African Arguments

Top Menu

  • About Us
    • Our philosophy
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

Main Menu

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Climate
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • Think African [Podcast]
    • #EndSARS
    • Into Africa [Podcast]
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Africa Science Focus [Podcast]
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Debating Ideas
  • About Us
    • Our philosophy
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

logo

African Arguments

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Climate
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • Think African [Podcast]
    • #EndSARS
    • Into Africa [Podcast]
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Africa Science Focus [Podcast]
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Debating Ideas
Politics
Home›African Arguments›Politics›Uganda: How Not To Disarm

Uganda: How Not To Disarm

By admin
August 12, 2009
2005
2

Everyone supports “uniform, complete, and balanced across all tribal and ethnic groups.” People are unanimous that they “want peace and they see disarmament as the best way to end the insecurity.”

These statements are true in Darfur. But the quotations are from a report on Karamoja in north-east Uganda, where for the last three years the Karamoja Integrated Disarmament and Development Programme has sought to bring to an end the region’s thirty-year history as one of the most lawless places on the African continent.

A recent report from the Feinstein International Center, Changing Roles, Shifting Tasks: Livelihood Impacts of Disarmament in Karamoja, Uganda, documents how despite unanimous support for disarmament as a goal, most experiences of disarmament have been negative. What makes this a particularly important case to study is that the KIDDP is an integrated, donor-supported, multi-stakeholder effort that is intended to include development as well as disarmament.

The report describes two sets of problems. One is that the process of disarmament is largely forcible and associated with human rights abuses. Most operations are carried out by the Ugandan People’s Defence Force using cordon and search methods, leading to arbitrary detention and physical abuse against young men.

The second is unintended consequences. These include: “increased insecurity for communities; stripping of essential and productive assets; the erosion of traditional mechanisms to cope with vulnerability and food insecurity; shifts in gender-based labor roles, responsibilities and identities; transfer of animal management responsibilities; and the collapse of the dual settlement and migratory systems central to the success of pastoral and agro-pastoral livelihoods” (p. 12).

The report describes how disarmament exercises are often followed by an increase in attacks, because imbalanced disarmament results in the selective vulnerability of those who have been disarmed. Among disarmed communities, men are unable to protect their livestock while herding, so that they corral their animals near army garrisons. The animals are weakened and the community is impoverished. The army gains control over herding practices and livelihoods, and the burden of supporting families shifts to women. Obliged to go out into the bush to forage, women and girls are more exposed to sexual violence than before. Some people interviewed by the authors predicted a process of illegal rearming.

The report makes for sobering reading for anyone concerned over the future of Darfur.

Previous Article

Celebrity Activists: A Poor Imitation of UNICEF

Next Article

Call to Lift US Sanctions from Sudan ...

admin

2 comments

  1. Abd al-Wahab Abdalla 12 August, 2009 at 06:23

    This experience is unsurprising. My question is, what have the successive international mediatiors for the Darfur conflict done to take this into account? Or are they strictly bound by UN Security Resolution 1564 and so committed to the disarmament of the Janjaweed?

  2. Matthew Sinn 13 August, 2009 at 00:25

    The first step on the road to disarmament should be cantonment of heavy and crew-served weapons first, including technicals/”doshkas,” kept under guard by U.N. forces, proceeding in parallel with Sudanese Army withdrawals and drawdowns of the state security apparatus (i.e., Border Police, Transhumant Police).

    Responsibility for armed groups should be vested in designated individuals, who will then have incentive to control the behavior of the combatants/former combatants within their jurisdiction.

    Disarmament should not, at this stage, cover small arms, which should be retained one per able-bodied male (I am presuming that a gender-equitable formula would be difficult and perhaps impractical, as I have not heard anything about female fighters).

Leave a reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  • President of Zimbabwe Emmerson Mnangagwa was Minister for State Security at the time of the Gukurahundi massacres. Credit: DIRCO News Service/ Jacoline Schoonees.
    PoliticsZimbabwe

    Gukurahundi: Can the man accused of opening the wounds heal them?

  • Politics

    Bibliography on Social Research on Darfur

  • EconomyNigeria

    Manchester in ruins: The demise of northern Nigeria’s industrial hub

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter


  • 81.7K+
    Followers

Find us on Facebook

Interactive Elections Map

Keep up to date with all the African elections.

Recent Posts

  • Senegal’s angry protesters are proud defenders of their democracy
  • We analysed climate research on Africa. Here’s what we found
  • Could the jihadis dismantle the Sahelian state?
  • Nigeria’s Happy City is on the brink of being swallowed by the sea
  • Cameroon: The keyboard warlords of the breakaway republic

Editor’s Picks

Côte d'IvoireEditor's PicksPolitics

The genocide that never was and the rise of fake news in Côte d’Ivoire

From anonymous avatars to foreign PR companies, the spread of fake news has become an inescapable part of the political landscape. The small town of M’batto in south-central Côte d’Ivoire ...
  • Chad: The bed Déby made

    By Helga Dickow
    April 22, 2021
  • A man holds an image one of the individuals who disappeared and is still missing at a rally in Uganda. Credit: NUP.

    “Give us back our people”: the Ugandans who disappeared

    By Liam Taylor & Derrick Wandera
    October 12, 2022
  • African ecofeminism. Credit: Caroline Ntaopane/Womin.

    Why the world needs an African ecofeminist future

    By Fatimah Kelleher
    March 12, 2019
  • Nigeria's former president, Olusegun Obasanjo continues to wield significant influence in Nigeria. Credit: Friends of Europe.

    An interview with Olusegun Obasanjo: Up close and a little too personal

    By James Wan
    September 28, 2017

Brought to you by


Creative Commons

Creative Commons Licence
Articles on African Arguments are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
  • Cookies
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
© Copyright African Arguments 2020
By continuing to browse this site, you agree to our use of cookies.