Ethical Challenges for Social Work in Post-Conflict Situations: The Case of Africa's Great Lakes Region

Abstract

During the past decades, the African Great Lakes region has experienced several armed conflicts, widespread political crisis, and large-scale loss of human lives. The civilian population bears the brunt of political turmoil and suffers from direct and structural violence and from the violation of their fundamental human rights. Although social work is still weak in these countries, it can play an important role in peace-building and in the overall rebuilding and reconstruction of affected societies in order to achieve a lasting impact in transforming conflict and poverty structures. In this article, a multi-dimensional conceptual framework for social work in such situations is introduced. Social work interventions in highly sensitive post-conflict contexts should ideally be linked to local knowledge systems and African ethics, thus providing guiding principles for ethical social work practice. Empirical examples from Northern Uganda and Burundi underscore the importance of such contextualised approaches.

Keywords:

• African Ethics
• Conflict
• Social Development
• Social Work
• Ubuntu
• Uganda
• Burundi

Funding

The project ‘Promotion of Professional Social Work towards Social Development and Poverty Reduction in East Africa’ (with a focus on Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda) was funded by the “Austrian Partnership Programme in Higher Education & Research for Development (APPEAR)”, grant number is [Project26_Prep13].

Notes

1. Empirical information is based on repeated field visits to the respective post-conflict regions as well as on an extensive research project on the role of social work towards poverty reduction and social development in East Africa. The project ‘Promotion of Professional Social Work towards Social Development and Poverty Reduction in East Africa’ (with a focus on Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda) was sponsored by the Austrian Partnership Programme in Higher Education and Research for Development (APPEAR).

2. Linguistic phrases deriving from the Lwo-language of the Acholi, the major population group in Northern Uganda.

3. Meanwhile, the LRA shifted its activities from Uganda to the DRC, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan.

4. In Northern Uganda there are also other ethnic groups that were affected by the conflict, but the Acholi outnumber these groups, hence the focus of this article is on them.