Conference Program

Lake Victoria, which is shared by Tanzania (51%), Uganda (43%) and Kenya (6%) (EAC, 2023), is the second largest freshwater lake in the world and the largest in Africa. It is rich in resources such as fisheries, biodiversity, wetlands, forests, wildlife, and tourism, which play an important social, economic, and environmental role in the livelihoods of over 45 million people (Agol et al., 2020). Most communities along the lake depend almost exclusively on fishing and related socio-economic activities. However, fish traders are increasingly trapped in an exploitative procurement process involving transactional sex, whereby fishermen (and sometimes young women) seek sexual favours in exchange for selling or acquiring the catch.

With dwindling fish stocks and limited socio-economic opportunities in the region, competition to purchase or sell the scarce catch has become intense, exposing more women, as well as young boys and girls, to these exploitative practices in an area grappling with a high HIV/AIDS prevalence. Meanwhile, prevailing social norms, ignorance, and stigma raise questions about agency and prevent victims/survivors from seeking care or accessing social services – further compromising their dignity and human rights.

Drawing on the WHO social-ecological model, exploratory mixed-methods, and interviews with 64 individuals from fishing communities in Kenya, this paper discusses the core drivers, actors, and responses to reduce the risk of transactional 'sex-for-fish' and gender-based violence (GBV), as well as alternative livelihoods. The aim is to co-develop gender-responsive, survivor-centred, and trauma-informed knowledge to address the intersectional needs, experiences, and systemic injustices faced by these communities

Drawing on theory from critical disability studies with a decolonial approach, emphasizing intersectionality, my research aims to provide a thick description of the journey of female disabled international students from the Global South to Canada for higher education. Through conversations with six interviewees and reflective thematic analysis alongside current literature, the findings highlight the incongruence between their expectations and Canada’s harsh living conditions, as well as existing social discrimination that push them into a struggle to survive. However, they are not merely ‘victims’ of the system, but active players who could negotiate with circumstances by means of resilience and resistance. They create a hybridity between locally embodied and Western epistemologies, to not only deal with immediate situations but also thrive for academic excellence. The study delivered their recommendations to improve disabled international students’ living and studying experience, including enhancements to support systems and suggestions for policy development. Ultimately, this study suggests that international education while often shaped by colonial and neoliberal agendas, also holds transformative potential. Through reflection, resistance, and reciprocity, international higher education can evolve into a space of learning and unlearning that challenges Western epistemic dominance, fosters decolonial forms of knowledge exchange, and amplifies the value of knowledge from the Global South. The significance of this research in the body of literature is that it considers the dimension of disability within the scope of intersectional identity, which other research in international higher education rarely considers. Therefore, my approach will widen the scope of consideration when it comes to entangled forms of bodily and ideological marginalization.

Mon sujet de recherche doctoral porte sur l’application d’une perspective féministe intersectionnelle à visée décoloniale en gestion de la coopération internationale . Ma thèse s’intéresse à l’expérience bolivienne où les mouvements féministes entretiennent des relations complexes avec les instances de pouvoirs (gouvernements, organisations internationales, etc.) et où la décolonisation a une double interprétation : l’indépendance bolivienne face aux États dominants, et l’indépendance des communautés autochtones face à l’État bolivien. Ainsi, à partir de l’expérience bolivienne, la question au centre de la recherche est : qu’est-ce qui qualifie une gestion féministe intersectionnelle et décoloniale en coopération internationale et quels en sont les obstacles ? La collecte de donnée de la recherche s’est déroulée de 2022 à 2024 grâce à une étude de cas en collaboration avec une organisation de coopération internationale située en Bolivie.

Dans le cadre de cet article, et en cohérence avec la thématique spécifique de la conférence en 2026, je m'intéresse au structure macro de gouvernance en coopération à partir de l'écosystème de l'organisation collaboratrice dans le cadre de ma thèse de doctorat. L'analyse s'intéresse aux rapports de pouvoir qui fragilisent le secteur de la solidarité internationale et aux pistes d'opportunités et d'alternatives pour réfléchir (et agir) différemment (bailleurs alternatifs, processus alternatifs (i.e les appels de projets inversés), réseaux de sociétés civiles, etc.).

At a moment when global development is increasingly shaped by widening inequalities, democratic erosion, climate crises, and the fragmentation of multilateral governance, this paper interrogates the limits of contemporary internationalism through the lived experiences of those most often marginalized within development systems. We ask: whose lives, labour, and well-being are valued within dominant models of development, and whose are rendered expendable?

Drawing on critical race theory and intersectional feminist frameworks, this paper centers Black women working within nonprofit and development-oriented organizations in Nova Scotia, a region shaped by Canada’s largest Indigenous Black population and long-standing histories of racialized dispossession. While nonprofit and development institutions are frequently positioned as vehicles of care, solidarity, and social good, they often reproduce extractive labour practices, racialized emotional work, and gendered inequities that undermine worker well-being and sustainability. The COVID-19 pandemic further exposed these contradictions, intensifying workloads while revealing the fragility of people-centred development models.

Through qualitative inquiry, this research highlights how Black women navigate intersecting structures of racism, sexism, and precarity within organizations tasked with advancing social justice. In doing so, it challenges dominant assumptions of “development” that prioritize productivity, resilience, and output over collective care and human dignity. The paper contributes to conversations on pluriversality and alternative ways of knowing by foregrounding experiential knowledge, community-rooted perspectives, and relational understandings of well-being.

By linking local nonprofit labour conditions to broader global development paradigms, this paper offers a critical intervention into debates on governance, justice, and sustainability. It argues that reimagining internationalism requires not only structural reform at the global level, but also a fundamental reorientation toward valuing all human lives, resisting extractive logics, and placing people rather than profit or performance at the centre of development futures.