Most profoundly, we believe, the symposium produced
many unanswered questions. Rather than viewing this as
an obstacle, we believe this is a deeply significant factor.
We believe that too much wrong has been done in the
name of easy solutions without enough questions.
In a similar spirit, we were particular about inviting
delegates from ICC situation countries and other
contexts where recent developments in transitional
justice have occurred. We were privileged to be
joined by survivors of sexual and gender-based
violence, lawyers, prosecutors, academics, civil
society actors, and activists from Chad, Kenya,
Côte d’Ivoire, Uganda, and the Democratic
Republic of the Congo, who generously shared
their insights, research, and experiences. At the
same time, we sought to reject the patriarchal
distinctions between war and peace in recognition
of the fact that sexual violence is a global
phenomenon, and we self-consciously included
presenters on contexts that were not explicitly
situations of war, armed conflict, or mass violation,
to challenge these methodological distinctions and
in acknowledgement of the fact that, regardless of
the existence of armed hostilities, a global war on
the bodies of women and people of marginalised
sexual identities exists perpetually.
survivors of these different approaches. Ultimately,
here, it was emphasised by many participants
that the homogenisation of victims and their
preferences often advocated by those of us who
hold positions of power can be violent, and that
truly victim-centric justice requires listening to
what victims want from a justice process – which
may also include approaches that practitioners,
prosecutors, activists or academics focusing
on particular individual mechanisms are not
themselves advocating.
Finally, we were deliberately interdisciplinary,
and included those who advocate different
approaches to addressing sexual and genderbased violence methodologically and practically.
In many respects, with the advent of the Women,
Peace and Security Agenda, as well as the work
of the ICC, a prosecution-centric approach to
gender-based violence has proliferated globally.
We were delighted to include approaches that
focus on prosecution, but also looked at other
approaches, including those focused on restorative
justice, reparative justice, memorialisation, and
communal accountability, and the interactions
between processes. In this regard, we were able
to examine unintended consequences, narratives,
inclusions, exclusions and impacts on victims and
Most profoundly, we believe, the symposium
produced many unanswered questions. Rather
than viewing this as an obstacle, we believe this
is a deeply significant factor. We believe that too
much wrong has been done in the name of easy
solutions without enough questions. As such, we
present 46 questions that emerged in the course
of the symposium at the end of this report. Some
of them are partially answered in the report’s
sections on the various presentations. Many are
unanswered. We hope you, our readers, will take
them up. In this way, we hope the symposium and
its report will function as a series of thoughts,
possible directions, and question marks in a
broader and ongoing push for justice for sexual
and gender-based violence.
We believe that the result was a profoundly
engaging, at times difficult, and altogether
inspiring series of discussions. The richness of the
presentations, the openness, and the challenging
feminist space made for what we believe to be
important conversations, observations of several
serious gaps in current approaches, and a
celebration of the successes of many in the room
who have been working tirelessly for justice.
A letter from the symposium organisers /v