The paper will argue that it is necessary to understand how conflict impacted citizenship to know how people are able to engage in post-conflict local democratic governance. In this paper citizenship is understood as a status – being a member of political community and a person with rights – and as a practice – the activities of people to realise their rights and shape the decisions affecting their lives.
This paper is based on case study research in the Acholi region of northern Uganda, where the Acholi people experienced insecurity due to activities by a rebel group called the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and lived in a heavily militarised environment created by the Ugandan military, the Ugandan People Defence Forces (UPDF). The paper will show that we cannot ignore the experiences people carry into and away from conflict and displacement.
