Theo Hollander

The Blessing of Survival: Challenges and Opportunities in the Reintegration of Female Child Soldiers, Abused and Impregnated in Lra Captivity Theo Hollander

The Blessing of Survival follows the reintegration and rehabilitation processes of seven young mothers who were all abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army and abused and impregnated in their captivity. This book analyses the challenges the young mothers faced and the opportunities they grasped in their struggle to establish new social bonds and to become acquainted with the cognitive and structural elements in their new found societies. The author analyses their reintegration and rehabilitation from both a structural as an actor oriented angle and as such he is able to pinpoint the exact factors which hampered and helped them with their struggle to reinsert themselves in communities which are partially alien to them, taking into account their roles as mothers, their past experiences, the character of the society they are inserted to and the conscious and unconscious strategies they applied to live more comfortably in their communities. The title was chosen because all the young woman considered it a blessing that they are still alive, although they all survived their captivity by very narrow margins.