Humanitarian Remains: Erasure and the Everyday of Camp Life in Northern Uganda

Abstract

Abstract The impacts of protracted displacement can be understood through the spatial and material afterlives of war. In the context of Northern Uganda, the experiences of conflict that are interpreted in memorialisation are often reflected of how governments and aid agencies administered life during war. This article examines leftover aid rations, archives, former displacement camp sites and even unmarked graves as evidence to better understand what happens when people try to return “to normal” after decades of war between the Government of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army. It asks what narrative and material erasure implies for survivors who seek to create memorials to reflect on the war and have come to find that the past has been destroyed. Understanding how forgetting occurs, whether intentional or not, illuminates the difficulty of using archival material or artefacts as tools for remembrance projects. The article undertakes an examination of the everyday experiences of displacement and traces of aid assistance to show how memorial efforts can better make sense the past in the present.