The pastoralists’ research journey has taken us from the terrors and bitterness of the violence that hurts everyone in the society, into the spaces where it is inside the system of governance. Half of the community research was in the communities’ own places, working out how to articulate the complex interactions of the insecurity and the community’s part in failing to solve it. The other half was in the policy space, asking why the problems persist, and what is the way forward.

Local people feel that no one cares for the safety of the people or the animals. They argue that disarmament is a violent approach that gives those in authority a right to kill on sight without accountability to communities and that it does not deal with underlying problems of crime and justice. Pastoralists have argued here that the militarised solution is the reason they must keep on re-arming, as it provokes more violence and crime than it offers solutions. Violent theft is followed by revenge, rape hurts and undermines women’s power, and raids are organised in a web of connections that link individuals inside different herding communities to collaborators in the administration, the army, and the business community within and across the international borders. Disarmament renders the people defenceless, generates rumouring and revenge, and can easily be evaded by crossing the border. The two governments may agree on a military solution, but in other respects they fail to coordinate. Each aspect of insecurity consolidates another aspect. Each unresolved crime leads to the next.

Karamoja and Turkana pastoralists produce tens of thousands of livestock every year, and every year lose a high proportion of them. Those who benefit from the criminal economy of livestock raiding have little need for trust in institutions of law and order. But for everyone else it is vital that these institutions work. The thread that runs through it all is the failure of governments to provide protection, justice, and redress. If these systems were working, people explain, then a crime is an event that can be dealt with. When the institutions fail, crime, self-defence and revenge become habitual and everyday peace is lost. When citizens fear those that are appointed to protect them, and when they are patronised or blamed by policymakers, they lose the confidence that anyone can put the system to rights.

Too many people in too many different parts of society have become embroiled for a simple solution to present itself. It would be foolish to underestimate the difficulties inherent in reforming institutions that have been adapting to militarised violence for over a century. As long ago as 2005 there were arguments put forward to government that the real cause of insecurity was not arms proliferation but a ‘lack of governance, the absence of law and order, and the failure of the government to develop the region’ (an interview with the Ugandan Joint Christian Council in Kampala referred to by Stites and Akabwai, 2010).

Each of the encounters of people and their states depicted here, from Kobebe, to the Executive Order, to the resource-sharing agreement, demonstrate the effects of asymmetrical power relations. Government is divided from the people by a crucial fault line of violence and distrust, and community knowledge and influence are excluded from the policy process. We can also see the heightening of divisions between the Karamoja and Turkana pastoralists because of blame and suffering. These interlocking relationships – between the states, the militaries, the citizens and the communities – need to be improved.

The geopolitics and diplomacy of two neighbouring states is an important factor. Its high politics introduces inertia, but also potential. There is growing realisation among pastoralist leaders of the need for engagement across all of these fault lines, supporting the geopolitical relations, the engagement between people and their government and the healing of internal community divisions. Uganda and Kenya have complementary concerns about security and economic issues, including interests in mineral and energy production and cross-border trade. It is in their political and administrative structures that the two countries differ most, and this creates delays in their interaction that the less scrupulous powerbrokers use for gaining ground. And while the two states have been actively seeking to harmonise security, neither has taken real action to bridge the gulf between government and citizens that they so lack, and which lies at the heart of their own cross-border political failures. Instead, the two countries have agreed on a militarised approach that tackles only one aspect of the problem inadequately and leaves room for the other parts of the system of crime, abuse, suspicion, and revenge to flourish.

The pastoralist researchers have shown that foundational elements of the governance system (the distribution of power, productive resources, and values) are in dispute. Each major actor group is operating in ways that routinely assume that others are going to behave in untrustworthy ways, especially in relation to power, resources, or values (Luhmann, 1979). And the situation is getting worse: distrust redirects a lot of energy into conflict, defence and suspicion, and leaves people with little room to innovate in unprejudiced ways.

If we consider that the problem is distrust, then the solution will be different from that which has gone before. Community, civil society, government and the armed forces can reform their actions on basis of positive policies and actions that build trust, be they in forging a cross-society collaboration to deal with crime, or in promoting local livelihoods, celebrating cultures, or reforming services. Many of the existing policies have the potential to work, but only if every one of the major actors is on board to reform how they are designed and delivered, building trust along the way. Military solutions can change to community-agreed policing that spans the borders. Resource-sharing solutions can start with the residents who are going to implement the policy on the ground and whose traditional institutions have already worked out a lot of what the policy should involve. Judicial solutions can begin with initiatives that bring the state and customary systems of justice into first small- and then larger-scale agreements.

The responses should be small trust-building steps that build one upon the other. They need to consist of equal negotiations (rather than ‘consultations’) that can lead to agreements on specific activities within and across a given sector, geography or political unit, with actual budgets and real promises – with sanctions for failing to deliver – which in turn can lead to binding agreements on institutions, laws and sanctions. The reality, as Luhmann suggests, will not be a roadmap, but a commitment to ensuring to bring the actors together into agreement at every stage.