Gender, Relational Harm, and Justice: Legacies of Political Violence

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Scholars of peacebuilding and transitional justice have widely acknowledged that the term ‘post-war’ is often a misnomer, particularly for those most affected by political violence (Kriesberg 2019, Friedman 2017). The continued presence and lingering effects of violence have been particularly documented in the realm of sexual and gender-based violence (Boesten 2014) and in relation to structural injustices (Lambourne 2009, Gready and Robins 2014). While literature on conflict transformation and transformative justice has made important strides in highlighting the root causes of conflict, less has been written on the long-term and gendered effects of political violence. This panel examines the “relationality” of harm and the possibilities for agency in contexts of grave human rights abuses and systematic oppression. In sustained periods of violence and atrocity, one of the greatest harms that individuals and communities experience is the violation of intimate bonds with others. Far from being a by-product of political violence, this panel takes as a starting point that the violation of intimate relationships, for instance, the forced separation of children from parents, has long been a strategy to enable mass violence and oppression. Such “relational harm” is a deeply gendered terrain, affecting women and girls in particular, and leaving gendered legacies for survivors and their communities.

This panel seeks to develop a feminist understanding of relational harm. While in recent years, scholars of transitional justice have critiqued the individualized and Western foundations of global transitional justice and its imposition on non-Western societies (Kelsall 2009, Theidon 2006, Robins 2012, Millar 2012, Shaw 2007), more needs to be done to understand harm as enabled by and targeting our relationships with others. It builds on work on complex victimhood (Baines 2015, Leebaw 2011) and feminist critiques of transitional justice as overly individualistic in orientation (Ní Aoláin 2000). The panel also draws on feminist research on care and social reproductive work (Rai, Hoskyns, and Thomas 2013).

The panel examines three inter-related sets of issues. First, how can we capture the specificity of harms that target and take advantage of individuals’ intimate relations to others? Is it useful to think about primary and secondary conceptions of harm? How is relational harm gendered? How does forced separation from others affect everyday political, social, and economic life? To what extent can we approach harm as intergenerational? Second, the panel examines how the theory and practice of transitional justice address relational harms. How have measures, such as reparations, addressed long-term legacies of violence? Who is seen and whose stories gain visibility during and after violence (Berry 2018, Friedman 2018, Ketola 2020)? Third, the panel considers the resilience and agency of victim-survivors. We are conscious of the risk of pre-determining experiences of harm and seek to critically engage with important concepts integral to relational harm, particularly the nuclear family, motherhood and fatherhood (Peterson 2020). How have victim survivors demanded space and recognition? How have people and communities mobilized on behalf of lost or missing loved ones? What are the ethical and political implications of examining experiences of harm and expressions of agency together?

The panel brings together scholars addressing multiple dimensions of political violence across different geographical contexts and temporalities. This includes disappearances in Sri Lanka, African American experiences of slavery, forced motherhood in the Lord’s Resistance Army in northern Uganda, and the conflict in Northern Ireland. To explore synergies, the panel brings together a range of approaches from political science, feminist studies, legal studies, critical ethnography, and peace and conflict studies. As such, it advances plural understandings of agency, harm, and justice to establish new grounds for critical interventions in the fields of transitional justice and peacebuilding.

Sub Unit

• Division 21: Conflict Processes

Individual Presentations

• Violations of the Heart: Parental Harm in Contexts of Systematic Violence - Rebekka C. Friedman, King's College London; Hanna Ketola, University of Sheffield

• Maternal Harm in Conflict and Post-Conflict Context: Northern Ireland - Fionnuala Ni Aolain, The University of Minnesota

• Social Repair, Belonging and Patriarchy after Conflict-Related Sexual Violence - Erin Baines, Liu Insitute for Global Issues; Camile Oliveira

• Funding Transitional Justice to Achieve Transformative Impacts - Kirsten Ainley, Australian National University; Claire Wilmot, London School of Economics; Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm, University of Arkansas, Little Rock

Chair

• Helen Kinsella

Discussant

• Helen Kinsella