 Hello everyone and welcome back to Plenary 2, Creating Bridges Between Research, Policy and Practice on Addressing Conflict Sexual Violence. You are a part of the Missing Peace Global Symposium. This is Plenary 2 and we're delighted to welcome you back this afternoon with a really remarkable panel of experts that will be led and moderated by our colleague and friend, Dr. Dara K. Cohen. She is the Political Scientist and Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Her research and teaching interests include the causes and consequences of civil war, gender, political violence, and does qualitative and mixed research methods. She's known for her book Rape During Civil War and for many other publications. We know her as one of the first scholars in the Missing Peace Scholar Network and we're so delighted to welcome her back as moderator of the afternoon's Plenary. Thank you and thank you all. Over to you. Thank you so much, Kathleen. I just want to say welcome back to everyone who is joining us here in person and a special welcome to our online audience that is joining us via our live stream. I'm just very grateful to be here today with all of you amongst this incredibly impressive and powerful group of experts from all different sectors. It's just really a pleasure to be in the presence of so much knowledge, expertise and lived experience on this incredibly important topic. The purpose of this particular discussion is to talk about the kind of policy problem that conflict-related sexual violence is, what different research disciplines can contribute to our collective understanding of the problem of conflict-related sexual violence, what do policymakers and practitioners need from academic researchers and how can research policy and programming be bridged to better address conflict-related sexual violence. In other words, how can we bridge the gap between what are often seen as silos between those various sectors. I'm going to start by just giving some brief introductions to this wonderful panel that is on the stage with me. I'm joined by really some of the foremost academic experts, policymakers and practitioners who are on the cutting edge of research and practice in each of their respective fields. Immediately next to me is Elizabeth Jean Wood, who is a professor of political science, international and area studies at Yale University. Libby has been a mentor, advisor and friend, someone who I have greatly admired in my own research since I started my dissertation on the topic of wartime sexual violence in 2006. And I think it's not overstating the case to say that Libby's research really created and shaped a lot of the field of the academic social science research on wartime sexual violence. Next to her is Philip Schultz, who is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Bramon. And I have been reading your work for quite a long time and assigning it in my classes as well. Philip is a leader in research on men and masculinities in the conflict-related sexual violence space, and he's also written very eloquently and thoughtfully about the ethics of research in this space as well. Next to Philip is Bramie Poulogacinum, who is the lead of transitional justice and accountability in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the U.S. Department of State. We just met for the first time a couple of moments ago, but it's really a pleasure to be able to be joined by someone who is part of the effort to lead work on comprehensive transitional justice in this very important space. And finally at the end, we are joined by Pyle Shaw, who is the director of the program on sexual violence and conflict zones at Physicians for Human Rights. And Physicians for Human Rights are also, I think, among the leaders in the humanitarian sector, thinking about, in really creative and I think at least on a personal level, very inspiring ways about combining evidence and research. And in fact, I had members from Pyle's team in my class that I teach at the Kennedy School on qualitative and mixed research methods, just to share some of the incredibly creative thinking that is happening at PHR on how to collect evidence and share it back with the policy community. So with that, I'm going to start with some questions for our panelists, and I'm going to start with Libby. Libby, can you share with us what have social science researchers really learned over the past decade, maybe since our last missing peace meeting, about conflict-related sexual violence and what are some of the most important findings that have emerged from the research? First of all, thanks very much for the invitation to participate in this event. I am not only learning about cutting-edge research and innovative policy initiatives, but I'm also being inspired by your dedication, commitment, and insight into this difficult topic that brings such suffering to survivors, to those who don't survive, and their communities. So I'm going to focus on conflict-related sexual violence in a somewhat narrow sense, that by armed actors during conflict. And I think it's very important to put front and center the finding that conflict-related sexual violence varies across armed actors. It varies in form, whether it takes the form of gang rape, sexual slavery, forced abortion, and so on, in targeting against whom does it take place, and of course, in frequency. So the form, for example, some armed organizations engaged in forced marriage against a particular social group and punish other forms of sexual violence by their combatants. On the other hand, some armed organizations engage in a pattern of very wide repertoire and very wide targeting. So that's a sharp contrast. Some armed organizations, as we'll heal more about, target boys and men, and some of them target as well gender and sexual minorities. And in contrast, some armed organizations engage in very little conflict-related sexual violence against civilians. And it's important to note that this absence is documented not just through desk work, but also through field work in the setting, talking with local actors and so on. So based on this variation, one important takeaway early on in the stream of research is variation across organizations within the same conflict. That means that the unit of analysis cannot be the conflict if you're going to try to understand the roots of variation and patterns. It has to be the armed organization. And it also cannot be the culture of the society because that also cannot explain that variation. Another important finding is that state forces are more likely than non-state actors to engage in high levels of rape against civilians and of conflict-related sexual violence generally. And most importantly, as a takeaway here, is that two decades of research has shown that these crimes, which inflict such suffering on those victimized and on their communities, are not unavoidable collateral damage. They are not inevitable and they can be avoided. If we have some organizations that don't engage in it, then we can hold commanders of other armed organizations responsible. But to do so effectively depends on understanding why and how sexual violence during war occurs. So we can begin to understand variation at a deeper level by considering on the part of an armed organization. Does it occur as policy from above or is it some sort of opportunistic violence by combatants on the scene? And indeed, some organizations engage in a form of sexual violence against a certain targeted group as a military strategy, a tactic, a weapon of war. For example, as part of ethnic cleansing, torture of detainees, sexual slavery, forced marriage. And again, often against a particular social group. And other organizations, however, engage in a policy of sexual violence, but not as an immediate military strategy. Most often as a way to regulate the sexual and reproductive lives of their combatants. For example, in some cases, a forced marriage, sexual slavery, and so on. And again, often against a targeted social group. In other settings, yes indeed, it may be opportunistic driven by the private preferences of combatants. But another, I think, important finding is that you also have cases that are in some sense in between. It's not a policy from above for either reason, nor is it opportunistic by individual combatants. But it is driven by social dynamics among the combatants themselves and commanders tolerate it. That can be a recipe for very frequent sexual violence. That is, it can be frequent without having been adopted as a policy. Examples are, as Dara has documented, where groups forcibly recruit that through mechanisms of socialization can give rise to high levels of sexual violence, though it's not an explicit organizational policy. And once established, what I call sexual violence as a practice, can be very persistent. For example, military sexual assault within the ranks of the US military persists despite accumulating costs to the US military in terms of public scrutiny and congressional meddling in their chain of command. Militaries do not like that. And nonetheless, though I think increasingly sincerely, commanders are trying to stamp it out. Nonetheless, it persists as does retaliation against people who report it. But we should note that it varies across units. So it's not that this is constant across US military, which again points to the salience of unit level, gender and organizational norms and culture. So I want to emphasize the malleability of gender norms, relations, and practices in some settings. Great. The fact of variation is probably one of the most important findings, as you've just said, to emerge from the social science literature. And of course, I think thinking about variation originated with your 2006 article on that point. And you've also talked about the other important finding of not just simply thinking about the causes of sexual violence as either opportunistic or strategic, getting away from that binary and making it more nuanced. So I think those are two really important results for us to consider. How have scholars explained these differences? How have they come to understand why there is variation both in patterns of conflict-related sexual violence and variation about sexual violence as a practice, as a policy, and as a strategy? Well, ideology of the armed organization is key to explaining many, but not all of these patterns of sexual and other types of conflict-related violence. Ideology teaches normative beliefs about what violence is permissible and against whom, and what violence is not, including those based on beliefs about appropriate gender relations and hierarchies. So for example, the Islamic State's ideology explains why it targeted some groups with particular forms of sexual violence and did not target other groups with that form of sexual violence. Ideology also helps explain the near absence of conflict-related sexual violence on the part of some not all leftist insurgent organizations. But to have these effects, ideology needs to be more than cheap talk. It must be inculcated and enforced through the design of institutions. For example, of recruitment, socialization, and discipline. And of course, armed organization vary in the strength of their ideology. Some, indeed, it is just cheap talk. And so some have weak or no institutions for the inculcation and enforcement of ideology. So beliefs about gender relations and hierarchy key to the pattern of sexual violence may reflect that of the local society, but not of the armed organization itself. So because analysis of gender relations and hierarchy, both as lived and as a normative aspiration on the part of the group are essential to explanations of conflict-related sexual violence. And if they are to explain patterns of variation, they themselves must vary. Researchers have become increasingly more sophisticated about the role of gender relations in shaping patterns, asking, under what conditions is that the beliefs and practices concerning gender in society that matters for patterns of conflict-related sexual violence? What's legitimate? What's normalized? With what you can do with impunity and so on? And in contrast, under what conditions is that the beliefs and practices concerning gender on the part of the armed organization that determines those patterns? This can go two directions. It could be that the armed organization has successfully inculcated and enforced an ideological vision of those gender beliefs and norms. Or it could be that it is the armed organization at the level of the rank and file that has adopted different from society, but its own unit level gender norms and belief. And that's what's driving the pattern of conflict-related sexual violence. And the third question is, under what conditions do commanders, based on their beliefs about gender norms, do they tolerate sexual violence on the part of their combatants? Wonderful. So you've laid out for us, I think, some of the really important ways that the research has developed some answers to our open questions and puzzles. And some of our under, as created, I think, some more clear understanding of motivations and explanations for variation. Just briefly, what do you see as some of the most exciting avenues of research? What's most promising? What are some of the most urgent research questions? Well, just as my distillation of findings just now does not do justice to this expanding field of research on conflict-related sexual violence, meaning sexual violence by armed combatants in the way I'm using it. Nor can I do justice to the ingenuity and creativity on the part of researchers today, but I'll try. Not only are scholars creating new data sets, but also they're bringing cutting-edge methods to the documentation and analysis of sexual violence during war, including those. And this is really important that address, to some extent, the under-reporting of sexual violence that so complicates analysis in this field. So among others are list experiments. So it's an indirect way to assess, for example, the prevalence of sexual violence as a very sensitive item that people may not answer if you simply ask them. We can talk a little bit more about how that goes, but it's an indirect measure of prevalence of very sensitive items. The collection and analysis of focus group data that pays attention to the differences of what I privately think and what I may say to the rest of you in my focus group and what the group itself may endorse at the end of that process. And also doing much more sophisticated statistical work on existing data to account for those, the under-reporting of sexual violence. So in data sets, you may have a zero that really is the absence of sexual violence, or you may have a zero that looks just the same, but it's under reporting. And so some of these cutting-edge statistical methods model which zeros are which with some uncertainty. But modeling by which zeros are which, you can then try to assess correctly correcting for that under-reporting what findings in the field stand. So for example, Dara's work on force recruiting stands once you correct for false zeros, so to speak. Another finding that stands is that rebel groups with fair and inclusive processes of selecting leaders, they engage in less sexual violence during war. And this technique appears to resolve some contradictory findings in the literature. For example, the relationship between having women combatants in the organization and the organization's level of sexual violence. It's actually positive for state forces, negative for non-state actors, which is a very interesting differentiation of these two kinds of armed actors. And it disconfirms some other findings. So that's great, but I really think it's important that we continue with some of the most productive of the methods in which we as a community engage already, and I would say one of them is analyzing variation in patterns within the same organization across units informed by gender analysis. For example, deeply qualitative research like oral histories with former combatants, assessing whether a pattern of sexual violence is an organizational policy or whether it is a practice, and doing so even in the case in which we only have indirect evidence. So for example, a co-author and I published a recent paper in which we make an argument based only on indirect evidence that sexual violence by the Myanmar military against the Rohingya is likely state policy, not mere opportunism, so to speak. And exploring how to design and implement policy to prevent and mitigate harm that is tailored to the context, that is also, I think, a very important research area to keep front and center. For example, how humanitarian organizations can mitigate the harm of stigmatization of victimized individuals and their families and communities, that's very important. And then, relatedly, to continue to analyze what the ICRC calls the roots of restraint, the absence in this case of conflict related sexual violence. And if we know more about it, can we leverage those factors towards policy, effective policy to mitigate sexual violence? And then finally, of course, ongoing ethical research with victimized families and their communities, under what conditions they come to exert the kind of reliance and agency that we are seeing here today. I think the most urgent, just to close, is to better tailor policy to the particular setting, to the particular patterns of conflict related sexual violence that we observe. And how to best support victimized communities towards that resilience and agency and away from stigma. And finally, continuing to work towards understanding the causes of these differentiated patterns of sexual violence during war, as a way to design more effective policy interventions. And finally, just to reiterate what I think is the most important takeaway of variation, it means that rape is not inevitable. Other forms of sexual violence during war are not inevitable. Commanders can effectively prohibit it if they choose to, which strengthens accountability and prevention. Thank you, and I look forward to learning more and more about this from all of you in the next few days. Yes, thank you so much for that. Building on one of the final points that Libby made about thinking about research with families and with communities, I'm now going to turn to Philip. What can ethnography and anthropology, sort of fields of social science beyond maybe political science, which is the home discipline of both myself and Libby, what can these other fields contribute to our understanding of conflict related sexual violence? And I guess in particular, what is there to be gained from centering survivor perspectives, which is often, I think, a central focus of these kinds of disciplines? Thank you so much. I also want to begin by thanking you as IP for convening us all here and thanking you for inviting me to be part of this. It's a real privilege to sit alongside scholars who have really shaped my own work and alongside people who are really putting the stuff that we talk about into action and into policy. And I'm really excited to be part of this conversation. Thanks also for that question, Dara. I think it maps really nicely into some of the debates we've had in the first plenary already. And so ultimately, full disclosure, I'm not an anthropologist myself. I think maybe I'm a lost political scientist sometimes who, however, finds much value and appreciation in these ethnographic and anthropological perspectives to study the gender dimensions of our conflict. Ultimately, I think because they offer much value and enable us to really zoom into the specifics of trying to understand the micro level dimensions and the specificities of how communities, different group of people experience sexual violence and its wake and its consequences and its effects, sort of not as an alternative to but really complementary to the more big picture, sort of overarching patterns that you teach us so much about in your work and in your remarks now. And in my work, I've tried to embrace and apply these approaches in different ways and really trying to understand the experiences and the perspectives specifically of male survivors of sexual violence in Northern Uganda, which, as I think we all are aware of, are often sort of sidelined and marginalized in these debates in which I think an ethnographic sensibility enables us to be attentive to. And so to illustrate you the value of these approaches, I want to tell you a very short story. Much of my work is situated in Northern Uganda and I'm looking at Grace now specifically who can help me out maybe. And in Northern Uganda, much knowledge and wisdom is communicated orally through proverbs. And there's one proverb in particular which I really use as a guiding framework in my work and it states, and now correct me from Ron Grace, Odo Mabo Penechotwo, which obviously, as you will all know, translates as or can be translated as a long stick cannot kill a snake. And so I don't have a long stick here, but everyone who ever had to try and fight a snake knows that that's true, right? If you would have imagined this to be a bit longer, but if you have a long stick and you want to kill that snake and hit it, you will only be able to deliver very sort of low, not the size of blows to it because it's too long and also there's the risk that if you hit the snake, it will curl around the edges of the stick and then when you raise it again to give it another blow, the snake will then fall on your head and you will be in trouble. So you don't want to do that. And so what you need to do is to use a shorter stick in order to be able to give it sort of, you know, short and strong and decisive blows in order to kill the snake. And so the morale of that proverb really is that if you're too far away from a problem, you cannot contribute to a solution. And so instead, you need to get close to it in order to understand it and to be able to contribute to a solution using that sort of metaphorical short stick. And I think this really nicely captures what ethnographic approaches help us with. They allow us to get close to the experiences and the stories and the perspectives and the narratives of survivors of CRSV in order to first of all understand them and then to be able with that knowledge and that understanding be able and try and contribute to a solution. The idea also really nicely emphasizes I think the fact that CRSV and responses to CRSV in particular need to be contextual, they need to be situational and they need to be in direct response to local needs. So they need a short metaphorical stick in order to deal with them. And I think this sort of leading to the second part of that question really nicely sort of illustrates what we gain from centering survivors' perspectives and understanding of what is actually needed to respond to their experiences and ideally also how we could potentially prevent this kind of violence. And so again, I think this came out in the first plenary a lot already that survivors will ultimately tell us that rather than leaving it at more abstract, maybe sort of distant approaches to CRSV such as criminal tribunals or like a truce commission sitting in the capital somewhere, what is needed are measures that are really in direct response to their needs. That may be for instance the provision of medical or psychosocial service provisions, various reparation measures that enable survivors again to provide for themselves and to provide for their families in the wake of violence, as well as very importantly I think the recognition of their experiences. And I think this is particularly important for the experiences of people whose experiences are often sidelined like persons with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities or in most of the debates male survivors as well. And I think all of that can sort of contribute towards, you know, allowing survivors to live a, I mean this is quote-unquote normal or at least sort of minimally functioning life again and be part of daily life procedures and their social networks, all of which has been destroyed as a result of the violence and its effects. Ethnographic approaches then I think also enable us to tease out some intersectional differences in the experiences and needs between different groups of people in different communities, depending on their respective positionalities and their identities and their localities where they're sort of, you know, coming from. And I think this is particularly important and strong in emerging work with survivors again with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities where I think there are striking tendencies to really gloss over and often homogenize what are really diverse experiences and instead all of them, you know, putting all of these into one box and under one umbrella of one sort of acronym that whatever you decide to use and not really acknowledging I think the fact that, you know, the experiences of, say, a middle-class lawyer living in Beirut may be vastly different from the trans woman who has been falsely displaced living in an IDP or refugee camp in Oma or in Syria or elsewhere. And so I think, you know, ethnographic approaches again help us to tease out all of these intersectional differences there. There's still enough time. Or do you want me to wrap this up? Well, why don't I wanted to sort of build on one of the points that you were making about research on men and boys, which I think has been one of the topics where our kind of collective field has made a lot of progress in the past 10 years, but there also still remain quite a number of gaps. So I was hoping that very briefly and maybe one minute or so, you could tell us just a little bit about your, what do you see as maybe the top gap or top open question that still remains on research on men and boys in the CRSV space? OK, that's difficult to narrow it to one. I think there's so many, right? I mean, it's important, I think, to acknowledge that we have come a long way, you know, looking back 10 years and where we're now, it's much more commonly acknowledged. Yeah, as you say, there's a number of gaps. I think sort of building on what you've said, one gap in particular, is I think that so we know that there's variation in CRSV thanks to the work that you've been doing. But when it comes to discourses about men and boys, there's still one sort of singular storyline of this always and exclusively being a strategy of war, you know, that is employed to humiliate and then emasculate male survivors. And I think that may sort of be the case across many settings. But I think we still need to get a bigger, better understanding of, you know, how this plays out and what the sort of specificities of that are. And I think one way to do that is building on some of your work that are in the arguments you make is to really also look at perpetrators accounts and perspectives on that, because ultimately, as you say, to understand the causes of CRSV, we also need to look at that. I think one real challenge in the field that I'm seeing, and that is a bit concerning, I think, is that there are tendencies, I think, to sometimes pitch some of that growing recognition of men and boys as survivors of sexual violence against some of that important ongoing work on sexual violence against women and girls and the underlying patriarchal power structures of that. And I think there's also some tendencies in some of that work with men and boys that really sort of feeds into that, I think, and that often has, you know, I think there's tendencies to yeah, maybe sort of reestablish male privileges within that work to sort of reestablish heteronormativity in that. And they're often like what makes some of these approaches and some of that work maybe attractive in a way is that there's a re-musculizing message in that, where, you know, like your masculinities have been lost and then there's ways in which you can regain some of that masculinity and that makes a lot of sense from an individual perspective. But then looking at how we can transform broader power structures, I think, is sort of against that. And so ultimately, in terms of moving forward, and I'm promising that's my last point now, I think, you know, I would wish that we were instead of sort of trying to fight over the couple of pieces of cake that there are on the table in terms of resources and service provision and attention, that we would just collaboratively and relationally join forces and try and find the ingredients to, you know, have a recipe for baking a bigger cake in which there's attention and support and services for women and girls, men and boys, and persons of diverse. So, Giask, thanks. Wonderful, thank you. That is a great segue to our next speaker who is leading some of the cutting edge work in the policy space on some of these issues. So, Brahmay, can you share with us some of the programming work that is currently happening at the State Department around CRSV, and particularly in the comprehensive transitional justice space? What specific tools are being developed? Yeah, I'd be happy to. I also wanted to say thank you so much to USIP and also to this distinguished panel. It's really wonderful to be among so many friends and colleagues who I see in the audience who know our work quite well. So, I think as many of you know, preventing and responding to all forms of GBV, including CRSV, is a cornerstone of the US government's commitment to promoting democracy, advancing human rights, and furthering gender equity inequality. President Biden, my big boss, made clear in the 2022 presidential memorandum to promote accountability for CRSV that the United States does not accept CRSV as an inevitable cost of conflict and is committed to supporting victims and survivors through all available measures. Elizabeth, I think you talked about this quite eloquently, but I think this is a really critical memorandum because it really allows the USG to include the use of legal, policy, diplomatic, and financial tools to address and deter future violence. So, it's really enabled us, especially with the Bureau that I work for, the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor to use assistance and these tools to combat CRSV. And I would like to think that DRL likes to use many small sticks just to build on your analogy and that we're continuously integrating evidence base of research and data for action that's coupled with survivor-led consultative approaches to CRSV. DRL really values lived experience expertise in this evidence base and so as we pursue a survivor-centered and trauma-informed approach to CRSV and accountability programs, we really focus on that as our evidence base and I'd really love to talk about that more in our Q&A as well. So, accordingly, I mean, I'm again gonna be very focused on DRL's specific work in the transitional justice and programming space and I'd like to really get a little bit more granular even though this might be a little in the weeds but I think it's always helpful to be able to look inside the belly of the beast in terms of how we support survivors and victims of CRSV. So, DRL as well as a number of other USG entities takes a multi-pronged and locally-based approach to addressing conflict-related sexual violence. In addition, we have found that successful support has to be flexible and wide-ranging. This might sound obvious but in implementation it is actually very difficult for donors like the USG to pursue this kind of work. So, I thought I would maybe walk you through what we see as our three complementary streams in the CRSV space. The first is our rapid response and urgent assistance needs. The second is our long-term integrated and holistic programming. And the third is our small and micro grants to civil society and survivor-led organizations. And I'm sure that there are many here who have received funding from DRL so I'd welcome during the Q&A some of the successes and challenges around these funding streams. So, to look at our rapid response and urgent assistance needs first, you asked about some of the tools that we have. We're actually in the process of putting forth a rapid response toolkit. We have a mechanism called the Transitional Justice Consortium, the GIJTR. And it has partner organizations including the Sites of Conscience, IICI, Global Survivors Fund, CSVR, Synergy for Justice, and the Dennis McCwage Foundation. And they're developing an assistance, an assessment toolkit, excuse me, that takes a holistic approach to justice and accountability for CRSV. And the approach to justice and accountability for conflict-related sexual violence here is really to look at how to design this toolkit for the use by survivor networks and civil society organizations. So, looking at both formal and informal, reparative and retributive justice. So, beyond criminal accountability. The themes that are covered in the toolkit are intended to reflect survivors' varying needs. And this includes looking at the needs of men and boys and what we would say, marginalized groups that includes a number of groups that you've already mentioned here. And so, just in highlighting the toolkit, I wanted to mention that they're looking at both formal legal pathways through this toolkit as well as these alternative forms of pursuing justice. So, we're looking at community-based truth-telling, memorialization initiatives, looking at all four pillars of transitional justice. Gonna move quickly, because there's a number of programs that I wanna highlight and I realize there's quite a few in terms of the comprehensive work we do. But I wanna just take a moment to also talk about a phenomenal urgent assistance program. This is the Voices Against Violence Initiative, the VAB. It was originally announced at PSVI in 2014. And it's an example of how DRL and the VAB are dedicated to ensuring that survivors and those at urgent risk of extreme forms of gender-based violence and harmful practices have better access to service, protection, and justice. You can tell that that's from their fact sheet. But what's more impressive is that they have obligated and managed more than 56 million through this initiative. And I see a number of my colleagues who are involved with this initiative, reaching more than 2.7 million beneficiaries, including survivors of extreme gender-based violence, which is inclusive of CRSV. Okay, so that's our rapid response programming. I'd like to take a moment to talk about our long-term programming as well. And our long-term programming is divided into our atrocity prevention programs and then long-term justice and accountability programs. I think you heard earlier on, Ambassador Gupta mentioned, we're constantly striving to pursue prevention, not just response. And so within CRSV program implementation, our atrocity prevention programs are especially collaborating with partners to identify upstream approaches to preventing CRSV within fragile and conflict-affected contexts. And this really involves addressing the underlying drivers of gender inequality, which you've already mentioned quite extensively. I think addressing those underlying drivers is really what contributes to reinforcing the cycles of prevention and deterrence. And so to date, DRL's early warning programs demonstrate that including women as implementers of structures that transmits alerts and develop a risk mitigation responses increases the effectiveness of these structures. And we've done this through a number of different applied learning evaluation structures that have been in place. And I think as this audience is already well aware, CRSV is also often an early warning sign in and of itself that is indicative of a lack of rule of law and control or for security forces, which Elizabeth mentioned. Okay, so I think we can talk about atrocity prevention programs at NOSM, but I'd love to leave any questions and answers on our atrocity prevention programs to Q&A because I'd like to next just address our longer-term documentation initiatives. We have now DRL for over two decades looking at truth, justice, and accountability for CRSV crimes committed in violation of international human rights and humanitarian law has just recognized the long-term need for documentation efforts that are survivor-centered and trauma-informed. And we all know that those terms are now used quite liberally. And I think in earlier plenaries, we've seen, and I think Ambassador Venscock mentioned this, that these terms are being kind of thrown about, but what does it actually mean to pursue those kinds of programs, including the high-quality evidence that comes about as a result of supporting survivors and survivor-led organizations to pursue this work. I think I'd like to just highlight that at PSVI, DRL was very proud to announce that we would put aside $10 million over two years in global programs that support these kinds of civil society efforts and survivor-led efforts to investigate and document CRSV alongside the Morad Code, and just really looking at the code of conduct and ensuring its incorporation and best practices in documentation efforts as part of how the USG actually pursues this documentation. And I'd like to just give an example of this work because I think it makes it a little bit more concrete, which is that we have programming in Burma where, as already mentioned, sexual violence has historically been and continues to be used by the Burmese military to control and intimidate civilians. DRL programs to date are increasing the capacity of grassroots and civil society survivor organizations to credibly and professionally investigate and document CRSV while strengthening survivor-centric legal strategies to advance accountability in both the reparative and restorative areas. And central to this in terms of how we do this work is really wanting to see that CRSV survivors themselves are able to determine their own justice sector agenda and safely advocate for their needs. Do I have a minute to talk about our small grants or do you want me to move on? Because I realize this is quite a lot, but I can always stop there as well. I think we should pause there. And then I'm hoping during the Q&A we can also talk a little bit about from your perspective what donors and policymakers most need from researchers if you had to name maybe the top priority that I think that would be useful for Q&A. But in the interest of time, so we can reserve time for Q&A from the audience, I'm gonna turn to Pyle. Pyle, can you tell us a little bit about Physicians for Human Rights and the work that your organization does? We know that PHR works at the intersection of science, medicine, and the law to address CRSV as both the human rights violation and an international crime. How does research fit into the important work that you do in terms of programming and policy impact in practice? Thanks, Tara, it's a great question and one that I'm really happy to be able to talk about with all of you. First, like my fellow co-panelists, I really want to thank USIP for convening this conversation. It's so energizing to be together, to have colleagues from all over the world and such rich experts and expertise being shared. So really thank you. So Physicians for Human Rights was founded about 35 years ago and really works at that intersection of science, medicine, and the law and works specifically to address mass atrocities as well as human rights abuses. Our work is really squarely sitting at that connection between research policy practice and I would also add accountability. So I think accountability and justice at the end of that. So as all of you know, all too well, sexual violence cases are some of the hardest to pursue justice for and accountability for. Many survivors don't report and Libby's point on underreporting is one that we really focus on and really consider how we can create systems to allow for greater reporting in a survivor-centered and trauma-informed way. So actually by trying to transform the systems that survivors are reporting into. And then also how do we think creatively about research and other methodologies to allow for greater insight into what survivors are actually experiencing. So patterns of perpetration, patterns of harm, need for services, and also patterns around perpetrators. And so really looking across all of those different areas and thinking creatively about how we can mobilize and gather that evidence without necessarily needing a survivor to formally be coming forward to report. So we really look very squarely at that challenge of evidence as well as the lack thereof. And evidence in two different ways. In the legal context where we think about forensic evidence or medical legal evidence and what's needed to prosecute or what's needed to pursue reparation. And then there's the second type of evidence which is really the evidence of what works and what doesn't work. And really looking at standards and best practices that exist. And what we see in our work is that it's really important to be bridging all of these together and that research is one really critical keystone but amongst a range of different strategies. For research to be effective in creating policy reform or shaping practice it has to come alongside a range of other strategies and it can't really exist in a vacuum. And so part of PHR's role in our niche I think is really trying to bring that research into areas where we can share it out with experts on the ground that are doing the work and really leading the effort and engaging with survivors. And then how do we also translate what we know works into tools that are really practical and accessible that can be utilized by a range of different stakeholders. Our work really looks at the fact that survivors of conflict related sexual violence really need a full multi-sectoral response. We can't just do the work by targeting one sector or another. And actually part of the challenge is that there's often a siloing of okay this is the health sector this is how you handle treatment and this is the legal sector here's how you handle prosecution. And this group of experts here you've done so much amazing work to break down those silos and so I know I'm preaching to the choir here but that's really been the core of PHR's work is how do we bring together multi-sectoral networks? How do we share out information from the health sector to the legal sector so that they can understand when they see terminology what it means? Or from the legal sector to the health sector back so why do we need you to ask questions about if somebody says they're pregnant why do we need to ask questions about if they were able to access care and were they detained were they in a situation of captivity? So to be able to explain across the why of what we're doing and also to be able to provide tools around what we know works in terms of trauma and so creating an entire pathway from the first instance of reporting all the way through to judgment where we're really talking intentionally about trauma and what we know about what constitutes trauma informed practices and what avoids re-traumatization. From that work we then develop networks and we really try to keep this kind of community of practice that is really working individually on cases but also able to share out knowledge and share out what's working and what isn't and we also work to develop tools. So for example, looking at protocols around engaging so drawing for example on the NICHU protocol so it's a protocol that is to allow interviewing of children in a way that's trauma informed and it specifically has been developed outside of a conflict setting it's been developed more in the context of sexual violence and other forms of interviewing of children and so our work is really thinking about how do we bridge from that kind of tool that exists outside of the conflict setting and how do we adapt and what kind of evidence do we have of what works and what doesn't and how do we tailor and create methodologies and tools. We also have standardized medical legal documentation forms for example that we also utilize and other materials like that. And then so we have this capacity development work we have the networks we have then the tools and resources and then from there we have a foundation where we've started to tackle the under reporting we've started to create systems where survivors can come forward where we might have more data and more information on what is occurring to survivors of sexual violence and what they're experiencing and by whom and how. And that's where we start trying to mobilize the research and really thinking about how we can take this evidence from the medical sector for example so the standardized medical legal form how do we take that and then be able to do analysis to get concrete rigorous data and find analysis of what survivors are experiencing and to be able to be used in justice processes or in accountability processes. And then from there we take the work and the research and we do an immense amount of advocacy and this is one of I think PHR's real kind of origin and purpose is really to be able to bridge all of this to effect change. And so our work is really focused on thinking about what kinds of, from looking at the advocacy questions from the outset. We start that in defining our research questions is where is this gonna be used? How are we gonna utilize it? And what do we hope will happen with this information? So for example in August 2003, Physicians for Human Rights published a report on conflict related sexual violence in Ethiopia with a specific focus on Tigray. The report, the data itself in the report was really powerful. It was drawing on the analysis of randomly sampled medical records from health facilities in Tigray. And the analysis was identifying really key patterns in the manner in which CRSV was occurring as well as in the characteristics of perpetrators. And so it was really concrete data. It has a lot of potential. Although I know there's a lot of conversations happening around what's been going on around Tigray but it has a lot of potential and actually helping to shape policy response. But this research couldn't have happened in a vacuum. To be able to mobilize this research we first had to start by building capacity and working with partners in terms of thinking of how do you do standardized medical legal documentation? What are the tools you need to be able to do that? And so really starting with capacity development, introduction of these kinds of tools and a lot of conversations about okay, these are the kinds of cases we're seeing, here's what's coming up. And that creates an ecosystem where then you can do this kind of research and documentation. So really I think our work is looking at connecting evidence at all phases. It's evidence in the research sense and then really connecting to then generating evidence in legal sense. Wonderful, thank you so much. We are going to now shift gears to take some questions from the audience. We'll collect a number of questions and then the folks on the panel can answer whichever you would like to answer from your own perspective. I'm gonna ask as we did this morning for those in the audience to please introduce yourself and then to please ask the briefest possible version of your question so that we can collect as many as possible and hear as many voices as possible. So please raise your hand if you have a question. See some, okay. I see one up here in the front. Hi, my name is Sofia Cardona. I'm a GBB focal point for UNHCR in Mexico. My question I think it's mainly towards Professor Jean Wood and towards Philip but feel free to take a crack at it if you will. I'm wondering particularly when you're discussing perpetrators and falling outside of the binary of policy or opportunity and more looking towards sort of social tolerance for it. If you have found particular instances or if your research has led you to what intimate partner violence intersects with that particular tolerance. I'm asking this because in Mexico what we're seeing from UNHCR is perpetrators, gang members mainly and organized crime. So slightly different from armed groups but the people that we find at highest risk are women who are fleeing, gang members who were also their forced partners. So IPV as well as gang violence. So I was wondering if you had that intersection. Thank you. Thank you so much. Let's take another one. Maybe up towards the back. See one in the center at the back. Yes. Hi, my name is Amna. I'm representing the police service of Pakistan. My question is from Rumi. I mean great presentation about what the US is doing in terms of giving out money to the victims of gender-based violence but I had a question from my understandings and my experiences in Pakistan and handling gender-based violence. How does the US government then I'd say calculate the impact of the money that is being sent? Like is it trickling down to the victim or is it not? Like how do you gauge that this has led to justice? Like how are you defining justice in that term? And my second question would be that from my own experiences I've seen that a lot of these organizations that are working are usually working in the urban cities and in the global south there's a huge population that lives in the rural cities. So most of them they're conveniently ignored and they're out of the picture and to be honest that's exactly where the help is needed the most. So how do you count to that? Thank you. Thank you very much. Let's take another one. I see a hand right here, yes. Merci beaucoup pour la parole. Je vais simple de parler en français. Je sais pas qu'il y aura un tractecteur. Do we have a French translator available? She's over. Oui. Okay. Sorry. Fait de moi c'est Fredine Dongosi. Je suis de ministère des Santés en province de la R.D. Congo. En province du site qui vous. Et je suis le responsable des luttes contre les paludismes dans la province. Et la question de violence sexuelle me fascine quand même. Is them, is Dr. Fredy Dongosi. He works with the Ministry of Health in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And he is interested in conflict related sexual violence but he is also the person responsible for the malaria program in the province in South Kivu, in the eastern DRC. Bon, au fait, j'ai l'impression, j'ai comme l'impression que nous avons plus des données sur les survivants, donc les victimes, et peu des données sur l'autor de violence sexuelle ou les bourreaux. I have an impression that we have more data on survivors of sexual violence but not on perpetrators. Alors je me pose la question. Est-ce que vous ne pensez pas que l'étude de l'auteur p est orientée vers une partie des réponses et avoir une partie des puzzles? To believe that we need more research on perpetrators to help address sexual violence effectively. Oui, et là, ma question revient en cours sur auprès d'Elisabeth et Philippe. This is a question I'm asking Phillip and Elisabeth. Est-ce que les groupes armés ont les mêmes comportements? Do armed groups behave the same way or they have different behaviors vis-à-vis sexual violence? Est-ce que la fréquence dépend du comportement du commandant de groupes armés? So does sexual violence depend on orders or behavior of the commander of the armed group? Dans les victimes des violences, on parle de victimes avec handicap et non handicap et les statistiques nous disent que c'est différent par rapport à la fréquence de viol. Est-ce que ça ne peut pas être la même chose auprès de groupes armés ou auprès du commandant? Un commandant handicapé, avoir des problèmes psychologiques, effectivement on peut avoir une fréquence élevée dans son groupe de violences. So if the commander is a handicap, is an handicap person, maybe there will be more sexual violence in his armed group than a commander who is physically strong and intellectually strong. So do you think there are variations, differences? Okay, thank you. I think we have to probably stop there. I think, did you get most of the question, Philippe? Okay, great. Let me just take one more question and then we can turn it back to our panel for the rest of the time. I see a hand right here at the front. Thank you so much. Thank you. My name is Ingregonstans Odegard, University of Oslo, but also Gises Cologne and Chair of the Children Bonobourg Foundation. I think this is really great bridging between the research policy and practice. And basically I have a question for all of you because what I learned from Professor Wood is that we know quite a bit and we have data. What I learned from Dr. Scheiss that she's also collecting data and I learned that policy is interested in using data for policy implementation. So I ask myself, where is the missing link and where is the bridge? I have the feeling that very often we're still too much in silos, having worked on Children Bonobourg for 25 years trying to bridge that. I've learned over and over again it's very often the same voices. And by the way, when we talk about evidence base, we need to know that we talk about knowledge base because there's a lot of voices. We don't hear because we don't know about them yet or because they've even been killed, which is for example the case with my Children Bonobourg. So they don't have a voice. So whose job is it to make those voices heard and how is the data sharing and research sharing working amongst you? I would really be interested in understanding how it's actually communicated and bridged. Thank you. Thank you so much. We'll turn back now to the panel. And if it's okay with me, we'll just go down the line and you can respond to whatever strikes your fancy. Why don't we start at the end here, Pyle? Why don't you go first? It's on. Okay, great. Sorry, I was expecting you to start on the other side. But thank you so much. Maybe I'll start with the last question. So I think it's a really great question and that's a really important one. And spaces like this are really important to be starting to bring together different disciplines. But there's definitely a need for more of it. Part of the way, PHR is small. We're about 35, 40 people. So we do this in a micro way. And a lot of the way that we tackle this is really thinking very intentionally about how we are linking the work with our partners and shaping norms, actually. Instead of trying to bring global norms down to our partners, it's actually working with our partners to identify problems, to innovate solutions in the context that we are in. And then actually trying to bring it back up to the international level from that starting point. So for example, I was mentioning that standardized medical legal documentation form. And that's a form that we developed together with partners in DRC with very deep consultation, a lot of expertise locally, as well as as international practice, but really looking on what could we develop that fit that very specific context. And then doing the work of drawing from that into then engaging in international processes and efforts to create good practices or tools and have that reflected there. So then you'll see that standardized medical legal documentation form annexed to the international protocol and documentation of conflict-related sexual violence. And so that is one of the ways, I think we're trying to address the piece that you're talking about where it often feels like we're trying to bring, the movement is trying to bring in top-down strategies into context where it doesn't work, where we need to be engaging knowledge from in different corners and different sectors and to be addressing that kind of very colonial mindset of we have the solutions here in DC and we're going to ship them out. But I think it's also, I think the other piece that we're trying to do is really focus on multidisciplinary teams and really intentionally, even within PHR, our work, our team is the only, I think there's lawyers, there's public health, there's former police, there's a software engineer and we have kind of a whole range and it's even within our own organization trying to bridge those different pieces of knowledge and there's a lot of debate and we'll talk about the public health term excess births and as a lawyer, I'm like, that's a what? We have to talk about that differently. And so there's a lot of conversation too on how do we create our products and our knowledge, how do we put it out in a way that's accessible and easy to utilize and practical and then can also be adopted to different contexts? I hope that answers some of the question. Wonderful. We have five minutes remaining, just keeping an eye on the time, so as briefly as possible as we go. Okay. So I wanted to address the lady's question, I think, from Pakistan in the back and actually dovetails into my third point that I was going to make about the third stream of work, which is that for DRL, we have small grants and micro grants and that's really the heart of DRL's work and that is how we get to the grassroots level and work with civil society organizations and survivor led organizations. It's something that we've done as a donor, I think quite well, that other donors are still trying to figure out and that is how we get out of the capitals, how we get to victims who have to walk 45 miles to get to a hospital, legal assistance, all of that. So I do think that we have a proof of concept of how we're doing that well. We need more assistance in that space. We need other donors to collaborate with us and we have seen more money going to rural areas as opposed to just the capital and I think there are many examples of that but we need to lean into that more and we've really empowered I think civil society as well as survivor led groups to ask for that funding and to know where to go and how to speak the donor language in order to get those resources to trickle down to victims and survivors. That's the success story. There are large holes of course and in how that assistance gets to the people who actually really need it. And then the second element which was actually in my notes which I would like to just read because it actually came from my applied learning and evaluation team is that there's been an explosion of activity in the CRSV research and intervention space especially in the last 10 years and my colleague said and I'd like to just quote her it's nearly impossible for those of us who are not scholars in the field to keep up with this constant new research making it difficult to use it in programming. Furthermore there is always gaps in literature for highly contextualized application like ours due to untested external validity. There's a need for research to focus specifically on application to government and private foreign assistance funding and I would say that gap needs to be met. Thanks. Thank you so much. Philip and Libby I think you each have about 90 seconds if you have some final thoughts before we close out the session. At the time as I speak. I'm going to address your question Sophia I think about the intimate partner violence link which I think is important and which maybe plays out a little bit differently in the context of sexual violence against men so at least from what I understood from your question we know that sexual violence in conflict is a sits on a continuum of intimate partner violence that may happen before that and then that may also sort of happen after that and so I think in the context of sexual violence against men there's at least a danger I think that we need to be attentive to that you know the effects of that violence on unsettling and impacting male survivors masculinities and taking away their authority and their power you know and their position of dominance may be responded to in different ways including for instance through the use of violence including intimate partner violence within the home you know as an attempt to sort of regain some of that strength and I think it's something that we absolutely need to be attentive to and be aware of without then also falling into the trap of saying okay all of these victims are also potential perpetrators and sort of you know flipping that around but I think that's absolutely and I think there's much more work to be to be done on that Very briefly I think there are a lot of implications for policy from the recent research and I'd be happy to brainstorm with people over the next few days about what I think some of the most salient ones are but I did want to address the question about perpetrators yes I definitely think more research needs to be done on perpetrators of sexual violence who are often have been victimized themselves often with sexual violence so I think one of the most effective research methods for this are oral histories where you really invite the person former combatant or present combatant to narrate the long version of how what brought them to this point I think that's very important but also parallel to that those members perhaps of the same organization that did not engage in sexual violence one and then two yes there's a lot of variation particularly when sexual violence is occurs as a practice across commanders and I would say it's not so much a matter of physical or cognitive strength it's more that the really some commanders just so devalue women and girls and other people who their combatants target that they just don't care it's easier just not to engage with their combatants at all so it's that disregard that's reflected all right wonderful so that will bring our panel to a close I just wanted to express my gratitude and appreciation to my fellow panelists on the stage I continue to learn so much from each of you there's so much more to say I could talk to each of you for hours more but for those of you in the room we can continue those conversations offline thank you all for being here as well and thank you once again to our online audience for joining us via the live stream with that I'm going to let me please join me in thanking our panel yes thank you so much