulu Town, May 2003.

56. Confidential interview, WFP security officer, Gulu Town, February 2003.

57. See Human Rights Watch, Human Rights Overview: Uganda (New York: HRW 2004), online at < http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/01/21/uganda6981.htm>, accessed 15 Nov. 2009.

58. The idea of ‘security corridors’ was mentioned to the author in a discussion with Walter Ochora (Local Council V Chairman, Gulu District), 20 May 2003; see also the discussion of humanitarian corridors in International Crisis Group (ICG), Northern Uganda: Understanding and Solving the Conflict, ICG Africa Report 77 (Nairobi/Brussels: ICG 2004) pp.22–3.

59. Francis Deng, Internally Displaced Persons: Compilation and Analysis of Legal Norms (New York/Geneva: United Nations 1998); ‘Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement’, U.N. Doc.# E/CN.4/1998/53/Add.2, online at < http://www.reliefweb.int/ocha_ol/pub/idp_gp/idp.html>, accessed 15 Nov. 2009.

60. Michel Foucault, ‘Governmentality’ in Graham Burchill, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (eds) The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf 1991) p.102. The most comprehensive book-length treatment is Mitchell Dean, Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society (London: Sage 1999). For early work in this vein, see the essays collected in The Foucault Effect; see also Michael Dillon, ‘Sovereignty and Governmentality: From the Problematics of the “New World Order” to the Ethical Problematic of World Order’, Alternatives 20/3 (1995) pp.323–68.

61. For other approaches to transnational governmentality, see James Ferguson and Akhil Gupta, ‘Spatializing States: Toward an Ethnography of Neoliberal Governmentality’, American Ethnologist 29/4 (2002) pp.981–1002; Carolina Moulin and Peter Nyers, ‘“We Live in a Country of UNHCR” – Refugee Protests and Global Political Society’, International Political Sociology 1/4 (2007) pp.356–72.

62. See Craig Calhoun, ‘A World of Emergencies: Fear, Intervention, and the Limits of Cosmopolitan Order’, Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 41/4 (2004) pp.373–95.

63. Peter Nyers, Rethinking Refugees: Beyond States of Emergency (New York: Routledge 2006) pp.4–8.

64. Alex de Waal makes a similar argument concerning the technicisation of famine, see de Waal (note 8) pp.23–25.

65. For a laudatory account of this macro-surveillance function, see Brent J. Steele and Jacque L. Amoureux, ‘NGOs and Monitoring Genocide: The Benefits and Limits to Human Rights Panopticism’, Millennium 34/2 (2005) pp.403–32.

66. Einar Bjorgo and United States Institute of Peace, Space Aid: Current and Potential Uses of Satellite Imagery in U.N. Humanitarian Organizations (Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace 2002).

67. See John L. Davies and Ted Robert Gurr (eds) Preventive Measures: Building Risk Assessment and Crisis Early Warning Systems (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield 1998).

68. Much of the effort around the so-called ‘Responsibility to Protect’, especially insofar as it involves the ‘Responsibility to Prevent’, can also be seen as part of this trend; see Alex Bellamy, Responsibility to Protect: The Global Effort to End Mass Atrocities (London: Polity 2009).

69. See Cécile Dubernet, The International Containment of Displaced Persons: Humanitarian Spaces without Exit (Aldershot: Ashgate 2001).

70. For an extended treatment of this tendency, see Marriage, Not Breaking the Rules, Not Playing the Game (note 11).

71. Liisa H. Malkki, Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 1995) p.236.

72. Interview, Local Council I Pabo members, Pabo internment camp, March 2003.

73. Interviews, Gulu District, November 2005.

74. For details on this relationship, see Martin Komakech, The Internal Displacement Phenomenon in the Internal Armed Conflict within Acholi Sub-region of Northern Uganda: The Challenge to Provide Protection, Master's thesis, The European Inter-University Council, Ruhr University, Bochum (2005).

75. Barbara Harrell-Bond, Imposing Aid: Emergency Assistance to Refugees (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1986) p.11.

76. Liisa H. Malkki, ‘Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and Dehistoricization’, Cultural Anthropology 11/3 (1996) p.388.

77. Liisa H. Malkki, ‘Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and Dehistoricization’, Cultural Anthropology 11/3 (1996) pp.388–90.

78. Béatrice Pouligny, Peace Operations Seen from Below: UN Missions and Local People (London: Hurst 2006) p.67.

79. Jennifer Hyndman, Managing Displacement: Refugees and the Politics of Humanitarianism (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press 2000) p.xxii.

80. Barbara Harrell-Bond, ‘Can Humanitarian Work with Refugees be Humane?’, Human Rights Quarterly 24/1 (2002) p.52.

81. Barbara Harrell-Bond, ‘Can Humanitarian Work with Refugees be Humane?’, Human Rights Quarterly 24/1 (2002) p.60.

82. Barbara Harrell-Bond, ‘Can Humanitarian Work with Refugees be Humane?’, Human Rights Quarterly 24/1 (2002) p.61.

83. Harrell-Bond, Imposing Aid (note 75) pp.90–1.

84. Malkki, Purity and Exile (note 71) p.235.

85. Nyers (note 63) p.114.

86. Mark Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security (London: Zed Books 2001) p.34.

87. Tim Allen and David Turton, ‘Introduction’ in Tim Allen (ed.) In Search of Cool Ground: War, Flight, and Homecoming in Northeast Africa (Trenton and London: Africa World Press and James Currey 1996) pp.1–22.

88. See P. W. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2003).

89. De Waal (note 8) p.189.

90. Dolan (note 17) p.307.

91. Finnström (note 15) pp.158–59.

92. Author's confidential interviews, Pabo internment camp, Gulu District, Uganda, November 2004.

93. Author's confidential interviews, Gulu Town, Uganda, November 2005.

94. ‘Two Aid Workers Killed in LRA Attacks in Northern Uganda’, AFP, English edition, 26 October 2005; ‘LRA Kill British National’, New Vision (Kampala), 7 November 2005.

95. My account is, of course, informed by Hannah Arendt's description of the treatment of stateless people in Imperialism (New York and San Diego: Harcourt Brace 1968).

96. Jenny Edkins, ‘Sovereign Power, Zones of Indistinction, and the Camp’, Alternatives 25/1 (2000) pp.13–14.

97. Jenny Edkins, ‘Sovereign Power, Zones of Indistinction, and the Camp’, Alternatives 25/1 (2000) p.19.

98. See also Nezar Alsayyad and Ananya Roy, ‘Medieval Modernity: On Citizenship and Urbanism in a Global Era’, Space and Polity 10/1 (2006) pp.12–16.