AUTHOR=Apio Eunice Otuko 

TITLE=Resilience among Children Born of War in northern Uganda

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Political Science

VOLUME=Volume 4 - 2022

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/political-science/articles/10.3389/fpos.2022.874548

DOI=10.3389/fpos.2022.874548

ISSN=2673-3145

ABSTRACT=The literature on children born of conflict-related sexual violence, or Children Born of War (CBOW) is dominated by accounts and perceptions of suffering and risks that they experience both during and after armed conflict (e.g. Carpenter, 2007; Apio, 2008; Carpenter, 2010; Lee et al., 2021; Alessia et al.,, 2021). In contrast, this article focusses on nuanced experiences of CBOW after suffering adversities. The paper applies the culturally sensitive revised 17-item Children and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM-R) (Ungar & Liebenberg, 2011, Liebenberg et al., 2012) to 35 CBOW randomly drawn from a population of those born to former forced wives of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and another population born between 1993 and 2006 as a result of sexual violence perpetrated by cattle raiders in northern Uganda. Following the analysis of the CYRM-R scores, nine participants representing different quartiles, and with different scores on the relational/caretaker and personal resilience sub scales were identified to take part in a subsequent semi-structured interview process. The aim was to examine how children born of war in northern Uganda express resilience, the factors that influence their resilience experiences, and what it means for the broader concept of integration.