Understanding conflict-related sexual violence and the ‘everyday’ experience of conflict through witness testimonies
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0010836719838586 |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
| Author | Kirsten Campbell,Elma Demir,Maria O’Reilly |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0010836719838586
Cooperation and Conflict
2019, Vol. 54(2) 254 –277
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0010836719838586
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Understanding conflict-
related sexual violence and
the ‘everyday’ experience
of conflict through witness
testimonies
Kirsten Campbell, Elma Demir
and Maria O’Reilly
Abstract
The testimonies of witnesses who testify before criminal courts provide crucial insights into
the situated experience of conflict-related sexual violence. Witness testimonies highlight the
complex realities and everyday lives of individuals caught up in situations of armed conflict. The
evidence presented by witnesses can provide vital insights into lived experiences of wartime
violence, and reveal the seemingly mundane strategies and tactics adopted by victims to cope
with, survive and resist the violent and coercive circumstances of war. This article foregrounds
conflict-related sexual violence witness testimonies as highly significant sources of knowledge of
everyday experiences of conflict. It sets out a bottom-up, mixed-method approach for identifying
and analysing the experiential accounts of those who lived through conflict-related sexual
violence, while engaging with the opportunities and challenges of using witness testimony. Our
approach unsettles existing notions of ‘the everyday’ in Peace & Conflict Studies as a synonym for
narratives and practices of violence, justice and peacebuilding that are private, informal and largely
hidden from view. Understanding witness testimonies requires conceptualising the everyday as an
amalgam of formal and informal practices, as accessible through both elite and lay knowledges and
as documented in both public and private (e.g. redacted) sources. It requires challenging taken-
for-granted dichotomies that are frequently invoked to understand conflict and peace.
Keywords
Armed conflict, gender, rape, sexual violence, testimony, the everyday
Introduction
Witness testimonies provide crucial insights into the situated experience of conflict-related
sexual violence (CRSV). The testimonies of witnesses who appear before criminal
courts offer a critical lens through which to understand lived experiences of war. Witness
Corresponding author:
Kirsten Campbell, Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths College, University of London, London, UK.
Email: k.campbell@gold.ac.uk
838586CAC0010.1177/0010836719838586Cooperation and ConflictCampbell et al.
research-article2019
Article
Campbell et al. 255
testimonies highlight the complex realities and everyday lives of individuals caught up
in situations of armed conflict. They can provide an invaluable source of knowledge
about gendered experiences of wartime violence, and the strategies and tactics adopted
by victims of CRSV to cope with, survive and resist the violent and coercive circum-
stances of war.
Testimonies from criminal trials also hold vital information on the nature and quality
of justice achieved through criminal prosecutions. Witness testimonies offer essential
insights into the extent to which victims of human rights violations and violations of
international humanitarian law achieve official recognition of these violations and
redress for the harms incurred. Since they capture the day-to-day encounters and interac-
tions in trial proceedings, witness testimonies can also provide crucial evidence on which
to assess whether the legal process adequately acknowledges, or alternatively denies,
complex experiences of victimisation and agency.
Despite their significance, the testimonies of witnesses to CRSV1 are neglected by
existing studies of war, peacebuilding and post-war justice processes. This is surprising,
as the concept of ‘the everyday’ is increasingly embraced by scholars within Peace &
Conflict Studies (PCS) to examine the lived experience of conflict and peace, particu-
larly the small-scale strategies people use to navigate violence and peacebuilding in the
context of their daily lives. The so-called ‘local turn’ in PCS scholarship (Mac Ginty and
Richmond, 2013) has explored bottom-up, contextualised and day-to-day experiences of
conflict and practices of peacebuilding, using concepts such as hybridity (McLeod,
2015a), agency (O’Reilly, 2017), friction (Björkdahl and Höglund, 2013) and the every-
day (Mac Ginty, 2014). This scholarship has focused on how just and durable forms of
peace may emerge via bottom-up rather than top-down practices, and by informal rather
than formal actors (Lundy and McGovern, 2008; Mac Ginty, 2014). Yet, despite this
move to incorporate non-elite knowledge into conflict analyses, studies of the ‘everyday’
dimensions of war and peace are often removed ‘from the embodied world of those who
experience violence, conflict and marginalisation on a daily basis’ (Berents, 2015: 192),
including victims and witnesses to CRSV.
In the field of transitional justice, meanwhile, feminist scholarship and activism has
sought to obtain legal and social recognition of CRSV as serious crimes; challenge impu-
nity by securing prosecutions of perpetrators and redress for victims; and secure reforms
to ensure that survivors are not harmed by the adversarial legal process (Bell and
O’Rourke, 2007: 26). Feminist efforts to provide a nuanced account of the gendered logic
and impact of both war and post-war justice processes have focused on recovering narra-
tives of CRSV and of the complex harms experienced by victims (for overviews, see Bell
and O’Rourke, 2007; Buckley-Zistel and Stanley, 2012). By examining how CRSV survi-
vors narrate such experiences – within diverse contexts such as research interviews
(Baines and Stewart, 2011; Mischkowski and Mlinarević, 2009; Skjelsbæk, 2006), crimi-
nal trials (Houge, 2014; Kelsall and Stepakoff, 2007; Mertus, 2004; Mibenge, 2013;
Mullins, 2009) and truth-telling mechanisms (Boesten, 2014; Crosby and Lykes, 2011;
Leiby, 2009; Ross, 2003) – feminist studies have offered crucial insights into the impact
of victimisation and the courageous efforts of CRSV survivors to (re)construct their lives
and social identities as they navigate complex webs of social relationships, structures and
norms (Skjelsbæk, 2006). This research has both highlighted and challenged conventional
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