Decolonizing Social Work Practice: A Case from Ethiopian Refugee Settings

Abstract

This study examined the approaches of the Community Wellbeing Initiative (CWI), a gender-based violence (GBV) prevention program in Ethiopian refugee settings, through the perspectives of social workers. Using the decolonization framework, the study tried to bring the voices of global south social workers into the international discourse. In-depth interviews were conducted with 8 social workers, and transcripts of their interviews were analyzed thematically using Nvivo12 software. Three major themes emerged: “conflicting approaches with the local sociocultural context”, “foreign-based and centralized approaches”, and “aid as an instrument of modern-day imperialism”. The findings showed that the foreign-developed approaches of the CWI conflict with the local context and lack input from local expertise and knowledge. The approaches are highly centralized and limit social workers’ creativity in implementing the program. These findings demonstrated the need for involving local experts in designing GBV intervention programs, following a dialogical bottom-up approach and decolonizing partnerships that use aid as an imperialistic tool for social work services. Future research should further examine cases where local culture plays an oppressive role and find the balance between positive local contexts and global social work values and help expand the decolonization discourse in a direction that ensures relevance to local communities.

Keywords:

• Decolonizing social work
• gender-based violence
• indigenization
• cultural relevance
• professional imperialism

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the social workers who participated in this study, Professors Kjeld Høgsbro (Ph.D.) and Maria Appel Nissen (Ph.D.) for their guidance.

Disclosure Statement

There is no conflict of interest to disclose.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gashaye Melaku Tefera

Gashaye Melaku Tefera is now a Ph.D. student at the School of Social Work, University of Missouri.