Paper short abstract:

Standard analyses of land conflict in northern Uganda focus overwhelmingly on recent events. This paper pushes back against this tendency, reframing the stakes – and future implications – of contemporary land conflicts in the Acholi region as part of a century-long struggle for ancestral lands.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines how memories of colonial-era forced displacement shape responses to contemporary government(-backed) land grabbing in Uganda’s Acholi region.

In 2006, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) withdrew from Uganda, allowing 1.7 million Acholis to return home after a decade of internment in camps. Land conflict has marred this resettlement process and has thus become a leading topic of research on the region. Unfortunately, the 19-year-long LRA war looms so large in our understanding of Acholiland that most analysis of present-day land conflict is blinkered by a focus on this war and its effects.

To many Acholis, however, the struggle for their lands does not begin with wartime internment. Rather, it dates to an earlier mass forced migration. In 1913, ostensibly for purposes of sleeping sickness control, British colonial administrators relocated the entire population of western Acholiland, later converting the vacated territory into conservation areas. While these events caused lasting damage to Acholi land-use practices, many communities struggled throughout the 20th century to return to their former homes. This struggle was interrupted in the mid-1990’s by the escalation of the LRA war; but has resumed, in new forms, in the years since.

This paper examines how the stakes of contemporary land conflicts change when considered within the context of a century-long fight for ancestral lands. Building on both archival and ethnographic research, it explores how the academically overlooked history of colonial-era forced displacement is remembered by Acholi communities and mobilized in struggles to secure customary land rights for future generations.