Invisible No More: Looking and Listening Locally to Build Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Resilience

The ubiquity of sexual violence, with its devastating physical and psychological consequences, has rendered conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) one of the most effective and enduring “invisible crimes” of war. Despite receiving growing attention across academic, political, and activist circles, wartime sexual violence remains pervasive in contemporary conflict zones. Against the backdrop of these frequent and recurring violations, this thesis explores the dissonance between high-level rhetorical commitments to preventing and punishing CRSV and on-the-ground realities. What soon emerges is a troubling pattern in which gendered violence—and women’s lived experiences more generally—while increasingly visible in theory, remains marginalised in practice. By investigating the limitations of existing frameworks, this thesis explores why current efforts have failed to mitigate sexual and gender-based crimes in conflict settings. Through a series of semi-structured interviews with humanitarian workers, this study introduces the concept of “preparedness” as a critical factor in strengthening CRSV resilience, emphasising the importance of context-specific, gender-sensitive, and survivor-centred interventions across all stages of the conflict cycle. It concludes by outlining several policy recommendations for future practice and theory-building related to CRSV preparedness.