Wartime Sexual Violence, Social Stigmatization and Humanitarian Aid: Survey Evidence from eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

• Author: Carlo Koos,Summer Lindsey
• DOI: 10.1177/00220027211064259
• Published date: 01 July 2022
• Date: 01 July 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Journal of Conf‌lict Resolution

2022, Vol. 66(6) 1037–1065

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00220027211064259

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Wartime Sexual Violence,

Social Stigmatization and

Humanitarian Aid: Survey

Evidence from eastern

Democratic Republic of

Congo

Carlo Koos

1,2

and Summer Lindsey

3

Abstract

Sexual violence by armed groups is common in civil wars. Qualitative studies have

shown that victims and their families experience social stigmatization. Stigmatization is

viewed as a central mechanism to social exclusion and disintegration impeding post-

conf‌lict social, political, and economic recovery. We provide new theory on the social

conditions under which rape-related stigma intensif‌ies and decreases. Drawing on an

original population-based survey in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, we f‌ind

that victims and their families experience higher levels of stigma compared to unaf-

fected families and these effects are dependent on community attitudes and norms.

Furthermore, we f‌ind that humanitarian support interventions designed to address the

social nature of stigma can reduce stigma. Our article signif‌icantly expands prior

knowledge on a central mechanism in post-conf‌lict recovery by providing a ref‌ined

theory on wartime rape-related stigma and the role of humanitarian aid in mitigating

negative effects based on representative data.

1

Chr. Michelsen Institute, Bergen, Norway

2

University of Konstanz, Germany

3

Department of Political Science Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

Corresponding Author:

Carlo Koos, University of Bergen, Department of Administration and Organization Theory; till 02/2022

Chr. Michelsen Institute.

Email: carlo.koos@cmi.no

Introduction

Sexual violence is a widespread form of violence in civil wars (Wood 2006;Cohen

2013). How does wartime sexual violence, in particular rape by armed groups, affect

victims, their families and communities?

1

In addition to physical consequences for

victims, stigmatization is commonly viewed as an immediate adverse effect. Stig-

matization is understood as a central mechanism that leads to social exclusion and

community disintegration which can adversely affect trust, social networks, and co-

operation. These qualities are important for post-conf‌lict social, political, and economic

recovery and it is therefore critical to understand the determinants of micro-level

variation in social stigmatization in the context and aftermath of armed conf‌licts.

In this article, we develop a theory that describes the conditions under which rape by

armed groups leads to stigma and how humanitarian aid programs might help to

mitigate these adverse effects. We assess the observable implications with original

representative survey data from eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). While

our evidence is specif‌ic to eastern DRC, our theoretical contribution about the con-

ditioning effects of the social context provides new and ref‌ined arguments that go

beyond DRC and provide valuable future research avenues to scholars in peace and

conf‌lict research, gender studies, and social psychology.

During the last 10 years, there has been a surge of research on the micro-level

consequences of armed conf‌licts. Many studies show that people’s exposure to violence

is associated with prosocial behavior including social trust, political, and social en-

gagement and cooperation (for an overview, see Bauer et al. 2016). Other studies show

that wartime trauma is highly gendered and can lead to detrimental maternal health

outcomes and increased levels of intimate partner violence (Østby et al., 2019;Urdal

and Che 2013).

However, two limitations should be noted. First, studies on consequences of armed

conf‌lict rely on composite measures of violence exposure that include displacement,

property destruction, loss of family members, and sexual viol ence. Few studies dis-

aggregate forms of exposure to consider specif‌ic effects on post-conf‌lict outcomes.

2

This is unfortunate, given variation in forms of violence across conf‌licts (Guti´

errez-

San´

ın and Wood 2017) and the need to tailor post-conf‌lict humanitarian support in-

terventions (Autesserre 2012;Koos 2017, 2018;Lindsey 2021).

Second, the mechanisms of how exposure to violence affects post-conf‌lict outcomes

are not suff‌iciently understood. While prior studies have sought to explain the

emergence of prosocial behavior using concepts such as posttraumatic growth, there is

little theorization of other mechanisms or the conditions under which prosocial be-

havior may emerge.

This article makes three contributions. (1) We address the f‌irst limitation by dis-

aggregating people’s exposure to violence into three key categories: rape by armed

groups (our main interest), homicide, and displacement. (2) We address the second

limitation by focusing on stigmatization, an important but under-researched mechanism

in the literature on the legacy of violence. Furthermore, we develop and test a ref‌ined

1038 Journal of Conf‌lict Resolution 66(6)