Night commuting in Gulu, Northern Uganda : from spontaneous strategy to new social institution

Abstract

Executive Summary

Night commuting, as it is occurring in parts of Northern Uganda today, is the social practice of thousands of children leaving their households at night to go and sleep in one of the many night commuter centres that are established in the urban areas of Gulu and Kitgum. The common conception about night commuting is that the children come to the centres solely out of fear of abduction. This thesis challenges this notion and investigates the additional factors that make children in Gulu spend their nights in the night commuter centres. The study shows that children do not only come to the centres to protect themselves against the threat from the rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army, but that children and their households also use night commuting as a strategy to cope with secondary socio-economic effects of the prolonged conflict and displacement. It argues that the night commuting has developed from a spontaneous crisis-driven strategy to a social institution serving protection purposes, but also purposes related to the broader issues of subsistence and socialisation in the Acholi society.