Table 4 Summary of content in the identified sub-themes in the first theme
Sub-theme | Summary of content illustrating women’s experiences |
|---|---|
Reduced safety and exposure to general violence | Life became unstable and unsafe, with increased risk of violence [37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50] |
Conflicts resulted in destruction of societal structures and relationships [40, 45,46,47, 49, 58, 59] | |
Violence was expressed as threats, destruction, bombings, torture, sexual violence, theft, shootings, murders, obstacles to work, and arbitrary arrests [38,39,40, 45,46,47,48,49, 52,53,54,55,56] | |
Killings, abuse, and violence against family members and neighbors were witnessed [39, 40, 46, 56, 60] | |
Women suffered violence based on ethnicity and religion [40, 55, 57] | |
Family relationships changed and family bonds were disrupted [37, 39,40,41, 44, 46,47,48,49, 57, 59] | |
Insufficient access to resources meeting basic needs | War reduced the access to resources needed to meet basic needs [42, 51, 54, 59, 60] |
Grief over being unable to provide resources, safety and optimism for children [39, 59, 60] | |
Socioeconomic stress was experienced, including financial and housing difficulties [39, 42, 47, 54] | |
When living in refugee camps, women experienced significant challenges, including food shortages, insanitary conditions and inadequate shelters [38, 41, 42, 45, 55, 61] | |
Forced migration as a last resort | Reasons for migration included: (i) a need to seek protection; (ii) a need to flee from destroyed structures; (iii) when experiencing a lack of resources, and (iv) wanting to seek out peace and freedom [38, 39, 41, 45, 52, 56] |
The decision to migrate: (i) was not easy but needed to keep the family safe and seek peace [39, 45]; (ii) involved having to renounce normality and property [38, 45]; and (iii) was taken through social support and some needed to persuade family members [38, 45] | |
Positive effects related to exposure | Responsibilities of family members were expanded, involving increased independence [46, 48, 52, 62] |
Relationships with family members were strengthened through the exposure to war [47, 48, 54] |