Supporting local efforts to document human-rights violations in armed conflict

• Published in: The Lancet (British edition) 2001-01, Vol.357 (9252), p.302-303
• Main Authors: Jennings, Peggy J, Swiss, Shana
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Collaboration; Conflicts; Displaced persons; Documentation; Emergency medical care; Human rights; Humans; Interviews; Liberia; Murders & murder attempts; Polls & surveys; Rape; Risk factors; Rural areas; Schools; Sex crimes; Sex Offenses; Sexual assault; Violations; Violence; War Crimes; Women's Rights; Womens health; Womens rights
• ISSN: 0140-6736; 1474-547X
• DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(00)03625-4

Women's Rights International (WRI) was founded with the specific purpose of developing methods that can accurately document and address human-rights violations against women. The organisation works with rural women in countries at war or who are living under state-sponsored violence, using participatory actionoriented research. The women who are affected by a certain issue choose the research questions, design the survey, and collect the information themselves. In 1994, WRI began a collaboration with the Women's Health and Development Program (WHDP) at the Mother Patern College of Health Sciences in Monrovia, Liberia, to document the experiences of women, including sexual violence and coercion, during the war. During ongoing conflict, a team of Liberian health workers designed, wrote, and carried out a populationbased survey, interviewing 205 randomly selected women in urban neighbourhoods, markets, camps for internally displaced people, and high schools in Monrovia. They found that nearly half the women they interviewed had experienced physical or sexual violence and coercion by soldiers and fighters.1 Because they designed the survey themselves, the Liberian women were able to draw on their own experiences and understanding of violence against women during the war to document important risk factors and characteristics of sexual violence. For example, the team knew that when a woman was detained by a fighter and forced to cook for him, that detention was often associated with sexual violence. The survey data showed that being forced to cook was a significant risk factor, providing statistical evidence for what the Liberian women knew about human-rights violations during the war. Additionally, Liberian women knew that there were many interpretations of the word "rape", and that if they simply asked women if they were raped they would not have accurately documented every instance of sexual violence. Instead they used Liberian English to ask women about forced sex. Finally, the Liberian women knew that sexual violence during the war occurred along a continuum, with forced sex at one extreme, voluntary relationships with fighters at the other extreme, and sexual relationships in exchange for economic support and safety falling somewhere in between. In their survey they asked about the entire continuum, documenting a broad spectrum of physical and sexual violence and coercion by soldiers and fighters.