This paper begins by exploring the unique place of Gulu Town within the 20-year civil war in northern Uganda (1986–2006). It describes the conditions faced by the large internally displaced population of Gulu during the war and explains why the town has remained relatively stable despite the massive influx it experienced of uprooted rural Acholi. The paper explores the social changes that have occurred among the displaced population within Gulu’s tenuous urban environment, focusing on the breakdown of male, lineage-based authority and on the impact of town life on women and ex-rebels. Finally, the paper charts the changes in displacement patterns that have occurred in Gulu since the end of the war as a new landless and marginalised population seek haven in town and as social conditions and tensions, instead of improving, worsen with peace.

The debate over peace in Sudan has centred on the ongoing talks in Naivasha, Kenya. This paper argues, however, that sustainable peace is not simply a function of the implementation of an agreement between the SPLA and Khartoum, but that other fracture lines will run through post-conflict Sudan. Here we draw attention to the rupture between the Dinka, dominant within the SPLA, and the Equatorian peoples of the far south, hundreds of thousands of whom were driven from their homes or faced with economic and political oppression under SPLA occupation. As these refugees return, it will be through local government structures that Equatorians will or will not be integrated into the SPLA political project for Southern Sudan. Thus, local government figures prominently in the possibility for sustainable peace. We describe the origins and structure of local government in Southern Sudan, situating it in the history of political tension between Dinka and Equatorians. We then describe the challenge of equitably distributing land and foreign aid to returnees in the context of ethnic politics and a massive NGO presence. I N T R O D U C T I O NA number of different informants in Magwi County, South Sudan, related to us the same anecdote. A Madi man returning from Uganda goes to the land he farmed before being displaced, and finds a Dinka living in his house. He demands that the Dinka return his house and land. In response, the Dinka points to a date inscribed above the doorway. 'On this date, I liberated this house from the Arabs', he says. ' Where were you ?'

The International Criminal Court‘s intervention into the ongoing civil war in northern Uganda evoked a chorus of confident predictions as to its capacity to bring peace and justice to the war-torn region. This optimism is unwarranted, however. The article analyzes the consequences for peace and justice of the ICC's intervention, dividing them into two categories: those resulting from the political instrumentalization of the ICC by the Ugandan government, and those resulting from the discourse and practice of the ICC as an institution of global law enforcement.As to the first, the article argues that the Ugandan government referred the conflict to the ICC in order to obtain international support for its militarization and to entrench, not resolve, the war; the ICC, in accepting the referral and prosecuting only the Lord‘s Resistance Army, has in effect chosen to pursue a politically pragmatic case even though doing so contravenes the interests of peace, justice, and the rule of law. As to the second, the article reveals the harmful effects that ICC intervention can have on the capacity for autonomous political organization and action among civilian victims of violence, specifically how it leads to depoliticization by promoting a political dependency mediated by international law. The article draws from this analysis disturbing implications about ICC interventions generally, and concludes by asking whether ICC practice may be reformed so as to avoid these negative consequences.

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

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