Children born of wartime rape on fatherhood: Grappling with violence, accountability, and forgiveness in postwar northern Uganda.

Abstract

Children born of wartime rape face unique realities and needs, particularly as they relate to their birth origins, links with their perpetrator fathers, and challenges regarding identity and community belonging. As children with first-hand, embodied understanding of the legacies of war, their perspectives on postwar accountability and reconciliation are highly relevant. Yet the views of children born of wartime rape are rarely documented. To highlight their perspectives, qualitative interviews were conducted with 79 children born of wartime rape within the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Interviews revealed children’s love and loyalty to their fathers—who were high-ranking members of the LRA, as well as children’s struggles reconciling their fathers’ wartime actions, responsibility, and postwar accountability. Far from turning a blind eye to their fathers’ involvement in mass atrocities, children’s narratives centered on themes of violence, forgiveness, responsibility, and ambiguity. Participants’ views of their fathers and accountability mechanisms are linked to larger peacebuilding efforts, highlighting the importance of listening to this important but understudied group of children in postconflict reconciliation efforts.

Transgenerational trauma in Rwandan genocidal rape survivors and their children: A culturally enhanced bioecological approach

“…Despite the likelihood of father absence, interventions would do well to explore the role and impact of the father on child identity, as well as the mother–child relationship. Researchers have begun to explore the role and impact of fathers and fatherhood on the lives of children born of conflict-related sexual violence (Denov & Cadieux Van Vliet, 2021; Denov & Piolanti, 2020). Given the sensitivity and ethical implications of interventions with this unique population of conflict-affected women and children, any of the above-noted practice approaches would need to pay heed to the tensions and challenges around children's desire to learn more about their birth origins, and mothers’ frequent desire for privacy, secrecy, and not reliving the experience of sexual violence.…”

“They Now Know That They Are Children of War”: Forcibly Abducted Mothers and Fathers Balancing Disclosure and Silencing to Their Children Born of War in Northern Uganda

“…Considering narratives of war-affected populations as situational, positional and relational (Sigona, 2014) implies the need to recognize the agency of forcibly abducted mothers, fathers and their children, and their acts as political agents (Baines, 2015(Baines, , 2017Stewart, 2017;Atim et al, 2018b;Denov and Cadieux Van Vliet, 2020). Our participants felt very strongly that the choice to disclose or silence the context in which their children were born had to be left to them.…”

“…Third, an important contribution of this study was the inclusion of the perspective of fathers, which has been lacking in research on forced marriages within the LRA (Apio, 2016;Aijazi et al, 2019;Denov and Cadieux Van Vliet, 2020;Denov and Drumbl, 2020;Mutsonziwa et al, 2020;Oliveira and Baines, 2020), and, more generally, in research and practice regarding the upbringing of children during and after collective violence (Wieling et al, 2015;El-Khani et al, 2016;Murphy et al, 2017;Mehus et al, 2018). When laying out the findings of our study, the gender-specific experiences and difficulties in the trajectories of trauma communication were highlighted.…”

How does IR study children? A Brazilian perspective from the field

“…International Relations have already gained various critical contributions involving children: such as iconographic of childhood in global politics (Berents 2020;Burman 1994); children involved in armed conflicts, child soldiers and armed violence against children during armed conflicts (Martuscelli 2015;Rosen 2005;Tabak 2014;2020) and multiple acts of violence against children in international scenario -such as genocide and rape (Denov and Cadieux van Vliet 2020).…”