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Remittances and Household Wealth after Conflict: A Case Study on Urban Burundi | World Development
Few studies have researched the use of remittances in conflict-affected contexts. This study analyzes unique data from Burundi, testing three hypotheses: relative deprivation, investment, and insurance, derived from New Economics of Labor Migration studies, employing propensity score matching. Results show that remittances are common among wealthier households, rejecting the relative deprivation hypothesis. Remittances have strong effects on non-productive assets, such as living conditions and food security, and weak effects on productive assets, such as asset ownership. Poorer households invest mostly in non-productive assets, suggesting that remittances are insurance for the poor, whereas wealthier households seem largely unaffected by remittances.
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During the past decades, the African Great Lakes region has experienced several armed conflicts, widespread political crisis, and large-scale loss of human lives. The civilian population bears the brunt of political turmoil and suffers from direct and structural violence and from the violation of their fundamental human rights. Although social work is still weak in these countries, it can play an important role in peace-building and in the overall rebuilding and reconstruction of affected societies in order to achieve a lasting impact in transforming conflict and poverty structures. In this article, a multi-dimensional conceptual framework for social work in such situations is introduced. Social work interventions in highly sensitive post-conflict contexts should ideally be linked to local knowledge systems and African ethics, thus providing guiding principles for ethical social work practice. Empirical examples from Northern Uganda and Burundi underscore the importance of such contextualised approaches.
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Little is known about the role of cognitive social capital among war-affected youth in low- and middle-income countries. We examined the longitudinal association between cognitive social capital and mental health (depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms), functioning, and received social support of children in Burundi. Data were obtained from face-to-face interviews with 176 children over three measurement occasions over the span of 4-months. In this longitudinal study, cognitive social capital was related to a declining trajectory of children's mental health problems and increases in social support. Interventions that improve community relations in war-affected communities may alter the trajectories of resource loss and gain with conflict-affected children.
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The ongoing experiment of transformative justice (TJ) may soon find a new testing ground in Burundi. A long anticipated truth and reconciliation commission (TRC) is slated for establishment in the near future. Yet, Burundi continues to face longstanding and deep-rooted problems in its social, political, legal and institutional landscape that will fall outside of the remit of the TRC process, but that stand to negatively affect that process. Absent reform in these areas, the risk exists that the TRC may be judged as little more than inconsequential chatter by a population that has already suffered decades of violent conflict, social exclusion, corruption, and impunity. Informed by theories of transformative justice, this examination considers the potential shortcomings of TJ mechanisms where such reforms are yet to take place. It is argued that in contexts like Burundi, where impunity has become the norm, TJ mechanisms should form one part of a more combined process that ultimately aims to tackle the structures and dynamics that led to violence and that are reproduced in the present.
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The political climate in Burundi currently seems to be worsening day-by-day. The most significant recent episode was a high-profile revelation by a leaked UN report that arms have been distributed to the Imbonerakure, the youth wing of the ruling party CNDD-FDD. The Burundian press subsequently confirmed these allegations. This is the lastest event in a long series that includes restriction of freedom of the press, killing or imprisonment of political opponents, and the announcement that the President will run for a third term (this contradicts the Arusha Peace Agreement).
EASTERN CONGO
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The emphasis on demonstrable program results in international development work has produced countless evaluation guidelines and numerous scholars have championed specific, ethical-based evaluation approaches to guide international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs). Yet few studies have examined the ethical implications of current evaluation practices among INGOs or the resulting effects on INGO-funded programs. This article focuses on one among a growing population of young, U.S.-based INGOs whose evaluation practices reflect limitations of time, methodological expertise and funding. Drawing on existing principles of ethical evaluations, the author explores the circumstances and potential implications of one evaluation performed by an INGO in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and concludes that an ethically defensible evaluation exceeds the capacity of this young INGO. Four propositions are forwarded to highlight the tensions between currently accepted evaluation guidelines and INGO realities. Finally, to help under-resourced INGOs minimize the potential ethical implications for their programs, the article recommends that they prioritize their limited resources to: (1) build local capacity and decentralize evaluation tasks and responsibilities; (2) share program agendas and solicit feedback on implementation from evaluands; (3) share field impressions with local and expert stakeholders; and, (4) translate communications into local dialects to facilitate discussion about structuring future programs and their evaluation.
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The state of the Congolese state has been subject to a heated debate, with some arguing that it remains mostly irrelevant outside its capital or even that there is no such thing as Congo. Others contend that there is no lack of state order in Congo, but that this order is characterised by predatory rule and (privatised) extortion. This paper wants to put both claims into perspective and to assess how different actors re-deploy various rationalities and practices of statehood. Based on fieldwork in South Kivu, this paper looks into the making of public authority in the territory of Kalehe (eastern DRC), where since the start of the Congo wars in 1996 a growing number of armed and other actors have claimed and exercised power. The paper stresses that these actors' competing claims to public authority are intimately linked to struggles of territory and populations and tend to resemble and reproduce previous state practices and norms. The idea of the state seems to be one of the principal objects of reference deployed by these actors to legitimate their claims, mainly because it still resonates with the social imaginaries of public order.
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This article shows in what ways the lack of cooperation between international and local peacebuilding actors can hamper the effectiveness of their programmes. In Ituri, a north-eastern district in the DR Congo, international peacebuilding actors mainly focused on statebuilding while local peacebuilding actors predominantly addressed issues of social cohabitation, such as reconciliation between ethnic communities and the resolution of land conflicts. Due to a lack of cooperation, however, these different priorities were often only partially coordinated. On their end, local peacebuilding actors adapted international statebuilding programmes to the local context during the implementation phase, but were not relevantly involved in strategy making. International peacebuilding actors, in turn, have only recently started to adapt their programmes to local priorities. However, if they do so, they often crowd out and duplicate the work of local peacebuilding actors, rather than cooperating with them by implementing complementary activities. This ultimately makes both local and international actors' programmes less effective.
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Causality and conflict: tracing the origins of armed groups in the eastern Congo | Peacebuilding
Research on conflict tends to oscillate between two poles: cross-country research using statistical regressions to isolate key variables, and ethnographic research on single countries. I argue that, while the former often fails to capture the political and social dimensions of conflict, the latter can suffer from a lack of causal rigour. I illustrate this argument in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where I suggest a greater focus on the locus and process of the conflict. Armed groups have become much more integrated into regional political and economic elites over the past two decades, just as the Congolese state and army have themselves developed links with armed groups since the 2003–06 transition. These dynamics, and not a narrow focus on conflict minerals and local violence, should attract greater scrutiny.
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Peeling the onion: autochthony in North Kivu, DRC
Many different attempts have been made to explain the ongoing conflict in the DRC, ranging from ethnicity, to greed and resource wars, to the role of colonialism, and each provides useful contributions to the debate. In this article, we emphasise the concept of autochthony, which links identity and space, enabling the speaker to establish a direct claim to territory by asserting that he or she is an original inhabitant, a ‘son of the soil’. Its expressions have led to violent struggles in Africa, where assertions about autochthony are used to justify land claims. This can be clearly seen in the case of eastern DRC. While acknowledging significance of both regional and international factors, we regard the conflict in North Kivu as largely an agrarian war, and its root causes must be located in the complex web of uncertainties concerning citizenship and land rights. This is fuelled as well as further complicated by the extraction of the valuable minerals that are abundant in this part of the Congo. This article explores how armed non-state groups in eastern DRC, specifically in the North Kivu conflict zone, attempt to create an order for operation, survival and navigation in a population to whom it seeks support from as well as preys upon. We believe that our analysis highlights the need for an approach that assumes conflicts always have a local angle, and in the case of DR Congo and North Kivu this is land and the questions concerning belonging.
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Drawing on case studies of several Congolese churches in London and Atlanta, in this article I explore the practices and strategies of religious territorialization associated with the politics of diaspora. A focus on the manifold ways of enacting and performing diasporic religious identities enables one to understand how religious actors connect spaces and temporalities to carve out spiritual and symbolic cartographies. More specifically, I analyse the particular interplay of diasporic politics, religious identity, place and history in the context of political crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The transnational scope of the groups studied – Catholics, Kimbanguists and Pentecostals – significantly shapes their diasporic religious experience as they are embedded in larger polycentric social fields and ‘sacredscapes’ within which people, money, ideas, images, objects or values circulate. I also link the individual and collective experiences of diasporic religion to the shaping role of power relations and conflicts within wider transnational social fields.
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The risks of African military capacity building: Lessons from Rwanda | African Affairs
Civil war and insecurity are widely seen as obstacles to development and threats to international stability, and donors are therefore keen to develop African capacities to manage conflict on the continent. Building the capacity of African militaries is hazardous, however, given their frequent roles in coups, support for authoritarian regimes, and violence against civilians. This article argues that the risks of military capacity building can be assessed more accurately by understanding how national governments view and utilize the military as a policy tool. It demonstrates this using the case of post-genocide Rwanda, a significant contributor to African peacekeeping but also to instability in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The article identifies four features of the Rwandan regime's understanding and use of military force, using these to explain the dual and divisive role of Rwanda's military as an agent of instability on the one hand and peace on the other. Finally, the article explores the M23 crisis, considering implications for donor efforts to manage risks inherent in international commitments to “African solutions”. It concludes by arguing that, as African military capacity building continues, recognizing the ways in which such enhanced forces are likely to be used will be crucial to developing a better understanding of the continent's peace and security prospects.
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Le génocide des Tutsi rwandais vingt ans après | Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire
After 1994, the social sciences quickly incorporated Rwanda’s Tutsi genocide into their programme of study. This article questions whether the urge to compare the Rwandan genocide with other mass killings was entirely justified. Certain elements of the Rwandan genocide do not fit neatly into the framework provided by these kinds of studies. This article highlights three characteristics that resist easy classification in a social science analysis: the role of middlemen played by neighbours and families in the massacre; the specifically religious dimension of its extreme violence; and the phenomenon of “traumatic crises” during memorial ceremonies.
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Un historien face au génocide des Tutsi | Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire
n this interview, the historian Jean-Pierre Chretien recalls his experience in Burundi in 1964, when he instructed student teachers from Bujumbura. He recounts his discovery of the rift between the Hutu and the Tutsi, the shock produced by the 1972 massacres and Rwanda’s influence on Burundi. He revisits the roots of “Hamitic ideology” a racial mythology that surfaced in the social sciences during the 19th century and which was subsequently spread by colonialism. At the beginning of the 1990s, Jean-Pierre Chretien became aware of the increasing radicalization of racial thinking in Rwanda. In early 1993, he tried to warn the French public of the risk of genocide. Today, he calls for serious public debate regarding this historic event.
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Enfants victimes, enfants tueurs | Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire
Little attention has been devoted to the question of how children experienced 1994 within the world of social science. Yet children constituted important actors at the time, both as victims and as perpetrators. They accounted for a majority of the victims, as well as a substantial portion of the surviving population. This unique circumstance gave rise to a new family model, where a group of orphans was led by an older child. The participation of children in the massacres also proved to be one of the defining transgressions of the genocide. Examining these experiences ultimately allows us to investigate the ways in which the massacres redefined the social boundaries of childhood in Rwanda.
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Approche locale du génocide | Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire
This article offers a summarized version of one of the rare monographs devoted to the history of the Tutsi genocide in the Eastern region of the country. The Nyarubuye sector provides here the context for an analysis of the massacres’ organisation as supervised by the local authorities, whose role was essential. Between the 14th and the 17th of April 1994, in the centre of Nyarutunga and in the Parish of Nyarubuye, about twenty-seven thousand people were murdered. At first, the inhabitants worked together to resist their attackers, arriving from neighbouring sectors, until some of them were ordered to kill the Tutsi. The Parish had attracted many Tutsi from neighbouring parishes where the violence had already spread, and its occupants were exterminated in a matter of days.
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Tuer au cœur de la famille | Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire
While women represent approximately 6% of those incarcerated for their participation in the genocide committed against the Rwandan Tutsi, their involvement should be seen as one of the massacre’s decisive elements. Female participation took many guises (from looting and denunciation to brutal murder) and undoubtedly contributed to the intensity and efficiency of the genocide. An analysis of the biography of two women incarcerated at the Central Prison in Kigali sheds light on some of the mechanisms that allowed genocidal violence to permeate the basic building block of society that is the family, attesting to the radical nature of the massacres that occurred in 1994.
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L'État rwandais et la mémoire du génocide | Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire
Based on an analysis of the archives of the National Commission for the Fight against Genocide (CNLG) – the organisation tasked with the remembrance of the Rwandan genocide – this article seeks to explain under which material conditions and with which memorial imagery the Rwandan State has officially commemorated the Tutsi massacre that occurred between 1994 et 1996. An analysis of the first dignified State burials of the genocide victims and of the radical changes which subsequently took place between the first and second national commemoration ceremonies provides several clues. Finally, the author analyses the diverse foreign influences which helped to establish a Rwandan commemorative model.
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Rwanda 20 years on: investing in life | The Lancet
Two decades ago, the genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda led to the deaths of 1 million people, and the displacement of millions more. Injury and trauma were followed by the effects of a devastated health system and economy. In the years that followed, a new course set by a new government set into motion equity-oriented national policies focusing on social cohesion and people-centred development. Premature mortality rates have fallen precipitously in recent years, and life expectancy has doubled since the mid-1990s. Here we reflect on the lessons learned in rebuilding Rwanda's health sector during the past two decades, as the country now prepares itself to take on new challenges in health-care delivery.
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Twenty years after the Rwandan genocide, little is known about the political values of non-elite Hutu. The post-genocide regime has emphasized the problem of “divisionism” and “genocide ideology”, suggesting a popular preference for a radical stance on inter-group relations and reconciliation. This argument has been used to defer the question of democracy. This article investigates the attitudes of ordinary Hutu at a rural site, and shows that the respondents staked out a middle ground, emphasizing the shared interests of ordinary Hutu and Tutsi and distancing themselves from the political excesses of both Hutu and Tutsi elites. However, this moderate political space appeared to yield to more radical views when discussing the pressures of transitional justice, when respondents' careful distinction between elite and ordinary people collapsed and a monolithic actor, “the Tutsi”, was imagined in conflict with “the Hutu”. While this slippage appears to be a coping mechanism in the face of stressful situations rather than an inherent political preference, the article concludes that politically convenient assumptions and maladroit public policy risk contributing to the very dangers the regime claims to combat.
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RETHINKING POLITICAL RHETORIC AND AUTHORITY DURING RWANDA'S FIRST AND SECOND REPUBLICS | Africa
Drawing on rarely analysed primary sources obtained during multi-site archival research, this article examines and proposes to reassesses the political rhetoric deployed in pre-genocide Rwanda (First and Second Republics). The article contends that the First and Second Republics' rhetoric was not as ethnocentric as often contended. It argues instead that this rhetoric, cautious and moderate, should be understood as part of regime resilience strategies. Born of questionable origins, the two regimes faced recurrent instability and only imposed their authority questionably on segments of the Rwandan population. Unlike ethnocentric rhetoric calling upon limited ethnic affinities, moderate rhetoric was meant to ‘persuade’ and ‘pre-empt’, in other words extend support for regimes that were uncertain of their grounding.
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The 1994 United Nations Security Council resolution which created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) foresaw it marking a ‘new beginning’, both locally (peace and reconciliation in Rwanda) and globally (strengthening the project of international criminal justice). Over time, those who spoke on behalf of the ICTR highlighted the strictly quantifiable (number of arrests, convictions) and the contributions to the global ‘new beginning’ for international criminal justice. Ethnographic fieldwork at the ICTR, however, revealed that lawyers and judges, enmeshed in the Tribunal's institutional order, held diverse views regarding local and global efficacy, refracted through the sense of power(lessness) that accompanied their respective institutional locations. Focusing on the attitude of judges and lawyers to the lack of indictments for members of the Rwandan Patriotic Army for alleged massacres in 1994 and accusations of ‘victor's justice’, this article distinguishes between the ICTR as a disembodied institution that did or did not mark local or global ‘new beginnings’, and the ICTR as a collection of situated persons negotiating their simultaneous empowerment and disempowerment.
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There is a remarkable discrepancy between the political representation of the Batwa ethnic minority group in Burundi compared to in Rwanda. Whereas Rwanda’s focus on citizenship prevents the Batwa from claiming recognition as a politically salient societal segment, Burundi’s governance model, characterized by ethnic, consociational power-sharing, guarantees the political representation of the Batwa in the legislative assemblies. The difference is mainly due to the various modalities of political transition that both countries have experienced. While in Rwanda, regime change came about through a military victory, Burundi’s transition from conflict to peace involved a long and complex peace-negotiations process, with international mediators viewing the armed conflict and its resolution in explicitly ethnic terms. The Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement was a foundational moment for the recognition of the political participation rights of the Batwa in Burundi, despite the fact that they were not actively involved in Burundi’s armed conflict, or in the peace negotiations. The comparative analysis in this paper offers insights into the potential of peace processes with respect to improved minority-rights protection following violent conflict.
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Smooth Machinery: Global Governmentality and Civil Society HIV/AIDS Work in Rwanda | Globalizations
In recent years there has been a massive influx of aid to civil society HIV/AIDS work in Africa. Drawing on fieldwork in Rwanda, this article explores, through a governmentality perspective, the rationalities and technologies of government that accompany the new funding schemes. The paper feeds into contemporary debates on the relevance of governmentality studies in Africa and on the complicated relationship between state, civil society, and international donors in the particular context of Rwanda. Despite the country's known record of authoritarian politics, the paper argues that Rwandan civil society organizations are in fact largely subject to advanced liberal rule, rendering them responsible and active in their own government. This global governmentality, in turn, unfolds through a post-political machinery that effectively blurs boundaries between international donor, state, and civil society institutions. Ultimately, this means that researchers interested in resistance must be prepared to extend their visual field considerably.
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The Rwandan government's ongoing reconfiguration of the agricultural sector seeks to facilitate increased penetration of smallholder farming systems by domestic and international capital, which may include some land acquisition (‘land grabbing’) as well as contract farming arrangements. Such contracts are arranged by the state, which sometimes uses coercive mechanisms and interventionist strategies to encourage agricultural investment. The Rwandan government has adapted neo-liberal tools, such as ‘performance management contracts’, which make local public administrators accountable for agricultural development targets (often explicitly linked to corporate interests). Activities of international development agencies are becoming intertwined with those of the state and foreign capital, so that a variety of actors and objectives are starting to collaboratively change the relations between land and labour. The global ‘land grab’ is only one aspect of broader patterns of reconfiguration of control over land, labour and markets in the Global South. This paper demonstrates the ways in which the state is orienting public resources towards private interests in Rwanda, through processes that have elsewhere been termed ‘control grabbing’ [Borras et al. 2012, 402–416].
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This paper explores intersections of ethnicity, gender and age in Rwanda during and following the 1994 genocide. It firstly considers how these intersections affected the specific dynamics and nature of the violence during the genocide. It then examines how these intersections have shifted following the genocide in the context of a nation-building project, which has rejected ethnicity, yet embraced the pursuit of gender equality. Drawing on ethnographic research with young Rwandans in Kigali from 2004 to 2011, it identifies three disquieting continuities in the intersections of ethnicity, gender and age in contemporary Rwanda: (i) the ongoing ethnicisation of sexual politics among young Rwandans; (ii) the reproduction of ‘ethno-gendered’ stereotypes of Tutsi women that were central to the genocide propaganda; and (iii) the continued marginalisation of large numbers of Hutu young men, a factor which contributed to the participation of some young men in the 1994 genocide.
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In April 1994, genocide erupted in Rwanda with an unprecedented ferocity. Over the course of 100 days, more than 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu were killed. A major contributor to the violence was an intense propaganda campaign that dehumanised and demonised the Tutsi minority prior to and during the genocide. This propaganda presented the Tutsi as foreign and feudal oppressors, who would again oppress the Hutu majority as they had in the past if they were not targeted for extermination. Such dubious representations of history have deep roots in Rwanda, which can be traced to the early colonial period. This article will explore three examples of the way in which history has been represented and misrepresented in Rwanda, spanning from colonial to contemporary periods. It will consider how key stakeholders have sometimes portrayed Rwanda's history in skewed and inaccurate ways, and the profound impact this has had on ethnic divisions within the country. Moreover, it will examine how misrepresentations of Rwanda's history are continuing in the post-genocide period. It is only through interrogating (mis)representations of Rwanda's history that the political agendas that have and continue to shape them can be exposed and challenged.
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Inciting Genocide with Words by Richard Ashby Wilson :: SSRN
This article calls for a rethinking of the causation element in the prevailing international criminal law on direct and public incitement to commit genocide. After the conviction of Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity, the crime of direct and public incitement to commit genocide was established in the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide in 1948. The first (and thus far, only) convictions for the crime came fifty years later at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). The ICTR’s incitement jurisprudence is widely recognized as problematic, but no legal commentator has thus far offered an adequate solution to one central contradiction, namely the Trial Chamber’s repeated claims of a causal connection between defendants’ speech and subsequent acts of genocide. Such claims imply that the commission of genocide is relevant to determining incitement, despite the fact that incitement is an inchoate crime and therefore only the speaker’s intention matters. Drawing upon J.L. Austin’s ordinary language philosophy, the article disentangles the intention of the speaker from the consequences of speech acts. In determining incitement to commit genocide, international law might differentiate between three aspects of performative utterances, or what Austin terms the "locutionary" (the meaning and content), the "illocutionary" (its force) and the "perlocutionary" (the consequences) qualities of speech acts. Specific intent to commit genocide is found in the content, meaning and force of speech acts, rather than in consequences, which can be an unreliable guide to intention. By using this template, international tribunals might better distinguish modes of liability that require causation (such as instigating) from inchoate crimes such as direct and public incitement to commit genocide, where the meaning and the force of public statements is paramount. Other benefits of this approach include refocusing attention on the prevention of genocide and clarifying and narrowing the range of impermissible speech.
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Since assuming power after the 1994 genocide, President Paul Kagame and his political party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, have struggled to unite Rwanda’s citizens using, among other initiatives, a simplified version of Rwandan history to diminish the ethnic tensions that made the 1994 genocide possible. As a result, Rwanda’s history has become highly politicized, with vastly divergent versions of the nation’s past narrated in private settings, where it is more politically appropriate for Rwandans to share their experiences. This paper focuses on divergent representations of Rwandan monarchical figures – often unnamed – whom the narrators imbue with values according to their individual political affiliations, lived experiences, and identity. These narratives are indicative of the broader ways that modern Rwandans narrate their experiences of history in response to Rwanda’s current official history, as well as previous official histories. Careful analysis reveals much about the current political climate in post-genocide Rwanda: most notably, that Rwandans continue to see their nation’s past through vastly different lenses, demonstrating the enormous challenges facing the Rwandan government as it seeks to reconcile its population using current methods. It also highlights the ongoing need on the part of historians to approach contemporary sources critically, informed by sources produced and debated in the pre-genocide period.
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Le procès de Jean-Paul Akayesu | Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire
From January 1997 until September 1998, the first trial of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was held in Arusha, Tanzania. This historical trial culminated in a crucial judicial precedent. Working from the judicial archives, this article seeks to examine how the trial unfolded, as well as the uniqueness of the judicial narrative derived from the witnesses' statements. More broadly, this case study of a former mayor's trial also investigates the local dynamics of violence and genocide on the county level.
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Assessing Growth Performance in Uganda: A contest between Data Sources and Data Type
The paper examines national income for Uganda from the two primary sources, the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) and World Development Indicators (WDI) and constructs a consistent GDP series over the period 1970-2008, with a particular focus on sub-periods when there are notable divergences. Although results show these are consistent, similar and cointegrated, the UBOS series is smoother and produces a more stable measure of GDP than does the WDI series, making the former most appropriate for use when analyzing macroeconomic relationships of Uganda.
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In this article, I examine the autobiography of Paul Rusesabagina, An Ordinary Man, to interrogate the narrative construction of identity in contemporary Rwanda. My primary focus is the discursive and narrative dynamics involved in the problematical configuration of ethnic, class, and national identities prior to, and after the country's 1994 genocide. Regarding the contradictions in the way Rusesabagina attempts to articulate modern Rwandan identity (especially with respect to the perceived sameness and/or difference between Hutu and Tutsi), I argue that the dominant narratives of pre-colonial harmony he echoes are over-simplistic, homogenising and misleading in certain respects. This article thus seeks to problematise the prevailing idea – forcefully reinforced by Rusesabagina – that colonial interventions constitute the all-encompassing roots, rather than catalysers, of the endemic and seemingly irreconcilable differences that culminated in the genocide. My purpose in this regard is not to downplay colonialism's negative impact on social relations in Rwanda, but to foreground some of the often overlooked historical complexities that are revealed by Rusesabagina's valuable but as yet underexplored narrative.
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In spring 2012 a group consisting of Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo defectors in North and South Kivu mutinied and created a new rebellion group called M23 (Movement du 23 Mars). The fighting between the M23 and the government troops resulted in a new wave of refugees, partly consisting of Congolese Rwandophone Tutsis, whose interests the M23 claimed to voice. Yet little is known about how the people whose interests the M23 claimed to represent and protect perceived the armed movement’s claims. Indeed, there are many actors that talk about refugee situations and needs, from rebel movement to NGO—refugees are spoken about and for, with their own voices are shrouded in silence. Based on original field data collected from August 2012 to February 2013, this article analyzes the images of the M23 among Congolese Rwandophone refugees population in Rwanda. Examining their perceptions is particularly interesting in that the plight of the refugees and the issue of refugee return occupy a central position in M23 discourse. The article demonstrates an ambiguous perceptions of the M23, often articulated in terms of “they are the only ones we have,” strongly grounded in feelings of discrimination as citizens of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The article shows that rather than wholehearted support for the M23, the interviews reflected a wish for nonmilitary solutions to the conflict.
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2014 African Transformation Report: Growth with depth | Eldis
This report from the African Center for Economic Transformation presents the state of economic transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa, lessons learned from African countries and selected comparators from Asia and Latin America. IT also discusses how this transformation can be sustained for the long run. The report is the result of a three-year research program of country, sector and thematic studies to offer analyses and lessons that can be tailored to each country’s endowments, constraints and opportunities. IT was developed in collaboration with think tanks from 15 African countries. The key feature of the report is ACET’s new African Transformation Index that assesses the performance of countries on five attributes of transformation: diversification export competitiveness productivity technological upgrading human well-being These are then aggregated into one overall index designed for policy-makers, business people and the media to track how African economies are transforming and how they stand comparatively to their peers. The top five ranking countries are: Mauritius South Africa Cote D'Ivoire Senegal Uganda The bottom five are: Ethiopia Rwanda Nigeria Burundi Burkina Faso
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Do the “ultra-poor” have high returns to capital or are they otherwise constrained? Impoverished Ugandans, mostly women, were experimentally offered individual business training, $150, supervision, and business advising. We evaluated the full package plus the marginal effects of components: supervision (pressure to invest); advice; and stronger social networks (via group formation). 16 months later, microenterprise ownership and incomes double. Supervision and advice weakly increase initial investment but have little long-run impact. Group formation raised earnings through cooperative activities, suggesting social capital is an important input. Overall, the economic returns to cash appear high. We see little effect, however, on empowerment.
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In 2012/13, SLRC implemented the first round of an original sub-regional panel survey in Uganda aimed to produce data on livelihoods, access to and experience of basic services, exposure to shocks and coping strategies, and people’s perceptions of governance. This working paper explores the following questions: Which factors influence households’ livelihoods status? Which factors that influence people’s access to and satisfaction with basic services, social protection, and livelihood assistance Which factors influence perceptions of local and central government? What role do serious crimes play in people’s livelihoods, access to services and perceptions of governance?
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Key messages ■ 55 percent of households in Acholi and 28 percent in Lango report having at least one member who has experienced a serious crime. Most households experienced more than one serious crime. ■ Households with members experiencing serious crimes are more likely have on-going war-related injuries, less food security, less wealth, worse access to health care, education and water, and feel that local and central government does not represent their priorities. ■ The more serious crimes experienced, the worse off the household today.
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Key messages ■ Most households don’t have the education level or jobs that will pull them out of poverty, improve wealth and assets or reduce food insecurity. ■ Households that experienced serious crimes during the war are significantly worse off today than other war affected households. ■ Livelihood and social protection services are rare and aren’t targeted to those who need it most, in fact, these services often go to better off households.
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The war-wounded and recovery in Northern Uganda | Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium
Key messages ■ 5 percent of the population of Acholi and Lango sub-regions are significantly impaired or incapacitated by war-related physical, psychological and emotional injuries. ■ Households with war-wounded members are more likely to have fewer assets, worse food security, fewer livelihood activities, and use more coping strategies to survive. ■ The more serious crimes a person experienced, the more likely they are to have an ongoing injury that impacts their ability to function today.
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This article examines the multi-layered continuities of violence experienced, navigated and narrated by those in the Great Lakes region from the perspective of one life. Drawing on the unfolding life stories of Alex, a sexual minority refugee in Uganda, it focuses upon the complex predicament of persecution and marginalisation of the region’s sexual minorities, as they navigate protracted political conflict, displacement and wider intersecting forms and sources of violence. This article aims to draw attention back to the lived realities of violence as they are interpreted and articulated through time and space in situated acts of speaking. An ethnographic life stories approach compels us to consider the agency of those who navigate complex constellations of intersecting and multiple forms of violence woven through the fabric of everyday life, the social topographies within which people navigate and the wider sociocultural, political and legal dimensions within which they live.
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Although politics has become central to international development assistance, the use of political economy analysis (PEA) as a means for greater aid effectiveness remains an aspiring epistemic agenda. Even though virtually all aid donors have some personnel working on the development and implementation of PEA methodologies and frameworks, whether this new cognitive model for aid is compatible with pre-existing administrative factors is still an open question. We argue that for PEA to become fully institutionalised in donor agencies it needs to overcome the hurdles of administrative viability: its proponents need to reconcile it with corporate and professional incentives, as well as with the political environment in which an agency operates. We track this process empirically within two PEA leaders: the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the World Bank. Using documents and interviews from headquarters as well as three country offices – Bangladesh, Ghana, Uganda – we find that political economy analysis has not yet become institutionalised in programming, management or the professions, and remains an intellectual agenda very much rooted in the governance silo. We conclude by arguing that the future of PEA lies in organisational change, not any particular framework, and that this change is more likely to occur by disseminating PEA outside of the governance profession into agency management and the various sectors of development assistance.
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The Political Economy of Social Accountability in Rural Uganda | Brooks World Poverty Institute
Social accountability has become an important new buzzword among development actors seeking to understand the forms of state-society synergy that may be supportive of better public services. Advocates suggest demand-side initiatives are key to increasing the power of the poor in service provision but sceptics are concerned such mechanisms may generate mistrust of existing democratic processes while failing to challenge structural inequalities between disadvantaged citizens and political elites. This paper advances these debates by presenting qualitative research findings about political capabilities outcomes for different stakeholders within rural health and education services resulting from the social accountability interventions of a research and development NGO in Western Uganda. The paper supports arguments in the literature for NGOs to engage in more politicized strategies aimed at tackling structural inequality when seeking to advance the political capabilities of disadvantaged groups. The findings also suggest however, that within the restricted political space of rural Uganda at the current juncture, NGOs can generate limited improvements to service provision by bringing local state and civil society elites together for deliberative problem-solving.
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This article examines the heated debate that resulted from the decision of the International Criminal Court to investigate the events surrounding the conflict between the Government of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army. The Court's decision to intervene in Uganda was heavily criticized by political, traditional and religious leaders from the region, and by officials from a number of international humanitarian organizations on the basis of its perceived threat to peaceful outcomes to the conflict. The analysis demonstrates how particular discursive constructs of ‘peace’ and ‘justice’ became central to the debate as opponents and supporters of the ICC intervention struggled to impose distinct frameworks for evaluating and addressing the situation. Though the struggle appeared to be about abstract concepts, the ability to control these constructs had tangible consequences on the ground, as such concepts were linked with particular strategies of conflict resolution. The article concludes that the unequal relations of power which existed from the outset gave supporters of the ICC intervention an advantage over those opposing the intervention, allowing agendas for justice to overtake agendas for peace.
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Traditional justice, or what this article refers to as ‘ethnojustice’, claims to promote social reconstruction, peace and justice after episodes of war by rebuilding traditional order. Ethnojustice has become an increasingly prominent mode of transitional justice in northern Uganda. As such interventions multiply throughout Africa, it is essential to probe their political and practical consequences. This article situates ethnojustice theoretically within the broader discourse, practice and institutions of transitional justice, and historically within the reaction against orthodox liberal transitional justice from within the industry. Through an engagement with ethnojustice texts and interventions in the Acholi region of northern Uganda, the article argues that ethnojustice can end up extending forms of unaccountable, patriarchal power within Acholi society, funded and supported by the Ugandan state and international donors. In addition to underpinning this project of social discipline, ethnojustice also benefits the Ugandan state in its effort to avoid accountability for its violence during the war.
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Taxation and corruption: theory and firm-level evidence from Uganda | Applied Economics
This article develops a simple framework to analyse the negotiation over bribe and tax payments during the tax collection process. We show that the larger the bribe a firm offers to a tax collector, the larger the tax rebate it gets. More particularly, we show that the negotiation over bribe and tax payments hinges on four other factors: firms’ official liabilities, detection, firms’ negotiation power and red tape costs imposed on firms. Some of the predictions from the theoretical model are tested using firm-level data from Uganda. We find that bribe and tax payments are inversely related, thereby supporting the hypothesis of a negotiation taking place between firms and tax collectors. In particular, a 1% point increase in average bribe payments per employee is associated with a 7% point reduction in average amount of tax payments per employee. Results are robust to various instruments dealing with the endogenous relationship between bribes and taxes.
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Uganda has experienced high economic growth rates over the past decade, averaging 5.4 % per year, while poverty rates have declined over 14 % points over 2002–2003 and 2009–2010. However, conventional wisdom is that the benefits of poverty reduction have not been distributed equally and some authors even question the large decline in poverty. This paper seeks to examine poverty trends across Uganda from 1995 to 2010 by using non-monetary indicators based on household assets, housing characteristics, and household size and composition. In a variation on poverty mapping methods, we select household characteristics that are available in four Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and the 2005–2006 Uganda National Household Survey (UNHS). Using the UNHS data, we estimate household per capita expenditure as a function of these characteristics. Finally, these estimated equations are applied to the same characteristics from the DHS data to generate estimates of per capita expenditure, which are then converted to estimates of the incidence of poverty. The results confirm that the overall incidence of poverty has declined in Uganda over the past 15 years, but they show less progress than official expenditure-based estimates of poverty. We explore several explanations for this discrepancy.
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Randomised control trials (RCTs) can yield information about the effectiveness of agricultural extension and other development programmes, facilitating cost–benefit analyses and policy decisions under resource constraints. However, even after RCT design questions have been settled, a number of other practical challenges to successful RCTs remain. As a guide to those interested in applying RCTs more extensively, we outline several ethical, organisational, design and field-based challenges for RCTs, along with potential strategies for mitigating the challenges. We provide illustrations from our experience of an RCT of the Community Knowledge Worker programme, a novel agricultural extension model in Uganda.
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Human bodies have assumed centre stage in modern warfare, and few armed conflicts epitomize this more than the war in northern Uganda, where both rebel groups and government forces violated bodily integrity and altered human tissue to communicate messages, humiliate the enemy and their support base, and dominate both people and territory. The injuries and disabilities inflicted during wartime continue to affect people long after the conflict has come to an end. People whose bodies were ‘marked’ continue to embody the war in everyday activities in terms of pain, disabilities and loss of mobility. In other words, the war continues in their bodies. Most marked bodies struggle to conform gender performances to expectations. Furthermore, a decline in the productivity of people with marked bodies and failure to reciprocate mutual beneficial interaction leads to ruptures within social capital networks, resulting in widespread stigmatization and discrimination. Yet, focus on the body seems to be largely missing in peace processes and transitional justice. In the aftermath of armed conflict, where so many bodies have been marked, disability mainstreaming should become a quintessential element in transitional justice. This goes beyond medical interventions, meaning that in all transitional justice thinking and practice, attention is paid to how marked bodies can be included, participate and benefit. To ensure inclusion of marked bodies and other victim groups, more micro-analysis is needed that distinguishes survivor groups in terms of their day-to-day survival concerns, challenges, experiences, needs and aspirations.
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Economic growth without transformation: the case of Uganda | Canadian Journal of Development Studies
This paper argues that Uganda's economic development has been characterised by structural change in production without structural change in employment. This poses dangers to continued growth. Although labour is increasingly abundant, low productivity in agriculture, it is argued, makes labour expensive. This is due to policy failure – lack of investment in agriculture – and ultimately to the evolution of patron–client politics in Uganda. Rapid agricultural growth is required in order to permit labour-intensive growth in manufacturing.
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Confusion vs. clarity: Property rights and forest use in Uganda | Forst Policy and Economics
Projects and policies targeted at reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD +) frequently emphasize the articulation of property rights that are new, formalized or revised. A major question for successful REDD + implementation, and forest sector reform more broadly, is how changes in formal rights are understood and internalized by resource users. This paper explores the determinants of knowledge of formal rights, and whether accurate knowledge of rights influences forest clearing and forest product harvesting behavior in Uganda. We find limited awareness of rules surrounding clearing forest, and mixed levels of awareness regarding rights to harvest specific forest products. Harvesting behavior is variably correlated with awareness of rights depending on the product and capacity of district forest officials.
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This article, drawing upon primary field research, analyzes the origins and history of the East African Revival of the 1930s and its ongoing relevance and role in post-genocide Rwanda. Starting as a Holiness-inspired, Anglican movement, the Revival persisted among the Tutsi Diaspora during their exile to refugee camps in Uganda following the 1959 Hutu-led Revolution and has returned with them following the coming to power of the Rwandan Patriotic Front in 1994. The Revival, as it presently experiences a reawakening in the post-genocide church, provides the Tutsi returnees with a spiritual mechanism to explain their plight as refugees and a means by which to heal from decades of suffering. Additionally, a narrative has emerged in which they believe themselves to be a “Chosen People” who found redemption and healing in the refugee camps by embracing the revival spirit. Many Anglican returnees further believe they have been “chosen” to bring healing and reconciliation, through the revivalist tradition, to post-genocide Rwanda. While the return of the Revival tradition in the post-genocide Anglican Church offers potential benefits for Rwanda's reconciliation and recovery, the church must also abandon its apolitical inclinations and challenge the ruling regime in the name of truth, democratization, and justice.
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This article explores the interplay between violent protest and the making of laws in Uganda. It advances two main arguments. First, since multipartyism was restored in 2005, the Ugandan government has repeatedly drafted intentionally contentious new laws in part to provoke, divide and politically manipulate opposition. Implementing these laws has often not appeared to be a priority; rather, drafting, debating and (sometimes) passing them represent tactical ‘legal manoeuvres’ geared towards political gain. Second, I argue that these manoeuvres can be linked to another trend since 2005: the rise in urban-based protests and riots, which have often become violent and resulted in aggressive crackdowns by the state. In bringing these trends together, this article argues that the use of legislative processes as part of a strategic repertoire to destabilize political opposition has exacerbated unrest, especially among urban dwellers. Moreover, in response to rising protest the government has engaged in further legal manoeuvring. The analysis suggests that the semi-authoritarian nature of the regime in power, where the symbolic importance of the legislature and relatively free media contend with fundamentally authoritarian tendencies at the centre, is propagating this cycle of legal manoeuvres and violence.
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In sub-Saharan Africa, colonial influences have altered traditional practices as a way to manage that which Polanyi labeled as ‘fictitious commodities’ of land, labor, and money. Land has now become a highly marketable commodity and an intrinsic part of the global economy. Over the past century, Uganda's land rights have evolved from communal rights to that of male-dominated, individual ownership practices that have excluded women. Despite constitutional provisions, which confer title of both a deceased husband's property rights and equal rights to property within a marriage to a wife, postcolonial patriarchal tradition prevails. This article examines historical changes in land rights in Uganda and discusses the impact of shifts in land rights from communal ownership to individual tenure, altering power structures and attempting to create marketable land title. The Ugandan women's movement's opposition to policies and implementation of laws that exclude women has been unable to facilitate the required changes in unbiased access to land rights, despite apparent victories in revisions to the letter of the law. Situated within contemporary interpretations of tradition and pressures of market demand, this article shows that women's access to landownership and use are restricted by misinterpretation of traditional law and a lack of enforcement of contemporary legal rights. To illustrate the impact of a lack of access to land, this article examines an empirical case study of widowed subsistence farmers in southern Uganda. Women in Uganda continue to lose ground, quite literally, decreasing the possibility of gender equity in terms of land.
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This paper provides a critical appraisal of continental peace and development in Africa. Since the formation of Organization of African Unity (O.A.U) in early 1960s, African states agreed to strengthen their relalationship at continental and regional levels. The primary aim was a drive for liberty. With most of African countries attaining independence, there was a shift to regional economic cooperation, trade and conflict issues. Organizations such as the African Union (AU), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) emerged in order to address security issues and economic development. This is as a result of the cooperation of countries in specific regions. With growing leadership crises, conflicts have developed in various regions leading to political unrest in most countries. This has led to security issues being focal points of concern. As a result, peace agreements were signed and developmental activities being initiated. The paper examines Global and African peace and security architecture. The paper further assesses prospects that have arisen because of peace. It also analyzes challenges that arise due to peace initiatives and how they affect development in Africa. Particular attention is given to the crises in the Central African Republic, Rwanda, DRC Congo, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Chad Angola, Sudan, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, South Sudan, Uganda, and Somalia.
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The Ugandan government has been conducting tax policy reforms to create entrepreneurship conditions for the growth of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). SMEs play a very important role in the development of economies. Taxation and tax regimes are used by government to provide means for small businesses to participate in economic growth. Therefore, the paper critically analyses the taxation policy on small businesses and entrepreneurial enterprises in Uganda. The specific objectives of this paper are: To examine tax treatment on the performance of SMEs in Uganda; To find out the influence of taxation policy on small business and entrepreneurial enterprises in Uganda; and To find out if tax payers are aware of all their tax obligations and policies. The research is primarily carried out in kampala district and it covers four markets of Nakasero in central division, Nakawa in Nakawa division, Kasubi in Lubaga division and kalarwe in Kawempe division. The respondents were small business owners and in operation between 2005 and 2014. A mixed method of both qualitative and quantitative was employed. 50 respondents were considered out of the entire population in each market, and a total of 200 respondents selected for this paper. Data collected was analyzed using SPSS Version 17. The result of the research will benefit small business and entrepreneurial enterprises owners under study to know the defects of taxation and this will help to lobby with the government. The findings will assist the policy makers to amend the income tax law so as to make it friendly to small businesses.
