Promoting inclusion in decent work for Ugandan young people: will reducing violence help?

In 2018, the Time's Up Movement declared "the clock has run out on sexual assault, harassment and inequality in the workplace". These demands also resonate with the world's major development goals: decent work and economic growth (SDG 8) and gender equality (SDG 5), and influence financial security and good health and well-being (SDGs 1 and 3). Intersections between violence, harassment and labour outcomes are particularly relevant for adolescents, because substantial proportions enter full-time work during adolescence and early adulthood; and global estimates indicate that abuse is prevalent before age 18, with 1 billion children and adolescents aged 18 and under reporting past year violence.
However, there is little empirical evidence either globally or in Uganda on how experiences of violence in childhood and adolescence affect a) participation in skills programmes, entry into work, and decent employment; and b) about the extent and nature of physical, sexual and emotional violence experienced by young people in their workplaces. In this project, we will explore whether experiences of violence in childhood and adolescence lead to: inequalities in age at entry into work, retention in work, whether work is hazardous or non-hazardous; and the potential for these inequalities to be mitigated by skills training programmes and education. We will also explore the nature of workplace violence experienced by young people in employment. Our focus will be on Uganda but we will also use international data where relevant.
To do this, we will conduct analyses of existing data and a new qualitative study, with input from a new network of stakeholders we will convene. We will map the current geographical coverage of skills training provision in Uganda, and describe how inclusive current skills programs are by sex, age, socio-economic status, disability status; how many existing programs address histories of violence in participants; and how many existing programmes contain any components to address workplace violence. We will conduct a systematic review of international longitudinal studies to explore links between childhood violence and employment outcomes. We will analyse data from 2 international datasets, the Violence against Children Surveys (VACS) from 8 countries, and the International Organization for Migration Trafficked Migrants Assistant Database for Uganda (TMAD). These analyses will tell us about whether and how experiences of violence are associated with working during childhood, and unaccompanied labour migration.
We will use data from the Contexts of Violence in Adolescence Cohort (CoVAC) Study in Luwero District, Uganda, which follows adolescents over time. These unique data will provide information on whether previous experience of physical, sexual and emotional violence affect i) age at entry into the labour force, ii) retention in work, and iii) whether hazardous or non-hazardous work is undertaken. We will also document the prevalence of participation in skills programs, and whether this is related to the likelihood of hazardous work, and the prevalence of physical, sexual and emotional workplace violence.
All of these analyses will inform questions for our new qualitative study. This study will examine people's experiences of being recruited into skills and employment programmes in Uganda, how programme recruitment mechanisms might in the exclusion of vulnerable young people, particularly those experiencing violence and/or child labour, and young people's views on the provision of violence prevention strategies within skills training programmes.
Results from all of these analyses will inform network members about how best to make their skills programs more inclusive and relevant for people with histories of violence, and about how to use skills programmes as a platform to reduce workplace violence against Ugandan young people.

We have 6 impact pathways over the short, medium and long term.
1. Empowerment of adolescents excluded from the labour market. The inclusion of adolescents as partners in our network is anticipated to boost their skills and confidence which should be empowering for them.
2. Direct input into skills and employment interventions in Uganda. We will impact skills and employment intervention development and adaptation by engaging with partners who are participating in our network.
We will convene a group of stakeholders, including Ugandan young people who are excluded from training or employment; Ugandan academics; international academics; Ugandan NGOs in the labour and skills sector; the violence prevention sector, and the Uganda Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, and the Uganda Ministry of Education (which are jointly responsible for skills training provision). To create sustainable partnerships and facilitate knowledge co-creation and future research, we will pair each implementing member organisation of the network with two young people, and one member of the academic team, such that all participants have personal points of contact throughout the research period. Members of the research team will receive special training in how to facilitate young people's engagement in these small groups and within the larger network from Dr Walakira, who is a social worker by training and has experience doing engagement with vulnerable young people.
The network will jointly produce a research priority statement, and recommendations for policy and intervention development and implementation. We will also hold individual workshop events at each network member organisation.
3. Raise awareness among local stakeholders outside our network. We will raise awareness of the links between violence during childhood and adolescence with skills and employment outcomes, via media contacts of our network members. We will take advantage of Uganda's status as a pathfinder country within the Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children (www.end-violence.org/) to increase interest. We will provide evidence to encourage integration of violence prevention into other arenas, including skills programs and employment.
4. Influence intervention development broadly. On a larger scale, we will influence the development of skills interventions to be more inclusive by producing a short, non-technical report. We will share this via the Gender-Based Violence Prevention Network (which includes over 300 violence prevention NGOs in sub-Saharan Africa), the Sexual Violence Research Initiative Listserv, contacts at UNICEF, WHO, the Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children, the International Organization for Migration and the International Labour Organisation, UNESCO and international NGOs including Save the Children and Plan International, and Alliance 8.7 which has a bi-monthly column on labour exploitation.
5. Influence theory and practice. We will publish at least 8 academic papers describing findings from this work and present the work at a minimum of 4 international conferences including the Sexual Violence Research Initiative Conference in 2019, International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect XXIII meeting in 2020. We will produce a webinar at the end of the project in conjunction with the Child Protection in Crisis (CPC) Learning Network.
6. Solidify Ugandan expertise in research on violence and skills and labour outcomes. Through the project, we will hire three Uganda based early career researchers across two institutions. We hope these individuals will remain interested and committed to working on issues of violence, skills and labour participation in Uganda. They will solidify expertise at their respective institutions and we hope that direct small group partnerships within our network will create opportunities for future direct collaborations.