“Land that we call our own:” Place-based Justice
In this blog, Ketty Anyeko asserts that justice is place-based informed by women’s articulation that land is home, livelihood, identity, belonging, and healing.
Time to read: 11 min
How does place matter in the quest for justice and peace? On August 13th, 2022, my family, friends, and relatives in Uganda organized an event attended by hundreds of people in my ancestral homeland situated in Gulu district (Uganda) to celebrate my academic accomplishment. My doctoral research was conducted in Gulu in 2019, but that was not the only reason for taking the celebrations to Gulu. It was also connected to the land. Gulu is the place of my identity, belonging, and where my ancestors were buried. Besides this ancestral connection to the land, fifty women who participated in the research attended the celebration, an achievement that would not have been possible without their special and personal stories. Stories of being abducted by the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels and kept as forced wives, mothers, fighters, and spies for anywhere between 1 and 15 years. Stories of being forced to bear children fathered by rebel commanders when these women were still children themselves. Stories of pain, survival, courage, and victimhood in the face of a gruesome 2 decade’s war (1986-2006) between the LRA and the Ugandan government. Stories of how women escaped and returned home, only to be rejected by their own families, relatives, friends, and neighbours. Stories of living in poverty, suffering stigma, landlessness, challenging health conditions including trauma due to their overall abduction experience. It is these stories and many more, that grounded the women’s articulation of their senses of justice as place-based, and ultimately lived in the everyday.
Aimed at creating awareness of the challenges and many sides of justice and reparations for women and girls who survived wartime sexual violence in northern Uganda, this blog is about senses of lived justice connected to the land. I assert that justice is place-based informed by women’s articulation that land is home, livelihood, identity, belonging, and healing. In my previous blog, I stated that women’s voices and war experiences are still ignored at many levels (grassroots, national and international). Yet very little is known about what justice and reparations mean for them who survived sexual violence during the LRA war. Most scholarly literature on wartime sexual violence focuses on legally bound approaches to justice, limiting it to retribution for a legal wrong; yet women emphasize that justice is pluralistic and exceeds the law. This blog discusses the theme of place-based justice, a response to one of the questions my doctoral research asked: what is the prevailing sense of justice and reparation sought by women who had children from forced marriage? I begin by elaborating what place-based justice entails, followed by a reflection on methods particularly on research as relationship, and conclude with recommendations.
Senses of justice connected to land
The research found out that land is one of the key components of lived justice for women who survived conflict-related sexual violence and forced marriage. I named this component place-based justice, a sense of justice realizable when women own land to live on with their children fathered by the LRA. Land fulfills senses of justice connected to home (place), identity and belonging. Nearly every woman who participated in the research asked for land. Their calls for land were articulated in views that land is home, livelihood, healing, and a cultural identity for them and their children. Since Acholi is a patrilineal society, many of the women who remain single yet with children born of SGBV lack land. Land in Acholi defines one’s sense of identity and belonging and it is a key asset since farming is the main economic activity. Women whose “husbands” died or remained in the bush or returned but rejected them, called for a place-based kind of justice. Even participants who reunited with commanders still asked for land because their “husbands” were denied their own ancestral lands. One of the main impacts of the war in northern Uganda was an explosion of land grabbing and conflicts at family and communal levels. Land has been heavily commercialized in Acholi as the poor often sold it for quick cash instead of sharing with relatives in need.[1] In rural areas, most land is being rented to those who want to utilize it. But whether for sale or rent, women in the study cannot afford it. This has left women with nowhere to call home, belong, farm, and live their lives, hence their calls for a place-based justice that will ultimately contribute to their recovery from harm.
Justice - according to study participants - includes accessibility and ownership of land. These articulations are shaped by customary marriage practices, and practices of wife inheritance. Further, home is also defined as a place in which one’s ancestors flourish and one’s relations are strengthened. Yet this remains challenging not only because women are discriminated against within patriarchal systems, but because of the impacts of the war that brought about their rejection, and land wrangles related to land inheritance and poverty. These customary practices on marriage and land informed how home came to be defined in terms of women and children’s identities and senses of belonging. Senses of justice connected to land are illustrative of justice as a lived concept, an overarching argument my doctoral study developed.
Methods: reflection on ‘research as relationship’
Why were 50 of the women who participated in my research invited to celebrate research they were part of? From a western and academic perspective, these women’s presence at this celebration may be considered a breach of confidentiality and against acceptable research standards. But I accept this criticism and invite readers of this blog to pause for a moment and put themselves in the shoes of a woman who may have never been invited to an event, of a woman who is raising children fathered by rebels amidst challenges of unaffordability of school fees, and a desire to have their children get PhDs too. The women I worked with in this research are so close to my heart. I have a strong relationship with them, a relationship that goes as far back as 2006 when I started working in northern Uganda. They are my friends. In fact, we call each other sisters. They often refer to me as lamin wa (our sister).
I had a personal debate within me before seeking my mentor’s advice on whether to invite my sisters to my party. How will these women feel when they hear that I went to Uganda, had a big celebration but did not invite them because my institution may view it as a breach of confidentiality and that it may expose them to many risks? When my family asked me for a list of friends to invite to the party, half of the names were these women’s. That was when I pondered about this question: How do I show my appreciation while navigating institutional norms and what women risk by exposing themselves? Inviting the women was a recognition of our shared accomplishments and a fulfilment of a research protocol of reciprocity. I was so happy when my doctoral supervisor Dr. Erin Baines told me it was okay for the women to come to the event. But Erin and I have had this long-term relationship with these women and we both feel this close relationship with them. I concluded that research is grounded in long-term relationships with research participants, hence the concept of ‘research as relationship.’
Even if interviews, focus groups and storytelling with sixty-eight total participants took place during a seven-month fieldwork in 2019, my positionality as an Acholi woman with an existing research relationship and work experience with the women positively impacted the overall research process. My analysis that justice is lived by improving women’s access to and ownership of land in the everyday was informed by years of relationship, learning, friendship, sisterhood, and storytelling. Because of this existing relationship, I decided to work with the women as co-researchers and closely collaborated with their two survivor led organizations (Women’s Advocacy Network-WAN and Watyer Ki Gen-WKG), leading to the success of this research and development of the theme-place-based justice. This research was not the end of my relationship with these women, I am still engaging with them to explore further justice questions in my postdoctoral project at the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies-University of Toronto (UofT).
Recommendations
Building on recommendations in the previous blog, I reiterate the following linked to land:
The cultural institution in Acholi should advocate for improved land access and ownership by creating a bylaw that calls upon each clan to apportion land for women and their children-ultimately contributing to place-based justice.
Acholi community in northern Uganda should change their attitudes towards these women and their children and desist from derogative names such as ‘the nephew problem’ and allow children born of war to belong and utilize their maternal lands just like any other child in the home, culture is after all not static. It evolves.
The Ugandan government should designate state-owned land and apportion them to the women within the northern region so that they raise their children born of war. If such land is unavailable, government should include in its annual budget a certain percentage of funding to purchase land to these categories of women.
Academic Institutions and Scholars should factor to their research planning the concept of ‘research as relationship’ to avoid knowledge extraction, encourage building relationships of collaboration and trust in the efforts towards co-creation of knowledge and ensuring positive change in communities research are conducted.
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[1] The war effected how land was managed in Acholi. Poverty, a major impact of the war led to increase commercialization of land that would normally be given to relatives, friends, and neighbours for free.
Acknowledgements: Thank you to women and stakeholders who participated in the study, my research assistant Moses Komakech, Ugandan partners-WAN and WKG, my PhD committee Dr. Erin Baines, Dr. Pilar Riaño-Alcalá, and Dr. Sheryl Lightfoot (University of British Columbia), my postdoctoral supervisors Dr. Megan Mackenzie (Simon Fraser University), and Dr. Kamari Clarke (University of Toronto), Emma Donnaint of RN-WPS, the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship for funding the research, the RN-WPS with funds from the Government of Canada’s Mobilizing Insights in Defence and Security (MINDS) program and the Center for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies.
About the author: Ketty is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto working with Dr. Kamari Clarke. Her current research explores the views of children born of wartime sexual violence on the legal prosecution of their fathers.
Contact: ketty.anyeko@utoronto.ca