In Autumn 2017, the Conjugal Slavery in War collaborative research project distributed an online ‘justice survey’ to its partners in six conflict affected and post-conflict countries: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Rwanda, and Uganda. We wanted to learn how community-based organisations (CBOs) in these countries understand and represent the justice needs of survivors of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). We wanted to see how they assess different avenues of redress for survivors, and how they decide which policies, processes, and institutions work well, which are not helpful, and why. More abstractly, we wanted to gain a more nuanced and complex understanding of what justice means in post-conflict contexts.
The first time I presented our preliminary findings, someone in the audience asked why we surveyed CBOs rather than ask survivors directly about their conceptions of justice and justice needs. It is an important question. Abstraction from the voices and perspectives of survivors can serve to silence or misrepresent their voices and experiences, as can the significant stigma that accompanies sexual and gender-based crime. Are we not inadvertently reinforcing these processes by asking representatives of survivors to speak about justice needs?
Perhaps, so it is crucial to be clear about our goals. For better or worse, frontline workers are already tasked with representing survivors in many places, including policy consultations, criminal trials, and service provision meetings. Their access and claims to expertise give their perceptions weight. For this reason, CBO’s understandings of justice needs and priorities must also be understood. This is what we set out to study.
