Gender, violence and reparations in Northern Ireland: a story yet to be told

Abstract

Both reparations and conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) have been marginal to the story of the Northern Ireland transition from conflict. CRSV has received little formal acknowledgement, reflecting more fundamental gender-blindness in harm documentation and transitional justice in the jurisdiction. Likewise, reparations provision has been scant and piecemeal. The article documents the highly partial and deeply inadequate approach to reparations for CRSV in Northern Ireland throughout and after the conflict. We contend that the inadequacies of this approach have been so deficient as to in fact obscure-rather than illuminate-the manifestation of CRSV in the jurisdiction, thus undercutting an essential basis for effective reparations design and delivery in the future. The article ameliorates the identified absence of documentation and understanding of gendered harm in Northern Ireland, by offering a preliminary mapping of CRSV in the conflict. The article concludes that a transformative approach to reparations for CRSV in Northern Ireland would be one that advances recognition of both gender analysis and reparations as essential components of post-conflict justice in the jurisdiction.

Resurfacing Gender: A Typology of Conflict-Related Violence Against Women for the Northern Ireland Troubles

“…Assessment of the conflict has largely focused on the overt political violence of bombing and retaliation killings by armed parties and on a male-status victim, with much of women's experiences ignored (O'Rourke, 2013). Even where women experienced harm by conflict actors, such as in the home or community, those became subsumed under the criminalization model characterizing the conflict, invisibilizing women's experience of distinctive conflict harms (O'Rourke & Swaine, 2017).…”

“…It further occludes the growing evidence that it may be "the violence people don't see" (Fitzpatrick, 2013, p. 180) that has most affected women in the Northern Ireland Troubles and remains unseen in the evolving understanding of that conflict. A range of factors have contributed to this: a disregard for gender as an analytical lens has promulgated the masculinist study and understanding of the Troubles and its violence (Coulter, 1999); the silencing and exclusion of women and their experiences have characterized processes dealing with the past (O'Rourke & Swaine, 2017); prevalent gendered harms have been delinked from conflict violence through, for example, the normalization of intimate partner violence (IPV) by conflict actors (McWilliams & Ní Aoláin, 2013); and localized questioning and misgivings over whether context-specific harms comparatively stack up against globalized normative and "classic" (read: mass sexual violence) definitions of "conflict-related" violence that takes place "elsewhere" feature in women's own understanding of their experiences of the conflict (Swaine, 2018). However, through the very ways that the conflict took place, women experienced and continue to experience a broad range of harms directly and indirectly related to that conflict (Swaine, 2018).…”

Historical Gendered Institutional Violence: A Research Agenda for Criminologists

“…The strict work regime was enforced through disciplinary measures including hair cutting, deprivation of meals, solitary conferment, physical abuse, and humiliation rituals. Those who escaped could be arrested (O’Rourke, 2015).…”

“…However, the McAleese Report (2013) into the Laundries made no recommendations about prosecution or accountability. Because the Report made no findings as to the abuse of women (holding that this was “outside its remit”), the state has maintained that there is no “credible evidence” that women were detained for long periods, tortured, or subjected to criminal violence (O’Rourke, 2015, p. 159). In 2014, the UN Human Rights Committee (2014, p. 4), addressing the institutional abuse of women and children, noted that “It regrets the failure to identify all perpetrators of the violations that occurred, the low number of prosecutions, and the failure to provide full and effective remedies.” The body advised the state “to prosecute and punish the perpetrators with penalties commensurate with the gravity of the offence” (2014, p. 4).…”

Gendering peace in Northern Ireland: The role of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security

“…In addition to formal representation, gender policy issues remain peripheral and under-developed. Gender-based violence continues to be a cause of a significant proportion of crime, with rates of reporting of sexual and domestic violence increasing since the Agreement and, in particular, historic sexual violence becoming visible (O’Rourke & Swaine 2017; Pierson 2017). The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) recorded 3,443 sexual offences in the year 2017/2018 (an increase of 9.3% from the previous year) and a 17.8% increase in the number of reported rapes (with less than 2% of these resulting in a conviction) (PSNI 2018).…”