Research ruminations

I have been writing about gender and sexual violence as forms of insecurity, making the case that they are security issues, that they represent failures of democratic governance, etc., etc. And I have drawn on the cottage industry of reports and studies that reinforce some of these statements, especially in connection to gender violence and sexual violence in conflict zones.

One of the great women's movement victories of the last two decades or so has been to get sexual violence in conflict recognized as a crime against humanity. The routine looting and raping of armies during campaigns or occupation (and also of non-state actors) finally received the condemnation it always deserved. Moreover, with the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and its sister resolutions, the message has gone out firmly to states and other conflict parties that at least in conflict situations, we are approaching a moment of zero-tolerance for this horrible human rights violation.

Several reports and studies have been written describing the horrors of sexual violence during conflicts. They are powerful--I can attest to this--because they often include survivor testimonies. It makes for horrible and hard reading, and it makes exactly the impact that is sought to be made. Denial does not remain an option after one reads these reports.

In recent weeks, I have needed to look more closely at the same growing pool of resources, in search of data from Asia and have been dismayed to find very little. For one, most of the cases that are usually discussed are from Africa--Rwanda, Libera, Sierra Leone, Congo, Sudan. For another, what you do find for Asia is usually either very specific (a quotation from one meeting) or very general (there was rape during this crisis). The information that might be available is in sources that for a variety of reasons are out of bounds, and many conflicts in Asia actually fall below the radar of what I can write about. After weeks of searching almost fruitlessly and literally scraping morsels out from this note and that report, I don't know what to think.

So here is a really hard question that I am actually afraid to ask but must if I am to be an honest scholar: If there is no accurate, reliable data on gender violence and sexual violence in conflict zones, are all of us over-stating a problem because for a range of our own reasons, we want it to exist? And my 'on the other hand' for this is: Data is also very sketchy and unreliable for other kinds of violence, but we do know it exists. For instance, we don't know how many wives face abuse in their homes, but it is safe to say that abuse is far more common than it ought to be.

But still, why is there so little data? And where there is, for instance, with the Special Rapporteurs' reports, they are based on visits that happen at unpredictable intervals and the Special Rapporteur does not necessarily return to the same context. We don't know what has changed and what has not.

The UN has tried to get around this by setting up a special database on violence against women, but they have sent out questionnaires to member-states that ask questions mainly about laws and policies in existence. Even if they had asked for data, though, where would member-states go for that data when it really hasn't been collected systematically--and maybe can never be--anywhere.But that's a concern I have written about at other times and that we did a seminar on last year, so I won't rehearse those stories.

I am more concerned about what we say about the experience of women in conflict and why? If what we write is half-based on imperfect accounts from other contexts and half on accounts that don't match a variety of evidentiary standards, then how do we tell the stories we know to be true in a way that is also factual? And without telling those stories again and again, how on earth do we point to the changes we want to bring about?

I don't know.