Navigating Moral Injury and the Search for Recognition: Dutch Peacekeeper Veterans Return to Lebanon

Moral injury (MI) not only impacts individuals but also damages relations between individuals and their communities. While conventional interventions focus on individual healing, veterans organize return trips to former deployment areas to mend these damaged relations. Drawing on fieldwork with Dutch UNIFIL veterans in Lebanon and life story interviews, the study examines how these trips address the relational dimensions of MI and trauma more generally. It employs a theoretical framework synthesizing MI and recognition theories, including an interplay between MI and transformative versus affirmative recognition. The analysis reveals relational breaches at political, societal, and interpersonal levels, both in the Netherlands and Lebanon, which profoundly impact veterans' lives, and motivate them to undertake return trips to Lebanon to mend these breaches. The return trips exhibit a complex dynamic of affirmative and transformative recognition, as well as reification, with both potential for healing and counterproductive effects.