Survivors Of Conflict-related Sexual Violence Research Articles

The gendered costs of stigma: How experiences of conflict‐related sexual violence affect civic engagement for women and men

AbstractA common understanding emphasizes the destructive effects of conflict‐related sexual violence (CRSV) on social cohesion and community life. Stressing the agency of survivors, we present an alternative argument. Our theory predicts that survivors seek to counteract the stigma attached to CRSV by contributing to the community in the form of civic engagement. Drawing on three original surveys from Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Liberia, and Sri Lanka and relying on list experiments to reduce underreporting bias, we find that survivors of CRSV indeed show increased levels of civic engagement. This civic effect is consistent across the three contexts and very likely causal. We also rule out an alternative mechanism based on posttraumatic growth and dispel concerns that increased civic engagement comes at the expense of decreased intergroup relations. However, looking at sex differences, our results are more sobering. While in line with our prediction, they do not support the optimistic notion that survivors' mobilization results in female empowerment and the closing of existing gender gaps in civic behavior. Our findings have important implications for our understanding of CRSV, the legacy of violent conflict, and the gendered nature of politics.

Post-Traumatic Growth, Resilience and Social-Ecological Synergies: Some Reflections from a Study on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence

The concept of post-traumatic growth (PTG) continues to generate significant interest, as reflected in the increasing number of studies. This article makes two novel contributions to existing scholarship on PTG. First, it seeks to demonstrate that the common framing of PTG as positive psychological change is too narrow. To do so, it looks to research on resilience and highlights the shift from person-centred understandings of resilience to more relational approaches that situate the concept in the interactions and dynamics between individuals and their social ecologies (environments). The article’s core argument is that there are social-ecological synergies between resilience and PTG, which, in turn, are highly relevant to how we think about and study growth. Second, the article empirically develops this argument by drawing on a larger study involving victims-/survivors of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Colombia and Uganda. It is important to note in this regard that there are no major studies of PTG focused on CRSV, just as scholarship on CRSV has given little attention to PTG (or indeed resilience).

Post-research reflexivity in qualitative research: Through cloaks and cross-threading

This interdisciplinary Note is a creative form of writing that engages in post-research reflexivity through a process that it terms ‘cross-threading’. Using the trope of a cloak, which it links back to the author’s childhood imaginings of having an invisibility cloak, it cross-threads through the medium of this cloak a series of thoughts and feelings about a recently concluded research project (led by the author) exploring some of the ways that victims-/survivors of conflict-related sexual violence demonstrate resilience. Drawing on empirical data from Bosnia-Herzegovina, it illustrates the utility of the cloak as a thinking practice in relation to some of the stories that interviewees told, and it highlights the relevance of the cloak as a way of thinking about resilience. It also discusses the cloak as an identity, and in so doing it draws attention to an important aspect of the research process that is rarely talked about – the feelings, emotions and anxieties that researchers might experience when a major study or project ends. This Note concludes by underlining the potential benefits to researchers of having an acoustic cloak.

Why Matter Matters: Conflict-Related Sexual Violence and the Relevance of New Materialism

New materialism encompasses a heterogeneous range of perspectives – which share some common themes with Indigenous beliefs and cosmologies – that collectively recognise the vibrancy and affective capabilities of matter. This novel interdisciplinary article makes an important conceptual and empirical contribution to addressing the fact that, to date, scholarship on conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) has largely overlooked new materialism. The article is not seeking to convince readers that a new materialist framework is superior to other frameworks applied to CRSV research. The objective, rather, is to demonstrate that new materialism can further enrich how we approach and study CRSV. It explores how new materialism challenges us to think in expanded and more creative ways about two concepts that are widely emphasised in extant scholarship on CRSV – structure and agency. It also draws on interviews with victims-/survivors of CRSV in Bosnia-Herzegovina to practically illustrate the relevance of new materialism and to suggest some potential avenues for future research. The article makes clear that adding a new materialist lens to the study of CRSV is not about diminishing the importance of victims-/survivors, their experiences and narratives. It is about situating them within wider relational and affective assemblages, asking new questions and acknowledging the significance of non-human agencies. Pourquoi la matière importe: Les violences sexuelles liées aux conflits et la pertinence du néo-matérialisme

Measuring Resilience and the Importance of Resource Connectivities: Revising the Adult Resilience Measure (RRC-ARM)

There have been many efforts to measure and quantify resilience, and various scales have been developed. This article draws on a mixed methods study which involved the application of one particular scale—the Resilience Research Centre-Adult Resilience Measure (referred to throughout as the ARM). Rather than focus on the quantitative results, however, which have been presented elsewhere, this unique article draws on the qualitative results of the study—semi-structured interviews with victims-/survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in Bosnia–Herzegovina (BiH), Colombia and Uganda—to explore and discuss some of the ARM’s shortcomings. It develops its empirical analyses around the crucial concept of connectivity, “borrowed” from the field of ecology, and the three elements of the study’s connectivity framework—broken and ruptured connectivities, supportive and sustaining connectivities and new connectivities. Through its analyses, the article highlights aspects of the ARM that could potentially be improved or developed in future research, and it ultimately proposes some concrete revisions to the measure, including two additional scales relating to change and importance, respectively.

Listening to Survivors of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in Nepal: Would It Ever Happen?

Listening to Survivors of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in Nepal: Would It Ever Happen?

Listening to Survivors of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in Nepal: Would It Ever Happen?

A theory of listening that entails openness, receptivity, attentiveness, and responsiveness shifts the onus for action onto the listener from speaker and undertakes listening not only as a process, but also as a substance. Listening to survivors in the cases of violence goes beyond hearing their experience, and taking seriously the justice interests of survivors as legal and political subjects. However, the survivors of Conflict Related Sexual Violence (CRSVs), caused in Nepal during the decade long armed conflict (1996-2006), have never been listened to for their voices and sufferings. Far from ‘substance’, they have neither been heard nor provided interim relief to which all other categories of survivors of the armed conflict were entitled to. The second National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security adopted in Nepal in 2022 has opened a possibility to listen to the CRSVs as it has included them officially for the first time. However, in reality they cannot be listened until the stakeholders move beyond tokenism to making their participation effective. It requires capacitating, providing psychosocial support, and assuring response to overcome any possible stigmatisation. The article concludes that listening to CRSVs requires a survivor-centric comprehensive approach, which includes i) work, education and good health to exercise their right to participate; ii) avenues and spaces for effective, full and meaningful participation; iii) skills for effective engagement together with the willingness of the state to open up decision making and a prudent action of all stakeholders on which the survivors can fully trust.

Following one’s nose: ‘Smellwalks’ through qualitative data

This Note utilises the idea of ‘smellwalks’ as a novel way of engaging with qualitative data. Based on a larger study of victims-/survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, it argues that smelling data – and allowing ourselves to viscerally imagine the odours and scents that the data evoke for us – can foster deeper insights into interviewees’ embodied experiences; in this case, embodied experiences of war and armed conflict. Within the data – consisting of 63 semi-structured interviews with victims-/survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), Colombia and Uganda – there were frequent references to food and cooking. This Note follows the scent trails within two particular interviews – one from BiH and the other from Colombia.

Achieving Justice for Child Survivors of Conflict-related Sexual Violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Light of the Kavumu Case

Abstract In this article, the author questions some assertions on issues of international and Congolese criminal law made in the context of an article published in a Special Issue of the Journal on ‘Justice and Accountability for Sexual Violence in Conflict: Progress and Challenges in National Efforts to Address Impunity’. While he credits the article with helping to bring to the attention of a wider audience the atrocities experienced by the victims of the Kavumu case — and thus contributing to the overall justice-effort on their behalf — he notes a few areas of legal concern, including: (i) the impact of Article 27(2) ICC Statute on parliamentary immunities in prosecuting crimes under the Rome Statute before national courts; (ii) the determination of liability of the accused when military judges have failed to identify direct perpetrators of crimes or the group to which they belong; and (iii) the relationship between the forms of criminal responsibility of individuals that make up the leadership of an organization and the policy element of crimes against humanity attributed to that organization. In sum, the article seeks to investigate to what extent the judicial reasoning in this case may have contributed to clarifying the provisions of the ICC Statute as applied by military judges in Congolese courts.

Event centrality and conflict-related sexual violence: A new application of the Centrality of Event Scale (CES)

Berntsen and Rubin’s Centrality of Event Scale (CES) has been used in many different studies. This interdisciplinary and exploratory article is the first to apply the scale and to analyse event centrality in the context of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). It draws on a research sample of 449 victims-/survivors of CRSV in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Colombia and Uganda. Existing research on event centrality has mainly focused on the concept’s relationship with post-traumatic stress disorder and/or post-traumatic growth. This article, in contrast, does something new, by examining associations between high event centrality, resilience, well-being and experienced consequences of CRSV, as well as ethnicity and leadership. Its analyses strongly accentuate crucial contextual dimensions of event centrality, in turn highlighting that the concept has wider implications for policy and interventions aimed at supporting those who have suffered CRSV. Ultimately, the article juxtaposes event centrality with a ‘survivor-centred approach’ to CRSV, using the former to argue for a reframing of the latter. This reframing means giving greater attention to the social ecologies (environments) that shape legacies of sexual violence in conflict.

Thinking about Resilience through the Interdisciplinary Lens of Connectivity: A Study of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence

ABSTRACT This interdisciplinary article uses connectivity as a framework for thinking about resilience and its relevance for conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). It specifically draws on ecology literature, where connectivity refers to interactions and movement within and between ecosystems. Viewed through the lens of connectivity, thus, resilience becomes a ‘moving’ story of dynamic and multiple connectivities between individuals and their social ecologies (environments). This approach to resilience fundamentally challenges neoliberal critiques of the concept. In particular, the article emphasizes important linkages between connectivity, resilience and care, and it argues that supporting victims-/survivors of CRSV also means extending care to their social ecologies.

The living past in the lives of victims-/survivors of conflict-related sexual violence: Temporal implications for transitional justice

Issues of time and temporality are highly relevant to the field of transitional justice. The very concept of ‘transition’ and transitional justice processes more broadly reflect a linear and teleological understanding of time that moves in a particular direction. While building on existing temporal critiques of transitional justice, this interdisciplinary article makes two original contributions to this corpus of scholarship – empirical and conceptual. First, emphasizing what it refers to as ‘the living past’, it draws on qualitative interviews with victims-/survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Colombia and Uganda to explore empirically some of the various ways that the past experientially intruded into the interviewees’ present. Second, it utilizes the analogy of the coagulation cascade, a biological blood-clotting process, to reflect on how transitional justice processes might move beyond linear temporal conceptualizations to recognize lived experiences of time and the multiple ways that individuals – as well as communities and societies – continue to coexist and transition with the living past.

A Measure of Justice: Alternatives to Pursuing Criminal Accountability for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in Sri Lanka.

Recent research conducted in Sri Lanka has revealed that victim survivors of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) and their notions of justice and accountability are influenced by their lack of trust in an ineffective criminal justice process. Moreover, the fear of reprisal by State allied perpetrators deters them from accessing formal justice. The failure of a criminal justice system steeped in patriarchal, discriminatory gender insensitive procedures in which CRSV victim survivors search for justice is analyzed through a recent judgment. The case highlights that searching for accountability in the current political context is not feasible and that CRSV victim survivors must be provided with support systems and forms of relief to move on with their lives until justice and accountability can be achieved. The article argues that although criminal accountability is the ideal, alternative possibilities for justice for CRSV victim survivors in Sri Lanka need to be explored, given the Sri Lankan political context and a criminal justice process fraught with many challenges. The role of the Office for Reparations in providing reparations to CRSV victim survivors and the options of a "partial" justice are discussed.

International Criminal Law, Everyday Spaces and Feminist Legal Theory

Abstract In this piece, I advocate using everyday spaces research methods, more common in anthropology and cultural studies than law, to ensure the participation and inclusion of the voices of survivors of conflict-related sexual violence (crsv). I argue these methods are in harmony with a feminist holistic interpretation of the International legal framework, including International Criminal Law, purporting to bring justice for survivors of crsv, and recent United Nations’ calls for survivor-centred approaches to crsv.

A man never cries: barriers to holistic care for male survivors of sexual violence in eastern DRC

ABSTRACT While we know that most male survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) do not have access to care, little attention has been devoted to a systematic analysis of why this is so. Drawing from semi-structured interviews with staff of service providers and male survivors of sexual violence, as well as from focus group discussions with community members in eastern DRC, this article sets out to explore challenges and barriers related to meeting the needs of male survivors of sexual violence with respect to their medical, psychological, socioeconomic and legal needs. Our findings suggest that local framings of masculinity can both negatively and positively influence support-seeking behaviour depending on how survivors themselves engage with masculinity ideals. Based on these findings, a conceptual framework including seven levels of barriers to care for male survivors has been developed. Although service providers strive to provide high-quality care to male survivors, we show that existing responses to sexual violence have mainly been designed to address sexual violence against women and need to be re-adapted to male survivors.

The mental health and well-being of internally displaced female Yazidis in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq: a realist review of psychosocial interventions and the impact of COVID-19

Yazidis in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq have been exposed to recurrent traumatic experiences associated with genocide and gender-based violence (GBV). In 2014, ISIS perpetrated another genocide against the Yazidi community of Sinjar. Women and girls were held captive, raped and beaten. Many have been forced into displacement. Rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and suicide are high. Limited research has evaluated interventions delivered to this population. This review explores how the global evidence on psychosocial interventions for female survivors of conflict-related sexual violence applies to the context of the female Yazidi population. We used a realist review to explore mechanisms underpinning complex psychosocial interventions delivered to internally displaced, conflict-affected females. Findings were cross-referenced with eight realist, semi-structured interviews with stakeholders who deliver interventions to female Yazidis in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Interviews also allowed us to explore the impact of COVID-19 on effectiveness of interventions. Seven mechanisms underpinned positive mental health outcomes (reduced PTSD, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation): safe spaces, a strong therapeutic relationship, social connection, mental health literacy, cultural-competency, gender-matching and empowerment. Interviews confirmed relevance and applicability of mechanisms to the displaced female Yazidi population. Interviews also reported increased PTSD, depression, suicide and flashbacks since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with significant disruptions to interventions. COVID-19 is just one of many challenges in the implementation and delivery of interventions. Responding to the mental health needs of female Yazidis exposed to chronic collective violence requires recognition of their sociocultural context and everyday experiences.

‘The Everyday Work of Repair’: Exploring the Resilience of Victims-/Survivors of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence

This interdisciplinary article uses what Das has termed ‘the everyday work of repair’ as a framework for thinking about resilience. It is not the first to discuss resilience and the everyday. What is novel is the context in which it does so. Extant scholarship on conflict-related sexual violence has largely overlooked the concept of resilience. Addressing this gap, the article draws on semi-structured interviews with victims-/survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Colombia and Uganda to examine what everyday resilience ‘looks’ like and how it is expressed within and across highly diverse social ecologies. In so doing, it reflects on what everyday resilience means for transitional justice, through a particular focus on hybridity. It introduces the term ‘facilitative hybridity’, to underscore the need for transitional justice processes to give greater attention to the social ecologies that can crucially support and enable the everyday work of repair and everyday resilience.

Measuring Resilience in the Context of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence: A Novel Application of the Adult Resilience Measure (ARM).

There is a rich body of research addressing the issues of conflict-related sexual violence, and a similar wealth of scholarship focused on resilience. To date, however, these literatures have rarely engaged with each other. This article developed from an ongoing research project that seeks to address this gap, by exploring how victims-/survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in three highly diverse settings – Bosnia-Herzegovina, Colombia and Uganda – demonstrate resilience. This research is the first to apply the Adult Resilience Measure (ARM), a 28-item scale that seeks to measure protective resources across individual, relational, and contextual subscales, to the context of conflict-related sexual violence. A total of 449 female and male participants in the three aforementioned countries completed the ARM (in the framework of the study questionnaire) as part of this research. This article presents some of the results of the analyses. Specifically, we first sought to establish through Confirmatory Factor Analysis whether the ARM was actually measuring the same construct in all three countries, by confirming the invariance (or otherwise) of the factor structure. The second aim was to explore how different resources function and cluster in different cultural contexts, to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of the different protective factors in the lives of study participants. We generated different factor structures for BiH, Colombia, and Uganda respectively, suggesting that a single factor structure does not sufficiently capture the diverse groupings of protective factors linked to the particularities of each country, including the dynamics of the conflicts themselves. Ultimately, we use the findings to underscore the need for policy approaches that move away from a deficit model and give greater attention to strengthening and investing in the (often overlooked) protective resources that victims-/survivors may already have in their everyday lives.

Resilience in the context of conflict-related sexual violence: children as protective resources and wider implications

ABSTRACT The phenomenon of children seemingly ‘doing well’ despite adversity spawned the early study of resilience, which has now expanded into a vast field of research. This article, however, is not about the resilience of children or the protective resources that they need to thrive. Locating the concept of resilience in the interactions between individuals and their social ecologies, it explores how children – as an important part of these ecologies – can be a significant protective resource for victims-/survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, and, hence, a support for resilience. It develops this argument using qualitative data from interviews with victims-/survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), Colombia and Uganda. It further seeks to demonstrate that this linkage between children, social ecologies and resilience has broader implications for transitional justice. Specifically, the article underlines the need for transitional justice processes to give more attention to, and to invest in, the social ecologies – and the protective resources within them – that inextricably shape the lives of individuals affected by violence and human rights violations, including victims-/survivors of conflict-related sexual violence.

Resilience as a multi-directional movement process: A conceptual and empirical exploration.

Movement is a recurrent thematic within extant resilience scholarship. Ecological theorizations of resilience emphasize systems that are in constant movement and flux. Terms such as "bouncing back" and "bouncing forward" are frequently used to describe how individuals recover and move on from adversity and trauma. However, integrated individual-systemic explanations of resilience movement dynamics are lacking. Seeking to address this gap, this interdisciplinary article expressly frames resilience as a multi-directional movement process. Individuals do not just move forward and backwards. Rather, they move in multiple and varied ways as they seek to navigate their way through adversity-and through systems and social-ecological traps that both shape how they move and require them to keep moving. Drawing on interview data with victims-/survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), Colombia, and Uganda, the article empirically explores what "movement" looks like at the microlevel through a focus on everyday forms and expressions of movement, while also examining how wider systemic environments shape and influence these movements.