Undesired Effects of Campaigns & Interventions

One topic that I have been interested in for quite sometime now is how some campaigns and empowerment interventions can lead to undesired consquences among target communities. Today, I will share with you a few examples that I came acorss throughout my research  and I invite you to share examples that you may know of. 

The first example I want to share is that of an intervention. I came across Nic a Bhaird's (2013) study exploring a participatory intervention promoting women’s and children’s health in a Kolkata slum in India. This study revealed that women’s mobilization led to undesired effects for members of the community, including violent attacks on men carried out by women which was then followed by brutal retaliation as well as civil unrest in the community. 

The other two exmaples are those of campaign approaches used in anti-FGM and HIV/AIDS campaigns. First, during the early anti-FGM efforts in the 1970s and 80s, institutions adopted a scientific medical framework which heavily focused on the health complications of FGM (UNICEF, 2005). Employing such an approach led to the medicalization of the practice, meaning that instead of abandoning FGM altogether, practicing communities simply shifted to practicing the custom within the walls of medical facilities. FGM was then performed by health professionals, such as doctors and nurses in hospitals or clinics, rather than by midwives, barbers, or traditional healers who lacked proper training (UVA/UNFPA, 2006; UNICEF, 2005; Abusharaf, 2001; Gruenbaum, 2001). Egypt serves as a good example of how FGM was medicalized. According to UNICEF (2005), 79 percent of mothers and 94 percent of girls still undergo the practice through medical procedures. 

You probably already know about this example as we learend about it in our class. This examples shows how HIV/AIDS campaigns in Nairobi led to unintended consequences. According to Jolly (2007), the Liverpool VCT, Care & Treatment in Nairobi stated that emphasis on prevention messages about the risks of heterosexual vaginal sex in HIV/AIDS campaigns led many men and women to believe that anal sex was safer and to assume that there is no need to use a condom for anal sex. 

References 

Abusharaf, R.M. (2001) Virtuous cuts: female genital circumcision in an African ontology. Differences: a journal of feminist cultural studies, 12(1), 112-140.

Gruenbaum, E. (2001). The female circumcision controversy: An anthropological perspective. Philadelphia, PA, University of Pennsylvania Press.

Nic a Bháird, C. (2013). The Complexity of Community Engagement: Developing Staff–Community Relationships in a Participatory Child Education and Women's Rights Intervention in Kolkata Slums. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 23(5), 389-404.

UNICEF (2005) Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: a Statistical Exploration. Retrieved on October 3, 2006 from http://www.childinfo.org/areas/fgmc/unicefdocs.php.

United Nations Volunteers/UNFPA (2006). UN Volunteers support to Combat Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) in Sudan Egypt Study Tour Report, 10- 21June 2006 (Unpublished).