 the first one sentence. Thank you very much for those of you are here. This is an impromptu well visit by Romina who's quite far away right now but we just want to hear a few words in the beginning about the project that she's working on and then also what the current situation is because you know the media are very fickle as soon as something else comes up a situation is completely neglected elsewhere so you're usually left with the worst impression and then this is what people remember although of course situations develop all the time so now we can have you perhaps as the reporter on the ground and please say a few words about your project about the people who are funding you as well and then also the situation that you're in. Well thank you Lars for setting this up as I said I understood they would be a child between two of us so this is the last minute I think so apologies we can give you enough notice to the participants and attendees and everyone who watched the video afterwards. I see York hello York my former supervisor and I see John Newton a very good friend of mine as well and a few other people hi Joe Binz as well too many jobs and you know I appreciate that you put this together and giving me the platform to speak. I have put together a presentation because I do have most of the material which I use in multiple occasions lately just I want to make a disclaimer I have been speaking in Amharic literally every day in the past I don't know how many months and I can't pronounce English so apologies if my English is just you know my pronunciation is over the moon just just a disclaimer so let me just share my slides if that's okay could you just make me the whole Lars and I'll share those and then you can both see my slides and me I believe you can both see you can see both screens. I wouldn't say I'm a reporter as I said I'm not in Tigrayi I haven't traveled to Tigrayi because I'm following university policy and I try to not put myself in risk where our university wouldn't cover me and most of my communication has been with partners in Tigrayi our two main partners in the kind of accession through the phone and some of the representatives were able to travel to Addis Ababa a few weeks ago so I have you know direct testimonies for them as well but the kind of I guess accounts I will speak about are primarily around the project as we all know is a controversial and sensitive topic and I'm very aware of the fact that you know not everyone is willing to speak about these issues currently and I don't want to expose anyone but I would like to say a few things on behalf of the project what we are doing and also Tigrayi as we hear it from the humanitarian aid being in most of the PMCP child protection response so I get very very regular many regular updates about the situation so I'll share some of that with you today and then you can ask questions and we can have a chat perhaps and you know a more conversational style so let me just show the screen I but I I did enable you well one second actually you should let me now oh I can do it now excellent yes okay good yes thank you so much uh okay let me just get you to the first slide I think you have already seen my slides and okay so I have titled this very casually a talk on the crisis in Tigrayi presenting the results of a literature review on war violence and domestic violence by Project Dildo to inform humanitarian responses in the region so I'll explain what you know my focus really is on a recent working paper that we released which looked at the current forms of war related violence in the region and the relationship to domestic violence which is the topic and the issue that we work on in Tigrayi and other areas of Ethiopia currently and I will try to explain how this working paper might be used to the humanitarian response currently in the region I put a photo here it's from a Zoom when I was last there of course in peacetime this was an interview with a soldier I did in in their compound and you know at the time again most households don't have weapons this this is just an exception as this this was a guard so what I will do today is I had the idea to to launch this working paper with the orthodox media platform the OCP the pan orthodox media platform and when we were discussing this event we thought of five questions really that we would try to address in that launch event and then Lars since you set this up we thought why don't we merge the two into one and and you know you this occasion really to to do the launch as well so the five questions we had in mind is first is you know saying a bit about the project and what we do explaining the motivations behind the work and how this relates to the current crisis the aims of the literature review context and how we see you know the insights of the working paper informing the current humanitarian response and then perhaps a more exploratory question you know given the theology driven nature of our project how would we say can Christian orthodox believers and really the international community support fellow degree in this time so I will try to follow these five questions in my presentation I hope I will not take more than 30 minutes but I'll try not to crash as well so project will do very briefly is a research and innovation project which is dedicated to the development and strengthening of rotaries if you'll be able to train the UK are it's motivated from previous research that was conducted in in the northern region of Ethiopia into Grinaxum and that evidenced you know the crucial role of religious tradition religious beliefs and the clergy in particular in in everyday life but also in married life and the experience of conjugal abuse specifically so the current project builds on this evidence and aims to increase our understanding around the influence of religious beliefs theologian clergy more specifically in domestic violence and and to improve awareness in society but also in the government sector about the influence of religious cultural parameters in domestic violence and especially in the attitudes and help seeking responses of perpetrators and victims respectively and the project expands also in Eritrea in the UK so it's not exclusive to Ethiopia what we would like to do is to reverse knowledge transfer essentially which has been typically you know western you know typically western knowledge is applied in what we call low and middle income countries what we try what we are trying to do is take a the colonial approach and you know use knowledge and evidence that we produce in Ethiopia and Eritrea around domestic violence in order to inform also debates and approaches in the UK domestic violence sector which increasingly caters to migrant and ethnic diverse ethnic minority communities including Ethiopian and Eritreans living in the UK so we hope not only to you know prioritize the communities on understandings and ignoring frameworks and religious cultural traditions and exegetical traditions so pay attention to theology but also change the way knowledge is produced and disseminated and shared so we aim at a more equitable knowledge production and sharing between the three project countries and more internationally it's you can see the funders this is funded by UKRI for support and we funded by the Harry Frankel Gangham Foundation something about the the the name of the project is the little day in Amharic and what we aim to do which is to bridge different discipline sectors and stakeholders including international development religious religious studies public health in order to achieve you know more integrated reflexive and essentially effective approach to addressing domestic violence in diverse religious cultural contexts as I said is based on previous research and many years of friendship and collaborations and discussions with colleagues in Aksum Mikhali and Atis Ababan so you can see the partners currently of course as I will say we have limited communication with Aksum University currently and the same for mentions Aba Kasad of Burhani Theological College which are two of our initial and main partners we have more communication currently with the Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association who are based in Atis and a new partner the Ethiopian Orthodox Church Development and Interchange Aid Commission which is the development wing of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church here in here in Ethiopia and also UK based and Eritrean partners as you can see so just to break up the monotony and before I go into the current situation I just wanted to share a few photos from Tigray that I collected throughout the years of my research and and relationship with the region and I just wanted to you know share a bit on what Tigray looked like before this conflict and the distractions that are happening as we speak is one of the most peaceful regions I have visited personally and and I truly appreciate the hospitality of the people and again the calm rhythm of the life of the local life especially in the countryside and this is a church inside a monastery in the village where I conducted a six month six month long research around Aksum in the countryside around Aksum in Lailo Macho Ureda if for those who know this is the the Church of Mary of Zion Maryam Sion in Aksum the very famous church where reportedly a massacre took place and reportedly I don't mean just the newspapers but I mean also records that I hear from friends and colleagues I have in Aksum. This is another photo from Tunkat Theophany this I believe was in Azbi Womberta Ureda in Tigray 2012 as you see a very you know strongly religious region as I will discuss and another photo from a village marriage which I attended again during my anthropological research in 2016-2017. So just very quickly I just wanted to discuss a bit impact because this is an impact led project and we respond directly to problematic understandings of the impact in international development which have tended to be Eurocentric programmatic or short-sighted really top-down understandings determined by donor priorities so we aim to depart from that and our main premise and an objective release to work in a meaningful way and to develop impactful interventions that are built from the ground up informed as I said by rigorous research that is reflexive and ethnographic and based on the accounts of the people themselves so language and you know linguistic abilities is key in this project but also we aim to in order to achieve this we aim to use sustainable and dialogical strategies throughout such as you know really using building on existing infrastructures and systems of domestic violence in order to avoid duplication so we're not bringing something new we're trying to really function as a bridge connecting existing initiatives national or non-governmental we try to broker across sectors and stakeholders in order to raise awareness around the complexity of domestic violence in the religious society and then we also aim to you know our methods and our research approaches aim to be again reflexive and people-centered at all times mostly ethnographic participatory and again in the languages of the local communities and building that communities themselves hold and their own understandings as much as possible and and just to concretize a bit our work so in Ethiopia we planned three we have three main components really which is research interventions and public engagement or knowledge exchange in terms of research we aim to build on the previous research and we are looking to conduct more interviews and surveys with many particular to understand how their religious beliefs and socialization informs their domestic violence attitudes and how that can then inform deterrence treatment programs for perpetrators but also other interventions in the community we also want to conduct more research with victims and survivors of domestic violence primarily through EULA clients that EULA supports again to explore how faith might be conducive in coping mechanisms which is something that was emerged in the previous research and we are exploring the possibility of developing a faith-based perpetrator treatment program here in Ethiopia in later years of course the research component have been put sort of postponed for now because we were trying to adapt the project in the early months and I can discuss this later now we are looking primarily on the intervention and public engagement component the intervention is comprised primarily of workshops with clergy which include theological ethnographic and safeguarding content around domestic violence and the aim is really to help the clergy understand the problem better their role in sometimes contributing to the problem but also in how they can become a solution or part of the solution actually. We also aim to hold trainings with secular providers again to raise awareness to share this research the results and the evidence and to raise awareness and to help them understand how they can engage better with religious stakeholders and parameters and domestic violence approaches and interventions and our key priority and activity in the past five months has been really on publishing working papers that are relevant, disseminating the research, organizing and delivering webinars around you know relevant themes and public engagements and again this has been one of the most resourceful ways that we could become useful in this time for Ethiopia as we were trying to adapt the project and to understand what is possible and what is not possible in terms of research activities. So the project started first of November which is quite ironic I guess because the conflict started on the 3rd of November or 4th of November so we were planning to travel to Ethiopia to Addis Ababa and so immediately all communications with the region were interrupted so we were unable to even ascertain the well-being of our colleagues and of course we couldn't continue the collaboration with the main teams partner institutions in Ethiopia which are at Summa University and the Saint Formatius Theological College in Macaulay and as we were sort of responding to this and the shock we were thinking how can we make the project useful and you know what does this mean for the project because the project again is built is very much based on evidence that was produced in Tigray which we then wanted to explore you know to apply to other regions of Ethiopia but Tigray was our pilot area and we also wanted to know to make ourselves useful how can we contribute to you know not just peace building or reconciliation in the long run but also immediately how can we support you know the victims of violence so the region and to pay attention you know to the conflict and how the conflict you know what the conflict would imply for a family relations for domestic life you know for the conflict affected communities as a whole and we also wanted to produce some guidelines for the humanitarian agencies we anticipated that there would be you know a humanitarian response and we know the problems within the humanitarian sector which like the international development sector tends to be oftentimes to follow top-down approaches again determined by donor understandings and priorities and we wanted to somehow help the humanitarian response practically by helping them contextualize you know their interventions in the region's historical, religious, cultural and ethnographic realities because this is what we have our comparative advantage was really our limited knowledge so the first thing I'll document the kind of forms of violence reported in the region so there has been extensive displacement as we all know with now thousands of people fleeing to Sudan and other areas of Ethiopia multiple refugee camps within the region including in Shireh where you know it's one of the areas that hosts one of the largest numbers of IDPs in the country internally displaced populations most of these refugees have been young children and women as you can see in some statistics earlier in the year excuse me currently humanitarian organizations have warned that millions are facing food insecurity in fact it is said the militant elements do not allow farmers to farm as a strategy and there is a significant risk of people dying from hunger because they cannot farm their farms there's also lack of medical supplies exacerbated again by looting by militant elements but also because of limited access to most parts of Tigray actually from recent humanitarian briefings it seems that only a few districts in where we're at within the Tigray region are accessible so most of the you know most of the region where the fighting is ongoing has been inaccessible to inaccessible to the humanitarian agencies and in terms of violence violence has been extensive unfortunately against civilians including systematic bombings of residential places intentional and repeat voice as well as indirect violence such as home source tribulates I have an access but all the sources are cited in section one of the worksheet and document the atrocities so the literature review we conducted essentially responded to these multiple forms of violence that we are hearing from Tigray happening in Tigray which you know we anticipated would have permanent damaging effects and and would result in complex trauma among both witnesses and victims and survivors of violence but also even militant elements and soldiers people fighting in the war from both sides so we initialized the rapid scoping literature review to identify the international evidence on the relationship between political violence war and domestic violence in order first to deepen the analysis of domestic violence in now conflict read and Tigray as part of our ongoing work because we do anticipate to go back in the future but also to inform humanitarian responses proactively as I mentioned and we also wanted to explore the long-term consequences of political violence such as enforced migration and displaced contexts because again we are aware of the the vulnerabilities that that displacement causes so you know we we would like to draw attention to a continuum of vulnerabilities across the forced migrant journeys and discuss the complex intersection with religious parameters in post displacement and the refugee context the refugee camp context the review process I'll very briefly I won't go into detail just I wanted to say that this was done by myself and one if you've been colleague who chose to remain anonymous for personal reasons the detailed division of labor can be found in the working paper for for reasons of transparency and again we wanted to as I said identify the literature the types of studies the the evidence that exists and then take the key insights and apply them to Tigray really so I won't go at all into the literature review you can read the working paper at your time but I just wanted to mention some key findings and messages which are the most important really and relevant to the current context so overall the literature review which looked at a conflict at the at the on militant populations but also the general population it also looked at sexual and gender-based violence in refugee camps and displaced contexts and emergency contexts the the main part of continued face trauma related comes from various case studies from around multiple case studies that we discuss physical damage disability and mental health trauma that is experienced by victims or even or witnesses of violence of war related violence there are other consequences such as fear shame and socio-cultural environmental consequences that can lead survivors and ex-compatents to be isolated after the conflict or to be unable to reintegrate in society when peace is restored there's also intergenerational components and effects of war related violence that again can coexist with structural criminal and domestic forms of violence that pre-existed before the conflicts so again this speaks of again complex trauma and the long-term consequences of violence and and the implication here is again that the response the humanitarian responses must consider not not just the immediate effects of war violence and how to support the the victims currently but also the implied intersections with structural normative and psychological parameters and pre-existing forms of violence and seek to support affected groups in ways that can you know prevent further abuse not just in domestic but also in communal life in post displacement settings especially in refugee camps which tend to show increased levels of IPV and other forms of intimate partner violence and other forms of violence following the conflict the other key insight relevant to our work is that while domestic violence intersects with conflict related sexual violence sexual and gender violence those should be approached as distinct while co-existing but as distinct phenomena because they have they tend to have different etiologies different explanations domestic violence is usually related not just to communal and structural and normative parameters but also to individual and intersubjective factors psychological trauma from childhood violence personality disorders or attachment to security and again that may require different types of responses than does conflict related sexual violence for instance and the implication here again is terian sector the term that is usually used is psychosocial services it has been criticized as being slightly vague as a because it's an umbrella term that encompasses multiple approaches and it's not very useful to understanding the distinctive etiologies of the problem and the distinctive interventions and needs for each problem but essentially what what these the literature review suggests is that we need a more focused approach you know a combination of psychological and clinical interventions for those that face complex trauma with a combination of community-wide social environmental measures which could be you know financial support social support and so on and these strategies need to be delivered most most likely in parallel informed by experts expert diagnosis but also on the basis of rigorous research this will become a very important comment because again the humanitarian response has to be very urgent and usually there's no time or priority for research but the literature review shows very very very you know strongly that responses have to understand first communities own conditions and understandings and then respond and to very you know very very relevant to this point any interventional response needs to be contextualized in in the community's own religious cultural normative systems to consider you know how family and social structures and institutions broken during the conflict may be restored to prevent other forms of violence but also to contribute to effective perpetrator treatment and reintegration in society in post-conflict time so in in parallel what we were trying to do through this working paper was not just to understand the international evidence but also to point the humanitarian agencies this working paper has been shared with the humanitarian agencies currently to the to the particular context of degree and to help them understand you know what how to adapt their interventions right to regional history degree on society and the people's religious cultural beliefs and values as well as understand pre-existing structural domestic or other forms of violence experienced by the population especially women and girls um we also wanted to draw attention to the fact that you know there have been extensive efforts by degree on women to improve the status of women and to address domestic violence and inequalities since the liberation struggle against the derg so you know we're very conscious about not losing the agency of the people in the current humanitarian response and acknowledging their activism throughout the years while still you know at the meeting and recognizing the problems of domestic violence that do exist in the region as as in the rest of the country and also to point to the fact that there is a deeply religious society within the indigenous city of an orthodox diet of Christianity being most prevalent and having been formally embraced in the kingdom of axon in the fourth century and and to ensure that this you know that that that that the people's heritage religious heritage is considered and and that the influence that religious tradition has on the people currently again is is taking into consideration in current interventions another photo just to break the monotony this is from a liturgy in mariamsion if i remember clearly um okay so the other the other interest in the working paper was obviously to isolate linkages between war-related violence and with religious parameters were related violence domestic violence and religious parameters and what became evident is that again religious parameters have been mostly neglected in the in this in the scholarship on domestic violence in emergency contexts the resourcefulness of religious personnel and religious beliefs has not generally been considered and in contrast to the international development sector which has engaged in recent decades quite thoroughly with religious stakeholders the humanitarian sector seems to be quite a bit behind on that as well the literature suggests overall that religious beliefs and spiritual activity can serve as coping mechanisms from i have cited a few studies there as you can read but of course in many contexts religious parameters interface with again culture specific folklore beliefs that might not necessarily be theological and and again those might have more pernicious implications on the other hand as as in a study from northern uganda bullet point three and the there might be other beliefs in society around for instance the activity of spirits which can then shape people's attitudes toward ex-combatant combatants for instance so in in northern uganda women who had participated in the violence and had symptoms after the violence post-traumatic stress or any other symptoms those could be interpreted as possession by evil spirits which then resulted in women's further abuse mistreatment or isolation by society in post-conflict so again we can see that that religious cultural parameters are very important and need to be understood and need to be integrated in any analysis of the consequences of violence given given any specific context but overall the literature on domestic violence from low middle income countries agrees that faith serves mostly as a coping mechanism in in such contexts female victims may resort religious beliefs to condemn their views and through their rodeos they may actually acquire a more justice-oriented understanding of their faith which again helps them to address the harmful situation they find themselves in so before I discuss how this evidence overall applies to the current to the context of degree I just wanted to mention a little bit on the current humanitarian response and challenges as these have been communicated to me I'm not again I'm not representative you know I'm not I don't have the most up-to-date information but I have tried to cite information that has been reported in written to me first and foremost current responses to sexual and gender-based violence and efforts to promote children's protection are being led by international humanitarian agencies the UN agencies in coordination with regional government ministries such as the bureaus of labor and social affairs in the region as well as NGOs and I NGOs that work in the region and have access and capacity to contribute to the humanitarian response the response has focused on providing the SGV response on providing immediate support to victims who arrive on refugee camps and other displaced contexts such as through the provision of dignity kits psychosocial support and case management for GPV survivors and women and girls at risk humanitarian actors however seem to be quite limited in their capacity and access to the region because of the high security as fighting is ongoing in those places and that means that those who probably need most of the help are not reached psychological on the other hand psychological specialization and capacity to train social workers that already act in the region to support and to cancel victims and to manage cases of rape of rape victims for instance is not enough and it's hard to mobilize although currently there is efforts are being made to mobilize new partners and new specialists from a disembodied to try in order to help to help in this process the HCR which with in the early days actually wanted you to address the stupidity right and although this offers helpful starting points there there's there's a space for it to be adapted to the regional context and to integrate some of the insights of our working paper and our literature review so for instance one of the objectives identified in the strategies to strengthen SGPV referral pathways in the region and it is agreed you know in our conversations we agree that this can be achieved more better by integrating the refugee policy with national efforts and initiatives such as referral systems that are currently being set up across the country by the Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association which is a collaborator to our project another objective of the strategy is to build the capacity of traditional justice and safety systems inside the camps on formal legislative procedures care records and case management integrated region most village units what are known as tabias have their own social courts that adjudicate on family issues and so there might be opportunities to set up mobile courts using the workers who might be present in the refugee camps or training other community members but of course in order to to ensure that this does it is successful one is to consider the socio-cultural and gender-related but sometimes govern the practices of the social courts officers who tend to be male so you know any such approach needs to ensure that they are properly trained and sensitized and again the strategy identifies the objective to partner with development with excuse me religious actors and religious stakeholders on children's issues but it doesn't it's silent on GBV and the clergy so there's definitely more space more room to integrate the clergy in IPvS GBV response strategies currently and this is something that we are really advocating for currently in our communication with the humanitarian agencies there is a lot again based on the evidence we've conducted but also the the central role that the clergy have integrated on society we think that there is opportunity here for them to become resourceful so in the previous research you know it emerged that again faith was was quite positive a positive force in women's life it was used as a coping mechanism but also as a as a as a resource to rationalize you know unreasonable situations or other trauma marriage-related trauma and it was never used to justify partner abuse on behalf of the women the clergy on the other hand were very much involved in the mediation of conjugal problems and again sometimes they didn't really understand this complex psychology of the perpetrator and the victim just advanced in the community to support the victims they offered shelter financial support they tried to prioritize the safety of the victim and and you know they they were an important resource when other institutions failed the police or the social courts or even women's associations when those failed the clergy were still available right to provide some support so so I think you know while while it's not advised for the clergy to to try and reform a perpetrator or you know solve you know situations of domestic violence they might become resourceful in this time by by raising their awareness of sexual violence in in the war and the trauma related to sexual violence and how they can respond to victims and survivors in a sensitive manner in a manner that validates their experiences so that re-traumatization is avoided in addition since there is lack of psychosocial support currently there's limited human resources on the ground declaring being already available and already with life events and traumas if if a properly trained could become a resource you know and filling the gap again of the lacking human resources currently in the region and and just thinking of the lack of access right humanitarian agencies cannot cannot reach most of the area integrates so clergy are already available and since they already provide the support they might become you know you again an important resource in this time um I I also wanted to before I conclude and pass on the word to the to our participants here our attendees to ask questions and share thoughts I just wanted to refer very quickly to the role of faith or religious discourse in public and political narratives currently in Ethiopia we have noticed that religious language has been misused even with some church-affiliated people who have either you know such as you know in the form of clergy blessing combatants before the war or promoting the war as patriotic um and as a result currently this is not just disconcerting from a theological perspective but also many degree and feel disappointed and alienated by the Ethiopian Orthodox church um and you know there are even fears of of a sort of separatist movement within in the same way that the ritrian orthodox decades um what we have to change against offensive war the church is very the orthodox faith is very clear clearly opposed against war even in defensive war those who do kill in time attacks uh oftentimes are um ostracized from the from the church there's there's multiple cannons about murderers in time of war in in general the faith takes a very clear position against any form of violence uh and sees the clergy as peacemakers and really as uh protectors of you know as advocates for peace at all at all time so we we are very um aware of the misuse of religious language very cautious and we try to uh you know publicly advocate or clarify you know theological positions on war violence and murder in time of war in order to ensure that religious language is not used to justify political aims currently so this is another way that we have found ourselves able to be again resourceful or helpful in some in some way in the situation uh and we also think you know being in Ethiopia where um again multiple Ethiopians have in in different conversations have justified the war on the basis of you know the previous political activity of the TPLF kaders uh we we find it very essential in this time to speak against vengeance and revenge in favor of peace and reconciliation and and we we are very we we're very strong about um you know advocating that the diaspora in particular Ethiopian and Eritrean diaspora have to become more aware and reflexive about the the force of their own discourse through social media and to be aware that that they are contributing to the continuation of animosity and grudges sometimes through the things they say and write so being being based in Addis Ababa and hearing these different discourses we are you know we find it um very urgent to to you know strengthen discourses around peace and reconciliation to really find ways to talk about unity and uh and overcoming past hostilities, grudges and animosities and again as a faith-based initiative we we we find and and we feel that this is something we can contribute again uh in the current time and uh I will not say more I just wanted to mention two other articles that we have published again to uh contribute to um current crisis in the ways we can one on to raise awareness around sexual about sexual violence in Tigray and another one coordinated through the orthodox outlet for dogmatic inquiries uh which is a collaborator I guess uh to our project um to stress again what the what the theological perspective one war is and to ask for you know to to encourage people to think in terms of love forgiveness and peace in this time and I'll end here I'll stop sharing um and I hope this has helped to give you some idea of what we're doing what we're dealing with and what the discourses currently are on the ground but please feel free to ask questions and clarifications I don't know if this is Lars what you expected me to present on but I'm uh overwhelmed because um I I just wanted to get you to explain a little bit what you're doing in Ethiopia but actually this was a proper lecture so I'm very apologies yes that um anyways so um yes I I'm um I I'm still um in awe of technology so I think it's very nice that we can actually share um a space which is um combining all of our existences at the moment and um you have clearly not forgotten your English that's very good yes that's the technology also was also cooperating and I um well I have several questions related to the the the um presentation that you gave but I think first we should let everybody contribute with their own observations and so on before I get back to any of mine because otherwise we'll we'll talk um you know you and I until the end of the day yes okay any anybody who has questions please unmute yourselves and just ask because we're not that many today it's a lovely circle of friends yes and uh Lars I just wanted to say you are recording this and I hope people are aware because some people joined us a bit later yes I I have to repeat that's true a few uh joined later that this is being recorded if you would prefer to um ask a question that you will not you would not rather not have recorded you can just um uh yes oh I can change this yes then uh I saw your message here um but the um so in that case put put your question into the um into the chat space and then at the end I'm going to stop the recording and then at the end we can discuss this um absolutely yes uh sorry I have to go and unmute you first of all I'm going to um no this is the wrong one if we can unmute everyone that would be lovely yes you have um I think this is because they um I'm slightly no I don't I don't want to switch ourselves off that's the problem yes uh this is up here yes one second it's technology it's never easy okay yeah that worked that worked yeah I do it one by one the collective one didn't work for whatever reason all right in the participants window you should be able to set the rules yes that's uh that's you that's usually what's that but um oh I mean what what do you do that maybe I can I can ask a question first of all Romina uh thank you so much and uh I'm through uh sorry at least it's not only me okay uh yeah I'm back to to unmute it what are you another so far now Romina are you up in the north no currently I'm in Addis Ababa I'm in Addis Ababa yeah are you joined I guess I just mentioned that I haven't traveled to Decay yeah I communicate on the phone and our partners have managed to travel to Addis Ababa when right I'm happening in Makalio and when the road from Aksum to Makalio was open currently I believe it's again closed yeah yeah because of the fighting south of Makalio yeah um I have two questions they're both quite large um I mean one is I've been kind of observing the Protestant discourse around the war and it's quite febrile and diverse um the Protestant fellowship has come out against the war in the beginning but of course there's lots of Protestant priests who support Abiy Ahmed and others who are against him Tamrat Laina recently came out against him former PM who was in day um I mean you say that the Orthodox Church has this sort of um stands against war and warfare in general but of course in the past they've often been just as any other religion involved in the politics and as I believe they are now as well so if you could give us a little bit more about the diversity that I would suspect is there also on the Orthodox position and the second question is a bit more about the project um I mean I think I think this this is really great but in in a sense you're in this sort of emergent situation now where a lot of the other things don't really apply right when you were dealing with domestic violence before you had the priest as part of the community where both perpetrator and victim were there and the priest could speak to the men about it because of course they're men so they could pick up that angle of things and and now when we're looking at sexual violence and I mean the the scale and of violence that you can see that's been perpetrated um or the the various interviews you can see in Al Jazeera and other places of of the places where women receive help in McAllay and in clinics I never see priests in these videos you know it could be that they're not there it could be that they're not depicted I would suspect they're not there because they're men and speaking to women about these very sensitive personal issues and the traumas that they suffered would probably not be the right place so where is the role of priests when the perpetrator the men who have perpetrated this violence are often not present in the community so what where do you see the challenge here again two large questions I hope you don't mind shall I answer or take more I can answer while people prepare their questions yeah okay well I have thank you York for excellent questions as always challenging and excellent I haven't followed so much the protestant discourse to be honest but I do know well I follow the discourse of the Amhara sort of you know region and ethnicity and and how they respond to Abi Ahmed and as you know recently there were protests in Oshawa which is another irony because we shifted the project from Tigray to Oshawa and now we cannot work in Oshawa because protests are ongoing we're hoping that after Fasik after Easter you know it will come down and we'll be able to work in the region but you are right it's it's it's been I don't want to say inconsistent right it's been sort of mutating I guess you know discourses are not monolithic there's different positions and the society is divided I think from my understanding and my discussions not everyone takes the same position there are people of diverse ethnicities who are against the war and people who are not in favor but they think that the war is the only solution that I think that's the right way of putting it because of the perception that people have of the activity of the TPLF in the past and it's the same with the Orthodox community I think largely because you know the Orthodox community crosses across ethnicities it's not it's not just the Tigrayans or the Amharas it crosses across the across the ethnicities in in Ethiopia and what is important to note and to recognize is that ethnicity has become more important than religion in in some way right ethnicity has become really a dividing factor in the church and as an outsider as some but also someone who works with the church right and church organizations I can see that the war is something that is not discussed openly is not talked about because ethnicity is such a sensitive aspect and if someone discusses the word then that will lead to the topic of ethnicity and because of ethnicity such a sensitive topic nobody is going to discuss it so yes there is a diversity of opinion right a diversity of positions I think what I have noticed to be very open now I don't know if I should be very honest is that those who are critical of the war are afraid to be critical openly critical because they don't think that we are in a democracy and there is consequences if you speak out to put it this way so there might be people from multiple ethnicities again not to name not a single out on ethnicity who are opposed to the war but they will not speak out because of the imminent consequences in terms of the of the church yes I wouldn't want to generalize I think initially in the early days most religious stakeholders have taken you know issued statements of for peace and you know in the early days and then things kind of shifted the next snapshot I have in my mind is when clergy were blessing combatants before the war started in November in early November in the stadium you know in Ethiopia where people gathered to give blood you know for the soldiers and so on and that really surprised me to see because I knew that the church had issued a statement earlier about peace and so on I will not go into details but there are divisions within the church and people who again it's ethnicity based there are antagonisms within the church and alliances within the church on the basis of ethnicity and the position that people take about the war so I would say that nobody has been unaffected by the current division in society right everyone is divided including the church itself and I think this is where the challenge lies that you cannot have a uniform position in the current era and and condition it's really hard to bring people on the same page that's what I'm trying to say everyone seems to be there's a lot of confusion there's a lot of multiple discourses that conflict with each other and what I see in society currently is that people don't know who to believe what I meant by the faith is against offensive word was the theological teaching so it's the theological teaching is very different from the discourse of the church and is very different from the discourses of the individual clergy right so that I think that answers a little bit the first question in terms of the second question that that was an excellent question and point indeed and I hear multiple some disappointing accounts about clergy even in Tigray so I hear very hopeful accounts and very disappointing accounts the hopeful accounts are that clergy are there to provide spiritual support you know that the people feel that the clergy's in Tigray really understand the meaning of the faith opposed to the clergy in that in a disababa who have you know are in favor of the world at least this is the perception that some people in Tigray have on the other hand what I hear is that there are some clergy who even ask high amounts of money to provide a service in Tigray currently you know because of the limited resources so they're you know they're they're showing opportunistic behavior which is very sad but I guess what I mean here is that given the lack of resources and you know availability of professionals or any kind of support in most of the community the clergy's are a point of you know a support system for the people is some you know you have your spiritual father you go to your spiritual father about life events and traumas and disappointments and when there is no hope the faith and the clergy are a source of hope in some way for many people and again I hear this from my colleagues in Tigray as I speak with them there's an extensive disappointment just I wanted to add this people are emotionally you know entirely disappointed and feel hopeless and speaking about the faith or being able to go to your spiritual father and share your disappointments and hopelessness you know it's it can be a source of coping a way of coping essentially you are right that even in domestic violence in peacetime in Tigray women when they do speak to their spiritual father they will tend to not reveal the real nature of their problem they will say my husband is high linear he's difficult or whatever but they'll not say he's beating me because they are ashamed because they won't don't want to share you know we're exposed to husband it's true when the situation becomes however very serious they do say they do tend to reveal the the true nature of the situation and even in most cases they don't have to reveal it because someone in the community will know and it will communicate it to the clergy and the clergy will be called into mediate in this case sexual violence is such an extent is such a serious trauma and serious you know form of abuse that I and so extensive that the way it seems to me people are currently more likely to speak about it you know you are right Tigray is a conservative society people are unlikely to speak about sexual matters you know it's a bit taboo I guess virginity is you know highly appreciated in Tigrayan society especially for young girls so you know it's not something that you would want to reveal if you have been raped however it sounds like women currently are sort of overcoming these norms you know women are going to hospitals to get to obtain contraception for example practically against rape you can see a shift already in society right responding to the extremity of the violence extensiveness of the violence so I think I think this is you know it's such a terrible situation but it creates this opportunity of becoming more outspoken about the problem and I think if we engage the clergy's to become aware first and foremost of the extensiveness of sexual violence to raise awareness in their community to not be shy to speak about these issues because this is a you know a form of abuse that shouldn't what is it shouldn't make someone feel ashamed because they have been raped or a victim of sexual violence it's something that one should be able to speak about in society and in community I think it can become an opportunity to you know to raise awareness first and foremost but also to make the clergy part of this campaign and and and effort again because they they are a source of hope and faith right they are the representatives of God in society for many people in the countryside they they represent for the people hope and you know spiritual support and I think if we if we don't engage with the clergy then we miss this opportunity that's what I mean I don't say that it's ideal it really isn't and there's multiple obstacles as you say communication between a male clergy and a female victim survivor but I also think it can become sourceful and if we don't engage them it can actually become pernicious because if the clergy don't understand the trauma and we may continue hiding it and they continue you know in post-conflict hopefully at some point when they speak to their spiritual children and they don't understand the implications of that trauma you know they will continue providing spiritual supporting misguided ways that's what I'm trying to say but if they're informed and trained at this time not to resolve the problem but to really know how to respond to it with sensitivity then they can become resourceful that that's what I meant I don't mean that they should be psychologists or you know psychosocial specialists but really to be informed and to be engaged with the humanitarian agencies and all the briefings I've received you know again all the agencies are doing the best they can I have I have seen no formal mention of engaging religious stakeholders and I put this question just in the final in the recent dollar briefing which was last week which involved Graham partners and the UN agencies I put this question of how the religious stakeholders are engaged and they say currently they are starting to engage them in awareness raising and community engagement so I think they are realizing that they can become resourceful I hope this answered the question but again I don't want to be misunderstood I'm not suggesting that they are you know they should be the ones resolving the problem I just think that as an important component of society including the social course the police women's association they also should be integrated in any response and intervention appropriately of course I hope this is helpful York yes well this I'm going to sneak in one question which I had earlier on when you spoke about the clergy it's understood that they're all men but is there a an informal clerical is there something in the clerical hierarchy which where the or in the subclerical hierarchy where women play a role as yeah connoisseurs for example or as helpers as assistants where women can go to in the first place I mean women have always been active in the church in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church whether it is through you know providing food for the homeless and cooking and you know supporting uh different ceremonies and liturgies you know there are there there's a the choir there are the dancers and so on they have been they have been integral in in church life but there there isn't the specific rank of a diet connoisseurs although this is this is something that is being discussed currently in the modern theological colleges it's something that I think the church is very interested in perhaps reviving or exploring how this could be revived revived but there are but there are the wives of the clergy's because clergy's Mari we can leave you an Orthodox tradition so it might speak to the wife of the priest although in my experience I didn't really encounter this pattern or a trend where women would feel comfortable to speak to the to the wife of the priest again I think because of the hierarchy or you know not feeling feeling that they don't they're quite different in their life situations you know the clergy's and the lady perceive them perceive themselves as quite different I want to say that you know the clergy tend to be perceived as the representatives of God on earth and what they do in their married life is not always perceived as something that applies to the latest married life if that makes sense um there are however other women there's women's associations in it in any every time yeah every village community integrates based on the research that I have conducted communicate women's issues to the zonal uh you know to to the word up to the word office and then to the zonal office to insure these issues from the countryside reach you know policymakers essentially so there is that communication line but there's also what we call the adir so sort of funeral association and other support associations where people contribute small monies and then they can learn borrow the money and use it for you know various needs in their lives and these tend to be very supportive systems but again it all depends on the trust of the members many of them disintegrate because trust disintegrates because people don't pay in time or contribute in time um so there are multiple groups uh associations where again women are very tea but but but it's I think in the church is quite limited I think it's hard to find another woman in the church with you know in a theological capacity where you feel that uh you know she she will be able to advise you from a theological perspective again this is a very conservative society very traditionally in the country speaking of the countryside not this not here in Addis Ababa we have many female theologians we have another way of doing as well uh but in the countryside people again have I think this perception of women be humble and not uh not take the position of being a skin class you know model or role model in the church or you know um I think you would be very important and resourceful uh because as York said much easier to open up to another female uh about these issues yes uh who might not even understand if you think you'll not understand you'll not even share it right that that that's how I victimize my team yes yeah absolutely so thank you very much um questions from Addis you should be able to unmute yourselves all of you now but yeah can I speak look I came to the meeting a bit late and so if I cross anything that I missed I apologize in advance but what I haven't heard is a dimension to do with sexual violence as a form of communication as a form of dysfunctional communication if you like but I remember reading about monkeys who had learned to sign and how monkeys defecate and uh hurl well on on on the victims uh and in learning to sign they use language instead um so working it backwards um you can see that some sorts of violence perhaps are through inadequate education to express emotion but also that violence can be a form of communication beyond words uh to do with the idea of what's the transference and scapegoating now at the heart at the heart of religion there is uh the crucify of Christianity there's the crucified Jesus and you have the carrying and the uh transfiguration of that suffering into something which becomes redemption uh at the heart of Christianity you have a religious cult which was spread and displaced a uh the Mithras cult within the Roman army and Jesus and Christianity became very much um pervade by the Roman army and you could perhaps look at religion as a coping mechanism for post-traumatic stress disorder and in seeing in seeing religion in this sort of way then the paradox and the difficulty for the involvement of clergy in this process is their recognition that the religious outlook is comprises within itself also are making sense of shared pain and suffering interesting when you speak frankly by me it sounds like you're a psychologist you speak like a psychologist I worked in cultural relations I worked with the British Council um but I have two schizophrenic sons uh two siblings brothers and I've had a lot of engagement in in in my own Christian tradition uh I was with the religious order for a couple of years so I'm very interested in in these dimensions the anthropological dimension of Christianity well thank you so much for the thoughts I I I wouldn't know what you know I don't have a confident answer to that but I did want to say that this this common on sexual violence as a form of lack of communication I am I am myself very interested in what allows the militant elements and I want names sides to commit this kind of uh forced into camps raped repeatedly gang raped oftentimes physically abused their organs destroyed so you know this agrees with this agrees with those perspectives that speak of ethnic cleansing or genocide uh I don't want to take I'm not a political analyst that's not my to look into what but I wouldn't perhaps it's not as complicated as you might suggest because what happens in wartime is that militant elements are given uh you know consume um alcohol and um engage in drug abuse so most of these you know soldiers who fight obviously are inebriated and have other substances within their bodies and obviously that you know shapes their behavior informs their behavior uh and breaks down whatever conscience-based restrictions people might have to commit this kind of violence which goes back to you know the psychological mechanisms I think you're pointing to the other thing I wanted to mention is that I'm not exactly sure about the demographic of the soldiers the Ethiopian and reported Eritrean soldiers fighting on the ground uh however the reports suggest that most of them are arabic speakers not from the highlands but from the lowlands of Eritrea which means that they are not christian orthodox they might be of other faiths I don't want to name a certain faith because again I have no clarity on this no certitude but initially I was thinking to myself how can soldiers of the same faith with basic christian understanding right could can commit this kind of atrocities if there is a differences in the faith and I'm not saying that all the soldiers are of a different faith they might some of them might be christian and a lot of Ethiopian and Amharamidishas who commit atrocities are all that come from the Ethiopian orthodox tradition right so I think this is very clear but I think the religious aspect might also have a contributing effect which which is something we need to look at and it's something we will only be able to research on after we know the demographic of the soldiers and we conduct ethnographic research to know how their specific affiliation informs their response right and their behavior in the field in the war zone uh you know in wartime so that's on the side in terms of sexual violence just I wanted to add you know in Tigray it is true there has been sexual violence before and there have been rapes before you know it's a society like any society uh there are problems of sexual violence strange stranger violence and to some extent sexual coercion in marriage and sexual coercion in marriage is generally not admitted because within the the christian framework of the people a man and a woman share the same body become one body essentially and you know a wife could not refuse your husband that's the idea and even the clergy would think in those terms and I encounter some clergy thinking in those terms but I want to uh warn against this idea there is there is a discourse currently going on on twitter which tries to essentially blame the victims or blame Tigray society for the sexual violence and I think we need to be very careful about this Tigray society is a very peace oriented society this is what the clergy will teach this is how the people will behave the people will say and this is what the people told me specifically if if they don't agree with each other wife and man they should there's no need for violence when you can just very is ubiquitous in Tigray so it's a society that really hurts previously and the fact that they don't like conflict is because they have been fought worse before and they understand the trauma of war people don't like conflict in Tigray this is very true and although there has been again some violence sexual violence stranger violence it's not something that has been approved uh or tolerated by the community something that is condemned both on religious and cultural grounds so I just want us to be very careful you know it's uh we shouldn't suggest that there is something inherent in the culture of the people you know the nature of the society that allows this kind of violence to to be committed the violence is committed because the political leadership has allowed it to be committed and because the soldiers are committing it let's be clear about it okay we should not I think that your ideology speaking because what you're not looking at is the need for every individual combatant to make sense of their place in the world and what they do we it's true of course it depends on their individual choices I agree absolutely with you but you know there have been contexts in in african wars right whether ronda uh Liberia Sierra Leone Papua New Guinea where there depending on whether this happened in previous wars in Tigray there was no such extensive sexual violence and I think we need to so if you look from a historical perspective this kind of form of sexual violence is out of the norm for Tigray and Ethiopia as a whole to my understanding so I think we need to put it in a historical perspective York is nodding his head I'm happy to hear if he has any further thoughts on this but I think John Vince wanted to speak for a long time John would you like to Thanks sorry it's amusing but I mean two questions really Romina or comments one's quite general which is I mean listening to the news with Ethiopia and then it's sort of full of the forthcoming June sorry elections I just wondered what whether there was what the feelings aren't quite how your impressions about how that's proceeding the other one is I've interested in looking at women and the development agency I work with the women's self-help groups are incredibly powerful in building up empowering women they and I've seen in Hawassa for example very strong women's groups who are challenging gender violence I mean there's one case I came across recently of just a group of about 12 12 women who found a girl who'd been raped and they took at the police station they insisted that the perpetrator was accused and was a punish for his crime and I you know that the women's groups are such a powerful force within development strategies I'm interested to know whether there's a kind of an opportunity for learning and exchange of knowledge and ideas between the developed community the religious community within Tigray thank you John yes absolutely in terms of the elections again I'm not a political analyst but I do see again a divided society people who just don't want to engage at all and are entirely disappointed with the political situation very low very low engagement so far at least from the numbers we see of you know participants in the current like the registered numbers for the current elections but from the the people I speak to many many just want to abstain that that's kind of the you know some some you know some of the impressions that I hear I can't cumulatively what the attitude of the societies I see a lot of disappointed disillusionment and and people wanting to abstain and not taking a position in terms of self self-help groups and women's activism you're absolutely right and that that's why I made I made the comment early that when we try to contextualize or shape current interventions in Tigray we need to think of the historical activism activism of women in the region what they have worked towards in the past decades when I arrived in assuming 2016 people tended to report to me that there had been extensive domestic violence awareness trainings a few years ago organized by the local government so there was already a lot of awareness about domestic violence people had been you know made aware of the consequences of domestic violence they were more likely to speak about it perhaps if I had conducted my research you know five or ten years earlier it wouldn't be the same response right so so this shows goes to show that a lot of activism and a lot of work has been going on in the region I believe before just before the war there wasn't an active demonstration in Macaulay as well by women against rape against the violation of women's rights in the region so you know we shouldn't take away that's why I said we shouldn't take away the agency of the women of Tigray or try to speak on their behalf and I'm just very conscious of that you know I don't want to represent their realities from my research in the region I see a very active what was before that a very active government in terms of gender issues women being more aware of their rights going to the social course more frequently more regularly demanding you know that police officers follow up with their cases and the women's bureaus you know in the Beretta and the administrative units the administrative sort of the regional office I guess had you know we're becoming more active we're doing surveys to understand women's problems to understand how to support them better to understand what kind of abuses they were facing in their communities so there was a lot of mobilization that's what I would like to say but at the same time I cannot tell you how effective these have been right I don't know in terms of the causal effects whether these have caused societal change and attitudes but they have existed and they have been very strong to my knowledge and experience and I think this this answers your question yes thank you then we have a question by Jordan Jordan Anderson yes hi uh firstly okay can you hear me yes I can hear you Jordan apologies I'm trying to make my camera come on um it's not working I'll just ask verbally if I can firstly thank you very much for your remarks it's it's been interesting I wanted to ask a slightly specific question if I could um so with the with the displacements of ethnic Tigrayans especially in western Tigray um being carried out by the Amhara militias there I wanted to ask what do you know anything about how that's impacting the Tigrayan clergy and the church properties um in that area do you know if uh the Tigrayan clergy are also being forced out along with their communities or the church properties being taken over by by new clergy who are coming in or are they being left out of it uh thank you Jordan to be honest with you I have no concrete uh documentation of that I have heard what I have been told in the accounts I have heard directly from Tigray colleagues um is that attacks of churches and monasteries are extensive have happened uh land grabbing is happening and I'm sure that churches and monasteries are not immune to it that that would be my answer thank you Tigrayan thank you um any more questions we have um is Joe Joe Joe wanted to speak yes hello hello I I always have um a hundred questions um but um before I ask a question that you just say thank you so much for uh the benefit of your thinking this last it is such an honor to to listen to you speak and um I mean my my one question would be actually more to do with the humanitarian aid agencies with whom you you have um been working because I'm very interested to hear um about their response to your engagement and whether they are prepared to do the kind of self-reflexive work which I know you favour um and uh to to put themselves out of the picture and and focus on the kinds of methodologies which you are promoting and how that all went down or continues exactly that's excellent that's an excellent question Joe I didn't want to invite them today but there was no time to advertise um I was just trying to retrieve the emergency response sheet they shared with me uh just to see who the partners are and uh to be a bit more to concretize a bit my my my discourse so there there are the Bolsas as I said uh CARE, ERD, MSF, Medecinsans Frontier, IRC, International Rescue Committee, IOM, Ethiopian Red Cross, ERDA um there are the UN agencies as I said UNFPA, UNHCR uh I'm not sure if UN women are involved I haven't seen that concern uh imagine um imagine one future I can't remember what is called I1D uh it's the initials are I1D, ACF and a few others um but on top of these so the more international or prominent not just international there are also national organizations and prominent organizations there are also multiple small organizations and initiatives in in Tigray so already social workers who are working on domestic violence or women's issues are now mobilized you know against the current sexual violence um so there's a lot of local actors and regional actors who work currently on the response as I understand um and who are you know are key because it's not the UN agencies that provide the humanitarian um you know um support but they coordinate they coordinate all the partners to try and avoid application and achieve you know a more integrated response essentially so when a new international a new organization comes into the picture and wants to support the response the AORs the areas of responsibility for GBV and child protection were as integrated within the larger response and we avoid it um that's an interesting question I am in conversation with the GBV AOR coordinator and she has been very responsive to my comments and you know the the I have shared so far in the working papers I think in the we raised multiple questions that the responses are research based and they're not top down they don't just follow you know UN guidelines that are formulated internationally and have nothing to do with the degree context we asked how we can integrate research uh you know an ethnographic approaches in particular they're very interested they said they're very interested in exploring these options and how we can collect more qualitative data this is a comment I made because most of the data we have is quantitative around IDPs in particular and provision of services how many agents are available and what kind of agents and so on but there's very little qualitative data so I have made those comments I think other other people raised some similar comments and they were well received we have to wait and see how how they will respond but you know I think they as I said the humanitarian sector you know has been very much embedded in in a certain practice in a mainstream practice it's not going to change in the current crisis Joe to be honest with you they are very much constrained you know they follow the donors priorities and agendas again they rely on funds um they also work with the government so they are constrained you know they they have to essentially follow government guidelines and bureaucratic processes um so I don't know what is what they are able to do you know how much space how much liberty they have to really shape their interventions because they're very much constrained especially now with the limited access to the region as we know um but I am pushing for more research and integrating research within the current responses uh and and and bringing you know researchers and rigorous scholars um you know integrating essentially the the research component with the current intervention as opposed to seeing it as something that comes in the aftermath uh you know uh or or um as an add-on element actually we are looking at ways to integrate research in the design of the intervention itself the problem here is always the time because it's one has to respond urgently you know it's an emergency context uh context uh I think research becomes secondary in people's minds um and again I I keep talking about research because in order to understand how to engage the different community stakeholders effectively you first meet that evidence collection right and qualitative accounts and ethnographic testimonies and the other thing I noticed is that the majority of people working in the meetings uh you know are foreign people foreigner so of course there are two great two great partners but I also wonder how many of these INGL staff work on the ground speak to Grignac that's my that's my next question it's something that I'm really interested in knowing and again I have pushed them I always say you know to to leverage on our knowledge because we do um you know my partners speak to Grignac I speak quite good to Grignac since my research to leverage on this opportunity of of you know our our bilingual ability uh in order to understand and communicate with the people and not just rely on translators who might again translation is just such a problematic practice um so so yes I think there's a lot of a room for them to become more reflexive but I don't know if they have the ability the time and the encouragement from the current conditions on the ground to do so so I try to play the the role you know I'm trying to be that voice that sort of reminds them that this this is something we should be doing I don't know how effective it is and how annoying I am but I am trying to to be that perspective you know that might not be good luck thank you we need more people like you that's um because um you know it's um what you say about language is so important because uh of course you know you think with a little google machine you can you can translate absolutely everything but that's not the case and then also if you want to open up the hearts of people you need to you need to be able to at least speak the emotional language and that's often linked to the vernacular you know languages that you speak absolutely and and just you know recently we were having this discussion with to this I can't remember this apologies the director of Eric Maid which is a organization that provides ecological counseling and support and specific term for trauma in Amharic my knowledge must be similar in Tigrinia it's common for people who have never used a word for trauma in Tigrinia anyone who attends is free to speak but in Amharic there's no specific term for trauma and even discussing how do you explain trauma when you need to paraphrase it and when you paraphrase it you know then a speaker who can understand the connotation of the different terms of physical express your system and that means you need to be embedded in the people's world context and work choice so it's not just a linguistic translation it's a cosmological translation which I discussed in my book you need to be able to translate across cultures and experience and not do that unless you are deeply in the context in your experience as well it's not just you come for a few weeks if you're a fluent speaker if even if you are another who comes to Tigrinia you know if you haven't lived there might be things you will miss you'll miss out on because you don't understand the implications of the language and experience of the people thank you brilliant explanation yeah any other questions I'm aware that time is running away and I will also have to switch over quite soon actually leave and meet people meet students one student outside so as yes any more questions any further questions I see your left but he did make a comment on violence I think during the different me the landscape we live in now but from the era of the red terror and previous words we do have reports of very strong violence indeed there was strong violence in the in the red terror committed by the state parties I'm to the to the extent I'm here but I was lying in particular um this is something different I would strongly suspect the sexual as well and I think this is an important point I know like who is acting research on terror by something more evidence on and more documentation as well I think this is you know this is more research understanding the the history of war yeah there has been a lot of meeting about the politics and you know the political culture and mobilization of the public forms of violence you have a lot of but to my knowledge and experience considerably less in Ethiopia again I'm not I'm not a specialist I'm not aware of the literature but I think it has received much less attention the forms of violence in previous conflicts as opposed to other African countries that I have been exposed to just a comment if anyone is more familiar and experienced and no legal please please and add to our conversation thank you thank you very much any more questions so I think yes we have here we can yes a question in the chat let me see uh some is the trauma is new yes exactly uh I don't know who the united you may be but in any case yes I mean it's one of the topics that I discuss in the context of Chinese history and it's speaking across civilizations the term trauma to translate that is is tricky because you end up it's not just psychological it's also connected to elements such as um now I can't think in English um not honor but shame that's it yes so this is how you overcome shame uh whether it's a personal whether it's a collective um you know whether you bring shame to the whole community by by being the victim and also it's not that shame is not located in the moment of the terror particularly with gender-based violence because their repercussions like pregnancy and then the birth and then you raise that child so the shame is faced over and over over again I've done a lot of work um of my own that into the narratives around Somali um women's experience of of this in the diaspora in America Italy and in uh Britain there is parts of Britain and that aspect of actually how does the family cope with the shame and the woman involved just like the singular woman within a she's part of a community that then is constantly dealing with her and the lived continued repercussion of that who in her own self is an autonomous individual you're absolutely right Joe it's extremely difficult I close my mind I have thought about it study I cited from Northern Uganda the but also females who had been victims as a result and those children were by society and so they had to be also to protect their children children weren't accepted and and again this is a general social society where women are uh if they have children uh or if they might be abused by the husband because he's not accepted so there are so many implications uh that we don't really think about and the reason we wrote the book for and we found all the studies in detail it shows that we are thinking how can we be of help to the children the victims because it will have tremendous consequences especially thinking of the religious cultural framework how can we support the women already face multiple challenges in the society due to the don't don't have formal income right especially in the countryside so there's huge implications and our hope is our aim really is to be proactive and not just the immediate uh need that is absolutely urgent but thinking two and three steps ahead of time we need to come together as a country as I say being in Ethiopia and as an international community working on Ethiopian studies and and really put our minds together and the humanitarian sector to to help each other and and produce an integrated that response to the psychos you know provide psychosocial support immediately to the victims currently the witnesses as well have a lot of people uh cannot have no closure perhaps they have seen people have no closure and also let us consider that oftentimes due to and potentially the militant elements help people to bury the dead which is so important in the right to have a proper burial so um so we have to think and have to think how can we respond to the complex bringing all the community stakeholders and I don't know this is really what as I said and I I think that's advocate for that that's the least we can do we cannot do much advocating for currently thank you Romina thank you Joe um any other questions otherwise I think I'll wrap up no thank you so much oh it was lovely it was very nice to have you with us and yes take good care of yourself and then um yes well in you never know and then um we are looking forward to having you back here in person and at some point we might be able to run proper life seminars again yes thank you very much thank you for everyone for coming at such short notice but I didn't want to um you know announce it too long in advance because you know um you don't know what the situation is like and and you did a brilliant job Romina for presenting the topic and also your your own personal engagement in this research thank you and the technology mostly worked zoom was a bit slow and the internet was also a bit slow yes thank you so much you know I apologize for unattended errors this is just as I said for my experience as an individual um I'm doing my best but I don't have any signs um I think we just have to understand that mistakes try to navigate the landscape full projects and work together that's the message I have to hear okay thank you thank you bye bye bye everybody celebrating the holy week I have a blessed holy week yes it's holy week of course in the orthodox world yes it's the orthodox yes eastern orthodox as well so holy week now and yes east they're coming up yes thank you so much thank you bye bye