Policy Brief South Sudan : working with local institutions to improve the provision of justice

Effective Protection of Fundamental Rights in a pluralist worl

Overcoming ruptures: Zande identity, governance, and tradition during cycles of war and displacement in South Sudan and Uganda (2014-2019)

This book explores the effects of war and displacement on the South Sudanese Zande, a people frozen in time by the classical anthropology of Edgar Evans-Pritchard. The research started in Western Equatoria State, South Sudan, at a time of hopeful reconstruction (2014-2015). Yet after war resumed in 2015, nearly a million South Sudanese refugees fled to neighbouring Uganda – and so the study continues with South Sudanese Zande refugees there (2015-2019). Based on hundreds of inter views with refugees and stayees, chiefs and elder s, government officials and former combatants, and ordinary people, this book places conflict, confusion, and the search for continuity at the heart of the historical ethnography of the South Sudanese Zande. The book focuses on the ties between people, between people and land, and the competing efforts to control those ties. These three foci relate to proto-legal questions that underpin human society: Who are we? To whom and where do we belong? And whose authority do we accept? This study shows that these foundational questions gain new salience in times of crisis, as people turn to nostalgia and utopia to escape present despair.Parts of the research for this PhD thesis were funded by: 1) the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs through the Knowledge Platform Security & Rule of Law; 2) the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs through the Rift Valley Institute; and 3) the Rockefeller Foundation through the London School of Economics’ Firoz Lalji Centre for Africa.Effective Protection of Fundamental Rights in a pluralist worl

Exploring Primary Justice in South Sudan: Challenges, concerns, and elements that work

Effective Protection of Fundamental Rights in a pluralist worl

Literature Review: Justice in South Sudan

Effective Protection of Fundamental Rights in a pluralist worl

‘When the World Turns Upside Down, Live Like a Bat!’: idioms of suffering, coping, and resilience among elderly female Zande Refugees in Kiryandongo refugee settlement, Uganda (2019–20)

‘Resilience’ is trending in development theory and practice, where it is often measured using countable socio-economic outcomes. This paper draws on ethnographic research with South Sudanese Zande refugees in Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement, Uganda, to show a different and often overlooked perspective; that of elderly refugee women. Having lived through decades of war and displacement, these women have developed a rich body of knowledge about suffering, coping, and resilience. Mixing idioms, folktales, and anecdotes, they teach youth not to focus on outcomes or ‘big dreams’, but on a stoic acceptance of loss and perpetual precarity. They advise actions like farming, childcare, and faith. Even so, suffering and coping are socially conditioned and policed, and the intimate circle harbours both protection and dangers, like witchcraft. The women’s accounts contrast bleakly with up-beat neoliberal developmentalism which sees cash-infused ‘resilience’ as the key to refugees’ self-reliant futures.Rockefeller Resilience Research: IGA-Rockefeller Funding Call under Grant IDVTA.Effective Protection of Fundamental Rights in a pluralist worl

Exposure to bacterial signals does not alter pea aphids' survival upon a second challenge or investment in production of winged offspring

Pea aphids have an obligate nutritional symbiosis with the bacteria Buchneraaphidicola and frequently also harbor one or more facultative symbionts. Aphids are also susceptible to bacterial pathogen infections, and it has been suggested that aphids have a limited immune response towards such pathogen infections compared to other, more well-studied insects. However, aphids do possess at least some of the genes known to be involved in bacterial immune responses in other insects, and immune-competent hemocytes. One possibility is that immune priming with microbial elicitors could stimulate immune protection against subsequent bacterial infections, as has been observed in several other insect systems. To address this hypothesis we challenged aphids with bacterial immune elicitors twenty-four hours prior to live bacterial pathogen infections and then compared their survival rates to aphids that were not pre-exposed to bacterial signals. Using two aphid genotypes, we found no evidence for immune protection conferred by immune priming during infections with either Serratia marcescens or with Escherichia coli. Immune priming was not altered by the presence of facultative, beneficial symbionts in the aphids. In the absence of inducible immune protection, aphids may allocate energy towards other defense traits, including production of offspring with wings that could escape deteriorating conditions. To test this, we monitored the ratio of winged to unwinged offspring produced by adult mothers of a single clone that had been exposed to bacterial immune elicitors, to live E. coli infections or to no challenge. We found no correlation between immune challenge and winged offspring production, suggesting that this mechanism of defense, which functions upon exposure to fungal pathogens, is not central to aphid responses to bacterial infections.Toxicolog

Long-term cognitive follow-up in children treated for Maroteaux-Lamy syndrome

Background: It remains unclear to what extent the brain is affected by Maroteaux-Lamy syndrome (MPS VI), a progressive lysosomal storage disorder. While enzyme replacement therapy (ERT) elicits positive effects, the drug cannot cross the blood–brain barrier. We therefore studied cognitive development and brain abnormalities in the Dutch MPS VI patient population treated with ERT. Methods: In a series of 11 children with MPS VI (age 2 to 20 years), we assessed cognitive functioning and brain magnetic resonance imaging prospectively at the start of ERT and at regular times thereafter up to 4.8 years. We also assessed the children’s clinical characteristics, their siblings’ cognitive development, and their parents’ educational levels. Results: The patients’ intelligence scores ranged from normal to mentally delayed (range test scores 52–131). In 90 %, their scores remained fairly stable during follow-up, generally lying in the same range as their siblings’ test scores (median for patients = 104, median for siblings = 88) and comparing well with the parental educational levels. Native-speaking patients had higher intelligence test scores than non-native-speaking patients. Two patients, both with high baseline glycosaminoglycan levels in their urine and severe mutations in the arylsulfatase B gene, scored clearly lower than expected. Patients with pY210C performed best. Brain abnormalities were aspecific, occurring more in patients with severe symptoms. Conclusion: Our study shows that cognitive development in MPS VI patients is determined not only by familial and social-background factors, but, in patients with a severe form of the disease, also by the disease itself. Therefore in patients with severe disease presentation cognition should be monitored carefully

Spatial and temporal variation of fish assemblage associated with aquatic macrophyte patches in the littoral zone of the Ayapel Swamp Complex, Colombia

ABSTRACT: Aim: The purpose of the present study was to examine spatial and temporal variation in fish assemblage structure associated with aquatic macrophytes in the littoral zone of the ASC. Methods: Specimens were caught between January 2008 and February 2009, over four limnimetric moments, using both cast net and seine net. Data on the temperature, electrical conductivity, pH and dissolved oxygen was recorded for the characterization of the water mass in the sites. Results: A total of 34,151 specimens from 44 species were collected. The most abundant species were Eigenmannia virescens, Astyanax caucanus, Astyanax fasciatus, Roeboides dayi and Cyphocharax magdalenae, which together accounted for more than 75% of the sample. Temporal and spatial comparisons showed variation in the environmental conditions and highlighted the existence of heterogeneous abiotic conditions (p0.05) regarding the fish assemblage structure. The multivariate analysis showed no significant relationship between existing environmental conditions and the fish assemblage (p=0.04). The analysis also showed the absence of a relationship between the fish assemblage and environmental variables with respect to the flood pulse and sampling sites (p>0.05). Conclusion: The uniformity of the fish communities that inhabit aquatic macrophyte patches in the littoral region of the ASC may be related to the availability of suitable habitat in structural terms, that probably supports a more abundant and varied wildlife

Resultaten kokkelvisexperiment Ameland

Dit rapport beschrijft de resultaten van onderzoek in de jaren 1999 t/m 2003 aan de effecten van mechanische kokkelvisserij op de bodemdieren en wadvogels. Het onderzoek is van het BACI type (Before After Control Impact), maar door omstandigheden konden slechts op één locatie waarnemingen worden gedaan: het wad onder de Hon op Ameland. Op basis van een dergelijk éénmalig experiment is het niet mogelijk onweerlegbare conclusies te trekken over het effect van bevissing. De ontwikkeling van een open gebied dat in 1999 en met name in 2000 werd bevist, werd vergeleken met de ontwikkeling van een nabijgelegen gebied dat gesloten was voor de kokkelvisserij. Bevissing leidde tot een afname van de dichtheid meerjarige Kokkels, die qua omvang goed overeenkwam met de op grond van de black box gegevens voorspelde afname. Kokkels vormden in alle jaren het hoofdvoedsel van de Scholeksters in het onderzoeksgebied en de afname van de Kokkels door bevissing leidde tot een afname van de Scholeksters. Het onderzoek leverde aanwijzingen voor een afname van de dichtheid Nonnetjes en de biomassa wormen direct na bevissing. In 2001 deed zich in zowel het open als het gesloten gebied een sterke broedval van Mosselen voor. Dit had een duidelijk effect op het voorkomen van Zilvermeeuw, Bonte Strandloper, Tureluur en Groenpootruiter. Eventueel toekomstig onderzoek naar de effecten van mechanische kokkelvisserij op het ecosysteem van de Waddenzee is alleen zinvol als wordt uitgegaan van een groot aantal onderzoekslocaties, een lange termijn en een strakke experimentele opzet