Missing Peace Young Scholars on conflict-related sexual violence and exploitation
By Maddie Boyd and Dylan Saba
Although more than 100 children and adults in the Central African Republic in 2016 accused French peacekeepers of sexual abuse — including rape and forced bestiality — and spurred an international outcry, French judges recently acquitted the peacekeepers for lack of evidence. While shocking, this event was hardly the first case of its kind and is certainly not an isolated incident as sexual exploitation and abuse has featured prominently in armed conflicts and humanitarian crises around the world.
This week, scholars and practitioners gathered in San Francisco for the Missing Peace Initiative’s Young Scholars Workshop, entitled Bridging the Research and Policy Divides: Conflict-Related Sexual Violence and Sexual Exploitation and Abuse. Meeting in the boardroom of Futures Without Violence in the peaceful Presidio section of San Francisco, a dozen scholars took up the complicated relationship between conflict-related sexual violence and sexual exploitation and abuse in the Central African Republic, South Sudan, El Salvador, Democratic Republic of Congo, and elsewhere.
“These scholars have so much new data, but we need to translate it into a form that policymakers and practitioners can use.”
The Missing Peace Initiative, established in 2012 by the United States Institute of Peace, Women in International Security, Human Rights Center — UC Berkeley School of Law, and the Peace Research Institute Oslo, seeks to identify gaps within research on conflict-related sexual violence and promote evidence-based policymaking. The Initiative hosts the Young Scholars Network, which includes PhD candidates and new faculty who focus on conflict-related sexual violence from a wide range of disciplines including political science, international relations, and public health.
“The Missing Peace Initiative’s Young Scholars workshop is meant to give young scholars an opportunity to share their work, elicit feedback, and advance the policy discussion,” explains Dr. Kathleen Kuehnast, director of Gender Policy at the US Institute of Peace. “These scholars have so much new data, but we need to translate it into a form that policymakers and practitioners can use.”
This year, the Young Scholars tackled pressing questions such as: Are conflict-related sexual violence and sexual exploitation best addressed as conceptually linked or as distinct problems? How can we better understand and address the sexual economies that develop in conflict-affected contexts, including as a result of peacekeeper and humanitarian presence?
Jasmine-Kim Westendorf from La Trobe University is one of the emerging experts who presented her work. She discussed the widespread abuse of children and the fact that sexual exploitation and abuse is committed by the full range of humanitarian workers, including civilian, UN, and military actors. Westendorf proposes a typology of harm, ranging from opportunistic sexual abuse to organized networks of exploitation. Westendorf also emphasizes that sexual exploitation and abuse is a security concern which can often affect local communities’ trust in peace-building efforts.
“Sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers, military personnel, and humanitarian actors is a troubling and complex issue.”
Other scholars presented their recent work on state-perpetrated sexual violence in El Salvador and Peru (Michele Leiby, College of Wooster), sexual violence inside and outside of UN camps in South Sudan (Alicia Luedke, University of British Columbia), sex workers’ experiences with clients working in humanitarian relief (Amanda Blair, University of Chicago) and international policymaking relative to sexual violence in conflict and its application in practice in the DRC (Chloé Lewis, University of Oxford).
In addition to providing feedback on the substantive aspects of each other’s research, workshop participants discussed ways academics can address the knowledge needs and interests of policymakers.
“Sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers, military personnel, and humanitarian actors is a troubling and complex issue,” explains Kim Thuy Seelinger, director of the Human Rights Center’s Sexual Violence Program at UC Berkeley. “With renewed attention from the new UN Secretary General and the Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, as well as the military and humanitarian sector, we can improve prevention, response, and accountability for these acts.”
As with each Missing Peace Young Scholars workshop, participants will now co-author a Peace Brief for the US Institute for Peace about policy implications of their current research. This year, the Scholars will focus on the overlap between conflict-related sexual violence and sexual exploitation generally. It will be published on the USIP website in September 2017.
