The purpose of this study was to investigate factors that influence resilience after trauma among internally displaced persons in Kiambaa village, Uasin Gishu County, Kenya. The rationale, the problem statement, the objectives as well as the research questions and the theoretical framework were presented in chapter one. The theoretical concepts of Richardson’s “meta-theory of resilience and resiliency” and Joseph and Linley “organism valuing theory” guided this study. The problem statement posited revealed that when people experience tragic events such as violence they get traumatized. Despite this, there are individuals who are able to adopt and bounce back with minimal disruptions to their lives, a factor referred to as resilience. Chapter two presented related literature by reviewing empirical research studies on the internal and external factors that contribute to resilience after trauma. Chapter three discussed the methodology of the study. The study adopted a mixed design approach. The target population for this study was 50. It comprised all individuals who were victims of the fire tragedy at Kiambaa village. Twenty two respondents for this study were selected from the target population using purposive and snow ball sampling techniques. Questionnaires and unstructured interview schedule were the main tools of data collection. The Big Five Inventory (BFI) by John, Donahue, & Kentle, (1991) personality were used to classify respondents’ personalities.The 25 item Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale 25 (CD-RISC-25) (used with permission) (Connor, & Davidson, 2003) was used to measure the resilience levels of the respondents. Means and Standard deviations were computed to quantify the amount of variation or dispersion of resilience among the respondents. Responses from research tools were cleaned, coded and entered into Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) for analysis. Descriptive data were organized into themes and categories and presented according to the objectives of the study. Pearson product moment correlation analysis, Chi square correlation analysis and Spearman rank correlation analysis were computed to establish the relationships between study variables. Chapter four presented findings in form of tables, cumulative frequency counts, graphs and charts. The major findings of the study were as follows: The internal factors that contribute to resilience in individuals were age, gender and personality. However, gender had a greater influence on individuals’ resilience levels. Other factors included personality and age. The main external factors that contributed to resilience in individuals of the fire tragedy at Kiambaa were spirituality and social support. The results of a Pearson correlation analysis confirmed a strong positive correlation between social support and resilience of individuals (r=0.835, p<0.05). Chapter five presented conclusions arising from the findings which indicated that age, gender, personality, spirituality and social support are significant internal and external factors that influence resilience levels of individuals. The study recommends that there is need for professionals working with traumatized individuals to be more familiar with these factors that contribute to resilience. The researcher also recommends that there is need to extend the present study by including other potentially important variables such as a wider range of psychosocial resources or health-related variables. Understanding the influence and importance of these variables may help to clarify the role of resilience in post-disaster adaptation. In addition, the researcher recommends that there is need to further extend the study to investigate the relationship between psychological resilience and another positive outcome, such as posttraumatic growth (PTG). / Psychology / Ph.D. (Psychology)

My dissertation research was a 14-month ethnographic study of the post-repatriation experience of forced migrants in South Sudan. It was designed to determine if alterations to gender norms and relations that refugees experienced during asylum differed as a function of the asylum environments and if these modifications remained intact upon the refugees’ return. The forced migrants in my sample, the Dinka of Bor from South Sudan, encountered two different asylum environments and experiences: Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya and Khartoum, in northern Sudan. After 10-15 years in asylum, these forced Dinka Bor migrants returned to South Sudan. I compared the pre-flight and post-repatriation behavior of these two groups of returnees to determine to what extent gendered behaviors could be attributed to each asylum location. I found that various global forces encountered during asylum were instrumental in forging new ways of life by changing gendered livelihood practices and gendered access to status, power, and resources after return. In addition, the resettlement context played an equally critical role in the gendered behaviors after return.

Background: In the last two decades Bogota, Colombia has seen a massive influx of internally displaced people (IDP) settling in its periphery where residents face the worst living, social, and economic conditions despite the 2011 passing of The Victims Law entitling IDP victims access to free shelter, food, education, and healthcare. Objective: To understand the circumstances and health care needs of Colombian IDPs, determine trends of health perceptions among IDPs and assess and quality of health services among IDPs in Bogota. Methods: Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with 12 professionals who work with IDPs and 36 IDPs. Interviews explored opinions of common health conditions and barriers to access health services in IDP communities. The EQ-5D survey about perceptions of health was administered measuring mobility, self-care, daily activities, pain, and depression/anxiety. All interviews were recorded, transcribed, coded for analysis. Results: Most IDPs did not indicate suffering with mobility, self-care, and ability to conduct daily activities. Seventy-five percent of participants indicated moderate to severe pain and 86.85% expressed feeling some form of depression or anxiety. Environmental factors are common contributors to poor health conditions. Individual and societal factors surfaced as detriments to accessing health services. The process to be included in The Victims Law registry is arduous. Although the Victims Law allows IDPs to access health services, many missing links in the system thwart quality health care delivery and discourage IDPs to utilize the health care system. Conclusion: Despite efforts to mitigate the struggles IPDs suffer there remain much needed health services and organizational improvements for the IDP community in Bogota.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the rights of internally displaced persons as well as finding out whose responsibility it is to maintain these rights. The questions being answered are: what policies, laws and conventions are addressing internally displaced persons in Somalia (mainly from within Somalia, UN and AU)? And; which principal similarities and differences in these documents are to find regarding what type of protection internally displaced persons can get? Whose responsibility is it to intervene if these rights and rules are not maintained? To answer these questions I have used a liberal-universal theoretical framework. The analysis is a describing case study of comparative nature between the Provisional Somalia Constitution, UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and the Kampala Convention. The result shows that there are many different rights of internally displaced persons in Somalia. Instead the problem seems to be based on the rights not being maintained in combination with the complex question of whose responsibility it is.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-07T14:27:18Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 1461750 bytes, checksum: ab64dcbe19beb2ea8db8f0f1c81d90e5 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-03-31 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This thesis aims to analyze the international protection of human rights in the scope of International Institutions, based on a case study on their effectiveness in relation to internally displaced people in Colombia. It begins from the idea that the intrastate conflict wave, which emerged especially after the end of the Cold War, increased the complexity and persistence of forced migration that is particularly characterized by the flow of internal displacement. Within this conjuncture, the phenomenon of the internal displacement in Colombia is put in evidence, since the armed conflict that lingers in that territory for almost five decades contributed to make Colombia the State with the major number of displaced people in the world. In this opportunity, knowing that there is not a system or an international agency specifically focused on protecting those people, this study seeks to answer the central question: what are policies and issues in international protection in favor of internally displaced Colombians? Therefore, in a previous moment it discusses about the phenomenon of internal displacement in Colombia, emphasizing the causes and consequences of this problem; In sequence, it searches the instruments of the International Right that provide guarantees for the internally displaced people, and then it analyzes the performance of the International Institutions concerning to Colombian forced displacement, such as the protective ways in assistance to the internally displaced people in both national and international spheres. In general, the method of approach employed in this research is the deductive one, since it starts from wider perceptions of International Right and International Institutions to the study of the protection system in benefit to internally displaced people related to Colombian conjuncture. Face to those points, it is argued that the international protection to the internally displaced people in Colombia is limited and flawed due to the absence of consistent coordination and resources, and because of insufficient planning added to a selective and negligent performance. / A presente dissertação pretende analisar a proteção internacional dos direitos humanos, no campo de atuação das Instituições Internacionais, tendo como base um estudo de caso sobre a sua efetividade em relação aos deslocados internos na Colômbia. Assim, parte-se da ideia de que a onda de conflitos intraestatais, que emergiu especialmente após o final da Guerra Fria, acentuou o quadro de complexidade e persistência da migração forçada, configurada, em particular, pelo fluxo do deslocamento interno. Dentro dessa conjuntura, coloca-se em evidência o fenômeno do deslocamento interno na Colômbia, uma vez que o conflito armado, que perdura no território por quase cinco décadas, contribuiu para torná-la o Estado com a maior cifra de deslocados no mundo. Neste ensejo, sabendo que não há um regime ou uma agência internacional especificamente voltada à proteção destas pessoas, procura-se responder a questão central do nosso estudo: quais as políticas e os problemas na proteção internacional dos deslocados internos colombianos? Assim sendo, no primeiro momento, discute-se o tema relativo ao fenômeno do deslocamento interno na Colômbia, lançando luzes à discussão sobre as causas e consequências desta problemática; logo após, averígua-se os instrumentos do Direito Internacional que fornecem garantias aos deslocados, para só então analisar a atuação das Instituições Internacionais no tocante ao problema do deslocamento forçado colombiano e debater acerca das formas de proteção aos deslocados internos, nos âmbitos nacional e internacional. De forma geral, o método de abordagem empregado, nesta pesquisa, é o dedutivo, uma vez que parte-se de percepções mais abrangentes do direito internacional e das instituições internacionais para estudar o sistema de proteção aos deslocados internos a partir do estudo da conjuntura colombiana. Frente aos pontos levantados, sustenta-se que a proteção internacional aos deslocados internos na Colômbia é limitada e apresenta falhas, pela ausência de uma coordenação consistente, de recursos e planejamentos insuficientes e por ser seletiva e negligente.

Internal displacement is one of the most significant challenges in the world today, and violence, conflict, and climate-related disasters have engendered millions of internally displaced persons (IDPs) on the globe. Despite this, the IDP-population is a marginalised group on the international agenda and stay primarily under governmental protection and assistance. This makes the adequacy and durability of solutions and governmental management of IDPs crucial. The number of IDPs continues to rise every year, and many nations have evident difficulties in IDP-management, negatively affecting prospects for sustainable peace. Previous research has primarily focused on singular aspects of IDPs and solutions of such. Less has been written in terms of a broader and more comprehensive understanding of government management of internal displacement. Several scholars, researchers, and experts have stressed the urgency to pay more attention to the issue and consider IDPs a concern beyond humanitarian responsibility. This study seeks to increase the understanding of governmental management of IDPs from a broader and more holistic point of view. This by comparing two cases that have faced high numbers of IDPs in a "post-conflict" context (Uganda and South Sudan) and applying the Inter-Agency Standing Committee Framework on Durable Solutions for IDPs as a guide and analytical tool for comparison. The study finds that the governments have managed the situation with similarities and dissimilarities but have both faced difficulties in providing durable solutions and adequate response to IDPs' plight. Accentuated is also the insufficiency of establishing national instruments covering durable solutions when the political will or national capacity is absent. Reflected in the IDP-situations and trajectories examined, the primary obstacles for adequate response and management have been solely or a combination of such. The study also accentuates the interconnection of IDP-management and peace processes. For peace to be sustainable, and for solutions for IDPs to be durable, simultaneous progress of peace processes and IDP-management is crucial.

"The problem of displacement remains formidable, especially in Africa. It is exacerbated by Afirca's continuous conflicts and bad policies that are taken and effected in the name of development. Women and children remain the worst victims of internal displacement. This is so because in real life, women and children are vulnerable. Thus adding on internal displacement is too much for them. There is still no international enforceable mechanism by which the protection of the rights of internally displaced persons (IDPs), and in particular women and children, can be ensured. This leaves such rights at the mercy of the states within which the internal displacement occurs. ... Chapter 2 will comprise of analysis of who an IDP is and the magnitude of the problem of internal displacement in Uganda and the DRC. This will also entail identification of the causes of internal displacement in both countries. Chapter 3 will identify and critically analyse the rights of women and children as IDPs. This analysis will focus on the conditions prevailing in Uganda and the DRC. Chapter 4 will come up with detailed and comprehensive recommendations as to what can be done to attain the acknowledgement, protection and enforcement of the rights of women and children that arise out of internal displacement. Chapter 5 will have a suitable conclusion to the study. It will show whether the findings of the study prove its hypotheses." -- Introduction. / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2004. / Prepared under the supervision of Prof. Jean-Didier Boukongu and Dr. Atangcho Ndji Akonumbo at the Catholic University of Central Africa, Yaounde, Cameroon / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/academic_pro/llm1/dissertations.html / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

"The rise in the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Sudan and Uganda is in no small part, due not only to states' incapacity to protect their own people, but also to a direct attack by states on selected communities, or on insurgent groups. In Sudan, there is a large amount of information pointing to the responsibility of the Sudanese government in the human rights violations committed against the IDPs in Darfur. In Uganda, the majority of the displaced harbour considerable anger towards the government for having forced them out of their homes and then being unable to protect and provide for them, and in many cases being guilty of violations of their rights. The problem is aggravated by the facts that IDPs have no specific set of international instruments or a Convention in their favour, and there is no dedicated UN agency to turn to. The concept of state sovereignty still takes centre stage, and IDPs remain under the 'protection' of their own states, which in many cases are responsible for their plight. International humanitarian assistance is limited to the provision of basic necessities like food, shelter and medicine, while measures that ensure respect for the physical safety and the human rights of IDPs remain inadequate. The Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement particularise general human rights principles to the situation of the internally displaced, however they have no binding authority, and therefore do not bind states, neither are they enforceable by the IDPs. Currently, reliance is placed upon international humanitarian law and the existing international human rights law, but international humanitarian law only applies in situations of armed conflict. Consequently, this study proceeds from the presumption that the governments of Sudan and Uganda have failed to protect the IDPs within their jurisdictions, hence the need for stronger international protection. The study is aimed at addressing the specific problem of the lack of adequate international human rights protection for the IDPs from the time of displacement, to the time displacement ends. Emphasis of the study is placed on displacements resulting from armed conflicts, because these are the most rampant and most problematic in Africa. Darfur and Northern Uganda are the particular focus of this study because they are the most affected regions in Africa today." -- Introduction. / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2004. / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/academic_pro/llm1/dissertations.html / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

This research focuses on the role that International Human Rights Law, policy and legislation should play in the protection of the rights of internally displaced children against child marriage. This thesis examines international treaties and domestic laws that purport to prohibit the practice of child marriage with particular attention to laws relating to the protection of internally displaced children (IDPs). / Mini Dissertation (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Law of the University of Pretoria, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Law (LLM in Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa). Prepared under the supervision of Dr Lana Baydas at the Department of Law, American University in Cairo, Egypt. 29 October 2007 / www.chr.up.ac.za / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

Gender-based violence has been widely used by various actors against the most vulnerable individuals in conflict-affected settings. Internally displaced girls and women are especially susceptible to suffer from this type of violence; nevertheless, they frequently choose not to report it. The present research identifies and analyses the reasons for the under-reporting of gender-based violence occurrences against the above-mentioned individuals in northern Mozambique, namely, the province of Cabo Delgado. In the first phase of primary data collection, the researcher conducted two focus group discussions to obtain a transparent understanding of the community members’ interpretations, including internally displaced people. In a second phase, seventeen semi-structured interviews were conducted with community agents, activists, service providers, international and non-governmental organizations representatives, and political and religious figures. Subsequently, the findings were evaluated through an altered version of the ecological model (What Works to Prevent Violence, 2018). The results revealed that under-reporting of gender-based violence cases is caused by the following reasons: victim’s fear; social stigma; fear of retaliation; lack of information about gender-based violence and respective materialization; culture-blaming; distorted interpretations of female and male identities; the perpetrators’ influence within the community; lack of preparedness of officials working formal institutions, including hospitals, to refer victims to judicial bodies; women empowerment as a secondary subject within decision-making bodies; prevalence and importance of informal institutions and respective decisions; lack of official supervision on informal institutions; grassroots’ lack of knowledge on the creation or amendment of laws; male majority in security forces, including police stations and military; abuse of authority; lack of training of security forces concerning gender-based violence and respective long-term implications; absence of a standardized reporting process; and morosity of the trial. Therefore, this research points out that under-reporting of gender-based violence must be evaluated from a variety of cultural, social, and political perspectives.