Hidden Voices and Social Healing: Lived Experiences in the Face of Militarization and Protracted Conflict

The project will examine gendered experiences of trauma, marginalization and recovery in militarized settings and protracted conflicts through the case studies of Colombia and Sri Lanka. Research on transitional justice - the processes through which societies address past violence and abuses - has generally focused on formal institutional interventions in cases in which there have been clear transitions from authoritarian rule or violence. Less has been written on how to address the past in highly securitized settings with significant militarization and lingering conflict. Transitional justice literature has also tended to focus on formal institutions over informal and particularly psychosocial healing processes. Integrating trauma theory into transitional justice studies, this project examines the significant effects of militarization and protracted conflict on collective trauma, marginalization and recovery. Although highly securitized environments may curtail or limit public participation and compromise formal transitional justice proceedings, the project contends that long-term militarization may also open new spaces for transitional justice and community recovery efforts. The project looks at militarized contexts as repositories of collective trauma and hidden narratives, which encompass individual experiences and loss. The project's goal is to examine more innovative and unconventional healing and justice processes even with little political space and to assess the contributions that such processes can make alongside more conventional transitional justice mechanisms. It pays attention to voices that are often not heard in transitional justice research, particularly women who participated in or were directly affected by combat, focusing on former cadres, war widows and internally displaced populations. The project advances a multi-method innovative interdisciplinary framework that combines rigorous qualitative interview-based and ethnographic observation with survey research, and supplements the research with visual documentation.

Research on transitional justice in Sri Lanka and Colombia is most timely. In the last year, global and domestic actors have called on both governments to pursue accountability for war crimes and set up investigations, particularly given peace talks in Colombia and a new government in Sri Lanka. This political momentum was clear in the engagement of Sri Lankan civil society and academics with my pilot research and the rigorous discussion in a Harvard conference on transitional justice that I co-organized in August 2015. In this project, I will produce policy-relevant research, give presentations and host workshops in both Sri Lanka and Colombia. Specifically, my research will have an impact on two types of beneficiaries. First, my empirical findings on the needs and experiences of marginalized war-affected female stakeholders, including ex-combatants, widows and IDPs, will benefit domestic and global practitioners, donors and policy-makers working on gender, healing and reintegration. While gender organizations and academics have carried out policy-focused research on the individual needs of female stakeholders, particularly on the economic situations and stigma facing widows and female cadres (see FOKUS 2015; Azmi 2015, Tabak 2013, Ortega 2015, Schwitalla and Dietrich 2011), through survey research and focus groups with women's broader communities, I will make recommendations that focus broadly on the social nature of reintegration and recovery. In addition, I will provide detailed recommendations through a multi-method approach that will reveal variations in stakeholders' experiences and needs, for instance, based on the amount of time that women participated in insurgent groups or the age at which they joined. Second, my research on informal community recovery in militarized settings and protracted conflicts will be useful to domestic and international practitioners and policymakers working on transitional justice, mental health and peace-building. The project plugs into a broader holistic turn in transitional justice policy and practice, which stresses community engagement, popular participation, conflict transformation and partnership (the UN 2008, the ICTJ 2008). Building on my previous conceptual work on the integration of formal and informal justice and recovery (see Friedman and Jillions 2015), I will provide concrete recommendations for how domestic and global agents can better support community actors and informal healing processes, particularly in psychosocial recovery. Throughout the project, I will work closely with local institutions to ensure wide dissemination, particularly my partners, who will translate my findings into Tamil, Sinhalese and Spanish and house reports at their organizations, and host and advertise workshops and presentations. In Sri Lanka, I secured strong support from ICES, the Center for Policy Alternatives, Shanthiham, the Women's Development Network, the Family Rehabilitation Center, LEADS, Women in Need, FOKUS Women and the Consortium for Humanitarian Agencies and mental health staff in Northern Sri Lanka. In Colombia, Taller de Vida, Casa Mujer and Justicia y Paz will support the project's research design and make use of its findings. I will also consult with and disseminate findings to my network of international NGOs, IGOs and government organizations, including USAID, the FCO, the UNDP, the International Office of Migration, the International Center for Transitional Justice, the International Crisis Group, Conciliation Resources and the US Institute for Peace. Finally, I will foster ownership for the research and an interactive, more symmetrical orientation by inviting stakeholders to the workshop, particularly in Jaffna, and contributing to publications produced by practitioners, notably Shanthiham and the Center for Policy Alternatives. A final London conference will disseminate the findings through a 'book scrub' and a visual images event featuring the project film and photography.