Conference Proceedings (Development Studies)

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Child Soldiers or War Affected Children? Why the Formerly Abducted Children of Northern Uganda are not Child Soldiers
(2014) Angucia, Margaret
In many places around the globe, over many centuries, adults have forcibly involved children in war. In more recent times, these forcibly involved children have come to be collectively referred to as ‘child soldiers’, in an attempt to address the crises that these children experience within war conditions. However, recent ¢eld experiences from northern Uganda show that children, formerly abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army, as well as the community they return to, do not consider themselves as soldiers. This paper explains the reasons why the children reject this categorization prefer to be regarded as war a¡ected. This paper concludes with the warning that erroneouscategorisation of war a¡ected children mightin£uence, and/or undermine, the electiveness of targeted intervention programmes.
Ethics, Human Rights and Healthcare in Uganda
(2015) Luswata, Albert
This paper attempts to show the linkage between Ethics, Human Rights and Healthcare. In the first place, it argues that healthcare needs ethics to guide it and make it humane; otherwise it is used against the person. This also explains the need for moral uprightness in the healthcare profession. Secondly, it shows how healthcare is also a human rights question in a dialectical relationship, since health policies and practices can affect human rights, just like the infringement on these latter can affect health. This has led questioning the extent to which healthcare practices in Uganda promote or threaten people’s lives and wellbeing. Thus, some practices and policies which seriously affect the lives and rights of patients, staff, families and the community in the Uganda context are examined. However, it also argues that human rights cannot solve all moral questions in healthcare and thus the need for other considerations.
Long-term socio-economic development through harnessing the demographic dividend:.
(2015) Tukundane, Cuthbert
In the last thirty years, Sub Saharan Africa has undergone a remarkable demographic transition. The region now has the youngest population in the world with some 600 million people under the age of 25. This young and energetic population can be a great resource for socio-economic development if properly developed. To realise its demographic dividend and achieve long-term socio-economic economic development, Sub Saharan Africa must build its young people’s human capital and provide them with livelihood opportunities. The current high unemployment and underemployment rates, as well as low productivity self-employment among the youth in the region are causing severe economic and social marginalisation of the youth. This marginalisation has increased socio-economic problems such as illegal migration, prostitution, crime, drug abuse, recruitment into terrorist groups and political instability in some countries. Thus, Sub Saharan Africa has to provide livelihood opportunities to its young population through access to quality education and skills. Having a skilled workforce will not only lead to increased access to job opportunities but also to innovation, development of new industries and expansion of economies. However, the current education systems in the region do not equip majority of the graduates with the requisite skills for the labour market, self-employment and innovation. This problem is compounded by high rates of early school leaving where millions leave without having acquired foundational skills and/or skills for work and livelihood opportunities. Accordingly, my current research focuses on interventions for skills and productive youth development using participatory methods. In my presentation I would like to share insights from my research and also to pose some unsolved questions. For example, how do we develop holistic solutions to reduce obstacles to youth skills development, employment and other livelihood opportunities in Sub Saharan Africa?
A democratic political order after violence:
(East African Journal of Peace and Human Rights, 2015) Tshimba, David-Ngendo
This article delves into the predicaments of elections after violent armed conflicts as a means to rebuild broken political structures and restore a democratic political order. The article acknowledges that elections are not a guarantee for order and stability in the aftermath of political violence. Many examples of electoral engineering in post-Cold War Africa have fallen short of meaningful political reconstruction. The article proceeds with an analysis of the case of 'electocracy', the quest for a democratic dispensation through the sole path of popular elections, in the post-war Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) based on the 2006 and 2011 general elections. The article suggests that the need to conduct general elections should not take pre-eminence on the political to-do list of priorities facing a post-violence country such as today's DRC. Instead, the article argues for political institutionalization through socially emancipating politics. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract, edited]
Excluded youth and skills training in Uganda.
(2015-02) Tukundane, Cuthbert
This paper shares insights into how the youth population in Uganda that is excluded from education can best be helped to develop skills necessary for the labour market and for other livelihood opportunities, such as productive self-employment. The paper shows that technical and vocational skills may not be enough to help excluded youth gain access to and maintain a decent job. They also need foundational and transferable skills. Moreover, I argue that it is important to enhance partnerships between training institutions and industry. In addition, given the Ugandan context, the informal, agriculture and ICT sectors are crucial sectors that could absorb a large number of youth provided they have the requisite skills to work or to become entrepreneurs in these sectors. It is also important to note that excluded youth may not only require skills. Those who desire to start their own businesses will require other forms of support such as access to finance.
Learning for sustainable futures:
(2015-09) Tukundane, Cuthbert
With 70% of Uganda’s population of 34.9 million below the age of 30 and 56% below 18 years, the country has one of the youngest populations in the world. The youth bulge that the country is experiencing demands for educational actions that enable these young people to learn for sustainable futures, especially for decent and sustainable work. Currently, youth unemployment in Uganda is estimated at 65% and is largely attributed to the slow growth of jobs in the economy, as well as a poor education system that produces graduates with inadequate skills for the labour market and for livelihood opportunities. This paper underscores the importance of partnerships between training institutions and industry in preparing young people for decent and sustainable work in Uganda. Drawing on research experience in the area of vocational skills development for marginalised youth in the last five years through the use of participatory methods; and experiences in facilitating an undergraduate class on Agriculture and Rural Development with a component of interaction with practitioners, I argue that one of the best ways to prepare learners for decent and sustainable work is through partnerships with industry. Not only do such partnerships enhance practical skills development, they also improve the quality of education generally and transitions from school to work. The paper concludes with a formulation of ingredients of effective partnerships between training institutions and industry that should enrich the preparation of learners for decent and sustainable work.
Assessment of Somali refugees’ wellbeing: The centrality of the human needs
(2015-09) Balyejjusa, Moses Senkosi
There is a substantial body of literature on psychological wellbeing of refugees in psychology, especially in relation to refugee acculturation. However, very little research has been carried out on refugee wellbeing by assessing refugees’ objective conditions of living. This paper seeks to bridge this gap by evaluating the satisfaction of the human needs of Somali refugees in Kampala, Uganda. Drawing on data from thirty-six individual in-depth interviews and seven focus group discussions with seventy Somali refugee and twenty-two Ugandan study participants living in Kisenyi slum, the paper shows that the study participants assessed the satisfaction of seven objective elements. They include peace and security, housing, education, health care, financial security, food and employment. These objective elements can be seen to represent human needs when analysed in relation to Len Doyal and Ian Gough’s (1991) theory of human need formulation. Specifically the objective elements are similar in some respect to Doyal and Gough’s identified intermediate needs of physical security, nutritional food and safe water, economic security, protective housing, appropriate education, appropriate health care and a non-hazardous work environment. Doyal and Gough (1991) maintain that their identified needs equate to functionings such as being nourished, healthy, literate and numerate (educated), sheltered, clothed, etc under the capability approach. The study participants assessed some Somali refugees as having adequate satisfaction of these objective elements while others as having inadequate satisfaction. Further, the Ugandan study participants evaluated the satisfaction of the elements more positively while the Somali refugee participants evaluated the satisfaction more negatively. In this paper I argue that this is the case because of the differences in Somali refugees’ financial resources and social support, a comparison of Somali refugees’ life situation in Kampala vis-à-vis their previous life situation in Somalia, a comparison of Ugandans’ life situation with Somali refugees’ life situation, and the non-discriminatory and accepting host environment. Refugees with more financial resources and stronger social support have their human needs such as housing, food, health care, education, employment and financial security adequately satisfied while refugees with fewer financial resources and weak social support have their needs inadequately satisfied. The financial resources are mainly from the small and medium scale business enterprises owned by Somali refugees in Kisenyi while the social support is mainly in form of financial remittances from relatives and friends from industrialised or developed countries. In addition to financial resources and mutual social support, the non-discriminatory and accepting attitudes and behaviours of Ugandans resulted in the satisfaction of the human needs of housing, education, peace and security, and employment of this category of Somali refugees. The positive evaluation of the satisfaction of Somali refugees’ needs of housing, education, food and financial security by Ugandans is because most Ugandans living in Kisenyi are in a poorer financial position than Somali refugees. On the other hand, Somali refugees’ negative evaluation of the satisfaction of their needs is due to Somali refugees comparing their better conditions of living in Somalia before the outbreak of the civil war with their conditions of living in Kisenyi. The findings of the study suggest that financial resources, social support and a non-discriminatory and accepting host environment are instrumentally important in promoting Somali refugees’ wellbeing since they guarantee adequate satisfaction of the human needs of Somali refugees. I therefore conclude by noting that having means to financial resources and a non-discriminatory and accepting host environment are fundamental in promoting and guaranteeing refugees’ wellbeing in general and Somali refugees in particular.
Embracing values beyond the Financial Value:
(2015-10) Kabiito, Bendicto
The dominant discourse upholds an idea that accumulated financial capital (money) can reliably address climate change challenges. What is often neglected is the fact that since the current trends of climate change is blamable on money-making human enterprises; the ability of the product of such enterprises (liquid capital/money) to address the environmental and climate consequences they create is put in question. The big question to be addressed by this study is; can a bad master (towards climate) be a good servant (towards its re-address)? This study attempts to challenge a dominant modernistic-capitalistic tendency of thinking that money and technology can and will resolve all problems of the world! In this study, climate change is viewed as closely linked to environmental destruction by the modernistic practices of capitalism and consumerism, which seek to indiscriminately convert natural resources into consumable articles. Herewith, ‘capitalistic’ development (in its extremist tone) is viewed as predatory to natural environment, the inventor of consumerism and a master-minder of climate change. In many cultures of the world, environmental conservation is/was communal responsibility and a cultural/ religious requirement. In the current global order, though, money is the driving force, even of climate change redress work! Even tree planting work (a conservation dimension) is largely done as a business endeavour. Africa needs to look beyond the monetary gains for values of vitality; to stop replacing forests and swamps with factories. Industrialists need to learn that increasing the amount of money dedicated to climate change, without decreasing carbon emission and the sacking in raw materials from the environment is no solution. I herewith caution that finances should not be the driving force behind climate change redress, but a desirable companion to uphold higher environmental value.
Memory and Forgiveness:
(2016-03) Angucia, Margaret
Memories of conflict experiences can be problematic in building social relationships between victims and perpetrators in post conflict communities. The challenge of negative memories to constrain living together in the post conflict community is real. According to Lederach (2004) relationships or building them is at the heart of conflict formations or their solutions after they have occurred. Northern Uganda experienced a prolonged conflict where massive abductions, mutilations, deaths, displacement and loss of property was bitterly experienced perpetuated by the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army whose members belonged to the same Acholi community that terrorised them. That conflict, one of the “new wars” of contemporary Africa has left an uneasy state of social relations balancing between the imperative to forgive perpetrators of the atrocities who are members of the same community and the burden of the unforgettable and painful memories. This paper will attempt to present some of the most painful memories of the massacres that took place during the twenty year war as remembered by the people of Acholi and discuss some of their dimensions that are posing challenges for forgiveness. The analytical aim will be to search for the possibilities for reconciliation.
Survival Fate’ or ‘Livelihood Option’? :
(2016-03) Kabiito, Bendicto
Uganda boasts of her natural resource wealth by day, and groans over its mismanagement by nightfall! Expectation and suspicion paradoxically typify the state of affairs of Uganda’s natural resource stock; flora, fauna and minerals alike. The establishment of the National Mineral Policy in 2000 gave hope as national commitment to guide mineral exploitation for social and economic development. With it, overcoming mineral resource mismanagement and profitability for the national cause was anticipated. After fifteen years of its existence, this study delved into establishing whether and how the mineral policy has been able to transform the mining sector in Karamoja from a ‘survival ploy’ to a sustainable ‘livelihood option

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