East Africa

Citation:

Ombati, Mokua. 2015. “Women Transcending ‘Boundaries’ in Indigenous Peacebuilding in Kenya’s Sotik/Borabu Border Conflict.” Multidisciplinary Journal of Gender Studies, 4 (1): 637–61.

Author: Mokua Ombati

Abstract:

Keywords: women, cross border conflicts, peacebuilding

Topics: Conflict, Gender, Gender Roles, Women, Indigenous, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Peacebuilding, Post-Conflict Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Kenya

Year: 2015

Citation:

Schulz, Philipp, and Heleen Touquet. 2020. “Queering Explanatory Frameworks for Wartime Sexual Violence against Men.” International Affairs 96 (5): 1169–87.

Authors: Philipp Schulz, Heleen Touquet

Abstract:

In this article we argue that prevalent explanatory frameworks of sexual violence against men primarily pursue one line of inquiry, explaining its occurrence as exclusively strategic and systematic, based on heteronormative and homophobic assumptions about violence, gender and sexualities. Feminist IR scholarship has significantly complexified our understanding of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV), documenting its multiple forms and causes across time and space—thereby moving beyond the persistent opportunism-strategy dichotomy and critically engaging with the dominant ‘rape as a weapon of war’ narrative. Drawing on empirical material from Sri Lanka and northern Uganda we queer the current explanatory frameworks, analyzing multiple instances of CRSV against men that both simultaneously seem to confirm and defy categorizations as opportunistic or strategic, while being situated in broader and systematic warfare dynamics and unequal power-relationships. Our empirical material shows that relying on crude categorizations such as the opportunism–strategy binary is unproductive and essentialist, as it tends to mask over the complexities and messiness of deeply gendered power relationships during times of war. Binary strategy/opportunism categorizations also imply broader unintended political consequences, including the further marginalization of sexual violence acts that fall outside the dominant scripts or binary frameworks—such as sexual violence against men with opportunistic underpinnings.

Topics: Conflict, Gender, Men, Gendered Power Relations, Male Victims, Sexual Violence, Rape, SV against Men, Sexuality Regions: Africa, East Africa, Asia, South Asia Countries: Sri Lanka, Uganda

Year: 2020

Citation:

Dolan, Chris, Maria Eriksson Baaz, and Maria Stern. 2020. “What Is Sexual about Conflict-Related Sexual Violence? Stories from Men and Women Survivors.” International Affairs 96 (5): 1151–68.

Authors: Chris Dolan, Maria Eriksson Baaz, Maria Stern

Abstract:

Despite the prominent attention that the problem of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) has recently garnered globally, we still know far too little about what is sexual about sexual violence, according to whom, as well as why and how this matters in our efforts to prevent and redress its harms. A growing theoretical, political, legal and ethical imperative to ask questions about the sexual part of sexual violence across both war and peace is nonetheless emerging. This article therefore turns to the accounts of male and female survivors of CRSV at the at the Refugee Law Project (RLP) in Kampala, Uganda. In our reading of their accounts, we explore how the participants understand the possible imbrication of the perpetrator's sexual desire and pleasure with the violence they inflicted, as well as how they deem such intermeshing impossible or deeply problematic in and to the gendered frames that govern how they think about the distinctions between violence and sex, as well as themselves as sexual, social, embodied subjects. Read together, these conflicted and conflicting testimonies offer a vantage point from which to rethink some of the reductive truisms that persist in dominant policy-friendly accounts of wartime sexual violence—namely that such violence is about power and not about ‘sex’. The participants’ accounts thus urge us, as scholars and policy advocates, to resist reducing the multi-layered experiences of victim/survivors of sexual violence to fit into the palatable narratives of victimhood that prevail in humanitarian, juridical and policy spaces.

Topics: Conflict, Gender, Gendered Discourses, Sexual Violence, SV against Men, SV against Women, Sexuality, Violence Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Uganda

Year: 2020

Citation:

Thomas, Lahoma, and Rebecca Tiessen. 2010. "Human Security, Gender-Based Violence and the Spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa: A Feminist Analysis." Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne Des Études Africaines 44 (3): 479-502.

Authors: Lahoma Thomas , Rebecca Tiessen

Abstract:

Topics: Domestic Violence, Gender, Women, Girls, Masculinity/ies, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Health, HIV/AIDS, Post-Conflict, Security, Human Security, Sexual Violence, Rape, SV against Women Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Uganda

Year: 2010

Citation:

Dancer, Helen. 2018. “Power and Rights in the Community: Paralegals as Leaders in Women’s Legal Empowerment in Tanzania.” Feminist Legal Studies 26 (1): 47–64.

Author: Helen Dancer

Abstract:

What can an analysis of power in local communities contribute to debates on women’s legal empowerment and the role of paralegals in Africa? Drawing upon theories of power and rights, and research on legal empowerment in African plural legal systems, this article explores the challenges for paralegals in facilitating women’s access to justice in Tanzania, which gave statutory recognition to paralegals in the Legal Aid Act 2017. Land conflicts represent the single-biggest source of local legal disputes in Tanzania and are often embedded in gendered land tenure relations. This article argues that paralegals can be effective actors in women’s legal empowerment where they are able to work as leaders, negotiating power relations and resisting the forms of violence that women encounter as obstacles to justice. Paralegals’ authority will be realised when their role is situated within community leadership structures, confirming their authority while preserving their independence.

Keywords: access to justice, legal pluralism, paralegals, Tanzania, women's land rights, legal empowerment

Topics: Conflict, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Justice, Land Tenure, Rights, Land Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Tanzania

Year: 2018

Citation:

Coulter, Janna E., Rebecca A. Witinok-Huber, Brett L. Bruyere, and Wanja Dorothy Nyingi. 2019. “Giving Women a Voice on Decision-Making about Water: Barriers and Opportunities in Laikipia, Kenya.” Gender, Place & Culture 26 (4): 489–509.

Authors: Janna E. Coulter, Rebecca A. Witinok-Huber, Brett L. Bruyere, Wanja Dorothy Nyingi

Abstract:

In more than 75% of households around the world in which water needs are fulfilled by retrieving water, women are typically tasked with this critical responsibility. This is true in Kenya, and the challenges women in rural areas of the country face are compounded by a lack of reasonable access to safe water by 56.5% of rural households. More than 25% of the population must travel at least 30 minutes to collect water, and 70% of all diseases in the country are water-borne (Kameri-Mbote and Kariuki 2015). Given their role as the primary household decision-maker about water, women have an astute understanding of water availability, access, quality and household use, and women’s perspectives would enhance decision-making in groups that address water resource management. However, women have historically been marginalized from participation in such processes for numerous reasons related to lack of empowerment, leadership, and voice, and the practicalities of the demands on her time that prevent her from having discretionary time to devote to civic processes. In this study, we interviewed 153 women living in three different watersheds in the Laikipia region of central Kenya about their views on water resource management, and interest in participation in water resource user associations (WRUAs) as members and leaders. Our results are consistent with prior research in that marginalization of women from WRUA participation is steeped in entrenched normative beliefs and behaviors about women’s roles and her domestic responsibilities, a lack of money to participate, and a lack of time given her other responsibilities.

Keywords: governance, Kenya, marginalization, women, water

Topics: Gender, Gender Roles, Women, Gender Equality/Inequality, Governance, Infrastructure, Water & Sanitation, Political Participation Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Kenya

Year: 2019

Citation:

Natile, Serena. 2020. The Exclusionary Politics of Digital Financial Inclusion: Mobile Money, Gendered Walls. Abingdon-on-Thames, UK: Routledge.

Author: Serena Natile

Annotation:

Summary:
Focusing on Kenya’s path-breaking mobile money project M-Pesa, this book examines and critiques the narratives and institutions of digital financial inclusion as a development strategy for gender equality, arguing for a politics of redistribution to guide future digital financial inclusion projects. 

One of the most-discussed digital financial inclusion projects, M-Pesa facilitates the transfer of money and access to formal financial services via the mobile phone infrastructure and has grown at a phenomenal rate since its launch in 2007 to reach about 80 per cent of the Kenyan population. Through a socio-legal enquiry drawing on feminist political economy, law and development scholarship and postcolonial feminist debate, this book unravels the narratives and institutional arrangements that frame M-Pesa’s success while interrogating the relationship between digital financial inclusion and gender equality in development discourse. Natile argues that M-Pesa is premised on and regulated according to a logic of opportunity rather than a politics of redistribution, favouring the expansion of the mobile money market in preference to contributing to substantive gender equality via a redistribution of the revenue and funding deriving from its development.

 This book will be of particular interest to scholars and students in Global Political Economy, Socio-Legal Studies, Gender Studies, Law & Development, Finance and International Relations. (Summary from Routledge)

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Development, Economies, Feminist Economics, Feminisms, Feminist Political Economy, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Kenya

Year: 2020

Citation:

Adeogun, Tolulope J., and Muthoni J. Muthuki. 2017. “Indigenous Approaches to Peace Building: Examining the Strategies Employed by Women in South Sudan.” Gender & Behaviour 15 (3): 9639–51.

Authors: Tolulope J. Adeogun, Muthoni J. Muthuki

Abstract:

South Sudan got her independence from Sudan in 2011 and up till now it has suffered from recurrent relapses. Many groups such as Governmental organizations, Non-Governmental Organizations, Women’s Organizations and other various Civil Society groups troop into this post conflict zones in order to achieve a sustainable peace. More importantly, women at the grass roots formed groups/movements in order to help in the peace building process. Despite all the efforts at the grass roots in form of mediation, diplomacy, peaceful intervention, South Sudan still suffers relapses of war. Albeit, this is not to say that the grass roots women had not been working and making progress in peace building in South Sudan. The findings of this paper are based on an empirical study carried out in South Sudan among the grass roots women’s groups. Hence, this paper examines the indigenous strategies put in place by these women’s groups while attempting to build a sustainable peace at the grass roots in their communities after a long and protracted war, the success stories that come along with it and recommendations on what else can be done.

Keywords: indigenous approaches, peacebuilding, women's organizations, South Sudan

Topics: Gender, Women, Indigenous, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Peacebuilding, Post-Conflict Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: South Sudan

Year: 2017

Citation:

Krause, Jana. 2020. “Restrained or Constrained? Elections, Communal Conflicts, and Variation in Sexual Violence.” Journal of Peace Research 57 (1): 185–98.

Author: Jana Krause

Abstract:

Anecdotal evidence suggests that sexual violence varies significantly across cases of election violence and communal conflicts but systematic research is scarce. Post-election violence is particularly likely if electoral mobilization further polarizes longstanding communal conflicts and political elites do not instruct security forces to intervene decisively. I comparatively analyse two prominent cases of post-election violence in Kenya (2007/8) and Nigeria (2008) that exhibit stark variation in sexual violence. Patrimonial networks and norms of violent masculinity that increase the probability of (gang) rape were present in both cases and do not explain variation. Civil war research has identified three explanations for the variation in sexual violence: situational constraints; ordered sexual violence or restraint; and bottom-up dynamics of sexual violence or restraint. I examine these for the context of post-election violence. I argue that the type of communal conflict triggered by electoral mobilization explains variation in sexual violence. In Kenya, pogroms of a majority group against a minority allowed for the time and space to perpetrate widespread sexual violence while in Nigeria, dyadic clashes between similarly strong groups offered less opportunity but produced a significantly higher death toll. These findings have important implications for preventing election violence. They demonstrate that civilian vulnerability is gendered and that high levels of sexual violence do not necessarily correspond to high levels of lethal violence. Ignoring sexual violence means underestimating the real intensity of conflict and its impact on the political process.

Keywords: communal conflict, election violence, Kenya, Nigeria, rape, sexual violence

Topics: Armed Conflict, Ethnic/Communal Wars, Conflict, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Governance, Elections, Sexual Violence, Rape, Violence Regions: Africa, East Africa, West Africa Countries: Kenya, Nigeria

Year: 2020

Citation:

Ochen, Eric Awich. 2017. "Women and Liberal Peacebuilding in Post-Conflict Northern Uganda: Community Social Work Agenda Revisited?" African Sociological Review 21 (2): 15-35.

Author: Eric Awich Ochen

Abstract:

This paper examines women’s participation in post-conflict peacebuilding activities within the neo-liberal peace theory and framework. Using qualitative approach, the study gathered information from 40 women and several key informants working and living in post-conflict northern Uganda. The paper utilizes this information in reflecting on how women live in and engage with their communities in post-conflict settings, and also assess the actual actions and initiatives that women develop in post-conflict situation, the space available to them and the emergent context. The paper also analyses the extent to which these factors shape community post-conflict adjustments. Key challenges affecting women’s participation in the peacebuilding processes, mainly at grassroots and community levels are examined. The major conclusion of the paper is that liberal peacebuilding approach does not fully espouse, embrace or explain issues of critical consciousness, social and strategic agency nor does it prepare the women to effectively engage their society. I argue that this limitation and omission do not adequately prepare women to confront social issues and oppressive practices as well as challenge certain traditions and power structures, issues that are hall marks of community based social work.

Topics: Gender, Women, Post-Conflict, Peacebuilding, Peace Processes Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Uganda

Year: 2017