Helping Rebuild Lives

Joanne Corbin broadens her work with war-torn communities in northern Uganda

Over the course of more than two decades, approximately 1.8 million people in northern Uganda were displaced in the midst of hostilities between the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Ugandan government. Since 2005, Professor Joanne Corbin has regularly traveled to the region to learn how years of armed conflict and displacement have impacted these communities and how they have begun to rebuild their lives. In her most recent work, Corbin focused on the effects of the war and dislocation on women’s social, cultural and economic roles and responsibilities.

Corbin has built relationships and networks in the region with the help of local organizations, including the Catholic Archdiocese and the Anaka Foundation, an NGO that helps communities improve their access to health care and education and become economically self-sustaining. In 2013 and 2014, drawing on these networks, Corbin interviewed women in four villages in the Gulu and Nwoya Districts who had lived for long periods in internally displaced persons camps. In the interviews she explored the changes in the women’s sociocultural and economic roles and responsibilities since their displacement, and the ways community and cultural influences have affected these roles.

Throughout her research, Corbin was very conscious that the entire community would need to be involved in and aware of her work at each stage. “Thinking about how interventions are developed within the community and attending to particular community understandings about how families and how communities work together” has been key, she said. She was especially aware that the men of the community needed to be involved. Many programs in the area focus on the needs of women and children, and when men are left out they are more likely to act out violently or commandeer resources provided to others.

To this end, when Corbin began her research she led community meetings with both men and women to talk about the nature of the study and why she was interviewing women only at that point. She also offered feedback at the end of the study so the entire community would hear the results of her research.

In most cases, the women were also land insecure. Land in these communities is passed through the male side of the family. If husbands were absent or killed, or if women weren’t married to their partners, they often lost access to land. “Without land you can’t build a home and you don’t have land to farm to raise income,” Corbin said. “You are impoverished, even more so than everybody else who is impoverished.”

In the interviews, Corbin learned that family and institutional structures had been thoroughly disrupted by the conflicts, and that women’s roles in their families and communities had changed significantly. Many had lost husbands to violence and disease, and were left with multiple dependents, including children of family members and others in the community. The women also spoke of the breakdown in relationships between men and women, with men often participating less in caring for their families. “Women would talk about this over and over again,” Corbin said. “When there were too many children to take care of and too many responsibilities the men would shift to women who didn’t have any children.”

Once she completed her research, Corbin worked with the communities to develop an intervention to address the social and economic changes and to re-establish community structures. They created what they call “dialogue groups.” These groups, which began meeting in May 2016, consist of no more than 20 men and women, who meet monthly for a discussion led by a community-based facilitator. Corbin developed modules on 12 content areas to guide the discussions, including respect, communication, relationships and marriages, domestic violence and women’s access to land.

Almost immediately, the participants in the dialogue groups defied her expectations. They took full ownership of the process, adapting the groups to their needs, setting up ground rules and engaging in difficult conversations. They’ve connected to resources in their area to obtain information and guidance, and have developed income-generating projects.

The Anaka Foundation has also used the groups as a vehicle for its activities. Thanks to the processes and structures the groups have developed, the foundation can deliver its services and resources more effectively—such as connecting the most vulnerable children to educational resources, improving sanitation and providing entrepreneurial trainings.

According to Corbin, the communities are already seeing changes. Men and women are working together in ways they haven’t before, and they’ve experienced a decrease in gender-based violence, which Corbin attributes in part to women taking on leadership roles in the communities and gaining confidence in their voices. Land dispute cases have also decreased. “I think that’s because, in the groups, they’re able to talk about differences or conflicts,” Corbin said. “And maybe there’s a different mechanism, a way of talking that allows them to resolve difficulties before they have to go through the legal route.”

Margaret Omona, Anaka’s executive director, also reports many changes. She has seen an increase in women’s self-esteem and in male involvement within families, more unity in the community in farming and maintaining resources, health and educational outreach by members of the group to the wider community, gender equality in access to education and an increase in financial savings.

Corbin has also been quite happy to learn that more men want to be involved in the groups. Early on, men who participated would hear from others that they were foolish to get involved with something that wasn’t providing anything tangible. Now the men who participate often explain to the naysayers that they’re getting something more valuable—new ideas and strategies for earning a better living. “I no longer have to give the reasons why people need to participate. The people themselves are generating these responses back to other community members,” Corbin said.

Corbin most recently visited the region in April and May of 2018, when most of the dialogue groups had completed all of the modules. The groups wanted to acknowledge the work they’d done, and set up a graduation ceremony where 130 participants received certificates of completion. Initially, they expected the groups would be done after completing the 12 modules, but all of the groups have chosen to continue together.

During this visit, Corbin and colleagues led a cross-district training with 90 participants where they networked, discussed accomplishments and set goals for the coming year. They also initiated nine new groups and introduced new modules on significant issues for the groups: suicide awareness and prevention, and income generating strategies. A social work colleague specializing in social entrepreneurship, Jacqueline Armstrong, developed and presented the modules on income-generating strategies and contributed to the training.

While working in Uganda, Corbin enjoyed strong support back at the SSW. She received financial support from the Clinical Research Institute and research assistance from three doctoral students—LaTasha Smith, Dominica Lizzi and Stephen Friedman—who have participated in literature reviews, interview question development, interview transcriptions and data analysis.

For now, Corbin is focused on deepening and broadening the work she has begun. She has launched a study to complement her first one— interviewing men in the region to understand the effects of armed conflict and displacement on their social, cultural and economic roles. She will process that data this year and hopes the findings will better inform the dialogue groups. Corbin is also working to disseminate her finding in publications and at conferences, partnering with more agencies, and determining how to implement on a larger scale the interventions that are proving to be so effective. ◆