From victim to citizen: Exploring the social role of young people in postconflict settings

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From victim to citizen Exploring the social
role of young people in post-conflict settings

• Julie Guyot, M.S.W.
• Africanist Doctoral Fellow
• Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
• August 4, 2008
• enhanced with presentation notes for posting

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Presentation outline

• Social transition from conflict to post-
• The limitations of trauma approaches
• Person-in-environment (ecological) perspective
• Introduction of social role theory
• Political youth, a role?
• Country examples
• Considerations and further research steps

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Social transition from conflict to post-

• A key task of reintegration is to help youth
  achieve
• a positive, respected role in their communities
• (Wessells Jonah, 2006, p. 39).

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• As children and youth now constitute
• the majority of the African population,
• Their integration into society, in terms
• of both civic responsibility and
• membership, hasenormous economic,
• cultural, political, and social consequences
• 
  (Diouf, 2003, p. 2).

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Purpose of this research

• Desire to shift from the study of ex-combatants
  as a segregated youth cohort from a perspective
  that privileges a between the ears (or trauma)
  approach, to an investigation into how youth fit
  into the post-conflict social environment
• A belief that African youth are political beings
  and constitute a vital component of civil society
•  
• To reframe the traditional approach that largely
  views young people as lost generation
  (www.npr.org) or perennial security threat
  (ICG, 7/31/08)
•  
• To explore civic engagement and political
  participation as therapeutic processes for
  post-conflict youth

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DDR as an organizing frame

• Zegeye (2004) stresses that both childhood and
  adulthood are
• socially constructed and are defined within
  institutional
• frameworks (p. 854, emphasis added).
•  
• Demobilization, Demilitarization, and
  Reintegration (DDR) is
• a useful construct to interrogate youth,
  transformation, and
• social role theory the reasons that
• Represents a cluster of programming (accessible)
• It operates as a liminal space, as a site of
  transition, transformation, and
  decision-makingthe space between, where things
  are named (Ferguson and Gupta, 2002 Foucault,
  1991)
•  

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Demobilization, Demilitarization, Rehabilitation
(DDR) and roles

• While DDR programs are set up to ease the
  reintroduction
• Of young people to their communities, the
  challenge young
• People face in locating a meaningful role can be
  complicated
• by notions held by community leaders and program
• administrators of what it means to be a young
  person.
• Along with medical checks, family tracing and
  resettlement
• packages, young people are assigned roles.

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The trauma paradigmfrom PTSD to cleansing

• Medicalized suffering (Kleinman, 1996)
• Focus on violence, not how it is processed
• Based on western notions (Summerfield, 1998)
• Relies on outside expertise (Pupavac, 2002)
• Deficit-based
• Does not capture resilience
• Not culturally congruent or appropriate
• A between the ears approach

Photo by Lindsay Stark
For a more detailed critique Guyot, J. (2007).
Suffer the Children The psychosocial
rehabilitation of child soldiers as a function of
peace-building. Available on www.child-soldiers.o
rg/psycho-social/english
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Building an empirical base
Too often, ex-combatants are characterized as
traumatized victims (UN, 2000), robbed of
childhood (HRW, 2006), comprising a lost
generation (StC, 2006).

• The Study of War-Affected Youth (SWAY) Project in
  northern Uganda
• and the Harvard School of Public Health
  longitudinal work taking
• place in Sierra Leone are enriching our
  understanding of how young
• people fare by
• incorporating variables related to pro-social
  behavior, employment, and political activity
• moving away from traditional trauma approaches
  that quantified western medical symptoms
• expanding beyond exclusive concern with
  depression and anxiety symptoms

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Child-in-environment

• Broad-based community-level interventions
• Ecological approach, holistic (Bronfenbrenner,
  1979)
• Culturally-appropriate
• Communal worldview
• Shift from trauma to social functioning

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RE Child-in-Environment

• Children may become embedded in adult narratives
  of community development, subsumed by household
  (as a unit of analysis) and schooling (as a
  normative, status-appropriate activity)
• Rather than focus on the dynamic interaction
  between young people and the environment, this
  model may simply assign them the concerns of the
  broader community
• They may serve as no more than a window to the
  community, rather than for the frame to function
  so as to enrich understanding of young peoples
  particular circumstance within it

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Social Role Theory

• Biddle (1979) a behavioral repertoire,
  characteristic of a person or a
• position a set of standards, descriptions,
  norms, or concepts held for
• the behaviors of a person or social position (p.
  9).

• typically associated with duties, norms, and
  expectations
• dictated by social structure and social
  interactions
• understanding is reciprocal and didactic

Photo by Lindsay Stark
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Social Role Theory

• One way of understanding the ways in which people
  are socially positioned, how the self is
  constructed, and how this informs behaviors and
  expectations regarding behavior
• Alternative, asset-based perspective that focuses
  on the individual agency that is exercised
  through role-taking and role-making (Turner,
  1962)
• Focuses on the interaction between individual
  behavior and social structure
• Unlike the prevailing trauma paradigm it captures
  coping, capacity, socio-economic condition, and
  community-level interaction
• It addresses issues of power because negotiation
  is central to the process of role formation
• Culture and psychosocial development are not
  treated as static, but evolutionary

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World Bank DDR report (2002)

• The soldier has been changed by his/her life and
  experiences
• as a soldier. Demobilized soldiers go through
  the process of
• leaving the status of soldier, leaving the life
  with which they
• have become familiar, and leaving the community
  of soldiers
• who have been companions through many
  experiences. See
• Hansen, 1999 Certainly, for the child soldier
  this important
• period of forming a social and personal identity
  has been
• the capstone of his/her childhood to that date
• (Verhey, 2002, p. 14).

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Multiple levels, multiple roles
decision-maker parent ally entrepreneur
caregiver mentor head of household
economic contributor
Community Roles
helpmate advisor protector jokester
Group Roles
messenger cook porter driver
Structural Roles
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On multiple roles

•  
• Marks MacMermid (1996) found that people who
  maintain more balance across their entire systems
  of roles and activitiesscore lower on measures
  of depression and higher on measures of
  self-esteem,and other indicators of well-being
  (p. 417)
• Research has shown that multiple roles may be
  good for ones health (Verbrugge, 1986) and
  psychological well-being (Baruch Barnett, 1994)
• According to Linton (1987), people with many
  self-aspects are buffered against stress from
  negative events because they have the option of
  refocusing on which selves have remained
  unaffected by any particular event (Marks
  MacMermid, 1996, p. 418)
•  
• An example from a CHF International study on the
  Economic Re-integration of Ex-combatants in Lofa
  County, Liberia (2008) Im a mother now, so I
  wouldnt fight again (p. 25)

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Multiple, simultaneous roles

• ex-combatant
• youth
• survivor
• leader
• friend
• sister
• girl
• storyteller
• vital member of civil society
• political constituent
• ideologue
• footballer

May 14, 2008, www.metro.co.uk
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On the subject of female combatants

• Whats emerged from a participatory action
  research with female
• former combatants taking place now (10 agencies
  in three
• African countries) is a strong desire expressed
  by participants
• not to be reduced to incidence of sexual
  assaultnot to be
• viewed as sex slaves.
• But to be recognized in ways that connect with
  participants
• personal sense of power and self-identity, which
  form an
• alternate role, pulled from within complex
  selves, with dignity.
• Self-concept and Definitions that come from
  outside the self

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Role Definers
Teachers
News media
Community elders
Social workers
Ex-combatant
NGOs
Politicians
Researchers
Former military commanders
Local officials
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Market women
Peer Group
Local Elites
Former commanders
Government
Youth leadership

Civilians
Ex-combatant
Neighbors
Village elders
School officials
Employers
Spiritual leaders
Researchers
Family
Peers
Social workers
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Interaction

• From a research and intervention perspective this
  dynamic is
• particularly useful as role theory highlights the
  agency of an
• individual while also providing a sense of
  environment, as
• A. an actors self is a reflection of the
  attitudes that others
• hold toward her
• B. elements are shaped by what the actor brings
  to the
• encounter
• C. the quality and type of interaction/engagement
  is highly
• relevant (Breese, 1997)
•  
• Role consensus is the meeting point of role,
  self-concept, and
• expectations. It depends on the alignment among
  these three.

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Liberian cases
Liberian reintegration through a role lens

• Lofa County (2008)
• Sinoe County (2005)

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Lofa County, Liberia (2008)

• From a CHF International Study on the Economic
  Re-integration
• of Ex-combatants (Taylor, Hill, Temin, 2008)
• Anecdotal evidence suggests that some of the
  ex-combatants
• returned expecting to be treated as heroes, or at
  least receive
• respect for who they are and what they had done.
  This often
• was not the case and many ex-combatants went
  through a
• period where they were at odds with community and
  family.
• Some continue to have problems. And even though
  they have
• (or perhaps had) an image of themselves as
  heroes, few took
• advantage of skills gained during warfare to
  build a life for
• themselves after the fighting ended. In short,
  ex-combatants
• continue to struggle (p. 27).

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Sinoe County, Liberia (2005)

• Opportunities for economic independence
  respected social position
• More successful process of spontaneous social
  reintegration.
• Utas (2005) noted how men were taking on adult
  roles that had taken place at a later age prior
  to the period of conflict (e.g. able to farm
  their own land and to marry).
• A separate report cites a Senior Reintegration
  Specialist who noted the presence of a 15
  year-old military commander of Sinoe Countys
  Tubmanburg region
• Matching role sets
• consistency across time as it relates to the
  duties, norms, and expectations
• autonomy and authority of wartime translated to
  positive social role for post-conflict period

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Assigned role and DDR The making of a Child
Soldier

• 15-year-old adults and 20-year-old children
• no birth certificates, and no clear-cut way to
  make the distinction
• Under-18s v. Over-18s
• A certain set of combatants could conceivably
  portray themselves as either adult or
  child
• Role (label) determined benefits and future
  program track
• Primary education v. vocational training, etc.
• and an assessment of which promises were more
  likely to be kept (p. 119)
• (Shepler, 2005)

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Role, identity and recruitmentAn example from
Sierra Leone
www.candacescharsu.com
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Role assignment Negative representation of youth

• Nigerian Area Boys, South African Tsotsis, the
  Breakers
• and Gang Boys of Senegal Savis Man and Rarray
  Boys in
• Sierra Leone, the Gronah Boys of Liberia.
• Representation of a troubled and troublesome
  youth
• has helped to criminalize youth, and fuelled
  an
• underestimation of the capacity for, and
  possibility
• of a positive youth in Africa  
• (Honwana De Boek 2005 in
  Oyewole, 2006, p. 7).

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Emergent themes

• Characterizations of youth emanating from
  security concerns and trauma frames are so
  negative as to preclude a sense of positive
  youth leadership
• Youth as a category is implicitly somehow
  deficient developmentally or inappropriate to the
  social order (e.g. tradition)

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Perception How old is leadership?

• Everyone we spoke with told us that the hope for
  Sierra Leone lies in its
• youthThe U.N. civil policemantold me that there
  were some stellar
• young men in the police force in his town, but he
  was afraid that they
• wouldn't be given the opportunity to pull the
  force out of its rotten past
• because they were thought too young to be
  leaders.
•  
• Photo by Rob Peterson

www.slate.com/id/2093103/
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Resistance to political youth role

• Elders rule, young people serve (Carter, 2007)
• A strong tradition of youth voice has been
  documented by Gables (2000). The Culture
  Development Club Youth, Neo-Tradition, and the
  Construction of Society in Guinea-Bissau, and
  others
• Notion of tradition itself is highly problematic
  See Rangers Invention of Tradition in
  Colonial Africa (1983)
• Co-opted by big men for hire as spoilers
  (Abdullah, 1998)
• Case studies of youth-led civic education
  (e.g. NAYMOTE)

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See Youth and Politics in Conflict Contexts, May
16, 2007. WWICS publication.
Resistance to political youth role

• Token role in local governance structures
  (Manning, n.d.)
• Somehow not authentic Imposed. Done to pacify or
  stimulate interest of NGOs, not reflective of an
  appreciation for youth voice
• Outcome of therapeutic/trauma paradigm (Pupavac,
  2006)
• The trauma paradigm provides a role that is
  wholly circumscribed by vulnerability and
  dependence. Systems are so convinced that youth
  are broken by trauma that belief in
  decision-making capacity is thoroughly
  undermined. Lost generations dont lead!

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Youth leadership

• Children lead14-year-olds going on 25 are
• leadersthey lead in the camps, in the
• transition points, in the reintegration
  facilities
• 
  Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire
  
  
• (UNICEF, 2002)

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Findings on violence and political participation

• 22 more likely to vote
• Twice as likely than non-abductee peers
  to hold public office
• 73 increase in likelihood of joining a
  peace-promoting organization
• MORE RESEARCH NEEDED

Blattman, 2008
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Blattman (2008) and political participation

• Dominant theories regarding war-trauma and young
  people
• assume that it renders them incapable of normal
  functioning
• much less participation in the public sphere. And
  yet, Blattman
• (2008) articulates a very different vision, based
  on data from
• northern Ugandan abductees.
•  
• But, what is most significant here is that there
  is a particularly
• political face to community activity.
• Interestingly, he found no relationship between
  abduction,
• violence, and NON-political forms of
  participation and
• volunteering
• MORE RESEARCH NEEDED

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Is there a political role for youth?
Victim or Citizen? Post-conflict programming
for African children and youth
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Social Role, future considerations?

• Community-based interventions
• intergenerational partnerships
• cooperation on superordinate goals
• duel impact of community healing and role
  valorization (Flynn Lemay, 1999)
• normalization processes
• Employment/training
• shift to cooperative livelihoods arrangements
• Fund collectives, rather than individual training
  modules?
• value of apprenticeships
• Role mastery, broader skill-base

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Social Role, future considerations?
UNICEF, Stevie Mann, 2003

• Education programming (Collier Morgan, 2005)
• peer-to-peer, across combatant/civilian divide
• role mastery, education beyond knowledge base
• Service delivery evaluation (Guirguis Chewning,
  2005)
• quality of community partnerships
• worker burnout (role overload)

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• Youth represent the
• possibility of either an
• exit from Africa's
• current predicament
• or an intensification
• of that predicament.
• - Alex de Waal

Photo by Lindsay Stark
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Resources Youth and Politics

• Blattman, C. (2008). From violence to voting War
  and political participation in Uganda. Center for
  Global Development. Working Paper, No. 138.
• Boyden, J. (2006). Children, war and world
  disorder in the 21st century A review of the
  theories and the literature on childrens
  contributions to armed violence. Working Paper
  138, Queen Elizabeth House, Univ. of Oxford.
• Hickey, S. Mohan, G. (2005). Relocating
  participation within a radical politics of
  development. Development and Change, 36 (2),
  237-260.
• McEvoy-Levy, S. (2001). Youth as social and
  political agents Issues in post-settlement
  peace-building. Kroc Institute Occasional Paper,
  21-OP-2.
• Newman, J. (2005). Protection through
  participation Young people affected by forced
  migration and political crisis. RSC Working Paper
  Series. No. 20. Oxford, United Kingdom Refugee
  Studies Centre, University of Oxford.
• Twum-Danso, A. (2004). The political child. In,
  McIntyre, A. (Ed.), Invisible stakeholders The
  impact of children on war (pp. 7-30).

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Resources Social Role Theory

• Biddle, B.J. (1979). Role theoryexpectations,
  identities and behaviors. New York John Wiley
  Sons.
• Breese, J. R. (1997). A re-examination of the
  concept of role and its divergent traditions.
  Virginia Social Science Journal, 32, 113 126.
• Flynn, R. J., Lemay, R. A. (Eds.) (1999). A
  quarter-century of normalization and social role
  valorization evolution and impact. Ottawa
  University of Ottawa Press.
• Goode, W.J. (1960). A theory of role strain.
  American Sociological Review, 25, 483-496.
• Linton, R. (1945). Social structure and cultural
  participation, In, The cultural background of
  personality (pp. 55-82). New York
  Appleton-Century.
• Mead, G.H. (1934). Mind, self, and society.
  Chicago University of Chicago Press.
• Parsons, T. (1951). The social system. Glencoe,
  IL The Free Press.
• Thomas, E. J., Feldman, R. A., Kamm, J. (1967).
  Concepts of role theory. In E.J. Thomas (Ed.),
  Behavioral science for social workers. New York
  Free Press.
• Turner, R.H. (1956). Role taking, role
  standpoint, and reference group behavior.
  American Journal of Sociology, 41, 316-328.

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Contact info

• Julie Guyot, M.S.W.
• julieguyot_at_hotmail.com