Rehabilitation of South Sudanese women ex-combatant refugees in Arua, Uganda: Narra-tives, Experiences, Intersections

This study brings forth the narratives of South Sudanese women about their lived experiences as ex-combatants living in Rhino camp Refugee settlement in Arua, Uganda. Ex-combatant, in this paper is defined as someone – in this case women – who have taken part in war, irrespective of their specific role (e.g. fighter, logistics, cook, ‘wife’ etc). Rhino camp is an open settlement, and the study examines how women ex-combatants are economically, socially and psy-chologically integrated and rehabilitated into the locality and within the South Sudanese refugee community. There is literature about refugee reintegration and repatriation. Ex-combatants have also been studied female and male, but there has been less attention in the literature about ex-combatant refugee women and much less on their experiences in a refugee setting. This study seeks to reveal the largely silenced intersectional experiences of this specific group of women, whose opinions and experiences have not been taken into account in wider scholarship of refugee rehabilitation. By visiting the settlement area, seeing how they live in an ethnographic-like manner, I seek to understand how these women themselves experience reintegration and rehabilitation in Uganda. Informal con-versations and formal interviews were carried out with these women to appre-hend their stories. Also, in focus were the lead institutions that play roles in the rehabilitation of these women, namely; the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) and Danish Refugee Council (DRC) - the lead implementing partner organiza-tion of ‘protection’ under UNHCR and OPM in Rhino camp refugee settlement. In addition, secondary data was used especially documentation done on the sub-ject by UNHCR, OPM and NGOs.