Difficult Life in a Refugee Camp : Gender, Violence, and Coping in Uganda

Offering nuanced insights into violence, humanitarian protection, gender relations, and coping of refugees in a Ugandan refugee camp, this book shows how risks prevail for refugees despite and partly due to their settlement in the camp and the system established to protect them, and hones in on the strategies used by people to protect themselves.

Although refugee camps are established to accommodate, protect, and assist those fleeing from violent conflict and persecution, life often remains difficult there. Building on empirical research with refugees in a Ugandan camp, Ulrike Krause offers nuanced insights into violence, humanitarian protection, gender relations, and coping of refugees who mainly escaped the conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This book explores how risks of gender-based violence against women, in particular, but also against men, persist despite and partly due to their settlement in the camp and the system established there. It reflects on modes and shortcomings of humanitarian protection, changes in gender relations, as well as strategies that the women and men use to cope with insecurities, everyday struggles, and structural problems occurring across different levels and temporalities.