Conflict-Related Violence against Women
Transforming Transition

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

Aisling Swaine (Author)

9781107106345, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 15 February 2018

332 pages
23.5 x 15.6 x 2.2 cm, 0.58 kg

By comparatively assessing three conflict-affected jurisdictions (Liberia, Northern Ireland and Timor-Leste), Conflict-Related Violence against Women empirically and theoretically expands current understanding of the form and nature of conflict-time harms impacting women. The 'violences' that occur in conflict beyond strategic rape are first identified. Employing both a disaggregated and an aggregated approach, relations between forms of violence within and across each context's pre-, mid- and post-conflict phase are then assessed, identifying connections and distinctions in violence. Swaine highlights a wider spectrum of conflict-related violence against women than is currently acknowledged. She identifies a range of forces that simultaneously push open and close down spaces for addressing violence against women through post-conflict transitional justice. The book proposes that in the aftermath of conflict, a transformation rather than a transition is required if justice is to play a role in preventing gendered violence before conflict and its appearance during and after conflict.

Part I. Introduction: 1. Introduction
Part II. Approaches to Understanding Conflict-Related Violence Against Women: 2. Historic prevalence vs contemporary celebrity: sexing dichotomies in today's wars
3. Who wins the worst violence contest? Armed conflict and violence in Northern Ireland, Liberia and Timor-Leste
Part III. Violence Against Women before, during and after Conflict: 4. Beyond strategic rape: expanding conflict-related violence against women
5. Connections and distinctions: ambulant violence across pre-, during and post-conflict contexts
6. Seeing violence in the aftermath: what's labeling got to do with it?
Part IV. Justice, Transition and Transformation: 7. Transitions and violence after conflict: transitional justice
8. Conclusion: transition or transformation?

Subject Areas: International humanitarian law [LBBS]