To see responses to gross violations driven by the expectations of those most affected by them demands an empirical and an ethnographic approach to reach an understanding of how victims and communities are changed by conflict. Such an approach necessitates empirical work of a highly interdisciplinary nature and an understanding of the role of the so-called „primary‟ institutions of the family and community that hold the key to recovery from such extreme events. Ethnography provides the best route to accessing insider perspectives and “permits us to transcend some of the parochialism inherent in our
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ostensibly universal theories” (Schatzberg, 2009: 183). Ethnography necessarily emphasises the local and the particular, revealing the empirical complexity that can demonstrate the inadequacy of approaches that seek to be global in their scope. The human rights community interprets responses to gross violations through a predominantly legal lens, and so has developed methodologies for collecting victim and witness testimony (e.g. OHCHR, 2008a), but has neglected ways of understanding the broader impact on and needs of affected communities and individual victims. Indeed, in post-conflict contexts the assertion of a rights-based agenda has often taken precedence over needs that victims may articulate that fall outside the typical remit of a human rights response. In the development context participatory approaches have been successful in not only understanding phenomena (and human needs) from a grassroots viewpoint, but in developing solutions to address them (e.g. Chambers, 1994): such approaches have not however been widely used in conflict and post-conflict contexts.
Here, a methodology is presented that allows a comprehensive approach to the needs of victims of conflict and through them an understanding of the global impact of conflict on a population or particular subset of a population. In this study that subset is a group of victims of a particular violation, disappearance. This methodology allows the researcher to work with victims to understand their needs holistically, contextualised in everyday life, and issues arising in families and communities that can have a huge impact on victims, but fall beyond the remit of a rights driven transitional justice approach. Above all, it allows the voices of victims to contribute to the debate about dealing with the past in post-conflict contexts. Scott has written of the „hidden transcripts‟ (1990) that the weak use beyond direct observation by those with power: it is the aim of this research to access such marginal discourses. The research is necessarily consultative, but aims more than this to be participatory. Whilst the methodology presented here certainly does not replace the mobilisation of victims to represent themselves (Section 10.2), it does allow for a process that engages victims and their organisations in a way that not only allows their voices to be heard and identifies local resources, but gives those organisations a concrete advocacy tool to increase their effectiveness. From an ethical perspective, this approach to research not only accesses victims in highly appropriate ways, but seeks to „leave something behind‟ in terms of fostering action that can address victim needs.
In development, both in research and practice, participatory approaches have become increasingly orthodox. They aim not only to understand development issues
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from the viewpoint of those most affected but also to develop responses from within affected communities:
[P]articipatory research focuses on a process of sequential reflection and action, carried out with and by local people rather than on them. Local knowledge and perspectives are not only acknowledged but form the basis for research and planning. (Cornwall and Jewkes, 1995: 1667)
Participatory research aims to shift the locus of power from the researcher towards the researched. Whilst participatory research can be merely consultative, in its deeper form it involves the researcher and the researched working together in a process of mutual learning. Participation has been framed as part of „rights-based approaches‟, where participation itself is seen as a right, and participatory process as restoring agency to the traditionally disempowered (e.g. DFID, 2002; Cornwall, 2002). Such thinking, about rights rather than needs, demands that one consider who is included and excluded from such participatory processes and can challenge traditional hierarchies within communities to tackle social exclusion. These participatory processes however tend to confine the role of the research subjects to the generation of data, following the research design with which they are presented: the extent of the agency of the research subjects in the research project is highly constrained. Action Research approaches can address this issue, by allowing the researcher to be a facilitator, rather than a director of the research. Such participation thus echoes the need for transitional process to be more inclusive and can act to initiate such modes of action.
In post-conflict contexts, there are many barriers to effective research: potential research subjects are traumatised, physical access can be compromised, and sampling strategies complicated. Fear and suspicion make the gaining of the trust of respondents potentially problematic. Divided societies complicate “emotional access”, that is “...the ability of the researcher to gain social acceptance within the community and gain access to the rich data that the respondents themselves hold.” (Bowd, 2008: 129). One way to address these challenges is through a “composite approach” (Barakat et al., 2002): using a combination of methods including the ethnographic, participatory rural appraisal (PRA), observation and surveys to overcome the constraints of research in a conflict or post- conflict environment. However, using participatory methods such as PRA in a highly divided society is problematic: „community‟ can often be held together by the weakest of ties and subject to the divisions of the conflict, and social structures damaged by
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violence. In contrast to the development context, in human rights and transitional justice participatory methods are problematic in an environment where rights are being violated, since this can create security risks for those victims seen to speak out. As such human rights work in conflict has largely remained something that is done by specialists on behalf of victims. In contexts where security issues are less salient, a strategy of
mobilisation is often employed where victims themselves organise, or are organised, for
advocacy: this study will discuss the possibilities of mobilisation as a tactic to permit victims‟ perspectives to impact on transitional justice processes and as part of a research methodology.
Significant empirical work has been done with populations affected by conflict and violations, including the exploration of relevant methodologies, from a transitional justice viewpoint. Pham and Vinck have proposed an “evidence based transitional justice” (2007: 231), developing what aims to be a comprehensive approach to empirical research with populations emerging from conflict. This has the express intention of impacting the development and assessment of transitional justice mechanisms, derived from the significant practical experience of the Human Rights Centre at the University of California, Berkeley.22 Pham and Vinck have identified participation of the community being researched as essential, both in order to challenge international prescriptive tendencies and to ensure that voices from the grassroots are heard. Such consultative processes are the first step towards challenging top-down process with perspectives „from below‟. Such an approach has been articulated as “transitional justice from the bottom up” (McEvoy and McGregor, 2008) and a need to “…explore ways in which [...] institutions of transitional justice can broaden ownership and encourage the participation of those who have been most directly affected by the conflict”. (McEvoy and McGregor, 2008: 5, emphasis in original) The participatory methodology used here aims to also provide support to mobilisation of victims that can sustain victim input to such process and lead to a victim-centred transitional justice (Section 3.2). The frame for most studies that have emerged from the transitional justice discourse is to understand what a society can do in response to crimes of the past, rather than asking victims what their needs are of a transitional process. Recovery from conflict and social reconstruction are only possible if the transformative impact of conflict on those most affected can be understood: this demands a broader approach. Here, I aim to avoid imposing any
22
See the numerous surveys conducted by the Human Rights Center and the International Center for Transitional Justice. See also Biro et al. (2004); Vinck and Pham (2010).
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external agenda on the research, but to let those most affected by conflict and violations define their own needs as individuals and as communities.
The ethnography of this study aims not just to understand victim perspectives but also to produce knowledge that can serve those victims by providing tools around which they can mobilise and that can be used to advocate for the addressing of their needs. It is political in that it seeks to challenge approaches to victims that emerge from narrow and unrepresentative elites, either national or international, that marginalise the views of those most affected. It thus seeks to be a critical ethnography, that is a “conventional ethnography with a political purpose” (Thomas, 1993: 4). An explicit aim of the research is to empower victims, and this drives the Action Research component. This study thus aims not to be a dispassionate study of a disempowered group in the anthropological tradition, but to actively engage with the „subjects‟ of the research (Scheper-Hughes, 1995). This is a natural reprise of a previous role of the researcher when working with these communities, and seeks to place the research in the young tradition of “critically engaged activist research” (Speed, 2006). The research seeks to contribute by addressing the politics of knowledge production in post-conflict societies and to “decolonise” (ibid.) the relationship between the research and the researched. Rather than seeking to avoid the tensions inherent in ethnographic research on human rights, such collaborative research merges activism and cultural critique, making them a productive part of the process. I begin from the understanding both that there is no such thing as “human rights „in the abstract‟” (Goodale, 2007: 25), and that “non-elites [...] are very often important human rights theorists” (ibid). A component of this is to give weight to indigenous concepts of importance to ordinary victims, even where they fail to find resonance in the normative frameworks of rights or law that transitional justice traditionally seeks to use. The research is intended wherever possible as an exercise in knowledge production on the terms of the researched, with victims and their organisations determining what was studied, and how, and what was done with the output. As an activist collaborator and facilitator, the researcher can enable the research, ensure it is disseminated to decision makers locally and use the data collected for his own academic purposes. Whilst an unequal power relationship between the researcher and researched persists, and ethical dilemmas remain (Section 5.3), the process aims to serve victims on their own terms. The long-term relationship between the researcher and victims‟ associations amounted to a prolonged process of negotiation of the obligations of the researcher, in analogy to the concept of “iterative consent” (Mackenize et al., 2007), ensuring accountability to the researched.
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The research agenda articulated here emerged from years of direct contact with victims, and a desire to see victims contribute to the transitional agenda. In both research contexts, since the end of the conflict victims, often from marginalised communities in rural areas, have become increasingly frustrated at their inability to influence the transitional agenda and at being represented by elites from the capital remote from their own lives. This research aims to exploit the mutuality of the research agenda and the desire of victims for dissemination of their needs. This co-dependence allows a deep understanding of both the problems victims face, and their resources and strengths.
The study was rooted in a participatory Action Research approach (Rappaport, 1970; Rhaman, 1993) with associations of families of the Missing. These associations represent victims, most often on a local district basis; they are known and trusted by the families of the Missing, and thus constitute a route to engagement with victims and an understanding of their agendas The family associations are groups of victims with relatives disappeared by the state or other parties to conflict who have come together to support each-other and to advocate for an addressing of the needs that arise as a result of having a missing family member. The research agenda is driven by the concept that victims best know their needs and how they should be articulated. As such, the research design and conceptualisation process was executed in a participatory way with associations of families of the Missing in Nepal and Timor-Leste. The associations, together with individual families who are their members, determined the goals of the research process and the methodology. This was done over a period of several months in both research contexts through a process of continuous interaction with family associations. The association leadership led the process but involved ordinary members of the association, both in their offices and through trips to the field made by the researcher with association leaders. This was essentially an emancipatory approach to participation, with the research driven by the researched. In Timor-Leste the fact that few victims‟ groups exist reduced the interactivity of the research process with a smaller number of victims and associations steering the participatory element of the study.
The output of this process of consultation with victims was that the research would have a significant advocacy dimension, would be ethnographic, and that the family would be the unit of analysis. Families wanted their needs to be communicated to authorities and advocacy can attempt to do this. Ethically, this engagement with family associations helped to address many issues (see Section 5.3) and facilitated access to
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families, through the construction of an ethical relationship with research subjects. The advocacy approach allows the addressing of the issue of consent, by ensuring that families are supportive of the research and can potentially benefit from it. The associations participated in the research as a community of victims and following finalisation of the research design were partners in its implementation with the associations, their leadership and members acting as gatekeepers and mediators with families (Section 5.2.3). They briefed family members on the nature of the research and assisted in the building of trust between the researcher and the researched.
The family is the unit of analysis: the nature of disappearance is such that it impacts families, rather than communities or individuals alone. In both Nepal and Timor the family is the principal unit of social organisation and is the most natural way to approach the issue. It was decided that whilst a qualitative methodology would be used, efforts would be made to ensure that the sampling was representative of all victims to validate the advocacy component and permit quantitative statements. The study emphasised the goals of transition, rather than the specific mechanisms (such as trials, Truth Commissions etc.), motivated by the lack of knowledge of potential mechanisms by victims and by the philosophy of the study that individual families would determine their own priorities in terms of needs. It was however possible to test attitudes to particular approaches, such as compensation, prosecutions and amnesty.
At the completion of the research the results were discussed with victims and associations, both to demonstrate that their goals for the study had been met and also as a member checking (Cresswell and Miller, 2000) exercise (Section A4.5). The final research reports, produced together with the associations, allowed the dissemination of the results as a tool of advocacy. In both contexts the research results were published in relevant local languages by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and publicly launched in conjunction with senior members of the Government (Section A4.5) in the presence of family associations (NepalNews, 2009; AlertNet, 2010). The collaboration with the ICRC brought several benefits to the research in addition to permitting publication of the results and allowing access to elites in Government and civil society. The additional resources that became available to what was otherwise a graduate degree study were invaluable, including use of vehicles that provided access to remote areas that would otherwise not have been reached. This is essential to the sampling strategy of the study, in which a random sample is chosen: without having access to all families such an approach is compromised. Emotional access (see above)
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was also eased through the association with ICRC, since it was known by a significant fraction of families met as perhaps the only actor that has maintained direct contact with victims since the time of the violation (in many cases) up to the present day.