Understanding Barriers and Pathways Towards Hope Among War-Affected Youth: A Phenomenological Approach

Background and Purpose: Former child soldiers face many obstacles in the post-conflict environment. As a consequence, newer trends in child soldier research have shifted from focusing on trauma to centering the interaction between the individual and their environment once they return from war. Given the barriers many face, including the important role resilience plays in one’s recovery, it is imperative that researchers consider the relationship between barriers and future orientations of this group.

This paper helps to fill these gaps by examining how former child soldiers living in Northern Uganda conceptualize hope in relation to their future. Hope is comprised of goals, pathways and thinking which, when positively oriented, can lead to positive psychosocial outcomes. Barriers, however, can mitigate these processes, creating goal blockages, resulting in diminished hopeful thinking.  Barriers are a consistent theme when examining post-conflict experiences of children associated with armed conflict. It is critical that social work researchers consider the interplay between barriers, hope, and future thinking when working with and advocating for war-affected populations.

Methods: Twenty in-depth, semi-structured face-to-face interviews were conducted with former child soldiers living in Gulu, located in Northern Uganda. Demographics of this sample include: 10 females and 10 males, ages ranged from 20-39 years old, and abduction lengths varied from 8 months to 19 years. Through a community-based partnership with the Community Rural Empowerment Support Organization (CRESO) a combination of snowball and convenience sampling were used to recruit all participants. With participant consent, all interviews were recorded for later transcription. Using Atlas.ti, horizontalization of the data, thematic clustering, and a composite description of the essence of the experience occurred in line with a phenomenological approach to data analysis.

Results: Data analysis regarding former child soldier experiences of post-conflict barriers and its relationship to one’s hope for the future revealed several important themes: the pervasive nature of poverty and its impact on goal setting, the gendered nature of hope, the relationship between post-conflict barriers and one’s orientations towards the future, and the familial nature of hope. Findings suggest that one’s experience of barriers in the post-conflict environment is directly connected to their child soldier identity, which largely informs conceptualizations of hope and future oriented thinking.

Conclusion and Implications: There is a general consensus that the conscription of children to fight in armed conflict is a grave injustice. A lack of opportunity and barriers to sustainable livelihoods post-conflict further compounds the injustice experienced by this group. Findings from this research highlight the importance of examining the interaction between an individual and their community, especially for war-affected populations, and how this interaction impacts goal setting and future orientations of hope. In order to make an impact, social workers should ensure that services and opportunities are structured in a way that responds to these barriers, thereby strengthening hope, and empowering vulnerable populations to consider and maintain positive future orientations. Recommendations from this research are made which span the ecological system.