The Politics of Triage: International Aid and AIDS Care in Northern Uganda

Uganda has been considered an AIDS success story since the late 1990s when prevalence rates decreased around the country. Recognizing Uganda’s unique AIDS response, this thesis seeks to analyze HIV/AIDS in Uganda and challenges normative understandings of Uganda’s ‘success’, specifically, in Northern Uganda. It explores how Ugandan HIV/AIDS policies targeting NGOs and the ‘community’ have depoliticized HIV/AIDS, creating new inequalities through triaged care. To understand the production of inequality, this thesis explores how clients and aid workers define ‘vulnerability’ and how relationships affect aid allocation. Newly emerging arenas of stigma are examined in order to challenge normative attitudes of HIV-status disclosure in health campaigns by demonstrating how HIV-positive people are facing new stigmas when they are incapable of being ‘productive citizens.’ As humanitarian aid leaves Uganda, HIV/AIDS NGOs seek to relieve the issue of aid dependency through development initiatives. This thesis ends by challenging development’s understanding of ‘us’ versus ‘them’.