Displaced democracy: refugees, elections, and humanitarian management in northern Uganda

Refugee camps, and those living within them, are generally poorly portrayed in public discourses. These portrayals are usually simplistic and one-dimensional, however, failing to account for systemic inequality as well as forgetting how refugees demand or show both formal and informal political action. By investigating the UN-backed election of refugee leadership in one small refugee settlement in northern Uganda in mid-2018, this chapter highlights the role which everyday, community-based authority, governance, and political action play within some refugees’ lives. It argues that, although both the process and the outcome of this election was important to the refugees involved, because it existed more for the purposes of streamlining camp management than for establishing refugee self-governance, it changed nothing about how power and authority within the settlement actually functioned. In other words, although the election as an event demonstrated many ideals of democratic governance, the reasons underlying the wider process were more about service provision than authority transfer. Thus, although these refugees now have elected representatives, the election was ultimately little more than an instrumentalised and utilitarian exercise in humanitarian efficiency.