Child Abuse and Neglect in Uganda

351 Pages·2017·3.79 MB·English

by  David Kaawa-Mafigiri

Child Maltreatment:
Contemporary Issues in Research and Policy 6
David Kaawa-Mafi giri
Eddy Joshua Walakira Editors
Child Abuse
and Neglect
in Uganda
Child Maltreatment
Contemporary Issues in Research and Policy
Volume 6
Series Editors
Jill E. Korbin, Ph.D., Professor of Anthropology, Associate Dean, College of
Arts and Sciences, Director, Schubert Center for Child Studies, Crawford Hall,
7th Floor, 10900 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44106-7068, USA
[email protected]
Richard D. Krugman, MD, Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics and Dean,
University of Colorado, School of Medicine, Room C-1003 Bldg 500,
Anschutz Medical Campus, 13001 E. 17th Place, Aurora, CO 80045, USA
[email protected]
This series provides a high-quality, cutting edge, and comprehensive source offer-
ing the current best knowledge on child maltreatment from multidisciplinary and
multicultural perspectives. It consists of a core handbook that is followed by two or
three edited volumes of original contributions per year. The core handbook will
present a comprehensive view of the field. Each chapter will summarize current
knowledge and suggest future directions in a specific area. It will also highlight
controversial and contested issues in that area, thus moving the field forward. The
handbook will be updated every five years. The edited volumes will focus on critical
issues in the field from basic biology and neuroscience to practice and policy. Both
the handbook and edited volumes will involve creative thinking about moving the
field forward and will not be a recitation of past research. Both will also take multi-
disciplinary, multicultural and mixed methods approaches.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/8863
David Kaawa-Mafigiri • Eddy Joshua Walakira
Editors
Child Abuse and Neglect
in Uganda
Editors
David Kaawa-Mafigiri Eddy Joshua Walakira
Department of Social Work and Social Department of Social Work and Social
Administration, School of Social Administration, School of Social
Sciences Sciences
Makerere University Makerere University
Kampala, Uganda Kampala, Uganda
Department of Social Work and Social Department of Social Work and Social
Administration, Center for Social Science Administration, Center for Social Science
Research on AIDS (CeSSRA), School of Research on AIDS (CeSSRA), School of
Social Sciences Social Sciences
Makerere University Makerere University
Kampala, Uganda Kampala, Uganda
Global Applied Research in Social,
Economic, Health and Development
(GARSEHD)
Kampala, Uganda
ISSN 2211-9701     ISSN 2211-971X (electronic)
Child Maltreatment
ISBN 978-3-319-48534-8    ISBN 978-3-319-48535-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-48535-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017930412
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Foreword
Despite improvements in technology, education and overall health and well-being,
millions of children around the world continue to live on the margins of society, face
multiple disadvantages and are often excluded from access to the myriad auspicious
experiences that can lead to a full, happy and productive life. The African experi-
ence of childhood, beyond child mortality, is often misunderstood and under-
researched. Moreover, there is a dearth of research that focuses on understanding
the quality of the lives of children who are increasingly surviving the most critical
stages of early childhood. This book offers an important contribution to the field
about the effects of child maltreatment within the Ugandan context. In the era of the
United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and other international calls to do
better for the next generation of young people, it is increasingly important that we
begin to consider the diversity of childhood experiences within the African context.
This volume is particularly important as it surfaces some of the cultural practices
that differentiate the childhood experience in Uganda from other countries includ-
ing female genital mutilation, child sacrifice, persistent violence and human rights
abuses. The volume also presents thoughts about the role that social service sys-
tems, policies and programmes pay in meeting the needs of these children. Finally,
in addition to unpacking these complex issues, this volume highlights the often
overlooked capacity of Ugandans to conduct research that is both culturally sensi-
tive and locally relevant. I commend the authors and editors for pursuing this impor-
tant topic. There is much to be learned.
Director, African Health Initiative Lola Adedokun
Program Director, Child Well-being Program
Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
v
Preface
Child Abuse and Neglect in Uganda is the sixth book in our series, Child
Maltreatment: Contemporary Issues in Research and Policy. This volume is at the
forefront of a literature on child maltreatment in regions of the world about which
we know far too little. Edited by our Ugandan colleagues Dr. Eddy Joshua Walakira
and Dr. David Kaawa-Mafigiri and with chapters authored by Ugandan scholars and
professionals, this book is a significant contribution in that it is from Uganda and
Ugandans rather than about Uganda from afar.
Most of what we know about child maltreatment is grounded in work from
Eurocentric nations. This volume challenges us to think both more universally and
more broadly and contextually. What are the overlaps among child maltreatment in
Uganda, as one African nation, and the more Western-oriented industrialized nations
that have produced the majority of the literature on child maltreatment? What
aspects of child maltreatment are informed by culture and context and challenge us
to broaden our thinking and horizons for child protection? What aspects are near
universals? The perspective of diverse cultures and contexts as exemplified by this
book alerts us to the reality that there are not necessarily easy or one-size-fits-all
solutions to child maltreatment, but a careful consideration of the context is
essential.
More than 50 years after C. Henry Kempe and colleagues’ landmark publication
on the abuse and neglect of children, the world has made progress in many ways, but
at the same time, we have fallen short of protecting our young. Children around the
world continue to suffer from a range of harms at the hands of those entrusted with
their well-being. In the first volume in this series, dedicated to Dr. Kempe, we
included his 1982 editorial from the Journal of Pediatrics, “Cross-Cultural
Perspectives in Child Abuse”. We should be encouraged in this work that child pro-
tection is now explicitly included in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development
Goals, with a target of Goal 16 to “End abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms
of violence against and torture of children”. To do so, we must be informed by a
wider cultural and contextual perspective, and this book guides us in this direction.
This book is the result of a long-standing relationship with our colleagues in
Uganda. We are delighted to see their important work impact the literature and
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viii Preface
reach a broader audience. This work was supported by the generosity of the Doris
Duke Charitable Foundation, the Schubert Center for Child Studies at Case Western
Reserve University and Makerere University, Department of Social Work and Social
Administration, in Kampala, Uganda. We hope that the publication of this volume,
and its distribution, will encourage researchers, scholars, practitioners and policy-
makers from a wide array of nations to similarly share their insights and experiences
on child maltreatment with the wider community of those dedicated to addressing
this affront to our children.
Cleveland, OH, USA Jill E. Korbin
Aurora, CO, USA Richard D. Krugman
Acknowledgment
We extend our gratitude to all those visible and invisible who directly and indirectly
made this book a reality. We would like first of all to thank God who granted us life,
energy and the grace to work on this book till its completion. By His grace we live
to bring honour to His name through making a difference in this world and, more so,
making a contribution towards children’s experience of a safe, satisfying and fruit-
ful childhood.
We thank colleagues who have worked with us for the past 2 years and fulfilled
their commitment by contributing various chapters to this volume. We adopted a
team mentoring approach supported by peer review and support during the process
of working on this volume. The approach was very instrumental in ensuring that
there was collective learning and involvement in other people’s work. Senior
researchers including Jill Korbin and Richard Krugman, the editors of this series,
provided useful feedback on all the book chapters that are included in this transdis-
ciplinary volume.
This book project was supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
(DDCF) through a grant (#2015039, PI: Jill Korbin) that enabled the contributors to
develop their chapters as a team through writing workshops, mentoring, and other
forms of support. The opportunity provided by DDCF, especially Lola Adedokun,
to spend dedicated time together to work on the project was invaluable.
We would like to thank Samantha Hill, Kelley Kampman and Sarah Miller-
Fellows who spent countless hours going through each and every draft of this vol-
ume, a process that involved back and forth communication with the editors and
authors of the various chapters. This volume wouldn’t have happened without their
dedicated efforts. We greatly appreciate the contribution that they made to the edito-
rial work. The editorial process was a learning process which undoubtedly has
allowed the imparting of knowledge and skills that will advance both the scholar-
ship and professional work of the editors of this book and the authors of various
chapters in this volume.
This volume is a result of collaborative efforts between our partners at Case
Western Reserve University (CWRU), Cleveland, Ohio, and in particular led by
Prof. Jill Korbin of the Schubert Center for Child Studies. Jill, we are profoundly
ix
x Acknowledgment
grateful for the fact that you are not only a role professional model to us in this field,
but you are also a friend who throughout the process of working on this book has
been patient and is always willing to guide us. Leaders at CWRU have worked with
local researchers at Makerere University for more than 25 years, resulting into sev-
eral publications including book chapters and articles in various journals. However,
most of the collaborative work has been in the field of medical sciences and medical
anthropology, without particular focus on issues of child protection. Thus, the focus
on children in their own right is greatly appreciated.
We are also grateful to Prof. Janet McGrath of CWRU who led earlier efforts in
collaborative work which paid attention to adherence to ART among adults during
the era of rolling out antiretroviral treatment in Uganda. The work, apart from deep-
ening our learning in this field, also opened up the opportunities for the present book
project. Janet during these efforts worked with mentors to the editors of this volume,
Prof. Charles Rwabukwali and Prof. Edward Kirumira who served as the principal
for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Drawing on expertise in the social sciences and more specifically from both the
fields of social work and anthropology to promote child well-being, the current col-
laboration targeted cultivation of interest among local Ugandan researchers within
the field of child protection research. We are grateful to the Department of Social
Work that led this book effort from Uganda and which enabled bringing together
authors from other disciplines. The foresight of the department has made it possible
to add this output to earlier volumes including the most recent that examined the
contribution of social work in East Africa to poverty alleviation, also a product of
collaborative work.
Finally, we owe a debt of gratitude to the countless families and children in
Uganda who participated in the various researches represented in the book.
Last but not least, we express our gratitude to our families who supported us
while we travelled to the residential workshops and bore with us as we kept them
awake during many nights when the lights stayed on as we ploughed away at the
chapters. We dedicate this volume to our spouses, our children and our
grandchildren.
David Kaawa-Mafigiri and Eddy Joshua Walakira