This presentation titled “Identifying sexual violence and access to HIV service among male refugees in Uganda” was delivered in Bangkok in October 2013 during SVRI conference, and was jointly developed with our partners from Johns Hopkins University of Public Health.
In January 2013, the Center for Public Health and Human Rights, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Refugee Law Project, School of Law, Makerere Universtiy started a collaborative research project on “Assessment Screening to Identify Survivors Toolkit for Gender Based Violence (ASIST-GBV) for Men and Boys in Uganda” funded by the United States Bureau of Population Refugees and Migration funded this project. It builds on JHU’s previous research and success in developing the ASIST-GBV to screen and identify female refugee and IDP survivors of GBV in Ethiopia and Colombia, as well as on Refugee Law Project’s extensive experience working in Uganda with male refugee and IDP survivors of sexual violence.
The aim of the project was to develop a screening tool for systematic identification of refugees and IDP men and boy survivors of sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict settings. Prior to this project, no such screening tool has ever been developed, and it is seemed highly probable that only a small proportion of male survivors of GBV ever report their experience and/or access appropriate services.