Paper details

Paper authors	JEREMIE BYENDA MUZIRI
In panel on	Coping strategies of affected people in a resource-constrained environment
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

To survive in the internally displaced camps in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) represents a tragic situation that pushes a desperate person to do all s/he can to answer her/his needs and of those in his/her charge. Given insufficient humanitarian assistance, men, women, girls and children in the camps look for all possible opportunities to find responses to their needs and to those of their family members. Young girls from families of modicum revenue or who lost their parents and unmarried women as well as women separated by their partners because of war or other circumstances are often in the situation to use transactional sex for survival, though risks and consequences related to such practice. It is as an alternative practice to survive in the absence or insufficient adequate humanitarian aid in a developing country such as the DRC. Based on ethnographic approach with focus on peer research method, the paper discusses the reality of transactional sex in internally displaced persons’ camps around Goma. We identified practices and categories of transactional sex victims, while discussing the necessity of effective and adapted humanitarian intervention to respond to those vulnerable population’ needs; therefore, reduce their dependency to such practice as a unique subsistence mean.

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