Divergent Discourses, Children and Forced Migration

Experiences of refugee, internally displaced and migrant children in different contexts (such as post-conflict and resettlement) are often considered separately, yet closer analysis points to the existence of commonalities across transnational locations and a need to articulate the ways in which global systems, state policies and migration processes impact on the lives of these children. Current discourses, policies and practices towards forcedmigrant children show that there are divergent and at times conflicting constructions of childhood and migration, and implicitly reveal the positions that these children occupy in relation to the nation-state system. In this article we focus on the existence of common divergent discourses that emerge from contexts in the global North and South, including Rwanda, Uganda, Ireland and the United Kingdom, where we have carried out research with children forced to move. Our overall aim is to re-politicise the position of child and youth forced migration through an analysis of three sets of divergent or ambivalent discourses: a) forced-migrant children as product of and threat to the nation-state; b) ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’ children; and c) the ‘psychological’ and the ‘political’ child

Community-based reintegration of war affected young mothers: participatory action research (PAR) in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Northern Uganda

In this report, we describe a community-based participatory action research (PAR) project involving approximately 658 young mothers and over 1200 of their children living in the three war-torn countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Northern Uganda. Instead of using internationally-defined notions and adult-centric statements about what reintegration is, we sought to understand reintegration from the young mothers’ perspectives, learning from them about what constitutes successful reintegration for themselves and their children. The project supported the young mothers in implementing actions that they thought would assist them in achieving their notion of successful reintegration. The project was implemented through an academic-NGO partnership that brought together a team from 10 non-governmental organizations, three African academics and four Western academics collaborating on the project over the course of nearly four years. A central goal of the project was to support the implementation of the Paris Principles by providing inputs from the field about how to do reintegration with a strong emphasis on participation in different country contexts. The project centrally involves young mothers as highly-active participants who take leadership roles in program development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, working to reduce the powerful stigma they face through their garnering of local resources. The project works to develop organizational capacity to implement programs using highly participatory approaches. Underpinning all our work was the principle of “Do No Harm.” Operationally, the project took place in twenty field sites in the three countries. At each field site, agency partners established groups of approximately thirty young mothers who joined together to work collaboratively to identify the problems they and their children were facing and implement initiatives to try and mitigate those problems. Problems identified across the twenty sites were remarkably similar, reflecting difficulties with social stigma, access to education for the participants and their children, access to affordable medical care, and sustainable livelihoods. With local supports and social action funds, young mothers’ groups prioritized their problems and came up with ways of addressing these challenges. Creative social action initiatives included hiring a nurse to teach about hygiene and sanitation, micro-credit to support individual petty trading, opening group businesses like a restaurant or a weaving cooperative, and building a collective groundnut farm on land donated by community members. In addition to the support experienced through the group process, these actions worked to increase the well being of the young mothers and their children and to bring them into the fold of the community. The findings of this multi-year project are highlighted below, followed by recommendations to practitioners, donors, and policy makers operating in the field of reintegration and post-conflict child protection. Multi-media presentations are available on the project’s website: www.pargirlmothers.co

Participation as principle and tool in social reintegration: young mothers formerly associated with armed groups in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Northern Uganda

Experience of traumatic stressors within armed groups can negatively impact social cognitions of mastery, self-efficacy, and control. This could be compounded by postreturn conditions of stigma, little access to education, and limited means of livelihood. We explore an intervention that placed girlsâ participation as a central organizing principle. Based on study reports and ethnographic field work, we examine how young mothers transformed their identity and membership within communities of return through drama, songs and poetry, and engagement in social actions. Meaningful participation offers a culturally grounded intervention in which the impacts of traumatic stressors on individual functioning and the social relational world are directly targeted, resulting in a positive modification of developmental trajectories for young women and, ultimately, their children

Building meaningful participation in reintegration among war-affected young mothers in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Northern Uganda

When young mothers, formerly associated with armed groups, return to communities, they are typically social isolated, stigmatised, and marginalised. This creates reintegration challenges for themselves, and their communities. Their children face child protection problems such as neglect, rejection and abuse. In this paper, the authors describe an innovative field practice - community based, participatory action research (PAR) - that meaningfully involved formerly associated young mothers, and other vulnerable young mothers, in their communities. The project took place in 20 field sites in three countries: Liberia, northern Uganda and Sierra Leone. It was implemented through an academic, nongovernmental organisation (NGO) partnership. The participants were 658 young mothers, both formerly associated with armed groups and other mothers seen to be vulnerable. Within the context of caring psychosocial support, these young mothers organised themselves into groups, declined their problems, and developed social actions to address and change their situations. Some project outcomes included: young mothers and their children experiencing improved social reintegration evidenced by greater family and community acceptance; more positive coping skills; and decreased participation in sex work for economic survival

Disparate Vulnerability to Membership Inference Attacks

A membership inference attack (MIA) against a machine-learning model enables an attacker to determine whether a given data record was part of the model's training data or not. In this paper, we provide an in-depth study of the phenomenon of disparate vulnerability against MIAs: unequal success rate of MIAs against different population subgroups. We first establish necessary and sufficient conditions for MIAs to be prevented, both on average and for population subgroups, using a notion of distributional generalization. Second, we derive connections of disparate vulnerability to algorithmic fairness and to differential privacy. We show that fairness can only prevent disparate vulnerability against limited classes of adversaries. Differential privacy bounds disparate vulnerability but can significantly reduce the accuracy of the model. We show that estimating disparate vulnerability to MIAs by naïvely applying existing attacks can lead to overestimation. We then establish which attacks are suitable for estimating disparate vulnerability, and provide a statistical framework for doing so reliably. We conduct experiments on synthetic and real-world data finding statistically significant evidence of disparate vulnerability in realistic settings

Facilitating War-Affected Young Mothers’ Reintegration: Lessons from a Participatory Action Research Study in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Uganda.

Young women and girls formerly associated with armed forces and armed groups face multiple challenges. Many become pregnant or have children while they are associated and face stigma and marginalization upon reintegration into civilian communities. This article describes a multi-year participatory action research study that took place in twenty communities in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and northern Uganda from 2006 – 2009 and included more than 650 young mother participants. We find that this community-based approach to reintegration improved the wellbeing of young mother participants and their children. We discuss the challenges and limitations of conducting participatory action research with war-affected young people and make recommendations for future reintegration programming

Incomplete Charge Collection at Inter-Pixel Gap in Low-and High-Flux Cadmium Zinc Telluride Pixel Detectors

The success of cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) detectors in room-temperature spectroscopic X-ray imaging is now widely accepted. The most common CZT detectors are characterized by enhanced-charge transport properties of electrons, with mobility-lifetime products µeτe > 10−2 cm2/V and µhτh > 10−5 cm2/V. These materials, typically termed low-flux LF-CZT, are successfully used for thick electron-sensing detectors and in low-flux conditions. Recently, new CZT materials with hole mobility-lifetime product enhancements (µhτh > 10−4 cm2/V and µeτe > 10−3 cm2/V) have been fabricated for high-flux measurements (high-flux HF-CZT detectors). In this work, we will present the performance and charge-sharing properties of sub-millimeter CZT pixel detectors based on LF-CZT and HF-CZT crystals. Experimental results from the measurement of energy spectra after charge-sharing addition (CSA) and from 2D X-ray mapping highlight the better charge-collection properties of HF-CZT detectors near the inter-pixel gaps. The successful mitigation of the effects of incomplete charge collection after CSA was also performed through original charge-sharing correction techniques. These activities exist in the framework of international collaboration on the development of energy-resolved X-ray scanners for medical applications and non-destructive testing in the food industry

The Classification of Obsessive–Compulsive and Related Disorders in the ICD-11

Background To present the rationale for the new Obsessive–Compulsive and Related Disorders (OCRD) grouping in the Mental and Behavioural Disorders chapter of the Eleventh Revision of the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-11), including the conceptualization and essential features of disorders in this grouping. Methods Review of the recommendations of the ICD-11 Working Group on the Classification for OCRD. These sought to maximize clinical utility, global applicability, and scientific validity. Results The rationale for the grouping is based on common clinical features of included disorders including repetitive unwanted thoughts and associated behaviours, and is supported by emerging evidence from imaging, neurochemical, and genetic studies. The proposed grouping includes obsessive–compulsive disorder, body dysmorphic disorder, hypochondriasis, olfactory reference disorder, and hoarding disorder. Body-focused repetitive behaviour disorders, including trichotillomania and excoriation disorder are also included. Tourette disorder, a neurological disorder in ICD-11, and personality disorder with anankastic features, a personality disorder in ICD-11, are recommended for cross-referencing. Limitations Alternative nosological conceptualizations have been described in the literature and have some merit and empirical basis. Further work is needed to determine whether the proposed ICD-11 OCRD grouping and diagnostic guidelines are mostly likely to achieve the goals of maximizing clinical utility and global applicability. Conclusion It is anticipated that creation of an OCRD grouping will contribute to accurate identification and appropriate treatment of affected patients as well as research efforts aimed at improving our understanding of the prevalence, assessment, and management of its constituent disorders