Doctoral Dissertation Research: From Episode to Everyday: Transitional Justice and Gender Violence After the Rwandan Genocide

这项研究考察了种族灭绝后过渡司法和性别暴力之间的关系。该项目调查暴行“后果”中出现和持续的各种形式的基于性别的暴力。在将焦点从例外转移到日常生活的过程中，该研究挑战了过渡司法框架的基本前提。这项研究探讨了过渡司法如何未能处理、有时甚至导致在大规模暴力事件后妇女生活中持续不断的暴力。提出了一个主要的研究问题：过渡时期司法的机制和总体目标是如何通过妇女对种族灭绝后性别暴力的叙述而出现的？数据是通过对接受当地两个妇女组织之一援助的卢旺达妇女进行的100次深入访谈收集的。访谈探讨了妇女在多大程度上将最近和(或)正在进行的冲突与1994年种族灭绝和为应对种族灭绝而制定的法律文书联系在一起。研究结果表明，社会治愈需要国际、国家和地方参与到冲突后社会中妇女遇到的一连串性别后果中来。这项研究通过阐明潜在干预种族灭绝后果的创新空间，有助于更有前途的过渡司法实践。鉴于对过渡时期社会的国际投资水平不断提高，政策制定者了解全球过渡时期司法努力在当地产生的影响非常有价值。该项目深入介绍了普通妇女在日常生活中如何理解和体验这些难以界定的概念，从而有助于更有效地衡量关于冲突后社会的文献中的概念(如和解、权利、正义、宽恕)。为该项目收集的定性数据将为性别和日常暴力在冲突后和解和社会重建中的作用提供新的见解。

This study examines the relationship between transitional justice and gender violence after genocide. The project investigates the diverse forms of gender-based violence that emerge and endure in the "aftermath" of atrocity. In shifting the focus from the exceptional to the everyday, the research challenges the basic premise of the transitional justice framework. The research explores how transitional justice fails to deal with, and at times even engenders, the ongoing violence of women's lives after an "episode" of mass violence. One main research question is posed: How do the mechanisms and general aims of transitional justice emerge through women's narratives of gender violence after genocide? Data is collected through one hundred in-depth interviews with Rwandan women receiving assistance from one of two local women's organizations. Interviews explore the extent to which women connect recent and/or ongoing conflicts to the 1994 genocide and legal instruments established in response to the genocide. Findings indicate the extent to which societal healing requires international, national, and local engagement with the barrage of gendered consequences women encounter in a post-conflict society.This research contributes to a more promising practice of transitional justice by illuminating innovative spaces of potential intervention in genocide's aftermath. Given increasing levels of international investment in transitional societies, there is great value for policy-makers in understanding the local impact of global transitional justice efforts. This project contributes to more valid measurement of the concepts in the literatures on post-conflict societies (e.g. reconciliation, rights, justice, forgiveness) by presenting an in-depth account of how ordinary women understand and experience such difficultly defined concepts in their everyday lives. Qualitative data collected for this project will provide new insights into the role of gender and everyday violence in post-conflict reconciliation and social reconstruction.