What are we learning about girls’ integration? Lessons from Sierra Leone, Liberia, Uganda & Angola

Mike Wessells CCF & Columbia University July 22, 2008

Girls’ Diverse Roles & Situations

Girls’Situation—Implications for Integration

• Discrimination and patriarchy before, during, and after the conflict • Marginalization in formal DDR processes • Gender-based violence, structural violence • Necessary supports—cultural and situational tailoring of livelihoods, health, educational, and psychosocial support • Underestimation of girls’ agency and resilience • Little attention to girls’ gendered situation and their own perspectives before, during, and after association with armed forces and groups • Mothering and children • Need to probe girls’ subjective, culturally constructed understandings of what is ‘integration’ and how to support it • Contextual adaptation—lessons from Angola and avoiding a ‘one size fits all’ approach • Question: are we learning systematically when and how to intermix formal and nonformal supports?

Systems Approaches to Integration

Family Community -Parents accept girls and support them -Family mediation -Actively discourage association with armed groups - Modeling of nonviolence - Positive parenting -Encouragement of education & girls’ participation -Establishment and support community mechanisms of child protection, with a strong emphasis on gender, nonrecruitment, & integration -Community sensitization & workshops on girls’ rights, empathy, reconciliation, reduction of stigma & jealousy -Access to education, health care, livelihoods & psychosocial supports - Community relations— drama, mobilization of girl youths for civic service Societal - Activities to promote gender justice -Girl friendly laws & policies -Media programming -Government supports -Links with regional, national and international mechanisms, 1612

Participatory Action Research: Building Agency and Resilience with Girl Mothers

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Sierra Leone:

CCF, Christian Brothers, Council of Churches in Sierra Leone, National Network for Psychosocial Care • •

Liberia:

Save the Children/UK, THINK

Uganda:

Caritas, Concerned Parents Association, Transcultural Psychiatry Organization, World Vision • Coordinators: Susan McKay, Angela Veale, Miranda Worthen, Mike Wessells

How the PAR works

• Girl mothers (half formerly abducted, half not) learn about or ‘research’ their situation and needs • Girls define which problems they want to address • Girls create social actions in their communities with support from the agencies and adult Advisory Committees • Girls document and learn from their activities

Sample Social Actions

• Petty business • Farming • Animal husbandry • Literacy activities • Community service • Community drama and other activities to support empathy and decrease stigma

Preliminary Outcomes

• Increased access to psychosocial support • Increased income—access to better foods, clothing, health care, education • Increased functional literacy • Less transactional sex work • Children’s participation in formal education • Improved status in the community

“Before the project, I was low and people paid no attention to me. Now they do because I have goats and groundnuts and do my business.”

Key Lessons

• Capacity building to avoid excessive staff guidance • Value of support groups • Importance of community advisory groups • Value of learning across projects • Careful attention to ‘Do No Harm’ Issues • Girls’ and staffs’ capacity building in regard to documentation • PAR is a means of bringing visibility to the invisible

Question

• Are we doing enough to listen to girls themselves and support their agency in the integration process?

Challenges

• PAR project - how to support additional girls who want to join - managing jealousy and community relations - enabling sustainable actions - going to scale • Wider Girl’s Integration arena - how to make girls’ issues central on the reintegration agenda - reintegration guides DDR process?

- building the evidence base - girls’ full participation in all phases - what about girls who do not want to return home?

- short-term programming and funding - how to effectively support girl mothers’ children - building stronger support & protection systems that link multiple levels, include social and legal protection, and support all war-affected and at-risk children