Violence against children in Nyarugusu Refugees Camp: reporting and perceptions across generations

Abstract

There are over two million displaced children worldwide living in established refugee camps. Many of these children have escaped violent conflict in their country, but still are victims of violence in camps. Yet, little is known about this violence and how camp residents subsequently react to it. We examine the issue of reporting violence using a sample of over 300 child-parent pairs of Burundian and Congolese refugees residing in Nyarugusu camp in Tanzania. To elicit social norms around reporting violence against children we use fictional vignettes of violent situations with randomized characteristics against a hypothetical child to measure parents’ and children’s perceptions of when children will report violence. Parents and children have similar beliefs that the vignette victims are more likely to report violence in school than in other locations. One contrast is that parents believe victims are more likely to report sexual violence than other types of violence while children do not. Additionally, we find a strong relationship between a parent and their child’s beliefs of when the hypothetical victim would report violence.