A continuum of violence from the forcibly disappeared to their women next of kin: the case of Sri Lanka

Every act of a forced disappearance is simultaneously a forced, involuntary separation. International Law recognises that in contexts of mass disappearances, marked by denial and impunity, family members—predominantly women—are compelled to enter a dangerous public sphere to demand truth and justice. While feminist scholars have long explored this reality, International Law and IR scholars have been slower to do so. Addressing this gap, I argue that women relatives of the disappeared who enter the public sphere in search of justice need to be recognised not only as victim-survivors but as justice seekers who can in turn become subject to state violence and terror. Taking the case of postwar Sri Lanka, I illuminate this violence as a continuum that stretches from the disappeared to the women left behind, which is both gendered and ethnicised and which can take several different forms — everyday, bureaucratic, and political. In so doing, I go beyond the framework of ‘ambiguous loss’, that has dominated studies of families of the disappeared to illuminate new forms of violence against relatives and expand our understanding of the gendered violence experienced across the war—peace divide. Moreover, I broaden our understanding of accountability beyond the disappearance to its gendered afterlives.