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The report for the Cross-sectoral formative research – Knowledge, attitude and practice study, which was conducted under the leadership of ComDev professor Ronald Stade on behalf of the country office of UNICEF Lebanon is now available online.

The purpose of the KAP Study is,

  • To establish a baseline for UNICEF Lebanon’s Country Programme Document for the period 2017 to 2020
  • To recommend C4D interventions that are successful in removing barriers to the adoption of positive practices with regard to education, child survival, child protection, child rights and social inclusion

The background for the KAP Study is the impact of the Syrian crisis. Lebanon has received more international refugees per capita than any other country in the world. This has created an immense stress on Lebanon’s institutional capacities. Over one million children in Lebanon are directly affected by the crisis. They are in need of basic services like education, health care, clean water, as well as of protection and inclusion.

The empirical scope of the KAP Study has been

  • To include Lebanese residents, Syrian refugees registered with UNHCR, Syrian refugees living in informal settlements and Palestine refugees living in Lebanon’s designated camps
  • To cover each mohafaza (governorate) in Lebanon
  • To include female and male respondents of all age groups
  • To provide results on indicators for each of UNICEF Lebanon’s programme areas

The data for the KAP Study were collected using three methods, one quantitative and two qualitative:

  • Questionnaire-based interviews with 7,000 households
  • 48 focus group discussions
  • 42 key informant interviews

From the collected data on the various indicators could be drawn conclusions about knowledge gaps and barriers to positive attitudes and practice, both among external stakeholders (caregivers and children) and internal stakeholders (providers of public services, including UNICEF and partners):

External stakeholders

  • Attitudinal challenges and knowledge gaps with regard to gender differences
  • Knowledge gaps on vaccinations, breastfeeding and menstruation
  • Attitudinal challenges because of intensifying and spreading conservative norms, for example with regard to child marriage, family planning and forced pregnancies
  • Gap between favourable attitudes towards positive discipline and persisting practice of negative discipline
  • Lack of knowledge: children and caregivers do not know that child rights, in addition to a right to basic services, also include the right of expression, participation in decision-making and social inclusion
  • Alarming knowledge gap with regard to disabilities

Internal stakeholders

  • Capacity gaps in the field of medical ethics
  • Capacity gaps in the delivery of clean water and the treatment of wastewater
  • Insufficient capacities in the field of education
  • Inadequate practices in the field of child protection, especially insufficient protection against violence
  • Insufficient capacities to build trust, so that women are ready to report incidents of GBV and CP violations to formal authorities
  • Insufficient capacity to professionally identify disabilities
  • Insufficient integration of disability perspectives with other programmes
  • Need for more participatory C4D initiatives

Project manager Lana Khattab reflected on the research in her article Humanitarian response in Lebanon: changing social norms or reproducing them? and concluded:
Although aid organisations are increasingly concerned about promoting gender equality, when faced with people’s immediate needs and the urgency to addressing them as fast as possible, social interventions can rely on, and reproduce, unequal gender roles and norms, rather than working to improve them.

Khalid Albaih is currently artist in residence at Copenhagen’s central library as part of the International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN).
He  joined ComDev on 1 March for a seminar with students and faculty where he presented his political activism and his journey from Sudan to Qatar and now Europe.

Albaih’s cartoons convey scathing criticisms of authoritarianism and iniquitousness, but they also express solidarity and hope for a better future. Sketching the ongoing events of the Arab spring in 2011, he quickly became an artist of the revolution. Many cartoons were turned into stencils and reproduced on walls in Beirut and Cairo, and are still used by revolutionary groups in his native Sudan, and by political activists in Yemen, Tunis, Syria.
(From his ICORN portrait)

The ComDev team is very proud to announce that ComDev lecturer Anders Hög-Hansen successfully completed the process to be promoted as a Docent, an Associate Professor in Media- and Communication Studies at Malmö University!

Anders’ public lecture Mix Tape Memories. Art, Storytelling, and Development took place in October.

Congratulations, Anders!

New book! In the Aftermath of Gezi-From Social Movement to Social Change?

by Tobias Denskus October 9, 2017 Uncategorized

A new book, co-edited by ComDev’s Oscar Hemer, analyzes recent developments in Turkey from a comparative global perspective. In the Aftermath of Gezi-From Social Movement to Social Change? is the latest title in the Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change series: This edited volume addresses various aspects of social and political development in Turkey […]

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Apply for ComDev’s flagship MA program until 16 October!

by Tobias Denskus September 18, 2017 Uncategorized

Dear all, These are exciting times at ComDev again! The autumn semester just kicked off with more than 150 students across all our courses and we just held our initial teaching seminar with a group of more than twenty students on site and many more online! The autumn application window for ComDev’s MA program is […]

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Conviviality and Illiberalism symposium 14-15 September

by Tobias Denskus September 12, 2017 Uncategorized

A two-day symposium at Malmö University 14-15 September 2017 Venue: Storm, Gäddan, Citadellsvägen 7 Resurging nationalism, identity politics and xenophobia are local responses, worldwide, to a planet increasingly characterised by the flexible mobility of people, ideas, images and things. In the EU and Europe as well as in the United States since long taken-for-granted truths […]

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Home at the Crossroads-Imagining the City by artistic and academic means, 7 June

by Tobias Denskus May 30, 2017 Uncategorized

Open Seminar in collaboration between Freeman’s and the Conviviality at the Crossroads network at Malmö University 7 June 2017, 13.00 – 18.00 Venue: Auditorium B2, Niagara building, ground floor, Nordenskiöldsgatan 1, Malmö 13.00 – 13.15                 Welcome Rebecka Lettevall, Dean of Malmö University’s Faculty of Culture and Society, Oscar Hemer, coordinator of theConviviality at the […]

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Erasmus+ E-skills for jobs seminar Latvia

by Tobias Denskus March 30, 2017 Uncategorized

On invitation of the Swedish Council for Higher Education (UHR), ComDev’s Tobias Denskus attended a transnational thematic seminar on “Erasmus+ developing e-skills for jobs” hosted by the Latvian State Education Development Agency in Riga. Discussing with more than 50 participants, mainly from the Latvian high school and education sector, Tobias spoke about “Communicating development & […]

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New book! Methodological Reflections on Researching Communication and Social Change

by Tobias Denskus January 24, 2017 Uncategorized

A new book, Methodological Reflections on Researching Communication and Social Change, edited by Örecomm colleagues Norbert Wildermuth and Teke Ngomba features new chapters by ComDev researchers, alumni of the program and many collaborators from Malmö and Roskilde University! The book expands the growing Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change series. Official synopsis: This book […]

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New journal article on Places, Landscape and Production of Memory

by Tobias Denskus November 28, 2016 Uncategorized

City Symphony Malmö: the spatial politics of non-institutional memory New article coauthored by ComDev’s Anders Høg Hansen and Erling Björgvinsson (Interaction Design, formerly Malmö University, now at Gothenburg) published in the Journal Media Practice, explores the function of media in the creation of non-institutional memory and discusses the complexities of participatory and spatially distributed filmmaking […]

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