Youth

Health Services for Women, Children and Adolescents in Conflict Affected Settings: Experience from North and South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo

Citation:

Altare, Chiara, Espoir Bwenge Malembaka, Maphie Tosha, Christopher Hook, Hamady Ba, Stéphane Muzindusi Bikoro, Thea Scognamiglio, Hannah Tappis, Jerome Pfaffmann, Ghislain Bisimwa Balaluka, Ties Boerma, and Paul Spiegel. 2020. "Health Services for Women, Children and Adolescents in Conflict Affected Settings: Experience from North and South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo." Conflict and Health 14.

Authors: Chiara Altare, Espoir Bwenge Malembaka, Maphie Tosha, Christopher Hook, Hamady Ba, Stéphane Muzindusi Bikoro, Thea Scognamiglio, Hannah Tappis, Jerome Pfaffmann, Ghislain Bisimwa Balaluka, Ties Boerma, Paul Spiegel

Abstract:

Background: Insecurity has characterized the Eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo for decades. Providing health services to sustain women’s and children’s health during protracted conflict is challenging. This mixed-methods case study aimed to describe how reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, adolescent health and nutrition (RMNCAH+N) services have been offered in North and South Kivu since 2000 and how successful they were. 
 
Methods: We conducted a case study using a desk review of publicly available literature, secondary analysis of survey and health information system data, and primary qualitative interviews. The qualitative component provides insights on factors shaping RMNCAH+N design and implementation. We conducted 49 interviews with government officials, humanitarian agency staff and facility-based healthcare providers, and focus group discussions with community health workers in four health zones (Minova, Walungu, Ruanguba, Mweso). We applied framework analysis to investigate key themes across informants. The quantitative component used secondary data from nationwide surveys and the national health facility information system to estimate coverage of RMNCAH+N interventions at provincial and sub-provincial level. The association between insecurity on service provision was examined with random effects generalized least square models using health facility data from South Kivu. 
 
Results: Coverage of selected preventive RMNCAH+N interventions seems high in North and South Kivu, often higher than the national level. Health facility data show a small negative association of insecurity and preventive service coverage within provinces. However, health outcomes are poorer in conflict-affected territories than in stable ones. The main challenges to service provisions identified by study respondents are the availability and retention of skilled personnel, the lack of basic materials and equipment as well as the insufficient financial resources to ensure health workers’ regular payment, medicaments’ availability and facilities’ running costs. Insecurity exacerbates pre-existing challenges, but do not seem to represent the main barrier to service provision in North and South Kivu. 
 
Conclusions: Provision of preventive schedulable RMNCAH+N services has continued during intermittent conflict in North and South Kivu. The prolonged effort by non-governmental organizations and UN agencies to respond to humanitarian needs was likely key in maintaining intervention coverage despite conflict. Health actors and communities appear to have adapted to changing levels and nature of insecurity and developed strategies to ensure preventive services are provided and accessed. However, emergency non-schedulable RMNCAH+N interventions do not appear to be readily accessible. Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals will require increased access to life-saving interventions, especially for newborn and pregnant women.

Keywords: health services, health system, conflict, population displacement, North Kivu, South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo, maternal, newborn, child, reproductive health

Topics: Age, Youth, Conflict, Gender, Women, Girls, Boys, Health, Reproductive Health, International Organizations, NGOs, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Regions: Africa, Central Africa Countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo

Year: 2020

Gender Differences in Children Mental Health Disorders after Earthquakes in Iran: A Systematic Review

Citation:

Seddighi, Hamed, and Ibrahim Salmani. 2019. "Gender Differences in Children Mental Health Disorders after Earthquakes in Iran: A Systematic Review." Journal of Community Health Research 8 (1): 54-64.

Authors: Hamed Seddighi, Ibrahim Salmani

Abstract:

Introduction: Earthquake occurs in the world every year and Iran is one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world with the ranking of 15 between 120 countries. Children are the most vulnerable group in disasters and they have a number of negative symptoms after a disaster. 
 
Methods: This study used the systematic review method and followed systematic review principles. Mental health, earthquake, psychosocial, PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, and stress were the keywords used to search in the Iranian scientific information database (SID), Noor Specialized Magazines (Noormags) and Google Scholar. The language of the search was Farsi and just Farsi articles were included in the review. 
 
Results: The result were presented in five sections (Psychosocial interventions, Signs of disorder, Gender, Age, Geographical area). It showed psychosocial interventions of those studied in reviewed papers were effective and there were gender differences in children mental health disorders after earthquakes in Iran. In addition, PTSD group, girls reported all the symptoms of PTSD more than the boys except anger symptoms, but the prevalence of PTSD symptoms in males was higher than in girls. 
 
Conclusion: Iranian studies just focused on male and female gender and found that disorders are higher in girls of different ages in childhood. In the age group of 13 to 18 years, the frequency of each disorder was less than that of the seven to twelve-year old group.

Keywords: children, mental health, earthquake, natural disaster, PTSD, gender

Topics: Age, Youth, Environment, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Health, Mental Health, PTSD Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Iran

Year: 2019

Girlhood, Violence, and Humanitarian Assistance

Citation:

Namuggala, Victoria Flavia. 2018. "Girlhood, Violence, and Humanitarian Assistance." In Childhood, Youth Identity, and Violence in Formerly Displaced Communities in Uganda, 107-37. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Author: Victoria Flavia Namuggala

Abstract:

This chapter concentrates on humanitarian assistance as a major component of survival during situations of displacement. Despite its contribution in saving lives, humanitarian assistance has its own controversies especially from the perspective of the beneficiaries. My discussion centers on such complexities concentrating on young women in northern Uganda. To bring this out clearly, I examine the nature of aid provided and how recipients conceptualize it, the gendered experiences involved and the sociocultural dynamics that inform the implementation of humanitarian assistance. I conclude that humanitarian assistance at times facilitates violence against young women characterized by starvation, sexual violence, survival sex, early and forced marriages, and increased spread of HIV/AIDS. This is due to operation through cultural patriarchal structures that sustain power hierarchies in favor of men.

Topics: Age, Youth, Displacement & Migration, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Health, HIV/AIDS, Humanitarian Assistance, Sexual Violence, Violence Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Uganda

Year: 2018

Disaster Recovery from a Gender and Diversity Perspective: Cases Following Megadisasters in Japan and Asian Countries

Citation:

Tanaka, Yumiko, Mikio Ishiwatari, and Atsuko Nonoguchi. 2019. "Disaster Recovery from a Gender and Diversity Perspective: Cases Following Megadisasters in Japan and Asian Countries." Contributing Paper to GAR 2019. United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, Geneva.

Authors: Yumiko Tanaka, Mikio Ishiwatari, Atsuko Nonguchi

Annotation:

Summary:
In the aftermath of disasters, local governments are primarily responsible for implementing quick recovery programs, including the relocation of affected people from areas at risk to safer places, rehabilitation of destroyed infrastructure, as well as the recovery of health, livelihood, social security and protection. The concerns of local administrations concerned, however, often face difficulties in reflecting diverse needs and perspectives into recovery programs, due to limited capacity and experiences dealing with a large number and variety of recovery programs under severe time and personnel constraints.
 
Recovery programs need consensus building among various groups, especially women, youth, the elderly and people with disabilities; and an integrated approach to multi-sectors, such as environment, ecosystem and town planning. Local communities need to express their voice in planning recovery programs, often with support from external experts and various aid organizations, including national and international CSOs. In reality, however, the inclusion of various groups in recovery planning is little concern of local governments, thus they end up to making one standard plan or one-size-fits-all plans, to avoid favoring one area/group over another. In addition, local people, especially women, youth, the elderly and people with disability, are often regarded as only victims or beneficiaries of humanitarian and emergency aid, rather than as actors and agents of change.
 
The Sendai Framework Recovery for DRR stresses enhancing disaster preparedness in recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction as a priority area. The aftermath of disaster poses a great opportunity for women, youth and other local groups to be empowered and exercise their agency and leadership, therefore, the governments as well as aid organizations and international society should utilize such a chance to increase their community disaster governance and transform a society to be more equal, inclusive, resilient and sustainable. Their recovery policies and approaches should involve various stakeholders, particularly vulnerable groups, in decision-making processes. As shown in cases in the Philippines and Sri Lanka, development assistance agencies should include capacity building activities in leadership for women and other vulnerable groups. (Summary from United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction)

Topics: Age, Youth, Development, Environment, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Governance, Humanitarian Assistance Regions: Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: Japan, Philippines, Sri Lanka

Year: 2019

Attitudes and Perceptions of Young Men Towards Gender Equality and Violence in Timor-Leste

Citation:

Wigglesworth, Ann, Sara Niner, Dharmalingam Arunachalam, Abel Dos Santos, and Mateus Tilman. 2015. "Attitudes and Perceptions of Young Men Towards Gender Equality and Violence in Timor-Leste." Journal of International Women's Studies 16 (2): 312-29.

Authors: Ann Wigglesworth, Sara Niner, Dharmalingam Arunachalam, Abel Dos Santos, Mateus Tilman

Abstract:

This article examines attitudes and perceptions of young men toward gender relations and gender-based violence in post-conflict Timor-Leste. A high level of domestic violence is reported, and a law against domestic violence has been passed in recent years. In 2013, a research team surveyed almost 500 young men using the Gender-Equitable Men Scale in both rural and urban contexts. It was found that young men become less gender equitable as they get older, and the environment they grow up in influences their gender attitudes. Existing contradictions and tensions between national government policy and local customary practices are well-known, and these are reflected in young men's acceptance of general principles of gender equality, which is unmatched by their willingness to accept more equitable gender relations in their own lives. Of concern was the level of young men's acceptance of sexual harassment and forced sex. Mechanisms are required to influence young men's attitudes to gender equality and intimate partner relations in school programs and other arenas as a priority.

Keywords: gender equality, masculinity, gender-based violence, Timor-Leste

Topics: Age, Youth, Domestic Violence, Education, Gender, Men, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Gender Equity, Post-Conflict, Sexual Violence, Male Perpetrators Regions: Oceania Countries: Timor-Leste

Year: 2015

Veteran Masculinities and Audiovisual Popular Music in Post-Conflict Croatia: A Feminist Aesthetic Approach to the Contested Everyday Peace

Citation:

Baker, Catherine. 2019. “Veteran Masculinities and Audiovisual Popular Music in Post-Conflict Croatia: A Feminist Aesthetic Approach to the Contested Everyday Peace.” Peacebuilding 7 (2): 226–42.

Author: Catherine Baker

Abstract:

In Croatia, campaigners for a more critical public reckoning with the memory of Croatia's 'Homeland War' (1991–5) and the national past confront embeddings of hegemonic myths of the war into everyday life. Among these are the stardom of a musician whose 'patriotic' music claims the same moral authority as the Croatian veterans' movement and whose public persona has embodied militarised masculinity since he became a wartime star. Popular music and youth engagement with it is thus among the sites where everyday understandings of peace are being contested. By exploring the audiovisual aesthetics of the song/video through which this musician re-engaged with veterans' activism in 1998, and showing that popular music spectatorship seeps into the everyday micropolitics of young people building and contesting peace, the paper argues that for critical peace and conflict studies to understand the affective politics of post-conflict masculinities, they must combine a feminist and aesthetic consciousness.

Keywords: audiovisual aesthetics, Croatia, everyday peace, masculinities, popular music, veterans

Topics: Age, Youth, Armed Conflict, Conflict, Feminisms, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarization, Post-Conflict, Peacebuilding Regions: Europe, Balkans, Eastern Europe Countries: Croatia

Year: 2019

New Critical Spaces in Transitional Justice: Gender, Art, and Memory

Citation:

Kurze, Arnaud, and Christopher K. Lamont. 2019. New Critical Spaces in Transitional Justice: Gender, Art, and Memory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Authors: Arnaud Kurze, Christopher K. Lamont

Annotation:

Summary:
Since the 1980s, transitional justice mechanisms have been increasingly applied to account for mass atrocities and grave human rights violations throughout the world. Over time, post-conflict justice practices have expanded across continents and state borders and have fueled the creation of new ideas that go beyond traditional notions of amnesty, retribution, and reconciliation. Gathering work from contributors in international law, political science, sociology, and history, New Critical Spaces in Transitional Justice addresses issues of space and time in transitional justice studies. It explains new trends in responses to post-conflict and post-authoritarian nations and offers original empirical research to help define the field for the future.
 
Contents
 
Preface / Ruti Teitel
 
Acknowledgments
 
Introduction: Reconceptualizing Transitional Justice: Exploring the Nexus between Agency and Spatiality
 
Part I: Art, Activism, and Politics: Redefining Space in Transitional Justice
 
1 Borrowing Achilles's Armor: The Political Afterlife of Former Transitional Justice Mechanisms
 
2 The Site and Sights of Transitional Justice: Art at the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg
 
3 Youth Activism, Art, and Transitional Justice: Emerging Spaces of Memory after the Jasmine Revolution
 
Part II: Civil Society, Gender, and Transitions: Emerging Spaces and Victimhood
 
4 Gendered Postconflict Justice: Male Survivors of Sexual Violence in Northern Uganda
 
5 Claiming Space: Advocacy for Gender Justice in Cambodia
 
6 The Question of Gender Inclusiveness of Bottom-Up Strategies in Bosnia and Herzegovina
 
Part III: Spatiality, Temporality, and the State
 
7 Libya in Transition: Spaces for Justice after Gaddafi
 
8 Navigating the Narrow Spaces for Transitional Justice in Iraq
 
9 Accountability in Syria: What Are the Options?
 
10 Dignity for the Defeated: Recognizing the "Other" in Post-Yugoslav Commemorative Practices
 
Conclusion: Practicing Critical Transitional Justice and the Road Ahead
 
Bibliography
 
Index

Topics: Age, Youth, Civil Society, Gender, International Law, Justice, Transitional Justice, Post-Conflict, Rights, Human Rights, Sexual Violence, SV against Men

Year: 2019

Examining Climate Change and Food Security in Ghana through an Intersectional Framework

Citation:

Wood, Alexa L., Prince Ansah, Louie Rivers III, and Arika Ligmann-Zielinska. 2019. “Examining Climate Change and Food Security in Ghana through an Intersectional Framework.” The Journal of Peasant Studies. doi:10.1080/03066150.2019.1655639.

Authors: Alexa L. Wood, Prince Ansah, Louie Rivers III, Arika Ligmann-Zielinska

Abstract:

As the effects of climate change intensify, subsistence farmers in Ghana are expected to face increased food insecurity, due to their reliance on rainfed agriculture. Within households, young women are expected to support all aspects of household food security, and will experience a more burdensome load of labor, as a dwindling stock of natural resources will make daily tasks more time consuming. The intersection of age, gender, and location inhibits young women's decision-making responsibilities and wage-earning potential. Climate change exacerbates this dynamic, which restricts opportunities to acquire sufficient food and places increased stress on household food systems.

Keywords: climate change, food security, intersectionality, Ghana, farming

Topics: Age, Youth, Agriculture, Environment, Climate Change, Gender, Women, Households, Livelihoods, Security, Food Security Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Ghana

Year: 2019

Sustaining Peace in the “New Gambia”

Citation:

Connolly, Lesley. 2018. "Sustaining Peace in the 'New Gambia.'" In Sustaining Peace in Practice: Building on What Works, edited by Youssef Mahmoud, Lesley Connolly, and Delphine Mechoulan, 59-64. International Peace Institute.

Author: Lesley Connolly

Annotation:

Summary:
“This chapter highlights three main areas that should be prioritized for the purpose of sustaining peace in the Gambia: women’s empowerment, youth empowerment and entrepreneurship, and transitional justice and good governance. It explains how investment in these areas has helped prevent the escalation of conflict and how it can contribute to the maintenance of long-term national peace and stability” (Connolly 2018, 59-60).

Topics: Age, Youth, Conflict Prevention, Conflict, Gender, Women, Governance, Post-Conflict Governance, Justice, Transitional Justice, Post-Conflict, Peace Processes Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Gambia

Year: 2018

Child Safeguarding in a Peacekeeping Context: Lessons from Liberia

Citation:

Blakemore, Sarah, Rosa Freedman, and Nicolas Lemay-Hébert. 2019. "Child Safeguarding in a Peacekeeping Context: Lessons from Liberia." Development in Practice 29 (6): 735-47.

Authors: Sarah Blakemore, Rosa Freedman, Nicolas Lemay-Hébert

Abstract:

This article reviews how peacekeeping officials safeguard children from sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) in Liberia, more than 15 years after the landmark reports published on this issue. Based on original fieldwork conducted in Liberia and in New York, the article introduces an innovative framework to assess whether or not organisations effectively safeguard children from SEA. It reviews three interrelated issues: reinforcing the institutional environment in the country, strengthening prevention of and accountability for child SEA by UN actors. The article concludes with specific policy recommendations for actors involved in peacekeeping activities.

Keywords: aid, accountability, aid effectiveness, civil society, NGOs, gender and diversity, youth, Rights, Sub-Saharan Africa

Topics: Age, Youth, Civil Society, Gender, Girls, Boys, NGOs, Peacekeeping, Sexual Violence, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Regions: Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, West Africa, Americas, North America Countries: Liberia, United States of America

Year: 2019

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