Dr Oliviera Simic, a Faculty Member from the Law Department of Griffith University researching on international law, gender, crime and transitional justice from an interdisciplinary perspective, will be giving a seminar on Hierarchies of Wartime Sexual Violence at 13.100 in the Eliot postgraduate teaching room at 13.00 on Thursday 12th May.
The event is run by the Kent Centre for Law, Gender and Sexuality.
Contact Dr Marian Duggan for further information. Email m.c.duggan@kent.ac.uk
The abstract provided by Dr Simic is as follows:-
The condemnation of wartime sexual violence as a gross violation of human rights has received widespread support in academia, international law, as well in celebrity activism, mass media reporting, and non-governmental and governmental initiatives. While rape and other forms of sexual violence have attracted considerable local and international attention, this recognition is predicated on an ‘ideal’ victim subject. This chapter examines the excluded or silenced narratives of wartime sexual violence among women belonging to so-called ‘perpetrator’ war-torn nations. In the chapter, although these denials and silences are contextualised more generally, I specifically focus on the silence surrounding Bosnian Serb women’s experiences of wartime sexual violence. I argue that the current discourse on wartime sexual violence results in the construction of a problematic victim hierarchy that excludes experiences of rape survived by wives, daughters, mothers and sisters of ‘perpetrators’.