Season 6: Research in the Shadow of Conflict

 

In this Sixth and Final Episode of the Mawazo Ideas Podcast Season Six, scholars explore the impact of conflict on African women researchers.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) states that 30 million displaced people live in Africa. This is about one-third of the world’s refugee population. Higher numbers have been recorded in Ethiopia, Central African Republic, Sudan, South Sudan, The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Nigeria. Studies have shown that women migrants and refugees often bear the brunt of conflicts, experiencing extreme conditions such as human rights violations, including gender-based violence (Arawi, 2021; Kabamba, 2018).

In the DRC, Meger (2010) reports that decades of conflict expose women to sexual exploitation and that girls as young as six months are not spared from the violence being committed by armed groups and the United Nations peacekeepers. This risk of death, rape, and injury often escalates to emotional, intellectual, epistemological, ecological, and a host of attacks that interfere with knowledge production.

Join us as we explore this critical topic, what it means for the research ecosystem, as well as some of the peace-building initiatives employed by scholars and their communities to bring about lasting peace.

 
 
 
 

Further Reading

 
Mawazo Institute2024