Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) who fled the war in northern Uganda to seek refuge in urban areas such as the Kampala slums of Namuwongo, Naguru and Acholi Quarters continue to see themselves as being in a state of crisis. The inability to move on from war experiences is intimately linked with unresolved displacement, subjectively experienced as exile. Respondents recognise the social, spiritual, and psychological effects of the conflict on their community and on individuals (and express fears that if not addressed these effects will continue into

World AIDS Day offers us an opportunity

Northern Uganda has become notorious for a range of atrocities and human rights violations committed in the course of more than twenty years of conflict and internal displacement. As a result of this notoriety multiple psycho-social interventions for certain categories of victims have been put in place. However, documentation of such violations remains inadequate, and most of what has been written on psycho-social issues in northern Uganda frames individual problems in terms of psychological trauma, and specifically Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This paper explores the potential role of traditional justice practices from across several communities in northern Uganda in a national transitional justice process in Uganda. To understand this potential role first requires an acknowledgment of the unique and unusual transition that Uganda finds itself in. Within this context, the paper aims to complement Uganda's Justice Law and Order Sector's (JLOS) on-going transitional justice initiatives and in particular attempts to

Since the late 1990s, as the search for solutions to protracted conflict has deepened, the potential role of traditional justice in responding to the situation in Northern Uganda has been increasingly researched and discussed. The roots of traditional practices lie in principles and mechanisms used in pre-colonial communities to ensure the maintenance of a just society. While previous studies of traditional justice have focused on present-day understandings of these practices and their relevance in the Acholi and Lango subregions, little has been done to elucidate the

Perhaps because many urban-based IDPs settle in slum areas, where they tend to blend in with the existing population, they are often perceived, even by some officials in humanitarian agencies, as a population less deserving of serious attention than their fellow citizens living in camps. Some humanitarian workers even claim that these people are nothing more than economic migrants, despite their unique history and circumstances.

Such claims in some instances offer an excuse for inaction; there is no doubt that dispersed urban IDPs pose far

While some may hold hopes that the power-sharing agreement between Presdient Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga

Violent conflict between the Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has plagued northern Uganda for the past 20 years. At its peak, the conflict displaced at least two million people, many of whom fled to or were forced into notoriously unsafe and inhumane camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) known as "protected villages".

While such figures earned northern Uganda the dubious accolade of being one of the worst humanitarian emergencies in the world, (1) they do not describe the full extent of conflict-related

This briefing paper presents preliminary analysis of research conducted with IDPs in Gulu and Pader in 16 "new settlement" and "decongestion" sites in six different subcounties from 12-22 May 2007. The research team used a combination of forty-two in depth one-on-one interviews and ten focus group discussions with IDPs. Additional interviews were also conducted with key government and agency officials in the said districts. While a rapid assessment cannot claim to make a definitive statement on the situation, the intention of this