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Burundi : la crise politique s'aggrave après l'arrestation d'opposants | Jeuneafrique.com
Le Burundi s'enfonce encore davantage dans la crise politique après l'inculpation mercredi d'un responsable de l'opposition et de 71 de ses militants. Ils sont accusés "d'insurrection" et risquent la prison à perpétuité.
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Sud-Kivu : des grands-parents hostiles au planning familial | Syfia
Les couples qui planifient les naissances, pour être sûrs de pouvoir bien élever leur progéniture, rencontrent souvent, au Sud-Kivu à l’Est de la RD Congo, l’hostilité de leurs parents. Pour ces derniers, selon la religion et la coutume, l’enfant est une richesse alors, qu’aujourd’hui, elle est le plus souvent une charge.
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Despite high levels of traumatic exposure, refugees often do not seek mental health services upon resettlement. The purpose of this study was to examine both concepts of mental illness in addition to attitudes and beliefs about treatment as well as potential barriers to accessing mental health services. To that end, qualitative research was done using focus groups with Congolese and Somali men and women in the United States (n = 48) in addition to a community survey with women from those communities (n = 296) administered by staff of a community-based organization. Mental health concerns, although identified, were often dealt with first in the communities themselves with the help of family or friends. Great emphasis was placed on their respective communities of faith. The actual role of mental health professionals was not well understood, and there was apparent hesitancy to use services, which also relates to issues of stigma.
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Former Child Soldiers’ Problems and Needs | Qualitative Health Research
With this article, we explore how staff working at transit centers and vocational training centers in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo experienced the problems and needs of former child soldiers. We argued that the staff’s experience of the children’s daily lives and their understanding of the sociocultural context of the conflict make their perspective a valuable source of information when trying to understand the phenomenon of child soldiering. Additionally, we reasoned that how the staff frame these children’s problems influences how they attempt to aid the children. We conducted 11 semistructured interviews and analyzed these using a hermeneutical-phenomenological approach. We clustered our findings around six themes: unfavorable contextual factors, acting as if still in the army, addiction, symptoms of psychopathology, social rejection, and reintegration needs. The overarching message we observed was that the informants experienced that former child soldiers require help to be transformed into civilians who participate proactively in their society
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Rwanda and South Africa are once again caught up in a diplomatic row. This erupted following reports of an attack by a group of armed men on the Johannesburg residence of Rwandan dissident and former Army Chief of Staff, Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa. The attack, which took place on March 3rd, comes on the heels of the killing last December of Rwanda’s former external intelligence chief, Patrick Karegeya. Both incidents and the attempted killing of General Kayumba in 2010 have brought suspicion upon the government of Rwanda for being behind them.
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Pourquoi la condamnation de Simbikangwa est historique | le carnet de Colette Braeckman
En leur âme et conscience, les jurés de la Cour d’Assisses de Paris ont jugé que Pascal Simbikwanga était coupable de crime de génocide et de crime contre l’humanité, et non de simple « complicité » et l’ont condamné à 25 ans de prison. Vingt ans après le génocide qui a fait près d’un million de morts au Rwanda, un mois avant la commémoration de cet anniversaire, à Kigali et à travers le monde, le procès qui vient de se terminer est historique.
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The psychological impact of working in post conflict environments ... | Intervention
This personal reflection describes the psychological impact of living and working in post conflict environments for psychosocial workers and researchers, such as the author. In her experience, working and living in post genocide Rwanda, primary, secondary and vicarious traumatisation processes were closely interrelated. She stresses the importance of understanding the connections that exist among and across different forms of traumatisation. The concept of intersectional traumatisation explains how multiple forms of traumas intersect through the act of listening, imagining, empathising and experiencing.
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Monitoring social transformation for the vulnerable using visioning and household mentoring
The District Livelihoods Support Programme (DLSP), implemented by the Ministry of Local Government in Uganda, and funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has been piloting the use of visioning and household mentoring as a new approach to tackle rural poverty among poor communities. The approaches have the unique aspect of providing social transformation for the most vulnerable households by empowering them to make joint decisions as a family and tackle their challenges. So far, the approach has shown great improvement in family income, gender equality, as well as awareness of other community programmes from which households can benefit.
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Review: We Must Free our Imaginations – Binyavanga Wainaina | Africa at LSE
LSE’s Siki Kigongo says that being present at Binyavanga Wainana’s recent lecture at LSE helped humanise the reality of the persecution homosexuals are facing in several African countries.
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Forced marriage as a political project | JPR
One of the most vexing contradictions about the Uganda originated rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), is the fact that it institutionalized forced marriage on the one hand, while actively discouraging sexually immoral behavior on the other: rape, sexual violence, and promiscuity both within the group and outside it were punishable by severe beating or death. What explains this contradiction? The article suggests that in addition to maintaining discipline and control over a diverse and reluctant group, forced marriage and the regulation of sexual relations reproduced a political project of imagining a ‘new Acholi’ nation. The article draws on original data collected in focus group discussions with former commanders and wives to commanders to discuss the historical evolution of this vision, how the LRA enforced rules regarding sexual behavior, and finally, the way forced marriage implicated women and girls in the organization of power and domination in the group until it was forced from permanent bases in Sudan in 2002.
