Introduction
Methods
Study Site and Context
Design of the Study
Study Participants and Procedures
Method | Age category | Sex of study participants | Districts | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Katakwi District (A)
|
Amuria District (B)
| |||||
Sub-county A
|
Sub-county B
|
Sub-county C
|
Sub- county D
| |||
Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) | 15-24 years | Men | 1 | |||
Women | 1 | |||||
25-34 years | Men | 1 | ||||
Women | 1 | |||||
35 Years and more | Men | 1 | ||||
Women | 1 | |||||
In-school youths | Men | 1 | ||||
Out of school youths | Women | 1 | ||||
Total FGDs | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | ||
†Key Informants (KIs) | Elders' representatives | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |
Cultural leaders' representatives | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||
IDP camps leaders | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||
Religions leaders | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||
School head teachers | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||
District political leaders | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||
Local Council leaders | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||
Civil Society Organization representatives | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||
Total KIs | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | ||
#Case Studies | Men | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | |
Women | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | ||
4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
Focus Group Discussions (FGDs)
Key Informant interviews (KIs)
In-depth case study interviews
Domain of inquiry | Probable questions to ask |
---|---|
Socio-demographic profile | District & Sub-county |
Village/Camp | |
Site | |
Number of participants | |
Moderator | |
Note taker | |
Date | |
Starting time | |
Ending time | |
Transcriber | |
Gender (number of men or number women for FGD) | |
Age (age range for FGD) | |
Vulnerability narrative | As a group, when do you think you experienced life difficulties associated with conflict/war for the first time? What happened then? And then?] |
Which life difficulties associated with conflict/war have you experienced in your lifetime? | |
We would like to know more about your experiences of life difficulties associated with conflict/war, Can you describe what happened when you faced life difficulties? | |
Looking at your history, can you tell us how your well-being/lifestyles used to be before you experienced life difficulties associated with conflict/war? | |
What have been the changes in your well-being/lifestyles after you experienced the life difficulties associated with conflict/war? | |
Context of trauma and sexual behaviour | Are there any other people in your social environment [family, social environment like friendship networks] who experienced/are experiencing life difficulties associated with conflict/war like you? In what ways do you consider your life difficulties similar or different to theirs? |
Have you ever heard [on radio, from other people] or read [newspapers] about any other person or people who had the same life difficulties' associated with conflict/war as you? [If yes] In what ways is such a person/are such people's life difficulties' similar or different to yours? | |
Please, tell us about the self-protecting things/resources which used to be available to protect against life difficulties when your people would be face traumatizing events? [Probe traditional ways of managing life difficulties] | |
Which resources [social and political networks and institutional] are available to protect against life difficulties when people face traumatizing events? | |
Looking at your history, can you tell us how sexual decency/integrity in your society used to be preserved before life associated with conflict/war befell your home areas? | |
Looking at your current society how has life difficulties associated with conflict/war affected sexual decency/integrity? | |
Explanatory models of sexual behaviour in a post-conflict setting | Do you have a local terms or expression that describes your life difficulties associated with conflict/war? [What is that local term or expression?] |
According to you, what do you think are primary causes of your life difficulties? [Take special interest to note all that is mentioned] | |
Was/is there something happening in your family, at work or in your social life that could explain your life difficulties associated with conflict/war? [If answer is yes, as next question] | |
In your society, how do you deal with [manage, cope] life difficulties associated with conflict/war? What assistance or help is given to someone facing a life difficulty? | |
Are your life difficulties somehow linked or related to specific events that occurred in your lives? | |
Impact of conflict-related trauma on sexual behaviour | How have your life difficulties associated with conflict/war changed your life/lives? |
How has your life difficulty associated with conflict/war changed the way you feel or think about yourselves? | |
How has your life difficulty associated with conflict/war changed the way you look at life in general? [Probe for impact on sexual behaviour]? | |
What has been happening to your social and sexual lives ever since you faced the life difficulties associated with conflict/war? | |
How have your lifestyle difficulties associated with conflict/war changed the way others look at you? | |
How have life difficulties affected people's motivations, beliefs, values, practices and opinions about sexuality in this community? | |
For those who faced lifestyle difficulties associated with conflict/war and coped well, what can explain the resilience/hardiness/toughness? | |
How has you family or friends helped you helped you through this difficult period associated with conflict/war in your life? | |
How have your spiritual lives, faiths or religious practices helped you go through these difficult periods in your life? | |
Is there anything else you would like to add? |
Ethical considerations
Data analysis
Results
Breakdown of the social structure in the study population
Discrediting of sexual sanctity in society
. . . with onset of the wars, things here changed . . . poverty increased, insecurity became an issue and, we could not live freely like it was before. Soldiers started to use money to lure young girls and women into sex . . . HIV/AIDS became common here when soldiers were deployed to guard our camp . . . many started sleeping with our daughters and wives . . . in our communities, whenever a new person would arrive in a camp, women would be easily enticed by him into sex . . .. . . living in IDP camps affected us . . . our cultural values and norms lost their sting . . . children stopped respecting their elders . . . they started sexual acts early. In the crowded camps, children would see their parents in sexual acts because the huts were too small for all family members . . . if a woman failed to get something from a husband and someone else was there and willing to do it in exchange for sex, she would go for it. This became common . . . most men lost their wives and daughters to soldiers . . .
Ever since problems befell our community, people's lives have been affected negatively . . . spread of diseases like HIV/AIDS became rampant due to crowding in IDP camps . . . the spread of HIV in this place started with deployment of soldiers here. Soldiers took people's wives since they had more money . . . these women came back to their husbands with HIV.
. . . our lives here have become are characterised by difficulties . . . we cannot cultivate easily as we used to . . . we lack what to eat . . . as a result of overcrowding in the camp, evils like sexual immorality have spread . . . we have very many cases of defilement, extra marital sex, early marriages and forced marriages, many of which were unheard of in the past . . . because they want to look smart and to have beautiful things, our girls and even women are enticed by those with money into having sex. . .
Perceptions about sexual morality and decency
So many things like incest, defilement, forced marriages and early marriage . . . are rampant in our society. These things used to be rare in our society . . . displacement by wars lead our people to learn strange behaviours . . . parents have started forcing their daughters to marry early because they want money . . . Young people got to know about sex very early in life . . . young girls and boys learnt to go for old men and women simply because a young person would take pride that a man or woman can provide for his or her needs. . . our neighbouring community of cattle rustlers led to many deaths and forced us into IDP camps. These neighbours are partly responsible for today's forced marriages and other sexual immoralities in our area . . . If they had not forced us into camps, sexual immorality, infidelity, defilement and rape wouldn't have become common here . . . nowadays, people force their sons to get married early before the raiders come to steal the cattle. Secondly, parents force their daughters to marry such that they can get replacement of the stolen cattle.. . . sex is being misused, it is an embarrassment to the society . . . young men nowadays go into sexual relationship with their mothers' age-mates, girls have started to have sex with old men. Sex has been commercialized . . . It has become worse with the worsening economic turmoil where everything needs money. Unwanted pregnancies have become common and so are abortions
Transactional sex in the context of vulnerability
. . . we have people living with HIV and different kinds of orphans . . . for some, one of the parents is dead while for others, both are dead . . . this is a problem . . . most of the girls who are orphans go for early marriages so as to be able to support their siblings . . .. . . life in IDP camps has really doomed us . . . because of behaviour adopted while in camps, sex has ceased to be respected . . . Sexual encounters now happen anywhere i.e. in pit latrines, bathrooms and even in open places giving children the opportunity to watch and thus get motivated to try doing it too. . . married women cannot afford basic needs for their children . . .in IDP camps, they learnt that they can survive if they get fairly rich men to have sex with in exchange for the basic provisions of life, thus increasing the risk of acquiring or spreading HIV . . . young girls learnt to be in love with elderly men for benefits like school fees, food at home and scholastic materials.
Consequences of exposure to conflict on resilience
. . . in October 1987, the cattle rustlers killed my father . . . . I dropped out of school. . . . In 1990, we were hit by famine and our mother abandoned us . . . I struggled to bring up my siblings since I was the first born. I married early because I needed someone to help me take care of my siblings . . . In 1996, I joined the army but the pay was not good and I used to be transferred quite a lot. I stopped soldiering when my two brothers were in secondary school. In 2005, I tested HIV positive and . . . I started septrin prophylaxis. I have since had other confirmatory HIV and Tuberculosis (TB) tests . . .
HIV might have not spread widely as it is nowadays . . . if it was not because of displacement. People would have been in their traditional homes . . . the laziness common in our people is linked to what happened to them . . . there was too much idleness and taking alcohol . . . insecurity made it hard to go back to villages to dig . . .
The lifestyle in IDP camps encouraged over drinking alcohol and engaging in HRSB. People would take advantage of making others drunk to have sex with them . . .
Gender-based abuse in a post-conflict setting
. . . seeing one's own mother or sister being raped, murdered and starved was too painful . . . The LRA brutally murdered, looted and abducted children and adults, some of whom have never returned . . .
". . . the violent approach of the conflict involved raping women and girls and this left many of the victims feeling psychological pain and disgust with their lives . . ."
. . . innocent people were killed and this left many of them puzzled and confused. Some women and girls were raped and this affected them psychologically and in general health . . . some got infected with diseases they did not have before . . .
. . . Sex totally lost meaning . . . women started to have sex for material gain and to support their families. . . poverty drove people crazy at the peak of war here! . . . you would find some one giving in to have sex because she wanted to earn a living . . . IDP camp life made the situation worse . . .. . . all the deviance in sexual behaviour mainly resulted from difficulties that people faced at the peak of war . . . there was food shortage and women started to exchange sex for food, gifts and other valuables. Girls started to be prematurely given out for marriage because of poverty . . . orphaned teenage girls started to just give in to marriage as the only way to have a house. . .Due to having just come out of a war situation, people generally feel dejected and hopeless, others feel they are the unluckiest in the world . . . some see no reason to live on . . . many women now exchange sex for food and other valuable items. Some have no fear of HIV/AIDS since unlike starvation; it will not kill them immediately . . . these are indications of despair.
. . . late in 2008, my husband tested HIV positive but for me, I tested negative . . . my husband puts me to task to explain how it happens that I am negative. He claims that I brought the disease . . . He abuses me, beats me and makes my life miserable . . . prolonged war and life in the IDP camp had lead us into many fights leading to separation . . . I married another man . . . my husband also married another woman . . . with return of peace, I went back to our home village and I went back to my original husband . . .
Relationship between exposure to prolonged trauma, well being and HRSB
The level of alcohol use for most people more than doubled and this happened after many people from different backgrounds settled in large IDP camps . . . among the youths, a lot of cross-generational sex started to happen . . . young girls started to have sex with old men. . . sexual immorality used to be low before the war . . incidence of rape has increased and so has divorce.. . . people are settling back from IDP camps into their homes but . . . they still have emotional and psychological problems as a result of their displacement . . . many had become reckless on issues to do with sex because of hopelessness in IDP camps . . . many of them lost respect themselves . . . they used sexual encounters as a way of dealing with emotional pain and feeling joyful even when they would be suffering hence putting their lives at risk of HIV and STIs