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Abstract
Providing empirical evidence of young people's experiences of survival and coping in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), this article draws on elements of resilience theory and presents narratives offered by young people on how they survive and cope with violence and adversity. Exploring individual accounts of coping and survival, this article reveals how far removed international rights-based child protection approaches are from the actual lived realities of young people in eastern DRC. The aim of this article is to challenge child protection actors to deepen their understandings of the socio-economic adversity and structural violence in which young people live towards the development of more relevant interventions which might more effectively contribute to improved outcomes for young people living in contexts of protracted violence.
Acknowledgements
I thank War Child UK, War Child Holland, AVSI and Save the Children UK for their staff time and logistical support in making much of this research possible. Laissez l'Afrique Vivre, Cris d'Afrique and Action pour la Paix et la Concorde provided essential support during my fieldwork in South Kivu. Financial support for fieldwork was provided by the University of London Central Research Fund (Coffin Trust) and the School of Oriental and African Studies (Additional Fieldwork Grant). I am grateful to Ruth Payne, Lorenzo Bordonaro and Wayne Bleier and to the anonymous reviewer who all provided important guidance to earlier drafts of this article. This research would not exist were it not for Dr Zoe Marriage, my PhD supervisor, or for all of the young people in North and South Kivu who have contributed their time and their stories.
Notes
This and the other testimonies cited below that were conducted for War Child UK research are also cited in War Child UK, Citation2010.
In an analysis of stored documentation on children's recruitment to armed groups conducted on behalf of the UN, I found that of the 1988 recruitment experiences documented in North Kivu in 2009, 928 of them had been classified as voluntary (data collection forms of the national Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration framework include a question which asks if the child was ‘voluntarily’ or ‘forcibly’ recruited).
This testimony has also been cited in Seymour (Citation2011a).
This testimony has also been cited in Seymour (Citation2011b).
This testimony has also been cited in Seymour (Citation2011a).
Gilligan (2003) documents the experiences of American prisoners and considers the role of historically transposed shame and humiliation as motivation for acts of violence.
This testimony has also been cited in Seymour (Citation2011a).