Humanitarian Action amid Prolonged Political Crisis and Conflict: Experiences of the Daughters of Charity Tigray

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In this blog, Sr. Medhin Tesfay, Director of Social and Development programmes at the Daughters of Charity Tigray (DoC-T), shares her experiences alongside that of her organization in providing solidarity-based locally embedded humanitarian assistance throughout the course of the most intense period of the conflict in Tigray from 2020-2022. During this period DoC-T had to adopt many of its approaches and services, providing programmes including emergency relief aid, psycho-social support for victims of gender-based violence in the conflict, and more besides. Sr. Tesfay is a member of the Humanitarian Observatory Ethiopia, which is hosted by the University of Addis Ababa in collaboration with ISS as part of the Humanitarian Governance: Accountability, Advocacy, Alternatives (HUM-GOV) project.

Sr. Medhin Tesfay, helping elderly and disabled individuals reach the emergency cash distribution desk during the conflict.

Amidst the prolonged humanitarian crisis and huge internal displacement in Tigray, the DoC-T adopted a community-centered approach to humanitarian aid. With the solid believe that affected population needs both hardware (in terms of food and non-food provision of assistance) and software (in terms of empowerment) supports, DOC-T has been providing impactful and innovative mental health support to empower vulnerable communities to heal, rebuild, and claim their rights. This journey demonstrates the strength of resilience, dignity, and local leadership in overcoming adversity.

Since 1973, the DoC-T have been committed to supporting vulnerable communities, particularly during the catastrophic famine of 1984-1985 and the intense conflict between 2020 and 2022. Our focus has always been on delivering targeted assistance to women, children, the elderly, and persons with disabilities. Throughout these critical periods, the DoC-T have consistently provided essential services, especially during the two years of the conflict in Tigray. DoC-T has worked relentlessly to deliver emergency cash assistance, life-saving food, vital non-food items, and necessary psychosocial support to the traumatized individuals in our communities. We have done this with a strong sense of purpose, humility, love, and empathy. This blog underscores our significant contributions during these trying times and reaffirms our steadfast dedication to creating a lasting positive impact.

From 2020 to 2022, Tigray region faced significant consequences from a prolonged conflict, compounded by one of the longest humanitarian crisis in recorded history. During this tumultuous period, DoC-T played a crucial role in delivering life-saving assistance, especially in the early days of the crisis when Mekelle (the capital of Tigray) became a refuge for many internally displaced persons (IDPs). This demonstrate the resilience of locally rooted and embedded organizations to provide vital supports to the vulnerable segments of the society when the humanitarian space is filled with insecurities and uncertainties.

While other humanitarian organizations were still arriving, DoC-T provided daily emergency support across 27 IDP camps, feeding over 34,000 IDPs for nearly eight months, often risking the safety of its employees. The organization also helped in remote and hard-to-reach areas of Tigray inaccessible to major international humanitarian agencies. The organization confronted dire conditions caused by disruptions in essential services and identified public schools that had been converted into makeshift shelters, mobilizing resources to address critical shortages of food, water, and clothing effectively. All the while DOC-T was also stuck providing all what it could, which was not even close to how much was needed. At times when there was no food, sisters and staff even went on foot on journeys that took 4 hours daily (visiting two times a day) to just to be with the community and console them.

Despite the closure of borders amid a devastating two-year conflict, the DoC-T, led by Sister Medhin Tesfay, made the decision to remain in the region with the community. This religious order was believed to be the only one operating in the area during the early days of the war.

Moving from emergency relief to offering psychosocial support

In response to the difficulties faced by women during the conflict, the Daughters of Charity offered not only emergency food assistance but also psychosocial support for those traumatized by the conflict’s horrific consequences. This psychosocial support was delivered through Women-to-Women Listening Circles, which included a nurse, a social worker, a medical student, an aid worker, and a leader from the Daughters of Charity. We drew inspiration from the Helpful Active Listening (HAL) circles, a grassroots initiative that effectively supported survivors of the Rwandan genocide. This straightforward and cost-efficient approach trains resilient women within the community to provide basic psychosocial support to their peers, enabling quick outreach to those in need. The method has successfully empowered and healed hundreds while also addressing the stigma surrounding sexual violence and fostering solidarity among victims. This impact is captured in the phrase: “breaking down the stigma and taboo surrounding sexual violence and promoting the creation of new links of solidarity between victims.”

The service has enabled survivors of gender-based violence (GBV), who once experienced deep shame and found it difficult to communicate with their children, parents, or spouses, to overcome shame and become advocates for marginalized individuals facing stigma. In the Bora district, these survivors have formed their own group and gained recognition and vital support from the local authorities. Haftu Gebru, head of the Bora District Education and Health Office, emphasized their transformation from passive victims to proactive advocates tackling the root causes of GBV showcasing the agency of the victims to advocate for solutions.

In these difficult times, the DoC-T achieved remarkable progress, but we were not in this endeavor alone. We were fortunate to receive essential assistance from numerous donors, particularly CARITAS Germany, which has dedicated considerable resources to enhance the lives of individuals in Tigray, especially in the Abergele district, which has been severely impacted by conflict and disasters.

As a valued long-term partner, CARITAS Germany has played a crucial role in the rehabilitation of specific schools and health centers, as well as repair of water points severely damaged by conflict. These initiatives have significantly reduced student dropouts, improved access to education, and ensured the availability of clean water, thereby safeguarding the community against waterborne diseases.

Lessons Learned and the Necessity to Support Local and Contextualized Intervention

The biggest lesson we learned was that with a bit more effort, it is possible to create formidable advocates in every intervention effort that can help to ensure the sustainability of the intervention by creating lasting community ties that can pass down experiences and create a structure for others to follow.

The DoC-T have been aimed to be a symbol of hope in Tigray during challenging times. We hope that our initiatives in healthcare, food security, education, and community support have positively impacted lives and fostered resilience. However, the ongoing violence and the situation faced by internally displaced persons (IDPs) have created a dire need for urgent, coordinated emergency and development responses. We urge a collaborative effort to tackle the humanitarian crisis in Tigray, leveraging our extensive experience in assisting marginalized communities in challenging circumstances.

The HUM-GOV Project is supported by a European Research Council (ERC) advanced grant, under project number: 884139

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question

About the Author

Sr. Medhin Tesfay

Sr. Medhin Tesfay is a Director of Social and Development programmes of DoC Tigray, Ethiopia. She is committed to empowering marginalized communitiess by improving access to essential services and fostering sustainable development which earned her the 2023 Romero International Award offered by Trocaire during their 50th anniversary for her courageous advocacy for justice.

Contact email; medhintesfay@yahoo.com

 

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Risks and rewards: How travelling with children shapes migrant decision-making

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Travelling with children is more complex than travelling alone. It is also more expensive. Yet the impact of children on migration decision-making – and the dilemmas faced by parents and caregivers on the world’s major migration routes – are poorly understood.

In this blog, Chloe Sydney draws upon recent survey data to share initial insights into how parents and caregivers make decisions about migration when children are accompanying them on their journey.

Photo Credit: PACES

Surveying migrant decision-making

Between March and October 2024, the Mixed Migration Centre (MMC) surveyed 1,557 people on the move in Italy, Niger, and Tunisia for PACES, a 40-month Horizon Europe project that aims to understand migration decision-making and thereby also inform migration policymaking (1). Among people surveyed, 11.5% were travelling with children(2).

A gendered and geographical distribution

Women surveyed were nearly four times more likely than men to travel with children, with 24% of women travelling with children compared to just 6.5% of men – and their migration decision-making accordingly constrained.

Geographically, the percentage of respondents travelling with children drops progressively along the route: 16% in Niger,  10% in Tunisia, and just 8% in Italy(3).  As can be observed on MMC’s 4Mi Interactive, a similar trend emerges when broadening the scope beyond PACES to all data collected in the three countries. This may be because parents and caregivers are wary of exposing children to the significant risks found in the Sahara, Libya, and the Mediterranean Sea.

How the risks inform the route

Recommendations and past experiences of family or friends were the most common factor informing choice of route for all respondents. For those travelling with children, safety and familiarity also played an important role in informing decision-making: as illustrated below, those travelling with children were somewhat more likely than others to prioritize safety (30% compared to 26%) and to choose routes they knew best (36% compared to 27%).

However, cost matters too, especially since travelling with children makes things more expensive. ‘My journey here with my children has not been easy at all, I had to spend a lot of money between Benin and Niger’, shared a Togolese father. In the face of limited resources, 35% of those travelling with children chose their route at least partly because it was the cheapest option, compared to 26% of other respondents. Conversely, parents and caregivers travelling with children were less likely to prioritize the fastest route, possibly because faster routes tend to be more expensive.

If the cheapest route involves greater risks, parents and caregivers face a difficult dilemma. Should you expose your children to danger in the hope of finding safety? In the words of British poet Warsan Shire,

you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land […]

 

Keeping safe en route

In the absence of safe alternatives, parents and caregivers take steps to mitigate the risks. As shown below, to protect themselves from crime and abuse, people travelling with children were more likely to travel in a group (58%), stop in places with trusted contacts (42%), and use safer methods of transport (36%). These precautions aim to reduce risks related to crime and abuse, but may also increase the cost of travel.

Despite efforts to protect children from harm, over two-thirds (68%) of respondents travelling with children felt children had been highly or very highly exposed to serious risks such as physical violence, sexual violence, kidnapping or death during the journey.

‘I cannot encourage anyone to take this route, because I lost my daughter during the journey, and I miscarried as a result of the pressure’, shared a Nigerian woman in Tunisia. ‘If you want to go, you should leave your children at home’, warned a father who saw his daughter being raped on their journey from Chad to Tunisia.

Where to go and whether to stay

Just as travelling with children can influence the route taken and the means of travel, it also influences decision-making with regards to choice of destination.

Reflecting parents’ and caregivers’ safety concerns, among those who specified a destination, over half (54%) of respondents travelling with children said they chose it at least partly because it was the safest option(4). This was the case for just 44% of those not travelling with children.

Perhaps to provide for their families, people travelling with children were more likely to mention their choice of destination was influenced by economic opportunities, at 80%. They were also more likely to mention the social welfare system, at 41%. Access to better education mattered somewhat more to them as well, as shown in the figure below.

Finally, travelling with children impacts whether and why people might one day return to their countries of origin. Those travelling with children were more likely to say they would return only if they believed it was safe (26% compared to 18% for other respondents). ‘The security situation is much better here than in our country of origin’, explained a man from northeast Nigeria, surveyed in Niger.

What we’ve learned

Among the people we interviewed, the presence of children impacts migration decision-making. Those travelling with children more often prioritise safety when selecting a destination, deciding whether to return, or to a certain extent when choosing a route. However, as travel becomes more expensive, costs also play a more important role in decision-making, potentially forcing some families to forsake safer, costlier routes in favour of more affordable, perilous journeys.

Our data also highlights the risks faced by children on the move, and their resulting need for specialised protection services. ‘My daughter has suffered many injustices on this route, she will be forever traumatised’, said a mother from Tigray in Ethiopia. ‘She has seen things beyond her years.’ Those who embark on dangerous journeys with their children, however, often have few alternatives: opportunities for safe, regular migration from Tigray, for example, are limited, even though the region is beset by high levels of food insecurity, limited access to essential services including education, and continued political instability.

Endnotes:

1. Since we rely on non-probability sampling, our findings cannot be generalized to all people on the move. Our baseline data collection will be complemented by two rounds of longitudinal data collection, enabling us to examine decisions to stay and migrate over the course of a year and a half.

2. One respondent refused to say whether they were travelling with children.

 3. The proportion of women surveyed remains relatively stable across the three countries, so this does not explain the drop in respondents travelling with children.

4. 177 respondents travelling with children and 1,344 of other respondents had specified a destination.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

 

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author

Chloe Sydney

Chloe Sydney is the Mixed Migration Centre’s Global 4Mi and Data Coordinator. She has nearly a decade of research experience, with a particular focus on forced migration. Chloe has a PhD on refugee decision-making with regards to return, and a master’s degree in International Migration and Public Policy.

 

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Emphasizing locally-led knowledge interventions in cases of neglected humanitarian crises: Launching the Namibian Humanitarian Observatory

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In this blog, Sister Agrippina Nandjaa (Caritas Namibia) marks the opening of the Humanitarian Observatory in Namibia, considering the importance of ‘neglected crises’ and their intersection with climate change. The Observatory in Namibia joins a growing network of spaces for research, discussion, and advocacy, coordinated by The Hague Humanitarian Studies Centre (HSC).

 

Image by Unsplash : Bernd Dittrich

The Namibia Humanitarian Observatory was launched on 24 May 2024 to create a space for discussion with communities and stakeholders around vulnerability to disasters across the country. The self-governed Observatory aims to engage communities prone to recurrent climate-related shocks to share experiences and explore pathways toward creative and self-reliant communities, especially in the case of drought. The widespread impact and long duration of drought make it one of the most costly hazards in Namibia. However, the impacts of drought can often be lessened through preparedness and early action aimed at decreasing community vulnerability and exposure. Namibia is the most arid sub-Saharan country, experiencing very high evapotranspiration rates (Mendelsohn et al., 2002). Consequently, it is exposed to recurrent droughts, with historically devastating consequences. A growing population, persistent poverty, and climate change provide even greater threats in the future. And, with the situation in Namibia often falling into the category of ‘neglected humanitarian crises; affecting international support and aid, we are reminded of the importance of the everyday actions and practices that drive humanitarian action from the local and grassroots level.

A platform for discussion and analysis around drought

In partnership with The Hague Humanitarian Studies Centre (HSC) of the International Institute of Social Studies, the Namibia Humanitarian Observatory will be a platform for discussions that enable communities and authorities to respond to humanitarian crises. It will bring together communities to assess historical drought events and their extent and impacts in Namibia. It will facilitate the gathering and analysis of relevant data and explore the current institutions and systems involved in drought monitoring, forecasting, early warning, mitigation, and reduction in the country by subsistence farmers.

This space will also act as an early action initiative that initially focuses on rapid-onset hazards such as climate change awareness and strategies for subsistence farming. Agriculture is primarily the main activity for subsistence farming in Namibia. In its humanitarian work across the country, particularly now with the distribution of food parcels for vulnerable households, which includes undocumented people, Caritas Namibia has been thinking of what skills, training, and advocacy of recovery programs are needed in the long term in order to cope with protracted drought in the 14 regions of Namibia. Traditional farmers seem unable to cope with the changing weather and climate that has resulted in low rainfall during the farming season compared to 50 years ago. Now, Caritas Namibia, together with the local government authorities, wants to explore the way of rethinking lost skills, new skills, advocacy, and training for subsistence farmers to improve their household livelihood to counter dependence syndrome and increase the communities’ adaptive capacities. The Namibia Humanitarian Observatory will contribute to this objective and will also safeguard the importance of local and indigenous knowledge and practices when it comes to disaster preparedness, response, and prevention.

The launch was hosted in the Zambezi Regional Councils and was attended by the Governor of Zambezi region, the Councilors, and council staff, Joseph Moowa Kalokela, member of Namibia Observatory, Gabriela Anderson, community manager of HSC, Joram Tarusarira from the University of Groningen and member of the Namibia Observatory, and Agrippina Nandjaa, Coordinator of the Namibia Humanitarian Observatory and Caritas coordinator. The attendees of the launch were able to leave reflecting on how countries like Namibia, who are adversely and continuously vulnerable to the effects of climate change, can play a vital role in international politics in holding other countries accountable for their own roles in the changing climate, like the environmentally damaging consequences of warfare in Israel and Russia.

Together, the presenting team at the launch of the Namibia Humanitarian Observatory were able to gain the support of the local government in the Zambezi region of Namibia and further the roots of the Humanitarian Observatories. That is, the importance of discussing the role of different actors within the humanitarian field and how they work together (or not) in addressing humanitarian needs in a highly contextual and locally relevant way.

For more information about the Humanitarian Observatories, check out The Hague Humanitarian Studies Centre website, and the information pages around the Humanitarian Governance (HUM-GOV) project. The Humanitarian Observatories regularly contribute interesting articles to BlISS. 

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the Author

Sister Agrippina Nandjaa

Sr. Agrippina Nandjaa is a Catholic religious sister lives and work in Namibia, and directing Caritas Namibia-Namibian Catholic Bishop’s Conference. Agrippina hold a master degree in development Studies-Social Policy from International Institute of Social Studies-Erasmus Rotterdam University, Honor degree in adult education and community development and Diploma in community education from the University of Namibia. She has experience over ten years. Agrippina is also coordinating the Namibia observatory which was lunched on 24 May 2024 in Zambezi region-Namibia.

 

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Sexual and Gender-Based Violence: looking beyond physical crimes

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November 25 is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and to mark the day this blog has been written by Carolien Jacobs (Leiden University) Patrick Milabyo Kyamugusulwa (ISDR-Bukavu), and Rachel Sifa Katembera, all three members of the Humanitarian Observatory DRC. The authors argue throughout that it is important that we realise that sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) consists of more than only sexual violence, it also includes structural violence that regulates justice. This is also the case in conflict-settings such as the east of the DRC, where a lot of attention goes to sexual violence.
Photo by Authors
In a time in which ‘her body, my choice’ is quickly – and sadly – gaining traction on social media, it is important that we are aware of the range of crimes that sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) consists of: it is more than physical sexual violence. For many years, sexual violence in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo has gained a lot of attention from media, international donors, and academics, especially when committed by armed groups. In 2018, the renowned gynecologist Dr. Denis Mukwege was awarded the Noble Peace Prize for his ‘efforts to end the use of sexual violence as  a weapon of war and armed conflict’. Although we by no means want to deny or downplay the high prevalence of sexual violence in the DRC – as also shown by ISS colleague Bilge Sahin -, we would like to use this blog to raise attention to other forms of structural violence in many countries across our patriarchically dominant world. These forms of gender-based violence are deeply embedded in society’s structures, making it difficult for women (and minorities) to claim their rights and to find justice. In an earlier blog in this series, Patrick Milabyo and Delu Lusambya already pointed out the importance of rethinking norms of masculinity and of combating toxic masculinity. In this blog we draw attention to two prevalent forms of violence that disproportionately affect women in eastern DR Congo, namely violence related to inheritance disputes, and to witchcraft accusations. What is problematic about this? Which challenges do women face when they seek (state or non-state) justice in such situations? And what can be done about this? Inheritance rights: discrepancy between state law and customary law According to the Congolese Family Code, revised in 2016, women are entitled to a similar share of their parents’ properties after death. Yet, in most parts of the country, custom holds that only the male heirs are entitled to inherit, and daughters often remain empty-handed, this also applies to children born out of wedlock, if they have been recognized by the deceased in life. As such, all children are the first category of heirs (art. 758.1). A similar problem arises for the right to inheritance for spouses, a problem that is even more complicated in polygamous marriages and in marriages that are concluded only on a religious or customary basis. This means that in case of the death of a husband, the husband’s family often claims the property, with the wife losing out, even though the surviving partner, parents and brothers and sisters of the deceased are all heirs in the second category according to the DRC Family Code (art 758.2). If there is no formal wedding registration, women depend on customary authorities to apply the statutory Family Code, but these authorities often adhere more strongly to customary norms that prescribe the return of the couple’s property to her in-laws. In practice, we see efforts of civil society actors to raise awareness about the Family Code and the right of women to inherit both as spouses, and as daughters. Yet, it remains common for families to divide property only among males, with daughters and spouses often losing out. Witchcraft accusations Across Africa, states have difficulties in findings ways to deal with witchcraft and witchcraft accusations. This is not any different in the DRC, where the state does not recognize the existence of witchcraft, nor the threats of witchcraft (Dunn 2024). Accusations of witchcraft are most often geared towards women, especially elderly women. Witchcraft accusations are indicators of tensions and distrust in social relations. Even if such accusations lack material evidence, they are difficult to counterclaim for the person accused. Local (state and non-state) authorities often lack the power to deal with such accusations and to calm tensions, and victims of (false) accusations cannot resort to a legal framework to address such accusations. As a measure of protection, we find that accused women sometimes get expelled from their communities, or are even placed in detention to protect them from ‘popular justice’. The ‘remedies’ that are offered by police and other state services hence harm their rights even further and risk turning accused women into double victims. Seeking justice for gender-based violence in all its forms Women in eastern DRC are disproportionately affected by injustices related to inheritance disputes and witchcraft accusations. For the former type of injustices, a proper legal framework exists, but its enforcement is at odds with everyday practice in many places, even when legal awareness about women’s inheritance rights exists. Witchcraft accusations are more difficult to address within the legal-rational frameworks of state justice, but the current solutions that are sought by authorities are doing even further harm. In sum, we argue that even if state institutions of justice are accessible, societal factors may still hinder the recognition of women’s rights and continue gender-based violence. Raising legal awareness and promoting a change of culture are both need to overcome clashes between human rights and cultural practices that are at a disadvantage of women. Although we have focused here on the DRC, examples of gender-based violence are to be found across the world. Let us not be silent about this and recognize that SGBV is not limited to SV! Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the Authors:

Carolien Jacobs
Carolien Jacobs is assistant professor at Leiden University, and conducts research in collaboration with the Social Science Centre for African Development-KUTAFITI.
Patrick Milabyo Kyamusugulwa
Patrick Milabyo Kyamusugulwa is Professor at the Institut Supérieur des Techniques Médicales de Bukavu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). He is member of the DRC Humanitarian Observatory and member of the Social Science Centre for African Development-KUTAFITI.
Rachel Sifa Katembera
Rachel Sifa Katembera is a researcher of the Social Science Centre for African Development-KUTAFITI and a member of the DRC Humanitarian Observatory. This blog is based on empirical research conducted by the authors on access to justice in eastern DRC as part of the Just Future Alliance.   Are you looking for more content about Global Development and Social Justice? Subscribe to Bliss, the official blog of the International Institute of Social Studies, and stay updated about interesting topics our researchers are working on.

This blog is part of the  Humanitarian Governance: Accountability, Advocacy, Alternatives’ project. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 884139

 Unfulfilled promises of research and increased research waste in Nairobi’s Informal Settlements

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…so another one of these researches? Is this any different? You know we are tired of these scientists … imagine if the poor were to get at least half of the money that is spent in studying them, wouldn’t it be nice?

These were the frustrated words of Makini (pseudonym) during a community baraza targeting evidence-based slum upgrading of Mathare, Kenya’s third largest informal settlement. Makini, a resident of Mathare for over 50 years, voiced the disappointment felt by many who have been over-researched without commensurate societal benefit. In this blog post, Stephen Nyagaya , Beatrice Hati and Alice Menya  discuss this case as a point of departure to advance the debate on research waste within social sciences.

Created by Bliss with AI

Informal settlements around the globe attract more appetite for exploration due to a complex nexus of wicked problems, emergent frugal novelties and new rhythms of development emerging in the informality context. In Nairobi, informal settlements house over 65 per cent of the city’s population and have experienced a fast-paced knowledge circus over the past three decades. While there is an uncontested need for research to inform development decisions and policy formulation, connecting this knowledge to community development and progressive action is still challenged. This phenomenon is what we discuss here as ‘research waste’.

Research waste: Not new, but still unacceptable!

The concept of research waste was first coined by medical statistician Douglas Altman in 1994, defining it as ‘research outcomes with no societal benefits’. This millennial concept dominates medical and clinical sciences but receives less attention in social sciences. Drawing on our experience, we argue that research is also wasteful if it lacks novelty, lacks relevance to a real-world gap and does not advance existing scholarship. We define research waste as ‘research that fails to yield societal benefits and lacks scientific value’. Research waste not only squanders tens of billions of dollars annually, but also contributes to research fatigue, perpetuates epistemic injustices and erodes public trust.

Every stage in a research ‘lifecycle’ is prone to waste, but the good news is that about 85 per cent of this waste is avoidable. Research waste arises from irrelevant rationales, flawed research designs, biased or poor reporting of results and methodologies and unpublished or poorly disseminated outputs. To further illustrate this point, we have outlined in Figure 1 below the various stages of research and practices that may (re)produce waste.

Figure 1: Practices producing research waste

Authors, 2024

The production of avoidable research waste is unethical practice. Researchers must navigate the research process conscientiously to strike a balance between scientific rigor, societal benefits and scholarly value. This negotiated middle ground is achievable through Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR). CBPR offers a methodological framework that catalyses research value by repositioning community partnerships at the centre of three interrelated research goals: generating evidence, facilitating meaningful action and promoting engaged learning.

Research buzz in Mathare

Nairobi city is a home to over 4 million people and more than 100 informal settlements. It is estimated that 65 per cent of the city’s inhabitants live and work in these informal areas, which epitomize existing inequalities in the city. In Mathare, residents live in deplorable living conditions, epitomized by poor housing and basic services, overcrowding, pollution and insecurity of tenure that lingers with frequent threats of evictions.

The pervasive failure of the government to upgrade these living conditions is attractive to research, contributing to a ‘research buzz’. The findings from our data mapping show that approximately 300 research activities were conducted in Mathare in a decade. However, these activities failed to yield commensurate value for the community. For instance, our analysis shows that out of the 300 research entries, 31 of were related to ‘infrastructure and economy’ (see Figure 2), yet the community still lives in deplorable conditions characterized by overcrowded, makeshift structures that increase the risk of hazards such as fires, exacerbate inadequate access to clean water and poor sanitation, and limit access to reliable electricity amongst many other problems.

Figure 2: Research conducted in Mathare between 2013 & 2023 along research themes

Authors, 2024

A Mathare resident cited her frustration with research, noting the imminent failure of its implementation.

Then again the one who sent you, I don’t know the government, they have done a lot of research and none of it has ever been implemented….Why bring (research) yet they won’t implement, why take information, knowledge, sit somewhere and yet not implement? The next day the same information they took, someone uses it for their own benefit elsewhere. So they have done a lot of research in the community, not now, not yesterday but even in the past years and not one has been implemented…

Mathare residents have been exposed to multiple studies with limited novelty and duplicated research topics, leading to research fatigue and unmet expectations for societal change.

Helicopter research

Researchers enter informal settlements with pre-determined agendas, engage the community as research participants and leave with the bulk of the information without further engaging with the broader audience. Researchers use informal settlements as testing grounds for concepts while the community is relegated to the subordinate role of respondent. In other instances, community participation is romanticized and framed as ‘partnerships’ with tokenistic and ‘command-control’ approaches that replicate exclusion.

With ambiguous guidelines on conducting research in informal settlements, scientific and ethical procedures have been conflated into unclear practices that expose the participants to unfair treatment. In some cases, participants are influenced by monetary compensation, resulting to coercion and undue influence. In other cases, prior consent is not sought from the participants. Trust is eroded when there are no clear strategies for collaboration between researchers and the community. Additionally, poor sampling strategies contribute to biased participation. Ultimately, some studies are designed to serve researchers’ interests, rather than deliver societal benefits.

Towards a methodological framework  

Knowledge should be co-created through fair collaboration between the community and scientific researchers to yield scientific rigor and societal development. The community-based participatory research (CBPR) framework provides a platform for knowledge co-creation by infusing local ingenuity with tools and techniques from scientific discipline.

The framework applies a bottom-up research process in which the research agenda, framed with communities, is scaled upwards. It proposes community participation in the entire research process, which translates into moving the community from being ‘research respondents’ to ‘research partners’. This approach allows for knowledge transfer to the community researchers through training and empowerment. The ten rules of CBPR, co-created with the Mathare community and dubbed ‘the ten commandments’, describe how researchers should co-create research ethics, establish rules of engagement and disseminate co-created knowledge to avoid waste. The following Figure 3 summarizes this framework.

Figure 3: The ‘ten commandments’

Authors, 2024

(1) Codesigning research agenda: Research should be framed together with community members, represented by community-based organizations (CBOs), groups or community researchers. These representatives help link research with local programmes that need urgent attention. The agenda should also align with themes of informality in literature.

(2)  Seeking requisite consent: Researchers should seek prior permission from the research participants. This involves describing the research purpose, data collection methods and the intended outputs. Consent will help manage expectations and increase trust between the researcher and the community.

(3)  Collaboration: Research with communities should, as much as possible, foster collaboration with community-led organizations. Collaboration ensures that knowledge is co-created with the community for empowerment and social action. The research proponents should further set long-term partnerships with the community with clear strategies for creating impact.

(4)  Confidentiality and protection: Data collected from/with the community should be protected against destruction, loss or illegal access. Researchers should maintain confidentiality throughout the research process.

(5)  Training community researchers: Community researchers are community members who live and work for the community. They engage in social work such as advocacy, activism, community health promotion, solid waste management, etc. When involved in research activities, they should be trained in research methods, ethics and dissemination strategies to foster learning and enhance research rigor.

(6) Data validation: Data collected from the community should be validated by the participants to ensure that it is devoid of errors and to determine whether the findings meet the intended objectives (avoiding data misuse).

(7)  Acknowledge community input: The community should be acknowledged by mentioning its input and engaging it in various dissemination exercises such as dialogues, workshops or conferences. The community should be acknowledged and included as co-author in (academic) publications.

(8)  Fair arrangements and equitable partnerships: Partnerships between the researchers and the community should be clearly stated with definite roles. This helps in building trust between the partners.

(9)  Dissemination: Researchers should ensure that findings are shared with community members and other relevant stakeholders. Open data platforms that are accessible to the public and the broader community should be promoted. Researchers should encourage the use of dialogues, public forums or other engagement strategies to disseminate research information to a wider audience.

(10) Engage beyond research: Researchers should engage beyond mere scientific dissemination methods. Such activities include translating and vulgarizing research findings to be understood by the larger local audience, reaching out to development actors for implementation or lobbying for policy actions by the government.

Conclusion

This post fronts CBPR as a solution to mitigating research waste in urban informal settlements. While the need for research to inform societal development is uncontested, research waste should be prevented by designing research practices that sync with local priorities, foster knowledge exchange and enhance scientific value.

 

Notes:

The discussions presented in this blog post emanate from the project ‘Towards a framework for community-based participatory research in informal settlements: a pilot in Mathare, Nairobi-Kenya’ (2023). The project was funded by the LDE Global Support programme, supported by Vital Cities and Citizens and implemented in Nairobi by Nuvoni Center for Innovation Research and MSPARC (Mathare Special Planning Area Research Collective).

References

  1. Balazs, C. L., & Morello-Frosch, R. (2013). The three Rs: How community-based participatory research strengthens the rigor, relevance, and reach of science. Environmental justice, 6(1), 9-16. https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/env.2012.0017
  2. Erasmus University Rotterdam. (2024). From Research to Action: How Community Researchers in Nairobi Promote Social Transformation. Accessed from https://www.eur.nl/en/news/research-action-how-community-researchers-nairobi-promote-social-transformation
  3. Fransen, J., Hati, B., Nyumba, R., & van Tuijl, E. (2023). ‘Community vitality and frugal practices in informal settlements in Nairobi: Towards a typology’, Cities, 134(January), p. 104179. doi: 10.1016/j.cities.2022.104179.
  4. Hati, B., & Menya, A., (2023) ‘Our cities have failed … decolonizing urban planning in the Afrocentric’, DEVIssues, November 2023, Vol. 25 – No.2 https://www.devissues.nl/our-cities-have-failed-decolonizing-urban-planning-afrocentric
  5. Ouma, S. (2023). Participation as ‘city-making’: a critical assessment of participatory planning in the Mukuru Special Planning Area in Nairobi, Kenya. Environment & Urbanization, 35(2), 470-489.
  6. SDI-Kenya. (2020). Informal Settlements Profiling Report: Nairobi County. Accessed from https://www.muungano.net/browseblogs/2020/4/16/draft-informal-settlements-profiling-report-for-nairobi-county.

 

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

 

About the authors:

Stephen Nyagaya

Stephen Nyagaya is an urban planning and development researcher whose interests revolve around spatial injustices, participatory planning and urban informality. He is a Junior Research Associate at Nuvoni Centre for Innovation Research/International Centre for Frugal Innovation and was actively involved in the CBPR project.

Beatrice Hati

Beatrice Hati is a pracademic specializing in people-centred urbanism and resilience. She is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in multilevel disaster governance at ISS while simultaneously serving as an urban development and research associate at the International Centre for Frugal Innovation (Kenya Hub).

Alice Menya

Alice Menya is Head of Programmes at Nuvoni Centre for Innovation Research/International Centre for Frugal Innovation-Kenya Hub.

 

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IHSA Annual Lecture Reflection: Starvation crimes, network shutdowns, and obstacles to humanitarian action in Gaza and Sudan

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In this blog, IHSA Vice-President and Senior Research Fellow at the Food Studies Centre at SOAS (University of London) Susanne Jaspars summarises and expands upon a contribution to the roundtable that followed the inaugural IHSA Annual Lecture on “War and Humanity” held in Bergen in May 2024. The blog was prepared with the help of Tamer Abd Elkreem and information gathered from their research project on the effects of digitalising food assistance.   

Starvation as a crime against humanity 

For about a year now, there’s been talk about imminent famine- and now famine – in Gaza and parts of Sudan, with very little action. In this blog post, I discuss starvation as a war crime and crime against humanity, what can be done in practice to act on starvation crimes, and why blocking communications networks needs to be seen as such a crime.   

War causes famine through acts that undermine the means of survival of particular population groups. This includes acts of commission such as attacks on production, markets, restriction of access for humanitarian actors, and the obstruction of relief. Also acts of omission such as failures to act in response to warnings or signs of famine, and acts of provision: the selective provision of food to one side of the conflict. These tactics can be part of counter-insurgency operations but also yield benefits for some. For example from being able to sell food at high prices and buy livestock at low cost, or use cheap labour from displaced populations.      

Extreme famines are therefore the result of political acts or decisions (local, national, international), meaning we need to understand: Who committed the famine? How was it committed and why? Who were the victims? Who was involved? In contrast to famine, a crime is not ended, but criminals are deterred, detained, prosecuted.   

Legal frameworks such as International Humanitarian law (IHL) and International Criminal Law (ICL), specify starvation as a crime:  ‘It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population […] for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance … whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive’. The crime of starvation includes wilfully obstructing humanitarian aid. The term “objects indispensable to survival” includes more than food, encompassing water installations and supplies, irrigation works, medicine, clothing, shelter, fuel, and electricity. There is no pre-defined list as items indispensable to survival are evolving and context dependant.   

Also, in 2018, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted resolution 2417 which condemns the use of starvation as a method of warfare against civilians and emphasised that it may constitute a war crime. I would like to discuss this a little further, in particular: 

How does reporting and accountability for starvation crimes work in practice? 

The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) report twice yearly to the UN Security Council (UNSC) on Resolution 2417.  The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) can also write closed White Papers to the UNSC and individual donors (like FCDO or the EU) too.  But how is this being operationalised?  What and how are FAO and WFP reporting?  What are some of the obstacles?   

Consider the February 2024 FAO/WFP report to the Security Council on Gaza and Sudan – which is remarkably apolitical.  The report states the facts on displacement, impact on food systems, and obstruction of humanitarian access, and then what is prohibited under IHL. However, these are mostly passive statements such as: 

  • ‘Unprecedented levels of conflict-induced displacement … have occurred.’  
  • ‘Civilian infrastructure has been damaged (water, fuel, electricity, bakeries, farms)’ 
  • ‘Conflict has halted production, prices have increased’ 
  • ‘Humanitarian aid has been restricted’ 
  • ‘Hostilities have led to telecoms blackouts’
     

War seems to almost be external to people’s economies or society, something neutral.  Using the passive tense to describe acts of war and its effects removes politics and responsibility.  This is exactly the opposite of what is needed to understand starvation crimes.    

What’s not in the report is who is causing starvation and who should be held to account (although there are some exceptions about Israeli actions in Gaza – e.g on the effect of evacuations without putting adequate infrastructure and services in place). Yet, Sudan has a long history of aid manipulation and since April 2023 there is evidence of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) denying access to humanitarian aid, and of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) looting, destroying farms, and recruiting forces by threatening starvation. This presents an intensification of the long-standing extractive political economy, and involves regional and international actors.  Note that exports of gold, and livestock are continuing and crude oil exports were higher in December 2023 than in the previous year.     

The recommendations are all clearly needed but bland: restore humanitarian access, pressure warring parties to adhere to IHL, have an independent investigation.  With UN organisations reporting, how could it be otherwise? A focus on starvation crimes was supposed to put the politics back into famine analysis. But can UN resolution 2417 do it?  Questions remain on who should be reporting starvation crimes (states? resistance movements? activists? students?) and who should act on it.   

The South Africa case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) sets an important precedent,  in particular the amendment to the provisional measures in March 2024: to take all necessary and effective measures – without delay – for the provision of humanitarian assistance, in response to reports of famine and starvation.   Since then the International Criminal Court (ICC) is seeking a warrant for the arrest of Israeli leaders, in another unprecedented move, for  war crimes of starvation.   Even with these high-level actions, the crimes continue.   

In contrast, on Sudan there is mostly inaction.  While starvation and genocide in Gaza is played out daily on our television screens, such reports on Sudan are rare.  Recent warnings of famine, and statements by UN experts, have had little impact except to pressure warring parties to come to power-sharing agreements rather than holding them to account. 

Communications networks as objects indispensable to survival 

Of course, much of the lack of action in response to Sudan’s crisis is due the prioritisation of geopolitics and economic interests over humanitarian response and – ultimately – stopping the war.  Sudan’s invisibility is also a result of blocking and manipulating communications networks and connectivity. Most societies are digitalised, meaning that people are increasingly dependent on connectivity for their day-to-day activities or – in the case of Sudan – their survival.  Connectivity becomes important in relation to starvation crimes because:

  • Blocking communications networks hides information on violations of human rights and humanitarian law.    
  • Internet shutdowns disrupt social networks, remittances, food systems.   
  • Third, network shutdowns also block aid provision, not because it hinders the coordination, information and security of aid organisations, but aid itself is increasingly digitalised: pre-paid debit cards, electronic vouchers, and mobile money. 

In Sudan, the Bankak App from the Bank of Khartoum has been a lifeline since  the start of the April 2023 war because it could be used to transfer of money to crisis-affected people and local organisations. From early February, however, the RSF disabled all internet providers.  Soon after, Starlink Satelites were introduced in RSF-held areas, which ordinary people pay to use for internet connection but which were brought in and managed by the RSF. As such, control over communications has become a way of denying services and resources to the enemy, life or death for ordinary citizens, as well as a new way of profiteering. It also illustrates the moral dilemmas of providing aid in conflict and the challenges of reporting on famine crimes.  This does not mean we stop calling out starvation crimes, but rather highlights the importance for humanitarians to analyse famine as a political scandal that requires global as well as local action.  

 

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

                         About the Author: 
                           Susanne Jaspars

Susanne Jaspars is a Senior Research Fellow at the SOAS Food Studies Centre. She has been researching the social and political dynamics of food security, livelihoods and forced migration in situations of conflict, famine and humanitarian crises for more than thirty years. Susanne’s geographical focus is has been mostly Horn of Africa, specifically Sudan and Somalia with shorter periods in the Middle East, where she has worked as practitioner and researcher. She is currently the PI of an ESRC funded project entitled: ‘Digitalising food assistance: Political economy, governance and food security effects across the Global North-South divide.’ More information about Dr. Jaspars can be found on the SOAS website. 

 

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When the State Doesn’t love you back: Navigating identities as a Nigerian woman

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Although the Nigerian state is guided by a Constitution that confers on all Nigerian citizens equal rights regardless of gender and sexual identity, it has been adept at maintaining a system of patriarchy through institutions, policies, and procedures which has led to the differential treatment of men and women. This is what Chouinard refers to as “spatial differing”, and has several knock-on effects that translate to unequal outcomes for some Nigerian citizens. In this blog, Emaediong Akpan explores how the state confers citizenship on its people: who has the right to participate in the affairs of the state? And to what extent such rights can be exercised and enjoyed by all?

Does the State have a character? And is it Gendered?

“The state is a masculine institution,”  assigning rights and belonging along gendered patterns. In allocating these rights, the state decides who belongs in the state and to what extent a person can lay claim to their citizenship. This is both a legal and social decision that affects the feeling of belonging and inclusion The struggle for inclusive citizenship is not new, and from voting rights to property rights, women have had to constantly negotiate with the state about what rights they can enjoy, but not in the same way that men do. This is because Nigerian women are often at a disadvantage, working against multiple levels of assumption, and negotiating male-dominated spaces.

The state is not a neutral entity, only concerned with the maintenance of law and order, rather it descends like a biased umpire into the arena of private life, regulating bodies and relationships. This is what French philosopher, Michael Foucault describes as bio-politics: [state] regulation of its people, taking the form of control over social interaction, health and reproductive rights, and the right to life amongst many others. For radical feminists, bio-politics is an indication of the state’s masculinity and commitment to protecting patriarchy. 

The organisation of state affairs does not occur accidentally, rather it is a deliberate effort to ‘exert a positive influence on life, that endeavors to administer, optimize, and multiply it, subjecting it to precise controls and comprehensive regulations.’ This deliberate effort of the state generally works though subjection that is guided by economic structures and cultural norms that dictate gender roles.

In Nigeria, citizenship occurs at the national level, state, and local government levels. While a woman in Nigeria can claim citizenship  (on paper), true citizenship that is characterized by access to citizenship rights, including social benefits and political participation. True citizenship, then, is something she must consistently negotiate through the course of her life. This negotiation is limited by the state’s decision to favor patriarchy, and this results in the differential capacity of men and women to claim the benefits and privileges that come with being a citizen.

Gender and Citizenship in Nigeria:  Women as Outsiders Within

The 1999 Nigerian Constitution (As Amended) is the reference point for who can be conferred the status of a citizen and who can transfer citizenship. In the country, citizenship is conferred at the national level by birth, where either parents or a grandparent is a citizen of Nigeria or from a tribe indigenous to Nigeria. Under section 26(2), only a man can confer citizenship to his wife through marriage, in essence, a Nigerian woman who marries a non-Nigerian cannot confer this citizenship on her husband or her children. In this way, a Nigerian woman’s citizenship can be considered inferior in the sense that it cannot be transferred to another.

The situation becomes more dire with single mothers who try to navigate citizenship, especially when the father of their child is no longer present or refuses to be in their lives. Women in this situation must attach themselves to a Nigerian male if their child is to identify as a citizen of the country, even with the most basic form of identity, a certificate of birth. These women are left with no other choice than to give their children the names of absentee fathers, or that of a male member of their family to retrieve these certificates from the state. Citizenship is sexual, in the way that, it ‘empowers’ the genders that are beneficial to the state – men. In doing so, the state considers the man as the entity who is able to give life, and the woman’s role is reduced to a body that houses the uterus suitable to carry a (male) Nigerian child, but not confer citizenship upon that child.

Another way the state is implicit in fostering gendered power relations is in the refusal to enact policies to address forms of disempowerment such as protecting the rights of single women who are navigating the rental market in Nigeria. For decades, there has been an outcry of single women in the country with complaints of facing prejudice from property owners because “single women should not rent houses independently.” My first-hand experience as a single woman renting a home in 2014 lends credence to this conversation. My search for a home in Abuja, the country’s capital, was met with several rejections because of my status, but interestingly, this changed when I returned with a ‘hired partner’ and flaunted a shiny make-shift engagement ring. Surprisingly, the property owner was female. As noted by Sathiamma patriarchy is produced by a system, meaning that both men and women can be active gatekeepers of patriarchal norms and practices, albeit sometimes unknowingly. These attitudes are rooted in persistent patriarchal socio-cultural norms that view women as property belonging to men.

While national citizenship is relevant for macro-level discourses, a different form of citizenship also exists within the margins – state citizenship. This is perhaps the most challenging for Nigerian women to navigate. Identities within the Nigerian state are defined in a masculine way. As a Nigerian woman, your identity is often contested and changing in many ways. For instance, at the point of marriage, Nigerian women must pay a fee to the state to change their names to that of their new partner, while notifying the public through print media – in a change of name announcement – that her previous name (father’s name) has been abandoned. These changes must also be replicated across every identity document that she possesses – bank details, international passport, and state and local government identity documents. In the case that her state and local government of origin differs from her husband’s, she continues to be denied indigeneity (rootedness), never fully belonging to her father’s home or her husband’s.

Reflection

The redefinition of a state – as masculine and non-neutral – through a feminist lens provides the needed objectivity to ask critical questions on the state’s role in regulating the public and private lives of its citizens. By looking at how the Nigerian state interacts with Nigerian women through this lens, we can better understand its preconceived roles for female Nigerian citizens.

The Nigerian state is masculine and would continue to subject women’s identities to the whims and caprices of patriarchy whilst denying men who do not fit the ideals of masculinity the right to citizenship. This is operationalized in its administrative processes, how women can (or cannot) access basic needs like housing, and the way that women are treated when they participate in public affairs.

Unless we begin to interact with foundational institutions like the state using a feminist lens to dismantle the assumptions of its rationality, these current efforts at addressing gender inequality will not yield much.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the Author

Emaediong Akpan

Emaediong Akpan is a legal practitioner, called to the Nigerian Bar in 2015. She is currently pursuing a Master’s in Development Studies with a specialization in Women and Gender Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies ,Erasmus University Rotterdam. With extensive experience in the development sector, her work spans gender equity, social inclusion, and policy advocacy. Her research examines the effects of technology-facilitated gender-based violence on women and social movements, highlighting how digital spaces serve as sites for power contests and the policing of gender norms.

 

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Questions of Sovereignty -Somalia on the UN Security Council

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Photo Credit: Evan Schneider

In this blog, Ahmed Sh. Ibrahim and Nisar Majid consider how Somalia’s joining of the UN Security Council at a time when its nationally recognised government controls only a portion of its territory. With Somalia’s internal territory so fractured, the authors look at a growing gap between how the ‘international community’ treats the Somali state and how the Somali state interacts with its internal polities and citizens. This all has serious knock-on effects for our understanding of the term “sovereignty”.

On 6 June 2024 Somalia won a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council, along with Denmark, Greece, Pakistan and Panama. As East Africa’s representative, Somalia along with the other newly elected members will join five already existing members to create the 10 non-permanent members on the Security Council. They will join the Security Council’s five permanent veto-wielding members of Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States. This two-year position, commencing in 2025, gives Somalia a voice in how the UN responds to conflicts around the world. Reacting to this development, the Foreign Minister of Somalia stated that Somalia would take up “its position on the global stage” and that “We stand ready to play a vital role in promoting peace and security in the world,” while the UN secretary general’s special representative for Somalia claimed “Somalia has come a long way over the past three decades on its path to peace, prosperity and security.”

Somalia, though, is a country that has minimal control over its territorial boundaries; with the secessionist region of Somaliland in control of the northeast of the country, various regional administrations with limited allegiance to federal authorities in central and southern regions and the militant Islamist group al-Shabaab holding arguably more territory than the government to the south. In this blog, we discuss Somalia’s election to the UN Security Council in relation to the juridico-political concept of sovereignty. We contend that Somalia’s election to the UN Security Council reveals one of the central problems with the concept of sovereignty: the disparity between a state’s internal sovereignty – a state’s ability to exercise effective control over its territory – and external sovereignty, also known as juridical sovereignty – the recognition by other states of a state’s rights to exercise control over its territory. We assert that there appears to be an increasing gap between Somalia’s ability to exercise sovereignty within its own territory and therein over its own people and its investment in external sovereignty or rather the investment of the international community in Somalia’s external sovereignty.

Sovereignty in Africa – a colonial inheritance

One of the most important concepts in contemporary political thought and practice is the juridico-political doctrine of sovereignty. The long and complicated history of this concept can be traced to the early history of state formation in Europe when it functioned as an organizing concept in debates over political authority

Since the emergence of the nation-state in Europe and its subsequent spread to the rest of the world, sovereignty has become synonymous with state authority and prerogative. As such, the specific history of this concept in African political history is deeply intertwined with the rise of the colonial state in the era of colonization. Ironically, the doctrine of sovereignty was initially part of the legitimating discourse used to justify European colonization of non-European peoples, including Africans. It was claimed that the attainment of a certain level of cultural and civilizational status was necessary in order for a particular society to legitimately claim sovereignty. Africans, as well as other colonized peoples, were too backward to exercise sovereignty over themselves, it was argued, and must be governed.  

While Africans and other colonized peoples rightly celebrated the attainment of sovereignty at independence, the historical legacy of colonialism was made evident when postcolonial sovereignty was bestowed on the successor of the colonial state, the postcolonial state. In Africa, this meant that the political borders drawn by colonizing European states were to crystalise into the parameters of postcolonial juridico-political sovereignty.

Despite arguments by some African scholars that the form of sovereignty inherited from colonialism is incompatible with African political history, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and its successor, the African Union (AU), have maintained that respect for colonial borders is a practical necessity to avoid chaos and balkanization of the continent into countless ethnic enclaves. But as the postcolonial state in Africa has come under increasing economic and political crisis, so has the contestation over sovereignty become a contemporary reality in Africa. 

No region in Africa is this more evident than in the Horn, considered one of the most conflict-prone regions on the continent. A significant contributor to the region’s conflicts are contestations over sovereignty. There have been several wars in the region over the question of sovereignty, including the 1977-78 war between Ethiopia and Somalia, as well as the 1961-1992 war that led to Eritrea’s separation from Ethiopia.

The recent and highly controversial MoU between Ethiopia and Somaliland, signed on 1 January 2024, is only the latest expression of one of the fault lines of conflict in the region.  The agreement gives Ethiopia access to and the right to build on land on the Somaliland coast: land that the Somali government considers to be its own sovereign territory. The disputes over sovereignty in the Horn is further exasperated by the complete disintegration of the postcolonial Somali state in 1991.

Photo Credit: Evan Schneider

Somaliland – internal sovereignty, external exclusion

The origin of the dispute over Somaliland’s sovereignty lies in the fallout from the breakdown of the Somali Republic. After about a decade of armed rebellion by several rebel groups, the longtime military regime of Mohamed Siyad Barre fell in 1991. Subsequent to the regime’s fall, the different rebel forces failed to agree upon the formation of a new government. This failure threw the country into a prolonged period of civil war creating the longest running and the paradigmatic example of a ‘failed state’ in the contemporary world. Reflecting the socio-cultural structure of Somali society and the machinations of rebel leaders, the various rebel movements were organized on the basis of clan and regional identity. This meant that when the military regime fell in 1991, each rebel group took control of the region where their specific clan predominated. The north-eastern part of the country was taken over by the Somali National Movement (SNM), whose members were primarily from the Issaq clan. Subsequent to their takeover of the region, SNM and traditional leaders from the region (Issaq and non-Issaq) decided to unilaterally secede from Somalia in 1991.  

In keeping with the dominant understanding of sovereignty in postcolonial Africa, regional authorities in Somaliland grounded their right to secede on sovereign authority inherited from the colonial state. Their argument is based on the fact that the region was a distinct colonial entity from the rest of Somalia. It was under British colonial administration from 1884-1960 and known as British Somaliland, or officially, the Somaliland Protectorate, while the rest of Somalia was colonized by Italy, Italian Somaliland. Five days after becoming independent on June 26, 1960, British Somaliland merged with Italian Somaliland to form the postcolonial state of Somalia.  Separatist officials from Somaliland argue that they are separating from Somalia and reclaiming the sovereign statehood, which was lost when the region voluntarily united with Italian Somaliland. This argument is made with an eye to the AU’s position that the political borders inherited upon independence should be the basis of African sovereignty and statehood.

Subsequent to its unilateral declaration of independence, Somaliland has created a relatively effective governance structure combining indigenous and modern forms of governance mechanisms. Consequently, and for the most part, Somaliland exercises a certain level of internal sovereignty, especially when compared with the rest of Somalia, where there has not been an effective internal authority since the fall of the state in 1991. Even Somaliland’s internal sovereignty and legitimacy was always more contested than claimed and has arguably weakened in recent years, including most evidently in the form of the Las Anod conflict. Despite its arguments and relative stability, however, no state has recognized Somaliland’s claim to sovereign statehood, That said, Somaliland does maintain quasi-official diplomatic relations with some countries (Ethiopia) as well as other contested/semi-recognised polities (Taiwan).

Somalia – limited internal sovereignty, external recognition

Somalia’s internal sovereignty is limited both by the secessionist Somaliland (as indicated above), but also by highly autonomous regional states, such as Puntland, whose formation precedes that of the Federal Government of Somalia, as well as by the persistence of al-Shabaab, whose own lifespan is longer than the Federal government, and which opposes the current Somali state.

Following the collapse of the state in 1990/91 and various periods of conflict and a succession of internationally supported peace processes, Somalia’s current federal government was established in 2013. It is very much the product of external intervention and a response to the perceived Islamist threat in a post-9/11 world, vividly described by Ken Menkhaus as’ ‘principally a division of spoils that is held together by a combination of a common threat posed by Al-Shabaab, copious levels of security driven external aid, and protection afforded by AMISOM peacekeepers.’

Since the establishment of this governmental arrangement Somalia is now in its third Presidential election cycle. As a sovereign entity it largely operates as a series of city states, divided between the Federal Government based in Mogadishu, operating out of a bunkerised ‘green zone’ and the Federal Member States, each with its own limitations on territorial control and legitimacy. Al-Shabaab holds sway over large swathes of the rural hinterland as well as possessing  a strong extra-territorial power, is able to tax business and people in government-held territory and operates a sharia’a based judicial system that many people utilise as it is considered both relatively fair/just and has the coercive capacity that ensures judgements are implemented.

Aisha Ahmad et al. argue that in fact there are two key parallel political bargains in Somalia, an elite political deal or bargain between members of the Federal Government and Federal Member States and a civilian deal which al-Shabaab establishes with citizens under its influence. The former deal is essentially backed up by the international community in the name of state sovereignty, and which serves to undermine the incentive for the government to develop a social compact with much of its population.

For many Somalis as well as many in the international community who work in and on Somalia, there is increasing recognition that domestic governance or internal sovereignty is not progressing even as the federal authorities in Mogadishu are increasingly invested by the international community with more powers of external/juridical sovereignty.

Conclusions

Somalia’s acceptance on the UN Security Council continues this external legitimising dynamic – and external sovereignty – with  limited signs on the ground that government – whether at the national, regional or local levels – is acting to improve its legitimacy with local populations, or that negotiations are taking place with either Somaliland or al-Shabaab, to further develop its internal sovereignty. It is in fact possible to argue that the continued legitimization of the Somali government by the international community in the name of sovereignty disincentivises government authorities from acting to consolidate internal sovereignty by investing in effective governance structures, improving its legitimacy with the local population through service provisioning and negotiating with the various competing authorities throughout the country. While reconciling the Westphalian notion of sovereignty with the complicated realities of African states struggling to exert internal and external sovereignty has always been difficult, the situation in Somalia underscores not only this country’s struggle with sovereignty, but the potential for contradictions between the external trappings of sovereignty and the internal reality.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the Authors:

Dr. Ahmed Sh. Ibrahim

Dr. Ahmed Sh. Ibrahim is a socio-cultural anthropologist with a PhD from the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY). He is currently an anthropology instructor with Carleton College’s Ecology and Anthropology Program in Tanzania. Dr. Ibrahim has done research in the Horn of Africa and among the African diaspora in the U.S. with a focus on the history and politics of religion, political conflicts and immigration. His research has appeared in peer-reviewed academic journals, edited volumes, and popular websites such as Africa is a Country and Responsible Statecraft. He can be reached at ahmedf95@gmail.com.

Dr. Nisar Majid

Dr. Nisar Majid is the research director for the PeaceRep (Somalia) programme at the LSE. He has worked in and on the Horn of Africa and the Somali territories for over 20 years, in various applied and research capacities. His areas of research have included food security and famine studies, humanitarianism, and diaspora studies. He is the co-author of ‘Famine in Somalia, Competing Imperatives, Collective Failures’, 2011-12 (Hurst). He can be reached at N.Majid1@lse.ac.uk.

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Is Liberia’s illiteracy problem linked to absent fathers?

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School Reading Corner: Image by Author

The prolonged civil war that brought life in Liberia to a standstill for over a decade has left deep wounds that the country is still working to heal more than twenty years after the conflict ended. While significant interventions have been made in the country’s education sector, low literacy rates persist — but the war and its aftermath may not be the only reasons, writes ISS MA graduate Christo Gorpudolo.

Liberia has one of the highest illiteracy rates in the world, with an adult literacy rate of 48.3% in 2017 (the global average is 84.7%) and a youth literacy rate of 77.46% (the global average is 91.68%). The country scored 177 out of 193 countries and territories on the 2022 Human Development Index (HDI), a composite statistic used to measure and rank countries’ levels of social and economic development according to the level of education, life expectancy, and standard of living.

But while the country’s low adult literacy rate has been linked to civil war and resulting poverty, a lack of infrastructure, and inadequate teacher training, recent research I conducted in central Liberia revealed another possible explanation: absent fathers. This observation is important because it is a factor that is not directly attributable to the civil war but that may have a potentially significant impact on efforts to address the persistent low adult literacy rate.

Understandings of Liberia’s low literacy rates

Much of Liberia’s education-related backlogs have been attributed to the civil war that ravaged this low-income country between 1989 and 2003. The long-standing impact of the war, including the destruction of much of the country’s trained workforce, has led to a struggling educational system still recovering from many challenges, including those related to access to education, the quality of instruction, and a lack of human and financial resources.

The absence of fathers hitherto has not been cited as a factor contributing to illiteracy, although it has been marked by scholars as an important factor positively affecting the growth of school–going children in Liberia. A report by the 2024 World Education network on Liberia’s education system moreover states that fathers’ involvement in children’s education means a lot to children, who eventually tend to perform better.

Conversely, non-profit organization All For Kids states that children who grow up without fathers are more likely to experience unemployment as adults, have low incomes, remain on social assistance, and experience homelessness. The organization also states that absent fathers is a factor consistently co-occurring with a wide range of mental health disorders and related problems, particularly anxiety, depression, and increased suicide risk.

An unexpected observation

My observation that the absence of fathers could be linked to low literacy levels among children came as I was conducting research on another topic. In March this year, I was hired by the CERATH Development Organization to research how young Liberian adolescents view the Liberian food system. This research is intended to help CERATH understand Liberia’s food security and what children’s visions are for a food secure Liberia. I spoke to 50 young adolescents between the ages of 9 and 17; of these children,19 were not attending school and the remaining 31 children were attending school.

During the research, while interviewing the children who were not attending school, I made an unexpected observation: all the children I spoke to who were not in school faced absent fathers at home or in their lives. Some of them live with mothers, aunts, or grandmothers who work to some extent; others live with mothers, aunts and grandmothers who are physically able to but do not engage in economic activities.

One of the children (aged 16) stated that his father died in 2020 in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital. Because of his father’s death, he and his mother had to move back to Bong County in central Liberia; he has not been enrolled in school since 2020. Another participant aged 16, also without a father, has never been to school. Yet another participant aged 9, also without a father, has also never been to school.

Thinking outside the box

Given their ages, all of these children were born after the Liberian civil war and were not actively involved in the war. Most of them also live close to schools and don’t necessarily have to walk miles to school. The country moreover has a free and compulsory primary education policy, which was introduced in 2003. Yet, despite these factors that may facilitate (or at least do not hinder) school attendance, these young adolescents are not currently in school. Could absent fathers be a reason for this and, thus, for Liberia’s low literacy rate?

Speaking with these young children, I observed that they are increasingly concerned about possibly never going to school. Others hope that their mothers and guardians would secure funding to send them to school. It is clear that the children I interviewed do want to attend school, but do not foresee the possibility of doing so. This is why it is important to examine all possible reasons for children’s failure to attend school.

The World Literacy Foundation states that in developing and emerging countries, the number of children and youth with no basic foundational and literacy skills is continuing to rise by an estimated 20% per year. Without any effective intervention, these young people face a lifetime of poverty and unemployment. Thus, further investigation is needed to ensure that children can attain quality education. Investigating the possible link between school attendance and the absence of fathers is an important place to start.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Christo Z. Gorpudolo is a development practitioner with over 9 years of work experience in the development sector. She is particularly interested in research  areas that cover peace and conflict, children rights, humanitarian aid and gender. She has a Masters of Arts degree in Development studies, Social Justice Perspective from the International Institute of Social Studies.

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Medical Drones in Africa: A Gamechanger for the Continent’s ‘Ailing’ Health Sector?

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While medical drones can be lauded as game-changing health technologies that help save lives, and usher efficiency and cost-effectiveness in the often contextualized as fragile African health systems, Edwin Ambani Ameso and Gift Mwonzora argue that this is not the complete picture.

The sight of desolate buildings, makeshift health settings characterised by a shortage of drugs and machinery and demoralised workers is an enduring reality of African health care centres. Medical professionals staffing these under-resourced health institutions work under depressed morale. The deplorable state of the African hospitals and clinics continues to affect in large part the underprivileged and often impoverished citizens. To fill in the gap where governments are failing to implement the right to health, some non-state actors like the Melinda and Bill Gates foundation have perennially stepped up. Thanks to the presence of vertical medical programmes funded through the assistance of donor agencies like USAID, UKAID, GIZ, DANIDA, NORAD, CIDA and more, this has saved somewhat dire situations.

While such assistance has helped improve the healthcare contexts for citizens, most African states have been left with the solitary and unfashionable role of coordinating healthcare initiatives rather than providing health as a public good accessible to all its citizens. Critical to note, however, has been the endless political rhetoric by African elites seeking political office who entice the electorate with the hype of ‘Health for All’. Often such public pronouncements are not met with clear-cut plans for providing universal access to healthcare for largely underprivileged portions of global citizens resident in the continent.

These governments anchor their political promises to the global health agenda of universal healthcare delivery with lofty promises of leaving no one behind.  It is in such contexts characterised by fragility, shortages, stock-outs, postcolonial legacies of poor infrastructures, and more grounded structural concerns that we are witnessing a rapid uptake and use of digital health technologies, notably medical drones, to leapfrog the aforementioned challenges. Thus,  questions arise  whether the real and imagined futures of healthcare access in Africa can in the long durée afford and embrace medical drones as the future of healthcare delivery.

Against this background, there is a need for robust research on whether African countries need these drones. If so, to serve which health  areas and how successful  have they been in saving lives in areas where they have been utilised so far? If found ineffective, what should be done, and with what urgency, to remedy the situation? Issues of the procurement and supply chain management of these drones at a government level also remain critical. This is considering African government elites’ proclivity to flout tendering processes: a trend reeking of grand corruption schemes.

These schemes have birthed what others have referred to as the ‘tenderpreneurs’ within the African healthcare systems. Worth noting have been the cases of looting of COVID-19 funds and the subsequent inflating and overpricing of medical accessories among various African countries. How then do we guard against state-led grand heists and corruption clothed under the procurement of moon-shot medical technologies with lofty promises of saving thousands if not millions of lives in much of Africa?  We contend that to simply adopt such technology without also addressing the governance side in several states would simply be tinkering on the edges.

We maintain that even if African governments embrace the digitalisation of the health sector without a change of conduct all efforts will come to naught. Digitalising the health sector is ideal but seems to be favouring private players such as drone companies whose contractual engagements with African states guarantee their health funds cut. This then leaves the health care budgets skewed to the detriment of the whole health system where human resource deficits, stockouts, and ill-equipped health settings persist.

Africa’s New Era of Digital Health Technologies

To then celebrate the digitalisation of the health sector without the concomitant financial support of the sector will be an disingenuous act  on the part of African ruling elites who are failing as duty bearers to guarantee the fundamental right to health for all citizens. This is sometimes in ways hard to see if one is to swallow the populist narratives of ‘health for all’ spewed during election campaigns.

Currently, the urge to embrace these technologies as essential to meeting the World Health Organisation’s triple billion target seems to be a politically driven promises of precision health delivery.

Drones or No Drones: Time for a Reality Check

Today, more than at any point, unlucky children and adults are dying from kwashiorkor, malaria, and snake bites in remote areas in rural Africa. What should be done? Is digitalising medical health including access to medical care and attention the panacea to cure this malady

Numerous benefits of medical drones range from the facilitation of emergency medical supply delivery, rapid response to disease outbreaks, improvement of maternal and child healthcare, provision of telemedicine, and facilitation of remote consultations. These drones have also proved useful in other contexts in mapping and the surveillance of disease-prone areas. Further, it is observed that medical drones can also be effectively used in humanitarian aid delivery, especially on impassable roads. Others have even stated that relying on road traffic can only go so fast and so far. Undoubtedly, these drones are convenient for providing emergency relief and aid, especially in low-lying areas such as Malawi, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe. These are contexts prone to recurrent floods and cyclones.

The Road Ahead

In the end, successful adoption twinned with sustainable use of these drones requires a multi-stakeholder buy-in. This will include the collaboration between governments, healthcare institutions, donors, drone service providers, the aviation industry, and local authorities.  Further, the buy-in (reception and acceptance) by the community is also paramount. It needs to be rehashed that without addressing the structural and underlying factors affecting Africa’s health care system, relying on drones alone as the magic bullet to cure challenges affecting the sector will be missing the forest for the trees. Medical technology needs to be anchored in a socio-economic, cultural, financial and political context which is not only permissible for innovation to thrive. The political will to stem corrupt practices, bad governance and other bulwarks that may militate against the full adoption and use of medical technology should be available. Absent due diligence, embracing medical drones in Africa without addressing the underlying structural, institutional, political, and governance factors will be akin to lofty ambitions of flying a kite where there is no wind.

This article was first published on EADI

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Edwin Ameso

Edwin Ambani Ameso is a postdoctoral Researcher at Universität Leipzig, Germany. He researches on “off-the-grid”: Infrastructures, processes of spatialization, and drones in Africa. His areas of research include health insurance, social protection and welfare, digital health technologies, infrastructures of care.

Gift Mwonzora

Gift Mwonzora is a Research Fellow in the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy at the University of Erfurt, Germany. He researches on digitalisation, politics and the future of work in Middle-Income Countries. His areas of Research include development policy, digitalisation, governance, democracy, human rights, social justice.

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Fueling the fire or preventing it? How fire ontologies shape (fire) disaster governance in Kenya’s ghettos

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You might gaze at this image and think, “If only the photographer had been a little more creative and had reached beyond the mesh, we would have gotten a clearer view of the fire.” Yet we, as the authors of this article, cannot help but appreciate how beautifully it portrays the complex essence of fire disasters, perceptible only when one looks ‘beneath the surface’. In contested spaces like ghettos, a fire disaster is not just a physical occurrence; it is a socio-politically intertwined phenomenon laden with dynamic micropatterns that shape the interpretations and subsequent responses to such disasters. In this article, Beatrice Gitundu and Future (Francis Mukiri) discuss how fire disasters in Nairobi’s ghettos are navigated, hoping to provoke a deeper comprehension of the multiple ontologies of fire disasters and how these can inform disaster risk governance in ghettos.

Picture by the GRO6 Fire Network

As you read this article, you’ve likely encountered a fire today, whether in preparing a warm meal, savouring a barbecue, or simply lighting a candle or a cigarette. For many, fire is an intuitive part of human life — a simple flick of a match or the flip of a switch to give us a flame for our daily use.

However, for the over one billion people living in ghettos (1) worldwide, a fire transcends these simple, intuitive meanings. Here, fires pose an everyday threat, often intersecting with multiple vulnerabilities to cause devastating fire disasters. Fire disasters in turn can lead to severe injury, deep psychological trauma, extensive property damage, the loss of lives, degraded ecological health, and enduring impacts on lives and livelihoods. Given their ubiquity, pervasiveness, and intricate interaction with city and community systems, there is more to a fire disaster than meets the eye.

In this article, we use an illustrative example of Nairobi’s 2011 pipeline fire to discuss multiple ontologies inherent in a (fire) disaster and the implications for disaster governance in ghettos. So, pull up a chair and kahawa as this blog takes you on a journey through the deeply ingrained layers of fire disasters, exploring what such layering can tell us about interpretation and governance of (fire) disasters. While our insights draw from immersive engagements with a network of community firefighters in Nairobi’s ghettos called the GRO6, the challenges to understanding and adequately managing (fire) disasters transcends regional borders.

Reconstructing and recounting the events

The observations here are based on two mobile theatre sessions co-organized with GRO6 on 8 and 9 November last year. These sessions form part of a broader series of methods used by Beatrice for conducting her PhD research, which examines multi-level disaster governance arrangements at the grassroots level through a case study of fire disaster management in the ghettos. During these sessions, members of grassroots organizations from Mukuru (including victims and emergency responders like co-author Future) recounted their real-life experiences of the disaster in Sinai. The narratives were enriched by participatory actor mapping and an on-site fire demo, where GRO6 and residents in the now-rebuilt area of Sinai not only recounted the events of the day but also showcased localized fire safety strategies that emerged afterwards. The observations from the mobile theatres are enhanced by expert narratives compiled from Beatrice’s interviews with fire administrators between January and March 2024, as well as from pre-existing interviews from secondary data sources.

The disaster: from “foretold hellfire to” “industrial accident”

On the rainy morning of 12 September 2011, what was to be a typical Monday for the residents of the Nairobi ghetto Mukuru Sinai turned tragic. A deafening explosion was heard, followed by a raging fire that razed through the ghetto, reducing over 400 homes to ashes and claiming more than 120 lives. An oil pipeline carrying lethal super petrol from a nearby oil depot had spilled large amounts of petrol into the storm water drainage system and the river flowing through Mukuru, which was ignited, causing an explosion.

Map showing the oil pipeline (in orange) and the site of the explosion. Created by the authors.

This fire disaster was seen through various lenses. Sinai residents described the fire vividly as a “rolling fireball”, a “burning river of death”, “the foretold hellfire”, “Black November” (an oil exploitation movie), “the walking dead”, and in other ways. Future, one of this article’s authors, describes the aftermath as “[…] a harrowing experience that transformed the beautiful Sinai into a field punctuated by death cries and drenched in blood, leaving lasting physical, mental, emotional, and financial scars that continue to undermine the residents’ resilience.”

For the privileged elite, on the other hand, the disaster was merely an accidental oil spillage. In its press release (Annex IV), the oil company attributed the fire disaster to a technical fault and denied any responsibility for the ‘accident’ caused by the spillage. Civil society actors on the other hand saw it as a crisis of enforcement, as a penalty paid by the impoverished for living there illegally, or as the deprioritization of ghettos by state agencies and the private sector as a result of corruption.

Civil society actors were actively responsive, with agencies like the Kenya Red Cross engaging in complementary search and rescue/recovery operations and emergency relief distribution. Others formed coalitions and engaged in legal contestation and collective advocacy through CSO statements aimed at holding the government and the pipeline company accountable. Additionally, UNEP and UN-OCHA conducted emergency environmental assessments to determine the ‘actual’ cause of the fire and inform policy decisions. They deemed the disaster an “industrial accident”. Post-disaster psychological first aid (PFA) was offered, albeit temporarily, which grassroots organizations criticized as a ‘hit-and-run’ response.

Politicians framed it in different ways, for example as the harsh cost of the pervasive encroachment on riparian reserves by illegal squatters or as a tragedy caused by systemic failures which were confronted politically and legally by the area’s Member of Parliament. Meanwhile, the media portrayed the disaster as a recurring ‘lesson never learnt’. This observation is especially poignant following the Embakasi fire tragedy in February this year — nearly 13 years later — that, like the Sinai pipeline fire, led to the loss of homes, lives, and dignity.

What lies beneath the flames?

These interpretations reveal the complexity of fire disasters, illustrating the interconnectedness of (such) disasters with place-based socio-cultural, political, religious, and economic systems. The Sinai disaster embodied multiple fire ontologies (2) that impacted how the disaster was governed and understood during and after it happened. The engagements during the mobile theatres and a critical analysis of supplementary data point to three fire ontologies with different undertones:

  1. Reinforced exploitation

Two significant trends set the stage for this ontology. The first was the recurring incidence of oil spills in the Mtongwe River (Ngong River). Every now and then, oil products would find their way into the river due to leaks or the vandalism of pipelines to access the precious commodity. Residents would scavenge for leaked oil. The second was the rampant practice of illegal oil siphoning — a lucrative business linked to business and political elites. The grassroots organizations revealed how this illegal business was camouflaged using exhauster trucks to transport siphoned oil. Youth got involved for profit, interpreting it as a “once-in-a-lifetime, God-given opportunity.”

This illustrates how oil siphoning has been socialized as a means of survival, how poverty drives the urban poor into perilous ventures, how the oil black market becomes politicized, and how capitalism perpetuates risk. The absence of alternative livelihood opportunities coupled with what Aiyabei et al. describe as the failure of enforcement created a fertile ground for continued exploitation of desperate residents. Ghetto residents considered taking the risk as better than unemployment, while the affluent in the oil market ‘industry’ exploited cheap labour whilst remaining hidden.

  1. Systemic failure

Multiple systemic failures were seen as gradually having reproduced the disaster. From absence of proper environmental and social impact assessments to a lack of planning, a lack of decent livelihood opportunities, the political facilitation of illegal siphoning, and weakened community vigilance, we see multiple factors converging over time to facilitate the tragedy. Narratives of illegality of the Sinai neighbourhood deflected attention from these contributing factors. “In the first place, it was even illegal to put up houses there. Where were we? We should have enforced the law,” remarked one civil society actor in a documentary (21:32). The ontology of ‘fires as a failure of systems’ hereby discounts the direct association of disaster risk solely with the illegality and unplanned nature of ghettos, emphasizing instead the need to look beneath the surface at the other underlying factors that mediate the occurrence and severity of a disaster.

3. Disaster bias

When a fire, especially a ghetto fire, is pitted against the myriad competing needs in cities, it never seems to make the cut. In Sinai, promised compensation and recovery investments were not fulfilled. In contrast, fires affecting the upper echelons of society, such as those at the city’s mall and airport, garnered immediate and substantial political attention, leading to generous resource allocation and the epoch-marking establishment of a national unit mandated to coordinate disaster management efforts. As one expert mentioned, “[…] two events that happened in Kenya during that year [2013] informed the decision by the then president to direct the establishment of a unit, and with a mandate and functions and vision, mission, and all that.”

These patterns underscore how economic and political influence shape the hierarchy of disasters, with some being perceived as more serious and others trivial. This (de)prioritization of disasters attracts varying levels of attention, responses, and resource allocation. It also raises the question: Why isn’t fire considered a good-enough disaster? While some speculate that fires generally rank lower on the disaster hierarchy, the reality reveals an interplay of power and politics that perpetuates disaster risk.

Oversimplified understandings yield oversimplified responses  

Probing the underlying contingencies that give a disaster its ontology is essential for understanding how the disaster is interpreted and consequently addressed. Despite the Sinai fire tragedy having been formally categorized as an industrial accident, the narratives analyzed here indicate complexities that go beyond the assumed spatial, temporal, and stakeholder boundaries of the disaster. The limited attention to exploitative patterns, systemic failures, and disaster biases constrained the development and implementation of comprehensive fire disaster management strategies before, during, and after the fire disaster. Oversimplifying disasters as single, isolated physical incidents overlooks their intricate interconnectedness with society, politics, economics, culture, beliefs, religions, and other factors. This ontological analysis lays emphasis on understanding the disaster in its multiple realities, boundaries, and interactions as an important foundation for effective disaster governance.

There is therefore an urgent need for Nairobi County’s disaster risk reduction department (DRR), the Kenya Red Cross Society, and other pertinent agencies to revisit the Sinai Tragedy. This entails not only fostering meaningful fire disaster resilience in Mukuru Sinai but also rethinking and collaboratively designing an approach to incorporate fire ontologies into fire disaster management practices. Enhanced an understanding of the multiple ontologies of fires can further bolster the efforts of frontline fire responders such as the Nairobi Fire Rescue Services (FRS) and community firefighters, including those in GRO6 and the Africa Fire Mission.

We continue engaging with GRO6, a grassroots network of community firefighters in the Mathare, Mukuru and Kibera Ghettos.

Endnotes:

(1)The term “ghetto” is used by communities is the so-called ‘informal settlements’ of Nairobi to refer to their homes. Therefore, this lexicon is adopted here to the extent necessary to uphold the indigenous nomenclature.

(2) Goodall et al. broadly describe ontologies in disaster sciences as the “philosophy of reality”, simplified as exploring the existence of a phenomenon (such as a fire) through the realms of underlying meanings, beliefs, and values that may be intuitive, assumed, and/or debated.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Beatrice Hati is a pracademic specializing in people-centered urbanism and resilience. She currently pursues a doctoral degree in multilevel disaster governance at the ISS while simultaneously serving as an urban development and research associate at the International Centre for Frugal Innovation (Kenya Hub).

Future (Francis Mukiri)is a community resilience advocate, a community firefighter, and leader of a grassroots organization in the Mukuru Ghettos.

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Four ways to boost investment in women-led small businesses

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Oxfam’s conversations and projects with entrepreneurs across the globe reveal a big gender gap in access to finance, says Windy Massabni. Women in business tell us that better support for them will include loan guarantees, alternative credit scoring systems and building the gender awareness of lenders.

Women selling mangos on the streets of Oyam, Uganda (picture: Windy Massabni)

“In Uganda where I come from, women still do not have the right of inheritance. All the assets and properties go to the male heir,” explains Marion Etiang, the founder of the Shea Care company in Uganda. “It’s up to men to give what they deem fit to the female in the family. Typically, when a woman goes to the bank to seek a loan for her business, the bank would require collateral which is often asset-based, even if she has the cash flow.”

Marion highlights a major root cause that holds women-owned businesses back: discriminatory gender norms over inheritance capital, capital that is therefore only available to men, not women, to grow their businesses. Such regressive gender norms lie behind the glaring gender gap in access to business finance.

BRINGING INVESTORS CLOSER TO WOMEN-LED SMES

In the realm of entrepreneurship, there’s often a disconnect between investors and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). While much effort is dedicated to making women-led SMEs “investment-ready”, little attention is paid to fostering “SME-readiness” or openness among investors or financial institutions. This oversight perpetuates inequalities in access to finance, particularly for women entrepreneurs.

But what if we could bring investors closer to women-led SMEs? In a survey conducted as part of Oxfam Novib’s project to support SMEs, the Impact SME Development programme, lack of collateral or assets was cited by women-owned businesses as a major obstacle. We also found that while 57% of businesses owned by men and 68% with mixed gender ownership sought external finance, only 46% of female-owned businesses did so.

Interestingly, women-owned SMEs had a 95% success rate in securing external funding, compared to 77% for male-owned and 93% for mixed-gender-owned businesses. This suggests that women entrepreneurs may be more reserved in seeking external funding. This is backed up by research by the Financial Alliance for Women, which found that women who are customers of financial service providers were more “risk conscious” then men, and more likely to sacrifice a potential upside in exchange for lower risk or less debt.

So how can we support women entrepreneurs to get the finance they deserve and that can help their firms thrive? Tackling root causes such as sexist inheritance customs and laws will of course be crucial for long-term change – but alongside this the women we talked to pointed out how NGOs and other support organisations can take action now to help them in four broad areas.

1. LOAN GUARANTEE SCHEMES

Many women emphasised the potential effectiveness of long-term guarantee schemes and partnerships. These local guarantees effectively protect financial institutions from losses if borrowers default, incentivising them to lend to women-owned businesses, even without collateral.

Abrar Shahriyar Mridha, Enterprise Development Project Manager at Oxfam GB, oversees a multi-country programme providing access to sustainable capital to help SMEs grow, and says such loan guarantees can transform the prospects for women-owned enterprises. “Partnering with banks and financial institutions gives us leverage to access women-led MSMEs, making them more bankable. These enterprises have created almost 18,500 jobs for women and reached 55,000 farmers, with 49% women in leadership positions.” Abrar’s example vividly illustrates the transformative effect that guarantee schemes can have on women-owned enterprises, fostering economic empowerment and gender equality.

2. ALTERNATIVE CREDIT SCORING – AND INCLUDING “SOCIAL PERFORMANCE”

Women are more reliable borrowers then men. Financial Alliance Women found that men are far more likely to be failing to keep up with repayments than women. Yet women continue to be underserved when it comes to accessing loans.

Different ways of assessing credit-worthiness  can help. That means analysing cash flow and business performance, rather than relying solely on traditional collateral-based assessments.

What could make a big difference is looking not just at conventional metrics but at the social capital created. Hassan Hajam, the Executive Director of Platform Impact, the Impact SME programme’s main partner in Cambodia, says: “Investors should design innovative, alternative financial instruments for impact-driven SMEs We have to move away from the typical balance sheet, profit-and loss statement, cash flow etc.. by integrating social and environmental dimensions at the end of the profit-and-loss statement if we want to see real impact thrive.”

By prioritising investments in businesses that can show such “social performance” – supporting gender equality and empowering women economically – investors can address disparities in access to finance.

3. FLEXIBLE PRODUCTS WITH SMALLER LOANS

An often-overlooked aspect of addressing gender inequality in access to finance is reassessing the size of investments. Many investors typically focus on offering large loans, often exceeding $1 million, which may not align with the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), especially those owned by women. These businesses frequently require smaller investments ranging from $100,000 to $500,000 to scale effectively.

Recognizing this disparity, initiatives such as our newly launched Pepea Fund aim to bridge the gap by providing smaller loans with a gender-lens tailored to SMEs, in this case with a focus on climate change mitigation. While we acknowledge that smaller investments may pose higher costs for investors, it’s imperative to take account of the social impact of such investments alongside the financial returns. We offer “mezzanine” loans, flexible loans with flexible terms that do not necessarily require tangible assets as security. This flexibility makes them more accessible to women entrepreneurs who may lack traditional collateral, such as property or equipment.

4. GENDER DIVERSITY AND GENDER AWARENESS IN FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS.

Ensuring lenders have a gender-diverse team is also crucial in addressing the biases and barriers faced by women entrepreneurs. This requires gender balance at all levels of a financial institution – from the executive level to front line staff.

At the ANDE x Sasin Business School Women Impact Entrepreneurship Day 2024, one business leader shared her experience of intimidation while applying for a loan at a bank.

As the head of a sustainable packaging company in Thailand, she had all the necessary documentation for the loan and met all the requirements, yet faced extensive questioning from the predominantly male staff. She felt compelled to prove her legitimacy, showcase her qualifications, and justify her ability to manage her business alongside motherhood.

This unsettling encounter underscores the need both for gender balance and for gender-sensitivity training for bank staff so they can better serve women. Alongside this lenders  will need a gender-lens investment strategy, fostering an environment where women entrepreneurs feel respected and supported, without encountering undue scrutiny or bias.

BUT WE ALSO NEED TO KEEP CAMPAIGNING ON ROOT CAUSES

Initiatives such as guarantee schemes, alternative credit scoring methods, and promoting gender diversity in fund management teams are essential steps in bridging the gender gap in SME financing. However, while these efforts do help alleviate immediate barriers, they do not address the root causes of gender disparities.

NGOs such as Oxfam and enterprise support organisations have a crucial role to play, not just in providing support through initiatives like those above, but also in advocating for policies and practices that tackle root causes, that change norms and systems and lay the foundations for true gender equity in access to finance.

This article was first published on Oxfam’s Views & Voices blog

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Windy Massabni is an Impact SME development specialist based at Oxfam Novib in the Hague. She coordinates the influencing, learning and training component of the programme in all countries.

Development Dialogue 19 | Why we need alternatives to mainstream education — and how the ‘Nook’ model of learning can show us the way

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Contemporary education models continue to reflect and perpetuate colonial educational priorities and by virtue are intricately tied to goals of shaping ‘children as future adults’ and creating a ‘productive’ workforce through education. In the process, they exclude marginalised groups of people, denying them the opportunity to learn and thrive. Alternatives to mainstream education models have been sought all over the world and are gaining traction. In this blog article, Anoushka Gupta discusses ‘Nooks’, alternative community learning spaces that non-profit organisation Project DEFY has introduced in several Asian and African countries, and shows how they are transforming the way in which people approach learning.

Learners working on projects during the design phase. Source: Project DEFY.

Situating systemic challenges within mainstream education models

The outdatedness of several mainstream education models in their failure to enable individuals and communities to respond to emerging challenges have long been recognised. Yet, not much has been done in terms of questioning the foundational principles of these models and in finding enduring alternatives. Such alternatives are needed particularly in Asia and Africa, where several systemic challenges confront educational systems.

It is well known, for example, that the founding principles of schooling systems rest on the assumption that child development is a linear process — it is thereby assumed that a child of a particular age must learn certain skills and competencies before progressing further[1]. As a result, as children move through school, their worth is increasingly tied to their performance in standardized examinations, placing immense pressure on them to do well and limiting opportunities to explore interests or enjoy the process of learning. Metrics to understand what constitutes ‘success’ over the years (through assessment results or further educational trajectories) have standardised experiences and divorced education from its local context[2].

Moreover, differences in material wealth and social location play an important role in understanding variations in ‘success’ defined through assessment results. For example, Dalit and Adivasi communities in India who were historically excluded from economic resources and formal educational systems face challenges in meeting the uniform testing criteria, which puts them at a disadvantage in many disciplines and professions even today[3]. In Uganda, high rates of teenage pregnancy and associated stigma reproduce exclusion and drive girls to drop out[4].

These instances demonstrate that mainstream schooling is built on rigid eligibility rules and criteria for success that fail to secure an environment where learners feel safe and heard and where they can explore their interests instead of sticking to uniform curricula, often detached from their own realities. In the next section, I will show how the Nook learning model seeks to contend with such hegemonic education models and creates safe spaces in which learners can thrive without excessive pressure to perform.

Questioning why we learn

First conceptualised in 2016 by Abhijit Sinha, founder of the India-based non-profit organisation Project DEFY,[5]Nooks are physical community learning environments located in under-resourced places that are accessible to learners irrespective of their age, gender, marital status, and socio-economic background. These spaces are built on questioning the fundamental purpose of learning, which for mainstream models often is creating a productive workforce by teaching them standardised knowledge and skills instead of centring interest as the main driver of learning.

Sinha’s experiment started in a small village in Karnataka, India. Disillusioned with his own educational experiences in one of India’s top engineering colleges, he envisioned a space equipped with basic tools and without strict instructions or rules that would push learners to really explore their interests and would encourage resourcefulness, teamwork, and innovation. These spaces later expanded, went through several iterations, and became the ‘Nooks’ they are today. And they continue to be adapted to new conditions and the needs of learners and communities. Since 2016, 41 Nooks have been set up and 32 are currently operational through partnerships with local organisations across Uganda, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, India, and Bangladesh.

The freedom to choose how (and what) to learn

Nooks follow ‘self-designed learning’ as the pedagogical orientation where the core belief rests on learners defining and designing their own educational goals in an enabling environment. Each space is equipped with basic tools, raw materials, the internet, and laptops and has two fellows who act as mentors.

The Nook follows a cycle-based structure comprising four stages:

  1. Exploration — fellow-guided sessions that introduce learners to diverse learning areas (from robotics to art to storytelling).
  2. Goal Setting — the identification and articulation by learners of a specific learning goal based on their interesteither from areas in the exploration stage or something totally different, as well as their definition of the steps and resources required to translate the goal into a project.
  3. Design — the execution by learners of the project, which they spend approximately three to six months on (the length of the cycle differs depending on the Nook).
  4. Exhibition — the presentation of their work at an event known as an ‘external exhibition’, which is used as a platform for showcasing learner projects to community members and external stakeholders.

Conversations, reflections, and enjoyment

In each cycle, beyond working on projects, learners gather twice a day in opening and closing circles to discuss any troubles they have faced, be it related to their project or something that bothers them in general. Reflections during these designated discussion hours are meant to build a sense of community in the Nook. Many learners have chosen to take up problems in their community – for instance, learners are trying to tackle environmental pollution in the Barishal Nook in Bangladesh. This approach to learning allows individuals to share challenges without judgment and allows them to flexibly explore their interests without assessments or pressures of completion. It intends to recentre the role of learners’ agency and to foster an understanding of individuals as part of a larger collective.

An opening circle in one of the Nooks. Source: Project DEFY.

The Nooks have also had a wider impact. First, self-designed learning naturally implies that projects differ across and within Nooks. A common thread, however, is that learners tend to pick up problems they see in their surroundings or delve deeper into an area they were curious about. In the Bulawayo Nook in Zimbabwe, for example, a learner articulated his desire to build an artificial limb, explaining, “Personally, I need it. I would also want to help other people in my community who are disabled once I achieve this goal. The cost of artificial legs is very expensive in the country so that is why I decided to make a cheaper and innovative one”.

Several learners also revealed that their goals challenged normative gendered ideas of learning and work. For instance, in the Gahanga Nook in Rwanda, a female learner spoke of how she intended to learn tailoring initially. However, with exposure to different areas, she discovered her interest in welding despite initial resistance from her family. With time and through encouragement from peers and fellows, she created a hanger and a garden chair, ultimately convincing her family to support her.

Lastly, Nooks foster a community identity. Before Nooks are set up, a community mapping exercise is carried out to understand how the space potentially adds value to the lives of community members. The eventual goal of each Nook is for learners to drive the concept independently. While Nooks are still young and learners running the Nook independently are yet to be located, several seeds of leadership from within Nooks have been sown. Beyond taking on day-to-day responsibilities, steering opening and closing circles, and mentoring fellow learners, the transition of several learners to Nook facilitator roles is encouraging.

Expanding the ‘idea’ behind and beyond Nooks — some final takeaways

Globally, enhancing access to schooling is hailed as a marker of development. Yet, the exclusion and disempowerment that are part of both the design and implications of such beliefs are rarely questioned. In contexts where disempowerment stems from wider socio-economic barriers that trickle down to schooling, Nooks demonstrate the value of learning spaces that allow flexibility to explore one’s interests without imposing restrictions on what to learn. In turn, the emphasis on contextual learning and engagement with community challenges as part of the learning journey seeks to upturn individualised notions of education.

Finally, while ‘community-led development’ is increasingly used as the go-to buzzword among development practitioners and donors, very few are truly willing to let go of predetermined criteria to measure the ‘output’ and ‘outcomes’ of education interventions. Truly recognising the agency of the learners and communities means first questioning our own metrics of what constitutes ‘success.’

This blog article draws on a recent working paper published by Project DEFY that can be accessed here

References:

[1] Prout, A. & James, A. (1997) ‘A New Paradigm for the Sociology of Childhood? Provenance, Promise and Problems’ in Prout, A. & James, A. (ed.) Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood. Second edition. London: Falmer Press. pp. 7-32.

[2] Ydesen, C. and Andreasen, K. (2020) “Historical roots of the global testing culture in education,” Nordic studies in Education, 40(2), pp. 149-166. DOI: 10.23865/nse.v40.2229

[3] See Ch2 ‘School Education and Exclusion’ in India Exclusion Report 2013-14. pp.44-75. Available at: IndiaExclusionReport2013-2014.pdf (idsn.org)

[4] Study-report-on-Linkages-between-Pregnancy-and-School-dropout.pdf (faweuganda.org)

[5] For more on Project DEFY, see https://hundred.org/en/innovations/project-defy-design-education-for-yourself

About the author:

Anoushka Gupta is a researcher based out of India. Her research interests include child and youth wellbeing, understanding social exclusion, and utilising participatory methods in community-based research. She has worked extensively with non-profit organisations primarily in India on educational quality and community-based learning models. She previously majored in Social Policy as part of the MA in Development Studies from the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam and holds a Bachelor’s degree in History from St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi.

Adapting codes of conduct for humanitarian workers to the DRC context can prevent and combat sexual abuse

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The Democratic Republic of Congo, particularly in its eastern side, has become a theatre of recurrent humanitarian cases of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse ‘SEA’. There have been reports of sexual violence and abuse from communities during the Ebola response and from internally displaced people as a result of waves of wars and conflicts. In a previous blog resulting from the discussions in the humanitarian observatory, Patrick Milabyo Kyamusugulwa and Delu Lusambya Mwenebyake argued that the fight against sexual abuse should be more embedded in the context of DRC. Here, they focus on how this could be achieved.
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On 15 May 2023, participants in the Humanitarian Observatory in the Democratic Republic of Congo (OH-DRC) met to shed light on how to adapt good conduct codes in humanitarian assistance, especially related to sexual conduct, to the local context of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This blog is the result of two group discussions on the topic. Reports have mentioned cases of abuse by local, international, and national staff operating on the ground, while delivering aid in areas dominated by different armed group operations and fighting, most recently in July 2023. There are different codes of conduct in the humanitarian sector, but the question is how they can become part of the lived realities of humanitarian actors and affected communities in the context. These rules play out and are differently interpreted where women and girls are exposed to a range of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) in Humanitarian actions in DRC. This blog argues that good conduct codes for humanitarian workers that prohibit all forms of sexual abuse, harassment and exploitation should be translated to local mechanisms and in ways that are appropriate to the social norms of the context.   Recognize the reality of a multilingual context: Translate formal codes of conduct in different local and national languages: i.e., in Kiswahili in eastern DRC, in Tshiluba in the Kasai regions, in Lingala in the capital city Kinshasa, in Kikongo in western DRC and sometimes in local dialects; for instance in Kinande in the Beni and Butembo regions.   Involve different actors including state officials: Allocate a budget line in each project dedicated to social mobilization for SEA prevention. Other activities could include organizing sketches and broadcasting programmes in local languages on radio and television about SEA and its consequences. Earlier involvement of state local actors (Mayors of cities, Territory Administrators, chiefdom representatives and alike) is needed in following up and acting severely against the abuse as specified in Congolese law. Justice actors such as public prosecutors need to be at maximum alert, while holding public audiences against documented sexual abuse cases. Civil society actors must denounce, advocate and lobby in favour of victims, be instrumental in promoting positive masculinity, and accompany victims in terms of socio-psycho-judiciary. At the same time, they must also reinforce the frame and space of influence and information sharing on sexual abuse, harassment, and rape for more reflection, follow up, advocacy and lobby, networking and connecting with local gender-based thematic groups. Finally, hotel managers should be involved in actions to prevent and combat any forms of sexual abuse, harassment and alike, and receive training on detecting and reporting signs of abuse.   Adapt humanitarian codes of conduct mechanisms to the context of the DRC There are two possible solutions in this area. One is internal to each humanitarian agency that requires regular awareness-raising of staff members on the one hand, and a clear sanctioning system on the other. This should include different training sessions, suggestion boxes, regular follow-up and evaluation, and creating a space for internal talks on this. To fight abuses, there needs to be denunciation, judicial sanctions and termination of contracts. Another way to change behaviours is through external mechanisms of awareness raising that refer to existing laws with and for affected community members. Also, family education and Christian message education against rape and abuses along with women’s empowerment would be beneficial. Lastly, schooling and mentorship for children, as well as awareness raising on the topic towards girls at schools and universities by promoting positive masculinity. Here too, fighting abuses can go through denunciation, judicial accompaniment, and criminalizing perpetrators of sexual abuses.   Reinforce local and existing norms There is a need to enforce the 2006 Law on sexual violence in DRC and the 2009 Law of children’s protection. Again, promoting women’s empowerment, children’s schooling and evangelization based on Christian beliefs to protect women and girls against any form of abuses, harassment and rape are all routes towards improving the situation. Applying all social norms that play on prevention, repression, discouragement, sanctioning any form of influence and structures of impunity; and instead promoting victim’s interest and damage repair. Value traditional and religious norms that prohibit and sanction sexual abuse, harassment and rape by promoting positive values of customs and religions. At the same time mobilizing influential church and traditional leaders along with creating a space of family education on the topic. In addition, messaging on positive masculinity and Christian positive values need to target both youth, couples, and women. Consideration of sexual abuse and the like as a transgression of the Christian faith, and sufficient reason for excommunication and community sanctioning. Religious and traditional songs that promote local values on positive masculinity such as else’s woman is a poison. Only locally driven actions have the potential to bring about changes when humanitarian codes of conduct are translated into long lasting and existing social norms. There is a need to allocate a budget line to social mobilization on the topic, strengthen capacities of local actors to the task and promote social norms based on formal laws, religious and traditional beliefs for positive masculinity.
Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1702372762559{margin-top: 0px !important;}”]About the authors: Patrick Milabyo Kyamusugulwa is Professor at the Institut Supérieur des Techniques Médicales de Bukavu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). He is member of the DRC Humanitrian Observatory and member of the Social Science Centre for African Development-KUTAFITI. Delu Lusambya Mwenebyake is a PhD researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies (Erasmus University Rotterdam), Delu is working on humanitarian governance in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Community-driven, accountability, and advocacy in Humanitarian Actions.

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This blog is part of the  Humanitarian Governance: Accountability, Advocacy, Alternatives’ project. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 884139

Institutional care is an affront to rights of children with disabilities

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In solidarity to the 16 days activism against gender-based violence, this article highlights the structural violence that impedes the rights of children with disabilities —including girls— in Kenya. The author Stephen Ucembe, who is an alumni of the International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, emphasizes the need to protect the rights of children confined to institutional care.

Image Credit: Hope and Homes for Children

Every child, including those with disabilities, is entitled to the rights enshrined in the Convention of the Rights of the Child which Kenya has ratified. As a country, we have agreed to uphold these rights through the Children’s Act 2022.

However, in contravention of their rights, children with disabilities are often hidden away in communities or sometimes separated and isolated in institutions against their wishes. Isolation from communities on the basis of disability is discriminatory. It is a dereliction of duty – an abdication of responsibility by the government. Supporting these children to be visible in our communities and families normalizes disability. Hiding them from others dehumanizes and perpetuates stigma and discrimination, hence exacerbating the problem.

Furthermore, unnecessary placement in residential care institutions often multiplies violations; children with disabilities are denied other rights, like the right to family and community care, to culture, to identity, to freedom of association.

A global Human Rights Watch report, published in 2017 titled, ‘Children with disabilities: Deprivation of liberty in the name of care and treatment’ documented that children with disabilities often face severe neglect and abuse. This included beatings and psychological violence, sexual violence, involuntary and inappropriate medical treatment, use of abusive physical restraints, seclusion and sedation, denial of education and denial of regular contacts with families.

An investigative media exposé traced how the problems described above play out locally. It uncovered multiple human rights violations perpetuated against institutionalized children with disabilities, by a government agency.

Nobody is seeking to romanticize families and communities. There are many children facing abuse, neglect and exploitation, including stigma and discrimination within family and community settings. However, studies consistently point to serious violations in institutional care settings. Moreover, over 80 years of research shows that supported families and communities are far better equipped than institutions when it comes to improvement of children’s overall well-being.

The primary role of government should not be to create more barriers, or spaces that deepen inequality and diminish inclusivity. Yet, this is exactly what we do when we institutionalize these children or neglect them in communities. The role of the government should be to ensure their protection and enjoyment of all rights, through full inclusion and participation in the community.

To make inclusion a reality, we need responsive initiatives that tackle ubiquitous stigma and discrimination. That starts with community services and facilities available to persons with disabilities, enabling them to access education, housing, rehabilitation and therapy.  It extends to respite care centers that allow struggling care-givers time off, or time to go and work. And it means we must improve infrastructure and provide necessary assistive devices, aids and services, like hearing aids, crutches, wheelchairs, tricycles, white canes and walking appliances to support full participation.

Lastly, it’s up to us to ensure we do not leave these children behind in the care reform processes that the government has initiated. To support governments to include disabled children in family based alternative care, the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities developed ‘Guidelines on deinstitutionalization, including in emergencies’.

These guidelines are meant to ensure an end to rampant violence against institutionalized persons with disabilities, including children. This advice should ensure children with disabilities are included and supported in families and communities, and prevent their institutionalization.

This article was first published on The Standard.

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Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Stephen Ucembe is the Regional Advocacy Manager, Hope and Homes for Children. He is a professional social worker with skills, knowledge, and experience working with children and young people without parental care, and vulnerable families. His preference is to work in Kenya, or regionally (east and southern Africa) with organization (s) whose mission and vision is family and child focused.

 

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Humanitarian Observatories Series | Creating a space for Congolese to talk about issues including how widespread sexual abuse is ravaging the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s humanitarian sector

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Sexual abuse is widespread in the humanitarian sector of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The observatory was set up to discuss, among others, crises that plague the humanitarian sector, including sexual abuse in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The Humanitarian Observatory (HO) is a suitable space for academics, civil society, international and state actors to discuss humanitarian governance challenges so to contribute in shedding light on how to go about them sustainably. A pervasive issue with devastating consequences Sexual abuse has become a significant problem in the DRC’s humanitarian sector. Incidents of sexual abuse by humanitarian actors  are widespread, as humanitarian activity has sharply increased. Independent news agency the New Humanitarian is one of the platforms reporting on these developments — in September last year it highlighted  the stories of 34 cases of alleged sexual abuse that resulted in pregnancy. The majority of the women reported abuse from employees of United Nations agencies, others from those working for international humanitarian agencies. More recently, that the number of women reporting sexual abuse by aid workers is still growing. The reports of purported victims of sexual abuse indicate that sexual abuse in the DRC has two main faces: (i) the sexual exploitation of aid recipients — that is, trading aid for sex, and (ii) the sexual exploitation of job applicants or colleagues lower in rank — that is, trading sex for jobs, job security, or promotions. One of the women interviewed by the New Humanitarian related that she was only 15 years old when her boss started inviting her to a hotel for sexual relations, claiming that she was to have sex with him if she wanted to keep her job. A few months later, she became pregnant, and she is now in charge of raising her young daughter at her own expense.   A space for talking about sexual abuse One year ago, in October 2022, a group of people in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) — humanitarians, academics, civil society actors and others — got together to form a Humanitarian Observatory.[1] The observatory, one of a handful set up in different countries as part of the At the  observatory event on 15 March this year, we chose to focus the discussion on sexual abuse in the humanitarian sector in the DRC. Sexual abuse scandals in the humanitarian sector have been widely reported, but occasions where we as Congolese can talk about such issues are few and far between. The launch of the observatory therefore served as a space for us to openly discuss the issue — something that has not truly been done to date — in particular how sexual abuse comes about and what needs to be done to address the problem, especially by those working on the ground in the DRC.
Photo 1: humanitarian observatory members in group’s discussion about sexual abuse in DRC, 15 March 2023, Bukavu
  Some observations The meeting of the Humanitarian Observatory where the issue was discussed had 18 participants comprised of 10 men and 8 women. Of the 18 participants, four were humanitarian aid workers, ten were researchers, and four were civil society actors. We could therefore have a balanced discussion in which different participants highlighted different dimensions of the issue and proposed several possible measures. Below, we highlight some of the main observations that were made at the meeting.   Shame and fear drive silence First of all, it was noted that victims are ashamed of having been sexually abused and therefore many victims prefer not to speak out in view of cultural restrictions for women; this is even more so in the case of male victims of sexual abuse. People may also be afraid to speak out because they fear retaliation from the perpetrator. Similarly, even though most of the participants of the discussion are active in the humanitarian sector, there seemed to be an informal agreement among victims about refraining from telling personal stories about or mentioning the names of people they knew to be perpetrators. Instead, in order to keep the discussion safe, participants spoke about sexual abuse as an external phenomenon rather than as practices they are involved in or have witnessed first-hand.   Here are some other observations that participants made:
  1. The problem is widespread. Reflecting on the problem, the participants agreed that (forced or consensual) sexual relations are rampant in the humanitarian sector. Many humanitarian male actors have condoms in their offices or while traveling for fieldwork. Moreover, it is very common that victims are invited into hotel rooms. Women are deceived with flattering words of promises of marriage, or they are just being told they need to consent if they want to keep their jobs. This may also happen to young women in need that are exploited for promises of goods or other gains. It is also rather common that humanitarian workers seek sexual relations with women engaged in small trade activities around the humanitarian compounds or women engaged in small jobs for the agencies, such as cleaning or cooking.
 
  1. Men at all levels are the perpetrators. The participants to the observatory found it important to note that accusations of sexual abuse concern men at all levels of the organization, from managers and office workers (such as human resources officers) to fieldwork staff, drivers, guards, and people with odd jobs working alongside women in cleaning and cooking. This is important because these latter groups are often not aware of codes of conduct and are not being involved in awareness-raising activities.
 
  1. Several context-specific factors make sexual abuse possible. A first factor is formed by the misery, poverty, and vulnerability among community members, who rely mostly on humanitarian assistance. The second factor is formed by the long-term stay of humanitarian personnel and operations of humanitarian agencies in the area, with little control or accountability of international and national non-governmental organizations working in isolated or remote zones. In these conditions, many women seeking access to aid, funding, or employment have resigned themselves to the idea that sexual relations are a largely unescapable ‘part of the deal’ and that their protests will not be heard.
 
  1. Patriarchal norms help normalize sexual abuse. And above all, it was recognized that sexual abuse is related to a dominant or hegemonic Congolese masculinity based on common and informal cultures, where men behave as if they are entitled to have sex in return for favours.
  Two recommendations Reflecting on this discussion, we can ask how we can prevent and fight against the phenomenon. At the end of the observatory meeting, the participants together formulated two main recommendations for actions that can be taken:  
  1. Rethinking norms of masculinity and combating toxic masculinity are crucial. Recognizing that the problem partly stems from cultural issues, it is a priority to promote positive masculinity through different means, including the news media and social media. It is important to combat predatory sexual behaviour and rethink masculinity norms. These should draw on alternative masculinity repertoires that can also be found in the DRC, such as the caring father or breadwinner forms of masculinity. In these, men are responsible providers for their family, including for their spouses, and at the same time provide space for women’s empowerment. It is a masculinity ideal where men considerably contribute to the household, both economically and socially.
 
  1. All workers in the humanitarian sector need to be made aware of behavioural norms and codes of conduct that should guide their actions. To combat sexual abuse in the humanitarian sector, awareness raising is a priority, focusing on humanitarian staff, including drivers, guards, and other male staff that are less exposed to training on codes of conduct and principles of humanitarian assistance. In addition, state actors, civil society organisations, and community members should be involved in awareness raising and following up on reported cases. It must be ensured that perpetrators are sanctioned according to legal, religious, and traditional norms of the Congolese society.
  The above-mentioned actions will need to be enduring — a single, once-off intervention is insufficient given that cultural norms strongly shape the present situation, in particular by normalizing sexual abuse and providing a space for its continued existence. The Eastern Congo has become a permanent site of humanitarian assistance, and this is not likely to end soon. This means that sexual abuse will also remain an issue. This is not only a matter for the humanitarian agencies. It is important that all stakeholders, including communities, civil society, and state agencies, take responsibility to fight against sexual abuse.
[1] We acknowledge active participation of members of the Humanitarian Observatory discussions in the event of 15 March 2023 from which the current blog is written, namely Claude Iguma, Odile Bulabula, Gentil Kavusa, Denise Siwatula, Bilubi Ulengabo, Christian Namegabe, Shukuru Manegabe, Sifa Katembera, Henri Kintuntu, Wabenga Lunanga, Samuel Kyamundu, Prosper Lufungula, and Veronique Saleh.
Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question. About the authors: Patrick Milabyo Kyamusugulwa is Professor at the Institut Supérieur des Techniques Médicales de Bukavu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). He is member of the DRC Humanitrian Observatory and member of the Social Science Centre for African Development-KUTAFITI. Delu Lusambya Mwenebyake is a PhD researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies (Erasmus University Rotterdam), Delu is working on humanitarian governance in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Community-driven, accountability, and advocacy in Humanitarian Actions.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc

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Humanitarian Observatories Series | Why it’s crucial for internally displaced persons to participate in the peace process following Ethiopia’s Oromia Conflict

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Like the conflict in Tigray, one of the gravest consequences of the conflict in Ethiopia’s Oromia region has been the disastrous level of internal displacement it has given rise to. In this blog, Alemayehu B. Hordofa provides an overview of the situation of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Oromia and shows why ensuring their rights should be at the heart of the peace process in the region. He contends that the peace process in Oromia should give adequate space to the viewpoints of at-risk populations, including IDPs, and that including their concerns in a peace agreement is critical for safeguarding sustainable peace and preventing future conflict-induced displacements.

Photo Source: Personal Collections

The political transition that occurred in Ethiopia in 2018 was hoped to bring peace to this deeply divided country; however, guns failed to be silenced, and Ethiopia continues to be ravaged by several conflicts that have uprooted millions of civilians from their homes. One such conflict is the one being waged in Oromia, the largest of the country’s eleven regions stretching across central, western, and southern Ethiopia.

The conflict has its roots in decades-old clashes between the Ethiopian government and the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), a nationalist political party established in 1973 to struggle for the right to self-determination of the Oromo people. The party was proclaimed a terrorist organization under the country’s former draconian Anti-terrorism Proclamation, and its leaders lived in exile in Eritrea until their return following the political transition in 2018. After the transition, the Ethiopian parliament lifted the OLF’s terrorist label and subsequently made significant amendments to the previous repressive anti-terrorism law. The new administration also signed the Asmara Agreement with the OLF and released political prisoners.

All these actions seemed to mark the start of a period of peace and stability for people whose livelihoods had been disrupted because of the decades-long conflict. But despite efforts to peacefully end the conflict, it flared up again shortly after the OLF leadership’s return to Ethiopia. This happened as the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), the military wing of the OLF, accused the Ethiopian government of failing to address major political demands made by the Oromo people. It subsequently refused to lay down arms, severed its relationship with the OLF, and continued its insurgencies, first in western and southern Oromia and then also in its central and northern parts following the military void created by the Tigray conflict.

This led to the short lifespan of the Asmara Agreement, as the government soon reverted to verbal clashes with the OLF and open military confrontation with the OLA. Below, I argue that durable peace can be ensured only by heeding the demands of the millions of IDPs that have not been met by the warring parties in their previous agreement, which has failed to truly resolve anything, and which does not seem to be at the center of the two parties’ ongoing negotiation.

 

How peace was sought—and why it proved ineffective

According to the 2023 Global Report on Internal Displacement, Ethiopia is the country in Africa with the second-highest number of IDPs after the DRC, with some 3.8 million people displaced. Conflict is the main driver of displacement, both at the national level and in the Oromia region. The latest data from OCHA show that over 800,000 people have been displaced in Western Oromia alone due to conflict. The number of people displaced because of conflict in the whole of Oromia is much larger, but displacement data is difficult to access.

The devastating impact of the ongoing conflict in Oromia compelled personalities, both inside and outside the government, to advocate for a peaceful solution of the Oromia conflict in a bid to stop displacement. In December last year, MPs from Oromia called on the Ethiopian Prime Minister to reach a peaceful settlement with the rebels, and opposition parties and independent civil society organizations made the same demands. The conflict in Oromia became such an important human rights and security issue that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stressed the need to end the “ongoing instability in the Oromia region” in his talks with the Ethiopian prime minister earlier this year.

Despite these internal and external pressures, the need to repair the crippled economy, and the increasing intensity threshold of the conflict, efforts to enter into a peace agreement remain futile. The first round of negotiations, mediated by Kenya and Norway, took place between April 24 and May 2 this year in Zanzibar and ended with no agreement having been reached to cease the hostilities. The two parties subsequently released similar statements describing the ‘unfortunate’ situation, claiming that “it was not possible to reach an agreement on some issues” during the first round of negotiations, and vowing to continue the negotiations to resolve the conflict “permanently and peacefully.”

 

No peace is possible without heeding the demands of IDPs

One of the main reasons for the failure of the Asmara agreement is its top-down orientation and failure to adequately engage the vast number of people who became victims of the impacts of the conflict, including the IDPs.[1] The agreement brought the political leaders of the two warring parties to the negotiation table without heeding the victims’ demands. The current peace process should learn from the failure of its predecessor and take practical measures to address the rights of IDPs, including the right to obtain sustainable solutions in the form of return, resettlement, or local integration; restoration of their damaged properties and livelihoods; and reinstatement of the provisions of social services in displacement or resettlement areas. These measures would break the conflict cycle, realize inclusiveness, ensure local ownership, and address vulnerability that could otherwise led to long-lasting instability and undermine the success of the process.

For example, the conflict between the government forces and OLA in the Horo Guduru Wollega Zone of the Oromia region was intersected with cross-border attacks against civilians by militias and armed vigilante groups from the neighbouring Amhara region, causing the large-scale displacement of civilians and the destruction of civilian properties. Likewise, many IDPs from western Oromia have crossed regional administrative borders to seek protection and assistance in other regions out of the fear of being targeted along ethnic lines. Other IDPs were forced to flee their homes out of fear of human rights violations by the government’s security forces.

The peace process should address the root causes that triggered these cross-border attacks on civilians, ethnic targeting, and human rights violations. It should comprehensively respond to these issues; not integrating the interests and rights of these IDPs in the peace process would detrimentally affect its success and durability.

Indeed, conversations I had with IDPs confirmed the importance of the peace process for the millions of Ethiopians living in or displaced from conflict areas in Oromia. For example, Muluneh (name changed)[2], who used to lead an independent life as a local businessperson and has now become an IDP because of the conflict in Oromia, explained:

“If the peace process is to become a reality, it must provide for some tangible mechanisms to address our [IDPs’] needs and interests. We [IDPs] endure the brunt of conflict in the region, having lost all our belongings and fled to save our lives. Any viable peace process in the region should address the root causes of the problems that made us vulnerable in the first place. We need compensation for our property looted, burned, and destroyed.”

Similar demands were made by other IDPs and human rights organizations to prevent arbitrary displacement, provide protection for IDPs and peacefully end the conflict in Oromia. The Ethiopian Humanitarian Observatory organized its second workshop on the topic of ‘Effective Governance Architecture for Managing Responses to Internal Displacement: The Role of Displacement Affected Communities and Humanitarian Organizations’ in March this year, during which workshop participants confirmed the low level of IDPs’ participation in humanitarian, development, and peace processes and underscored the positive correlation between IDPs’ participation, the effectiveness of humanitarian aid, and the sustainability of peace. Yet, these victims have not been consulted at any stage of the peace process in Oromia, their right to a remedy for their destroyed livelihoods has not been acknowledged, and the restoration of their property rights has not been prioritized.

Thus, it becomes clear that the participation of IDPs in the peace process is a cornerstone in ensuring its sustainability, warranting local ownership, and improving the implementation of its terms. The peace process must involve IDPs at all stages, and any potential peace agreement must include measures to ensure the specific human rights of IDPs and must reflect their interests. It must give a mandate for CSOs’ following up and monitoring of its enforcement.

Lastly, accountability is another cornerstone for lasting peace in the region. Peace becomes durable when it is combined with accountability and reparations. Accountability for causing, contributing to, or failing to address internal displacement should be an integral part of the peace process in Oromia.

[1] The other reasons include a lack of transparency in the negotiation process, as the terms of the agreement remain opaque until today and due to the absence of spaces for CSOs’ engagement in its implementation and monitoring.

[2] I spoke to Muluneh (name changed) in the town of Burayu in the last week of February as part of my efforts to define the focus of the Ethiopian Humanitarian Observatory that forms part of the ISS-hosted ‘Humanitarian Governance: Accountability, Advocacy, Alternatives’ project. Just a few days prior, the president of Oromia at a regional council meeting revealed, for the first time, the government’s intention to make peace with the OLA.

“The post is part of the humanitarian observatories series that received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme [Advance grant number 884139].”

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

 

Alemayehu B. Hordofa is a Ph.D. researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR). He obtained his LLM in International Human Rights Law from the Irish Center for Human Rights (ICHR), University of Galway, Ireland. He is currently working on the role of Civil Society Organizations and Crisis-affected People to shape humanitarian governance ‘from below’ in the context of the humanitarian response to IDPs in Ethiopia. His research interests lie in forced displacement, localization of humanitarian aid, transitional justice, and the development of CSOs in Ethiopia.

 

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Humanitarian Observatories Series | Humanitarian observatories – seeking change from below

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In the past few months, several humanitarian observatories have been set up in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and South Asia as part of a project on humanitarian governance and advocacy. These observatories review humanitarian action in the countries they’re located in and aim to contribute to humanitarian reform from below. In this post, Dorothea Hilhorst introduces this exciting new development and the Bliss blog series that will show what’s happening at the different observatories.
Launch DRC observatory 30 October 2022
Humanitarian governance is associated with many challenges related to the effectiveness of aid, accountability and trust, and the huge power imbalance between large humanitarian agencies and national aid providers, for example. Questions abound. How is the effectiveness of aid perceived by affected communities? How are funds allocated? Who are the people most in need? What is the role of the state in service provision? How is aid politicized, and whose interests are at stake? What is the role of national NGOs and civil society, and how are their voices heard? Whereas many of these questions are addressed in international policies and debates, the influence of actors from the countries that are mostly affected by crisis – recipients of aid, national aid providers and others – on these policies and debates is wanting. As part of a humanitarian governance project hosted at the ISS, we have launched a series of humanitarian observatories for such actors to help monitor humanitarian governance processes in locales of humanitarian aid interventions with the aim of improving effectiveness and accountability. The project is briefly introduced below.   Creating networks, enhancing dialogue and collaboration In an era of growing humanitarian needs, international advocacy has been focused on improving the effectiveness of aid, accountability, and the role of national actors. But these initiatives usually take place at the global level. We want to turn this around and reform humanitarianism by creating spaces for actors affected by aid interventions to monitor these in the places where they are enacted. The project ‘Humanitarian governance. Accountability, advocacy, alternatives’ that seeks to do this is a five-year programme funded by the European Research Council. The programme is hosted at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague and is organized as a network with the following partners: the Universidad de los Andes in Colombia, Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, and KUTAFITI and the CREGED in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is a culmination of aspirations and activities of my previous work where I have always aimed to enhance dialogue and create networks of people across different parts of the humanitarian field, especially with people living through and working on humanitarian crises in their own setting. The project hopes to create a space where people from those countries can meet and reflect on the challenges facing humanitarian governance in their country. For this reason, and following several exploratory discussions in the team, our partners have set up humanitarian observatories, which can be broadly defined as networks of a variety of actors that observe trends and processes in humanitarian governance and propose changes when needed. They can be imagined as spaces in which these actors keep an eye on how the humanitarian aid system functions in a specific context, providing an impression of the overall functioning of the system while also functioning amid all the humanitarian activities taking place. The observatories include representatives of affected communities, civil servants, members of civil society, and researchers from within and outside of academia. Why focus on national or regional contexts? There are several reasons why it is important to focus observatories on national or regional contexts:
  • National or regional observatories help observe humanitarian governance in its context. Due to reforms in the humanitarian sector, its organization is moving away from being centred on international actors and toward becoming more embedded in the countries of implementation. It is therefore important to observe humanitarian governance in its context, as it is affected by contextual issues such as the histories of governance development in a country, the relative strength of state and non-state institutions, and the level of economic development.
  • National or regional observatories amplify the voices of a variety of actors. International policy fora typically include voices of actors from different countries, but these are usually the same handful of humanitarian actors. By organizing the observatories locally, a larger range of actors can be involved and can make themselves heard, including actors from affected communities, researchers, and journalists.
  • National or regional observatories can become effective vehicles for promoting change on humanitarian governance in their context. Humanitarian advocacy can be defined as the activities of affected communities and their advocates to articulate, advance, and protect their rights (i.e. entitlements to assistance and citizenship rights more broadly), needs, views, and interests. This can be advocacy targeted at different actors and levels, including the humanitarian community. This works best when advocacy messages are context-specific, concrete, and implementable.
  Spaces for learning and dialoguing The observatories have further added value beyond monitoring the state of the humanitarian aid sector. For the members, they are a space for learning. Interestingly, the desire is also to learn beyond the context. The South Asia observatory, for example, is currently organizing a session about the situation in Sudan. The observatories are a space for exchange. In meetings of the observatory, members can exchange their experiences and insights and can learn from each other. This was for example paramount in the sessions held in the DRC about sexual abuse in the sector – participants shared their personal observations and ideas. The observatories can also be a space for strategic thinking to consider what the changes are that people wish to see in humanitarian governance. With this purpose in mind, the Ethiopian observatory has had several sessions to review a new piece of legislation on internally displaced persons and make recommendations on how this can include more accountability to affected people. And, finally, the observatories can be a space for action and influence. To some extent, this is built into the observatory, as participants can take the recommendations back to their own organizations. And the observatory meetings usually end in agreeing on points of action, such as entering into conversation with authorities on a certain topic or seeking exposure by writing a blog post.   From conceptualization to implementation There are currently four observatories: in the DRC, Ethiopia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and South Asia. A fifth observatory will be launched in The Philippines coming September. Each of the current observatories has held initial meetings. The agenda of the meetings is determined by the participants; hence, they all have a different agenda that is relevant to the context. In the DRC, the observatory is currently dealing with the role of the state and the issue of sexual abuse in the humanitarian sector. In Latin America, the focus is on the role of civil society and affected communities, in Ethiopia on accountability towards Internally Displaced Persons, and in South Asia on heatwaves. While activities are planned in the context, insights will also be shared internationally. They will, amongst others, be discussed at conferences and events of the International Humanitarian Studies Association, and they will be shared in this series of blog posts. The series will consist of blogs of members of the observatories about the issues of their concern and the reforms they wish to see. The observatories are a young initiative, and their development is open-ended. So far, the experiences have been very promising, and I very much look forward to seeing how the observatories evolve and what we will learn from them through the future contributions to BLISS.
The Humanitarian Governance project has received funding from the European Research council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 884139).   Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Dorothea Hilhorst is professor of Humanitarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University.  

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This blog is part of the  Humanitarian Governance: Accountability, Advocacy, Alternatives’ project. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 884139

Women’s Week 2023 | From young girls to “bush wives”: Armed conflicts are traumatising girl soldiers in Africa, and post-conflict peacebuilding and rehabilitation efforts could be making it worse

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As armed conflicts persist across the world, children are repeatedly recruited into armed groups as soldiers, robbing them of their childhood. While some estimates reveal that girls comprise almost half of all child soldiers, they feature less prominently in post-conflict peacebuilding and rehabilitation efforts. Esther Beckley in her research explores the disproportionate impacts of war on girl soldiers, exposes the gender blindness of post-conflict peacebuilding efforts, and calls into question the legitimacy of peacebuilding programmes.

I joined the army by force in 2004. I was still a minor and married. I was harassed by the chief and it traumatised me a lot. I have a 7-year-old daughter who was born from this harassment.”

These are the words of Charlene Kahrikalembu, a young woman from Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) who shared her experience with my co-researcher and I[1] about how she was forcefully recruited into the Patriotes Résistants Congolais (PARECO) armed group as a child soldier. Charlene’s narrative echoes that of the thousands of girls who are recruited across the world as fighters, chefs, sex slaves, brides, messengers, spies, and for other reasons in armed conflicts, yet remain unaccounted for during the post-conflict peacebuilding period.

Armed conflicts, wherever they occur, severely affect both people and material resources. Regrettably, the conscription of children, some as young as seven years old, into warring factions is a recurring tendency in armed conflicts, which affects their physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, and material well-being. In most situations, children are recruited to replace adults because they are vulnerable, subservient, and easily controlled.

Nonetheless, when the problem of child soldiers is examined, it is often depicted as a masculine phenomenon, i.e. the enlistment of boys. In researching this topic, I have found that this action is mostly influenced by mainstream perceptions of armed conflict as a phenomenon occurring between males who are ‘naturally’ strong and warrior-like. As Tickner (1992:2) puts it, “International Relations is a man’s world where war and power politics are special positions reserved for men”. This perception is further reinforced in the media with popular images of boys holding rifles, whereas girls are frequently deemed insignificant and rendered invisible within fighting forces. However, studies have shown that in contemporary wars, girls comprise 40% of children associated with fighting factions (Haer 2017).

More so, compared to girls not associated with fighting factions, girl soldiers are disproportionately affected by war. This is due to the lengthy period girl soldiers spend in the captivity of their respective armed groups, making them susceptible to persistent sexual violence, torture, drug use and abuse, and illness (Beckley 2021). For example, in Sierra Leone, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) led by notorious rebel leader Foday Sankoh used the taboo on women’s nakedness as a weapon of war. This was done by parading naked girls on the frontlines in an attempt to nullify the traditional ‘juju’ (voodoo) used by the Civil Defence Forces (CDF), also known as ‘Kamajors’, who should not see naked women on the frontlines (Oluwaniyi 2019).

From my conversations with female ex-combatants in Goma, eastern DRC, I learnt that girl soldiers were distributed amongst commanders of armed groups to serve as wives, which entailed constant sexual violence and forced pregnancies. This was also the case for the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) led by rebel leader Joseph Kony in northern Uganda, which I studied as part of my Master’s research. In the north-eastern part of Nigeria, girls constitute most of the suicide bombers, performing a strategic role for Boko Haram terrorists (Oluwaniyi 2019).

Despite these prominent roles played by girl soldiers in various armed conflicts, they remain marginalised in peacebuilding efforts. Peacebuilding typically comes as a disappointment to most girl soldiers, since they are faced with an identity crisis of whether they should be considered soldiers or mere sex slaves and wives of commanders. This bolsters their exclusion from peace processes like the United Nations’ Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) programmes. DDR is the very first stage of the peacebuilding process, aimed at dissolving warring factions, retrieving weapons from ex-combatants, and providing trauma healing and socio-economic opportunities to ex-soldiers to facilitate their reintegration into civilian life.

Rhetorically, gender issues are pertinent to these tasks, but in reality, this is not always the case. First, the design of DDR programmes in most countries requires ex-soldiers to present a weapon to prove their participation in the conflict before they are eligible for DDR benefits. Now,

how does a girl soldier whose body was used as a weapon of war ‘prove’ that she was a soldier?

In Liberia, for instance, commanders had to testify to a girl soldier’s participation in their armed group before she could benefit from the DDR programme.

Consequently, most girl soldiers do not benefit from the DDR procedure due to its masculinist design. They are forced to self-reintegrate into their communities with no physical, mental, social, or economic support. They return to communities where they previously killed their neighbours and relatives with no form of community reintegration, which is included in the DDR package. Hence, they are stigmatised and labelled as ‘damaged goods’, ‘bush wives’, ‘unmarriageable’, etc. It is much worse for girl mothers who return with children labelled ‘bush babies’ and are rejected by their community members.

All in all, peacebuilding efforts remain gender-blind, and one must consider whether the end goal of so-called peacebuilding ventures like the DDR is long-term peace. This raises critical unanswered questions, such as: What are the underlying knowledge and principles used to address gender issues in peacebuilding? How are the categories of difference constructed? By whom and for what purpose? What are the implications of these on girl soldiers and sustainable peace in general? Such questions need to be urgently addressed in studies aimed at investigating gender imbalances in post-conflict peacebuilding.

 

References

Beckley, E.M and Oluwaniyi O.O (Forthcoming). ‘The Rhetorics of Education for Girl Ex-Combatants in Sierra Leone’s DDR Programme’. Africa Spectrum: SAGE.

Beckley, E.M. 2021, “DDR and the Education of Ex-Combatant Girls in Africa” in The Palgrave Handbook of African Women’s Studies, eds. O. Yacob-Haliso & T. Falola, 1st edn, Springer Nature, Switzerland, pp. 178.

Haer, R. 2017, “The study of child soldiering: issues and consequences for DDR implementation”, Third World Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 450-466.

Oluwaniyi, O. 2019, “Women’s Roles and Positions in African Wars” in The Palgrave Handbook of African Women’s Studies, eds. O. Yacob-Haliso & T. Falola, First edn, Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, Switzerland, pp. 85-105.

Tickner, J.A. 1992, Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security, Columbia University Press, United States of America.

[1] This blog article is based on research I conducted for my Master’s degree five years ago, on further research I am conducting in pursuit of a PhD on gender, conflict, and peacebuilding, as well as that of other researchers in this field.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Esther M. Beckley is a final-year PhD researcher at the University of Malta. She is also a visiting Research Fellow at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS). Her areas of expertise include gender, conflict, child soldiers, postconflict peacebuilding and development, international interventions in conflict contexts, etc., with a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa.

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Women’s Week 2023 |“I am a girl, not a woman”: how recognizing diverse girlhoods can foster the inclusion of young mothers in debates on womanhood and girlhood.

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In Uganda, young mothers are predominantly called women, although some young mothers contest that representation and prefer to be called girls.  The normative insistence on categorizing young mothers as women despite girlhood being a transitional phase locks young mothers in an in-between category, a space in which they can be neither girls, nor children, nor women. International Women’s Day celebrations further risk widening the gap between such girls whose daily realities centre on survival, writes Annah Kamusiime. The need to recognize diverse girlhoods is a first step in ensuring that girls are included in discussions on womanhood and girlhood.

During one of the interviews I conducted in 2021 for my PhD research on representations of young motherhood, Nandi, a 16-year-old Ugandan mother, told me, “Even though I am a mother, I am a girl, not a woman”. Her statement is an example of the agentic manoeuvres of girls whose voice remains silenced and their existence pushed to the liminal space – liminal because as mothers, they are in an in-between category where they are not girls anymore, nor children, and nor women, especially when they are not married.

Being a parent is the main marker of transition to adulthood/womanhood; in most of Uganda others also include menarche, a sexual debut, and wifehood. But the young mothers I spoke to did not consider themselves to be adults – women – despite having borne children. And, having borne children, they were no longer children themselves. As a result, their needs as young mothers may not be adequately addressed by efforts that separately target girls, children, or women. Young mothers who fall into none of the marked categories of girl, child, or woman thus face marginalization and exclusion.  In this article, I discuss why the recognition of a distinct category of diverse girlhoods is necessary to further their inclusion – also in celebrating International Women’s Day.

 

‘Girl’ or ‘woman’? How words make worlds

The terms we use are not neutral – the way in which words are combined allows for certain meanings to flourish and for others to be minimized. For instance, consider these two statements: “The girl-child is pregnant” versus “The girl is pregnant”. Both can be used to describe an adolescent mother. But an emphasis on a pregnant girl as a child (as the first statement does) may elicit a different interpretation and response when compared to using only the word ‘girl’. And often such word choices are deliberate. Words make worlds; struggles over meaning are not just about semantics – they are strategic, they have an effect, they shape discourses, actions and rhetoric, and they are contested. Thus, there is a need to be reflexive on how we frame different categories of persons because conceptions shape engagement.

Another example that shows how words matter for girls: While I was writing this article, my 18-year-old daughter read it and told me that at school, their teacher told them that a girl becomes a woman on the day of her sexual debut. I asked her whether that mattered and whether it would make a difference if a girl would be referred to as a woman or a girl. Yes, she said, ‘girl’ and ‘woman’ mean different things, and it matters which is used. As in the case of Nandi, the labels  ‘woman’ placed on a ‘girl’ has specific connotations – it means she engaged in sexual intercourse yet she is expected to be asexual, she is a mother at the wrong time, and she has ruptured normative notions of conceptions of ideal childhood and youth because she is expected to be innocent.  As a result, young mothers are stigmatized and are seen as a threat to the social morals and social order, which fuels their exclusion.

These two examples show that yes, the label of a woman that is placed on girls who are young mothers matter to them even when everyone else may not acknowledge it. Many of the young mothers I have spoken to choose to be called girls, not children, or girl-children, or women. The failure to consider the desire for this distinct categorization means that these young mothers’ voices remain unheard. I therefore argue that we need to reimagine and reconstruct girlhood as diverse and distinct in policy, practice, and debates at different levels-national and international.

 

Girls just wanna be girls

Several renowned scholars studying girlhood, including those highlighted by Claudia Mitchell, have advocated for what they have referred to as the girl-method. Rather than continue to lump girls under either the categories ‘children’, ‘young women’, or ‘women’, they argue that it is vital to add ‘girls’ as a distinct category.  This would remove girls from the shadows and place them in the centre of the discussion on diverse girlhoods, including those of young mothers.

My argument above does not mean that we should dismiss distinct moments like the UN Decade of the Girl Child (1991-2001) and International Day of the Girl Child. Indeed, such moments have been and continue to be an open platform for considering and rethinking issues girls face. However, a merger of ‘girl’ with ‘child’ in what is celebrated as the day of the ‘girl-child’ has been problematized as being passive, essentialist, and homogenizing. My sentiments of the ‘girl-child’ label are that it emphasizes their innocence, vulnerability, and dependency and brings out connotations of powerlessness while also infantilizing girls.

It also poses a risk of illuminating the ‘child’ and marginalizing the ‘girl’ because the ‘child’ may take precedence over the ‘girl’. There are words which are nice sounding, such as ‘girl-child’, and the nicer they sound, the more useful they are for those seeking to establish their moral authority. To counter the risk of applying labels to exclude and marginalize girls, the category ‘girl’ ought to be conceptualized, deconstructed, and reconstructed from their perspective.

 

How International Women’s Day can exclude girls

This is my first ever blog article. I decided to write it because I wanted to reflect on how International Women’s Day (IWD) celebrations relate to the experiences of young mothers in urban poor locales, such as those that I have continued to engage with as part of my PhD research. In rethinking this year’s IWD theme (‘DigitALL: innovation and technology for gender equality’), several questions came to mind. For example, are girls considered in this debate on gender equality? How relevant is this debate on the role of technology and innovation for young mothers living in poor locales in Uganda where only 9% of the populations aged 15 years and above own a smart phone? Moreover, where only 8% of females use internet? And why should young mothers care about such discussions? How will tech-driven developments benefit them?

Unable to answer these questions, I decided to read up on International Women’s Day. What initially sparked IWD were spontaneous demonstrations to protest inhumane working conditions women faced and to press for improved working conditions. Other issues, such as the right of women to vote, were consequently included, and today IWD marks efforts to enact gender equality more broadly.

What is interesting is that International Women’s Day is assumed to be for everyone, everywhere, and is intended to celebrate and encourage collective action in pursuit of gender equality and extended rights for women. However, discussions about women’s suffrage, gender equality and parity are often far removed from the daily realities of many girls and women, including the young mothers in impoverished areas that I worked with – those who are primarily concerned with meeting their survival needs. In this way, specific categories of girls, or even women, including young mothers, may find themselves being excluded from efforts to enact gender equality and from celebrations of these.

International Women’s Day was initiated by working-class women and while it has since significantly highlighted the plight of women and efforts to close the gender gap, it is at a risk of becoming too universalized and corporatized to include women who face a range of intersecting struggles that stretch beyond voting rights and workplace equity. In celebrating International Women’s Day, it is important to remember those girls and women whose voices still go unheard, who move around in the shadows, and whose intersecting struggles leave them far behind.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Annah Kamusiime is a PhD researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS-EUR). Her research interests are in gender and adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). She is also a Director of Programmes at Nascent Research and Development Organization Uganda.

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