Access to Whose Justice? Survivor-Centered Justice for Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in Northern Shan State

Phyu Phyu Oo,Sara E Davies

doi:10.1093/isagsq/ksab014

Abstract

Abstract In 2019, the United Nations (UN) Security Council adopted Resolution 2467. The resolution was to encourage the international system to promote a survivor-centered response to conflict-related sexual violence. The role of local women-led civil society organizations has been identified as the crucial “first-response” mechanism to institute survivor-centered justice. In a situation of ongoing conflict, what agency do civil society organizations have to safely operate “first-response” survivor-centered justice? In this article, we examine the local practices of responding to conflict-related sexual violence in northern Shan State in Myanmar. This article finds that women-led local civil society organizations are indeed crucial first responders and a vital resource for promoting survivor-centered justice-seeking practices. The article also identifies the compromises and risks these civil society organizations experience that limit their agency to deliver survivor-centered justice. Local civil society organizations are constantly navigating local gendered norms, a patriarchal, unrepresentative formal legal system, and a hostile conflict environment. The positionality of local civil society organizations to local armed ethnic organizations and the state itself requires strategic consideration by the international community when recommending local civil society to deliver survivor-centered justice.

Highlights

In 2018, the United Nations Human Rights Council received a report by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar (i.e., “the Mission”), which concluded that “rape and other sexual violence have been a egregious and recurrent feature of the targeting of the civilian population in Rakhine, Kachin and Shan States since 2011.”
The Joint Communique signed by the Myanmar government and UN Secretary-General in December 2018 required UN agencies involved at the country level to support the national government and security forces for awareness training on gender equality, access to justice, and access to services for sexual violence survivors (UN Women and United Nations Development Program n.d)
The International Development Law Organization (IDLO) report (2019) and personal observation of local civil society organizations (CSOs) reveals that trust-building between ethnic communities and state institutions is a huge challenge and it limits the agency of women CSOs

Summary

Introduction

In 2018, the United Nations Human Rights Council received a report by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar (i.e., “the Mission”), which concluded that “rape and other sexual violence have been a egregious and recurrent feature of the targeting of the civilian population in Rakhine, Kachin and Shan States since 2011.” One year later, the Mission submitted a second thematic report titled “Sexual and gender-based violence in Myanmar and the gendered impact of its ethnic conflicts.” The report found that there was a “prevailing context of insecurity in northern Myanmar, the culturally based stigmatisation and ostracism of sexual violence survivors, and the continuing presence of the military and armed groups, despite the current ceasefire, suggest significant underreporting of human rights violations” (United Nations Human Rights Council 2019, 28). In 2018 and 2019, the UN-appointed Independent Fact-Finding Mission found that the Myanmar state had continually failed to prevent gross human rights violations committed by both state and non-state armed actors in the conflict-affected areas of Rakhine and Shan state, including widespread and systematic acts of sexual and gender-based violence (United Nations Human Rights Council 2019). It is vital to support local civil society as powerful agents of change, as recommended in Resolution 2467, but women do occupy the civil society space at great risk to their own security In these situations, civil society responses are daily curtailed by “patriarchal and gender-biased structures” that limit their operational power to prevent and respond (Ní Aoláin, Haynes, and Cahn 2011, 243; Shepherd 2017, 117)

Methodology

Findings

Conclusion