A Participatory Comic Intervention for Sexual Violence Prevention and Post-rape Care With Refugee Adolescents and Youth in a Humanitarian Setting in Uganda

Uganda is Sub-Saharan Africa's largest refugee host community; with over 250,000 residents, Bidi Bidi is the largest refugee settlement in Uganda and the second largest globally. In humanitarian settings, sexual and gender-based violence disproportionately impacts women and children. However, there continues to be a lack of evidence regarding both sexual violence prevention and post-rape care interventions in low- and middle-income humanitarian contexts, with even less evidence supporting adolescents and youth in these settings. Stigma directed toward adolescent sexual practices and engagement in sexual and reproductive health services, such as contraception, HIV testing, and post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP), is also associated with social isolation, violence and mental health challenges. Participatory comics offer a youth-friendly, low-cost, scalable approach for preventing sexual violence and training clinicians in post-rape care in humanitarian settings. This study aims to develop, implement, and evaluate the effectiveness of a comic intervention on preventing sexual violence and improving post-rape care with youth aged 16-24 and health care providers in the Bidi Bidi refugee settlement. Participating youth and health care providers will take part in 4-hour peer-facilitated workshops exploring topics of social, sexual, and psychological needs and pro-social interventions (youth) and post-rape care responses and attending to the needs of youth refugees who have experienced sexual violence (health care providers) using comics developed with qualitative data collected from an earlier study phase. Using a pre-test/post-test design, this study will assess changes in participants' PEP knowledge and acceptance, bystander behaviour, and sexual violence stigma.