Resilience Conflict Related Sexual Violence And Transitional Justice

This interdisciplinary book constitutes the first major and comparative study of resilience focused on victims-/survivors of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). Locating resilience in the relationships and interactions between individuals and their social ecologies (including family, community, non-governmental organisations and the natural environment), the book develops its own conceptual framework based on the idea of connectivity. It applies the framework to its analysis of rich empirical data from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Colombia and Uganda, and it tells a set of stories about resilience through the contextual, dynamic and storied connectivities between individuals and their social ecologies. Ultimately, it utilises the three elements of the framework – namely, broken and ruptured connectivities, supportive and sustaining connectivities and new connectivities – to argue the case for developing the field of transitional justice in new social-ecological directions, and to explore what this might conceptually and practically entail. The book will particularly appeal to anyone with an interest in, or curiosity about, resilience, and to scholars, researchers and policy makers working on CRSV and/or transitional justice. The fact that resilience has received surprisingly little attention within existing literature on either CRSV or transitional justice accentuates the significance of this research and the originality of its conceptual and empirical contributions. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Explores innovative ways to build peace after large-scale violence by combining resilience, adaptive peacebuilding and transitional justice.

It is estimated that 20,000 people were subjected to rape and other forms of sexual violence during the 1992–1995 Bosnian war. Today, these men and women have been largely forgotten. Where are they now? To what extent do their experiences continue to affect and influence their lives, and the lives of those around them? What are the principal problems that these individuals face? Such questions remain largely unanswered. More broadly, the long-term consequences of conflict-related rape and sexual violence are often overlooked. Based on extensive interviews with male and female survivors from all ethnic groups in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), this interdisciplinary book addresses a critical gap in the current literature on rape and sexual violence in conflict situations. In so doing, it uniquely situates and explores the legacy of these crimes within a transitional justice framework. Demonstrating that transitional justice processes in BiH have neglected the long-term effects of rape and sexual violence, it develops and operationalizes a new holistic approach to transitional justice that is based on an expanded conception of ‘legacy’ and has a wider application beyond BiH.

This book expands the current 'weapon of war' discourse on sexual violence, highlighting a wider spectrum of conflict-related violence against women.

Coexistence in the Aftermath of Mass Violence demonstrates how imagination, empathy, and resilience contribute to the processes of social repair after ethnic and political violence. Adding to the literature on transitional justice, peacebuilding, and the anthropology of violence and social repair, the authors show how these conceptual pathways—imagination, empathy and resilience—enhance recovery, coexistence, and sustainable peace. Coexistence (or reconciliation) is the underlying goal or condition desired after mass violence, enabling survivors to move forward with their lives. Imagination allows these survivors (victims, perpetrators, bystanders) to draw guidance and inspiration from their social and cultural imaginaries, to develop empathy, and to envision a future of peace and coexistence. Resilience emerges through periods of violence and its aftermaths through acts of survival, compassion, modes of rebuilding social worlds, and the establishment of a peaceful society. Focusing on society at the grass roots level, the authors discuss the myriad and little understood processes of social repair that allow ruptured societies and communities to move toward a peaceful and stable future. The volume also illustrates some of the ways in which imagination, empathy, and resilience may contribute to the prevention of future violence and the authors conclude with a number of practical and policy recommendations. The cases include Cambodia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somaliland, Colombia, the Southern Cone, Iraq, and Bosnia.

All too often in situations of armed conflicts, rape and other acts of sexual violence are used as military tactics. The use of sexual violence as a strategy of war is distinctively destructive and not only leaves victims with significant psychological scars but also tears apart the fabric of families and affected communities. Sexual Violence and Effective Redress for Victims in Post-Conflict Situations: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a collection of innovative research that analyzes these crimes and their implications for the needs of victims in post-conflict justice processes and how these needs can be effectively addressed in order to support the affected community. To conduct this analysis, it explores the distinct aspects of these crimes to understand the nature and extent of the social challenges and damage facing the victim, and examines the challenges and limitations of international criminal justice in dealing with a wide range of victim needs. While highlighting topics including judicial accountability, victims’ rights, and criminal justice, this book is ideally designed for psychologists, therapists, government officials, academicians, policymakers, and researchers.

This longitudinal study is based on the story of Lola, who was gang raped during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992. At the time, she was in a detention camp with her young children. Only one of Lola’s several perpetrators was convicted but his sentence of six years of imprisonment has never been actioned by the Bosnian judiciary. Lola’s rapist is still free and she lives in continual fear that he will retaliate against her and her children for her role in his trial.

"Across diverse disciplines, the term resilience is appearing more and more often. However, while each discipline has developed theory and models to explain the resilience of the systems they study (e.g., a natural environment, a community post-disaster, the human mind, a computer network, or the economy), there is a lack of over-arching theory that describes: 1) whether the principles that underpin the resilience of one system are similar or different from the principles that govern resilience of other systems; 2) whether the resilience of one system affects the resilience of other co-occurring systems; and 3) whether a better understanding of resilience can inform the design of interventions, programs and policies that address "wicked" problems that are too complex to solve by changing one system at a time? In other words (and as only one example among many) are there similarities between how a person builds and sustains psychological resilience and how a forest, community or the business where he or she works remains successful and sustainable during periods of extreme adversity? Does psychological resilience in a human being influence the resilience of the forests (through a change in attitude towards conservation), community (through a healthy tolerance for differences) and businesses (by helping a workforce perform better) with which a person interacts? And finally, does this understanding of resilience help build better social and physical ecologies that support individual mental health, a sustainable environment and a successful economy at the same time?"--