A demo outside the Nigerian Embassy in London in 2014. Johnny Armstead/Demotix. All Rights Reserved.
Readers are horrified by the reports of wartime atrocities committed against women and girls in recent African conflicts. Graphic descriptions of the most inhumane acts of sexual violence confirm their exceptional nature to audiences wondering how war could produce such unimaginable brutality. Yet the sexual abuse and enslavement of women is rooted in everyday gender relations. ‘War’ serves as an ideological scapegoat in debates that refuse to address uncomfortable realities about inequalities entrenched in the institutions of marriage, kinship, and the family.
The men and women who interact in wartime are full-fledged historical agents, socialised into norms and values that drive their behaviour in wartime and peacetime. To understand what happens in war, why, how, and to whom, we need to critically consider institutions that govern social relations in peacetime. These institutions, which are all the more powerful for passing unrecognised as instruments of daily abuse, have been shaped historically through the interaction of global, regional, and local forces. Changing them is often harder than ending conflict, and change—when it occurs—brings conflict right into the most intimate domains of life.
