Surviving on Their Own: Women’s Experiences of War, Peace and Impunity
The subject of war and rape continues to dominate the headlines, but media attention span is typically short. Women are portrayed as victims, almost interchangeable from one conflict to another. Their stories are not told within a longer time-frame, women are mainly presented as traumatized victims. Thus, creating a “stunned deer-effect” without a voice or any kind of capacity for creating change. The intense focus on rape also distorts other forms of violence and violations experienced by women, such as unlawful detention, different forms of torture and inhumane treatment, displacement, loss of livelihood, and vulnerabilities relating to the death or disappearance of a family member.
Women victims are haunted by invisibility and silence—both before and after their abuse. Women are most likely to be victimized precisely because they are pushed to the edge of society—marginalized, perhaps even demonized, and disempowered. Likewise, the full truth about what happened to them, and how it continues to affect their lives, is erased or denied—not only by the state, local authorities and the national elite, but often even those in their community and their own families.
Asia Justice and Rights (AJAR) is conducting a participatory research on how women experience conflict, and in its aftermath, struggle to survive in situations where impunity is the norm. Capturing in-depth stories of 140 women survivors from Indonesia, Timor- Leste and Myanmar, our research brings key lessons on how these women have helped themselves, while largely remaining invisible to those providing aid in conflict and postconflict settings. In the rush to create peace, authorities want victims of war to become invisible, and magically transform themselves into ordinary citizens without any special support. At the same time, governments and international actors fail to see the link between violence during war and violence in times of peace, providing resources to eliminate domestic violence and ignoring those victimized during conflict.
Owner/Developer : AJAR & Partners
Language : English
