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A cross-sectional study of community perceptions of stigmatization amongst women affected by UN-peacekeeper perpetrated sexual exploitation and abuse
BACKGROUND: Sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) by UN peacekeepers perpetrated against local women and girls is a concern in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). While stigma associated with sexual and gender-based violence is well documented more broadly, little is known about stigma associated...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8684182/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34922504 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-12221-6 |
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author | Gray, Samantha Bartels, Susan A. Lee, Sabine Stuart, Heather |
author_facet | Gray, Samantha Bartels, Susan A. Lee, Sabine Stuart, Heather |
author_sort | Gray, Samantha |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) by UN peacekeepers perpetrated against local women and girls is a concern in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). While stigma associated with sexual and gender-based violence is well documented more broadly, little is known about stigma associated with peacekeeper-perpetrated SEA. METHODS: The aim of this study was to examine how the degree of exposure to SEA affects community perceptions of a woman or girl’s (1) social status (public stigma) and (2) institutional support in her community (structural stigma). Two poisson regression models with robust variance estimation were constructed utilizing community survey data of SEA experiences from eastern DRC (n = 2867) to quantify these associations. Relevant demographic variables were assessed for confounding and effect modification. RESULTS: The prevalence of public and structural stigma were 62.9 and 19.3% respectively across the sample. A positive relationship was demonstrated between level of exposure of SEA and diminished social status in which women and girls experiencing moderate levels of SEA were at the greatest risk of public stigmatization after adjusting for confounding (RR: 1.94; CI: 1.66–2.26). Similarly, a positive relationship between exposure to SEA and inadequate institutional support was shown for female narrators wherein women and girls experiencing a high degree of SEA were 6.53 times as likely to receive inadequate support (RR: 6.53; CI: 3.63, 11.73). This contrasted with male narrated stories for whom there was no significant association between the SEA exposure level and institutional support. CONCLUSIONS: Women/girls with high exposure levels to UN peacekeeper-perpetrated SEA are at the highest risk of public and structural stigmatization, which should be more routinely considered when conceptualizing the consequences of SEA in peacekeeping contexts. The frequent occurrence of both public and structural stigma, coupled with the varying perceptions by sex, demonstrates the need for a multi-faceted approach for stigma reduction. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8684182 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-86841822021-12-20 A cross-sectional study of community perceptions of stigmatization amongst women affected by UN-peacekeeper perpetrated sexual exploitation and abuse Gray, Samantha Bartels, Susan A. Lee, Sabine Stuart, Heather BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: Sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) by UN peacekeepers perpetrated against local women and girls is a concern in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). While stigma associated with sexual and gender-based violence is well documented more broadly, little is known about stigma associated with peacekeeper-perpetrated SEA. METHODS: The aim of this study was to examine how the degree of exposure to SEA affects community perceptions of a woman or girl’s (1) social status (public stigma) and (2) institutional support in her community (structural stigma). Two poisson regression models with robust variance estimation were constructed utilizing community survey data of SEA experiences from eastern DRC (n = 2867) to quantify these associations. Relevant demographic variables were assessed for confounding and effect modification. RESULTS: The prevalence of public and structural stigma were 62.9 and 19.3% respectively across the sample. A positive relationship was demonstrated between level of exposure of SEA and diminished social status in which women and girls experiencing moderate levels of SEA were at the greatest risk of public stigmatization after adjusting for confounding (RR: 1.94; CI: 1.66–2.26). Similarly, a positive relationship between exposure to SEA and inadequate institutional support was shown for female narrators wherein women and girls experiencing a high degree of SEA were 6.53 times as likely to receive inadequate support (RR: 6.53; CI: 3.63, 11.73). This contrasted with male narrated stories for whom there was no significant association between the SEA exposure level and institutional support. CONCLUSIONS: Women/girls with high exposure levels to UN peacekeeper-perpetrated SEA are at the highest risk of public and structural stigmatization, which should be more routinely considered when conceptualizing the consequences of SEA in peacekeeping contexts. The frequent occurrence of both public and structural stigma, coupled with the varying perceptions by sex, demonstrates the need for a multi-faceted approach for stigma reduction. BioMed Central 2021-12-18 /pmc/articles/PMC8684182/ /pubmed/34922504 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-12221-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2021, corrected publication 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Gray, Samantha Bartels, Susan A. Lee, Sabine Stuart, Heather A cross-sectional study of community perceptions of stigmatization amongst women affected by UN-peacekeeper perpetrated sexual exploitation and abuse |
title | A cross-sectional study of community perceptions of stigmatization amongst women affected by UN-peacekeeper perpetrated sexual exploitation and abuse |
title_full | A cross-sectional study of community perceptions of stigmatization amongst women affected by UN-peacekeeper perpetrated sexual exploitation and abuse |
title_fullStr | A cross-sectional study of community perceptions of stigmatization amongst women affected by UN-peacekeeper perpetrated sexual exploitation and abuse |
title_full_unstemmed | A cross-sectional study of community perceptions of stigmatization amongst women affected by UN-peacekeeper perpetrated sexual exploitation and abuse |
title_short | A cross-sectional study of community perceptions of stigmatization amongst women affected by UN-peacekeeper perpetrated sexual exploitation and abuse |
title_sort | cross-sectional study of community perceptions of stigmatization amongst women affected by un-peacekeeper perpetrated sexual exploitation and abuse |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8684182/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34922504 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-12221-6 |
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