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

1. What are we learning about girls’ integration? Lessons from Sierra Leone, Liberia, Uganda & Angola Mike Wessells CCF & Columbia University July 22, 2008

2. Girls’ Diverse Roles & Situations

3. 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?

4. Systems Approaches to Integration

5. Participatory Action Research: Building Agency and Resilience with Girl Mothers • 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

6. 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

7. Sample Social Actions • Petty business • Farming • Animal husbandry • Literacy activities • Community service • Community drama and other activities to support empathy and decrease stigma

8. 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.”

9. 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

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

11. 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