Examining intersections between violence against women and violence against children:Perspectives of adolescents and adults in displaced Colombian communities

BackgroundResearch examining the interrelated drivers of household violence against women and violence against children is nascent, particularly in humanitarian settings. Gaps remain in understanding how relocation, displacement and ongoing insecurity affect families and may exacerbate household violence.MethodsEmploying purposive sampling, we used photo elicitation methods to facilitate semi-structured, in-depth interviews with female and male adolescents and adults aged 13–75 (n = 73) in two districts in Colombia from May to August of 2017. Participants were displaced and/or residing in neighborhoods characterized by high levels of insecurity from armed groups.ResultsUsing inductive thematic analysis and situating the analysis within a feminist socioecological framework, we found several shared drivers of household violence. Intersections among drivers at all socioecological levels occurred among societal gender norms, substance use, attempts to regulate women’s and children’s behavior with violence, and daily stressors associated with numerous community problems. A central theme of relocation was of family compositions that were in continual flux and of family members confronted by economic insecurity and increased access to substances.ConclusionsFindings suggest interventions that systemically consider families’ struggles with relocation and violence with multifaceted attention to socioecological intersections

Voices of Youth, Parents, and Stakeholders: Findings From Case Studies in the YouthSave Project

Voices of Youth, Parents, and Stakeholders: Findings From Case Studies in the YouthSave Projec

A youth vision of the city: The socio-spatial lives and exclusion of street girls in Bogota, Colombia

This dissertation documents the everyday lives and spaces of a population of youth typically constructed as out of place, and the broader urban context in which they are rendered as such. Thirty-three female and transgender street youth participated in the development of this youth-based participatory action research (YPAR) project utilizing geo-ethnographic methods, auto-photography, and archival research throughout a six-phase, eighteen-month research process in Bogotá, Colombia. This dissertation details the participatory writing process that enabled the YPAR research team to destabilize dominant representations of both street girls and urban space and the participatory mapping process that enabled the development of a youth vision of the city through cartographic images. The maps display individual and aggregate spatial data indicating trends within and making comparisons between three subgroups of the research population according to nine spatial variables. These spatial data, coupled with photographic and ethnographic data, substantiate that street girls’ mobilities and activity spaces intersect with and are altered by state-sponsored urban renewal projects and paramilitary-led social cleansing killings, both efforts to clean up Bogotá by purging the city center of deviant populations and places. Advancing an ethical approach to conducting research with excluded populations, this dissertation argues for the enactment of critical field praxis and care ethics within a YPAR framework to incorporate young people as principal research actors rather than merely voices represented in adultist academic discourse. Interjection of considerations of space, gender, and participation into the study of street youth produce new ways of envisioning the city and the role of young people in research. Instead of seeing the city from a panoptic view, Bogotá is revealed through the eyes of street youth who participated in the construction and feminist visualization of a new cartography and counter-map of the city grounded in embodied, situated praxis. This dissertation presents a socially responsible approach to conducting action-research with high-risk youth by documenting how street girls reclaim their right to the city on paper and in practice; through maps of their everyday exclusion in Bogotá followed by activism to fight against it

Investigación Acción Participativa (IAP) como una filosofía de vida : encontrando el corazón en (de) la calle

Título del número: Diez años generando conocimiento y liderazgo para transformar lo público. Sección: Investigación"Este artículo está basado en la amistad que hemos construido con diferentes comunidades durante los últimos ocho años en Colombia. Según Fals Borda, la Investigación Acción Participativa (IAP) no es un método de estudio, sino una filosofía de vida. Este requiere de la participación activa tanto del "investigador" como del "investigado"; es decir, que las poblaciones (sujetos de investigación) estén involucradas en todo el proceso investigativo como coinvestigadores, un término que problematiza las jerarquías y distancias entre "investigador" e "investigado" que impone la investigación científica tradicional...

Stigma-related access barriers and violence against trans women in the Colombian healthcare system

Drawing from qualitative research conducted in a participatory action research framework with 28 transgender women in Colombia, this paper presents the stigma-related barriers to healthcare experienced by trans women and their experiences of multi-level violence within the healthcare system. The authors also discuss how advocacy work was conducted as part of the research process and how trans community leaders were involved throughout the project in order to promote policy-relevance and community-based implementation of findings. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the experiences of violence and stigmatisation within the health care system is linked to broader processes of structural stigma reproduced within Colombian society

Acorralados en el río : el derecho a la ciudad de los habitantes de calle en Medellín

Título del número: Oportunidades y exigencias del fin del conflicto. Sección: Fotoartículo"¿Qué sucede cuando se eliminan o remodelan lugares históricos en una ciudad? Si para muchos ciudadanos modernos el espacio público es el lugar donde se genera una memoria colectiva, y este mismo espacio de las ciudades está habitado por diferentes poblaciones y dinámicas, eliminarlas es una solución más sencilla que afrontar los problemas sociales actuales y los retos que estos implican para el Estado. Como una manera de mantener orden en el espacio público, los habitantes de la calle son generalmente desalojados en nombre del progreso urbano (Wright, 2004)...

Reflections on activism, the academy and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex in Colombia: What a revolutionary ethos might look like

This essay brings together different voices to reflect on several participatory research projects carried out in Colombia, based on human rights, ‘empowerment’, harm reduction, (im)mobility and forced migration, gendered and political violence, armed conflict, and the right to health of people in the social margins. We look back on nine years of activism to explore the foundations of what our friendships and relationships have come to know as a revolutionary ethos. We critically re-visit and reflect on the concept of ‘the activist’ in the realms of the human rights apparatus in Colombia, the academy and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (NPIC). We look back on what was forged and what was lost to propose the critical concept of ‘radical honesty and self-care’ as the basis for a revolution that supports processes of healing and social justice. Finally, we imagine what ‘healing’ can look like, as committed activists despite our differences and positionalities. We engage with and problematise the different forms of activism that emerge in social struggles and we address self-criticisms, constant reflection, radical honesty and uncomfortableness as powerful tools in joining forces to continue social justice work and caring

‘I feel safer in the streets than at home’: Rethinking harm reduction for women in the urban margins

Through qualitative data collected with women affected by drug use and drug-related violence in Bogotá, this article explores the convergence of harm reduction rationales and violence prevention programming in the urban margins to advocate for women’s health empowerment and health rights as victims of intergenerational trauma and violence. We propose a methodological shift of public health praxis from street-based outreach models to intimate spaces of intervention for health outcomes embodiment as we continue to develop our community health model to work with marginalised communities in the urban global South. Through this work committed to social justice in marginalised urban communities, we seek to support women’s health needs through harm reduction in historically marginalised communities in urban settings. Our results expose how multi-level gender-based violence affects women’s health in their living spaces in the urban margins. Drawing from women’s voices and narratives of urban violence, we call for a feminist alternative to traditionally masculinist and public-space oriented harm reduction practice for health empowerment in the urban margins

“Growing Up Guerreándola”: On Adolescent Formations of Conscientização in Colombia

In this article, we argue that we have much to learn from the adolescent developmental experiences of social justice activists on the frontlines. Our team of authors includes the four youth social leaders at the center of the empirical work emerging from our qualitative research. We ground the Freirean concept of conscientização, roughly interpreted in English as critical consciousness building, in the lived experiences of these four youth social leaders in Colombia who have fought tirelessly for justice in their communities. The social justice stories of these young activists emerge from semi-structured interviews including visual methods designed by our research team to identify key moments in these youth pathways of conscientização for social change. We conclude by urging the state, key organizational and individual actors of social movements and the academy to pay closer attention to the lives and lessons that youth social leaders can teach us about social change

Examining intersections between violence against women and violence against children: perspectives of adolescents and adults in displaced Colombian communities

Background Research examining the interrelated drivers of household violence against women and violence against children is nascent, particularly in humanitarian settings. Gaps remain in understanding how relocation, displacement and ongoing insecurity affect families and may exacerbate household violence. Methods Employing purposive sampling, we used photo elicitation methods to facilitate semi-structured, in-depth interviews with female and male adolescents and adults aged 13–75 (n = 73) in two districts in Colombia from May to August of 2017. Participants were displaced and/or residing in neighborhoods characterized by high levels of insecurity from armed groups. Results Using inductive thematic analysis and situating the analysis within a feminist socioecological framework, we found several shared drivers of household violence. Intersections among drivers at all socioecological levels occurred among societal gender norms, substance use, attempts to regulate women’s and children’s behavior with violence, and daily stressors associated with numerous community problems. A central theme of relocation was of family compositions that were in continual flux and of family members confronted by economic insecurity and increased access to substances. Conclusions Findings suggest interventions that systemically consider families’ struggles with relocation and violence with multifaceted attention to socioecological intersections