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The struggle against sexual violence in conflict: Investigating the digital turn

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2021

Kristin Bergtora Sandvik  and
Kjersti Lohne
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Abstract

Digital technological innovations make new types of responses to conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) possible, bringing with them both potential promises and pitfalls. Aiming to provide a conceptual starting point for further analysis, this article problematizes the trend towards data extraction in exchange for aid, protection and justice, and argues for the importance of complementing technology-driven approaches to the struggle against CRSV with the inclusion of strategies for user participation and investment in digital literacy as key aspects of the response. To explore how the digital turn shapes the struggle against CRSV, the article offers a three-part analytical framework. First, the article unpacks how digital technologies create corresponding “digital bodies” – comprised of images, information, biometrics and other data stored in digital space – which represent the bodies of individuals affected by sexual violence, and which interplay with the risks posed upon the physical bodies of those facing CRSV. Second, the article maps out the role of digital technologies in a cycle of intervention, including prevention of, response to, documentation of and accountability for CRSV. Third, recognizing the increasing importance of data governance to the struggle against CRSV, the article considers how divergent humanitarian, human rights and international criminal law approaches to data may create different pathways for CRSV data. This could also give rise to new tensions in how international actors approach CRSV.

Keywords

conflict-related sexual violencedigital bodiesdigital literacyhumanitarian datasexual violencehuman rightsinternational criminal justice
Type
“Do no harm”: Humanitarian action in the digital age
Information
International Review of the Red Cross , Volume 102 , Issue 913: Digital technologies and war , April 2020 , pp. 95 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the ICRC.

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Footnotes

*

Research for this paper was funded by the PRIO-hosted project “Do No Harm: Ethical Humanitarian Innovation” and the University of Oslo-hosted project “Vulnerability in the Robot Society”, both funded by the Research Council of Norway.

References

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2 “Superplatforms”, or “platforms of platforms”, are giant internet companies that operate across multiple sectors, such as Apple, Facebook, and Google. See, for example, David Porteous and Olga Morawczynski, “The Superplatforms are Coming … and They Will Transform Financial Inclusion”, NextBillion, 21 December 2018, available at: https://nextbillion.net/the-superplatforms-are-coming-and-they-will-transform-financial-inclusion/ (all internet references were accessed in January 2021). We use this term for the emergence of platforms such as the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) PRIMES (see: www.unhcr.org/primes.html) and the World Food Programme's SCOPE (see: https://tinyurl.com/y4axb5br).

3 See also the thematic issue of the Review on “Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict”, Vol. 96, No. 894, 2015, available at: https://international-review.icrc.org/reviews/irrc-no-894-sexual-violence-armed-conflict.

4 We understand technologization as the incremental development and application of technology-based approaches.

5 António Guterres, Conflict-Related Sexual Violence: Report of the United Nations Secretary-General, UN Doc. S/2019/280, 29 March 2019, available at: https://peacekeeping.un.org/sites/default/files/annual_report_of_the_sg_on_crsv_2018.pdf.

6 To that end, the article builds on and develops insights from Kristin Bergtora Sandvik, Technologizing the Fight against Sexual Violence: A Critical Scoping, PRIO Working Paper, Oslo, 2019, available at: https://gps.prio.org/Publications/Publication/?x=1274; Sandvik, Kristin Bergtora, “Digital Dead Body Management (DDBM): Time to Think it Through”, Journal of Human Rights Practice, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2020CrossRefGoogle Scholar, available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huaa002.

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19 K. B. Sandvik, “Wearables for Something Good”, above note 9.

20 See K. B. Sandvik, “Making Wearables in Aid”, above note 9; Sandvik, Kristin Bergtora, Jumbert, Maria Gabrielsen, Karlsrud, John and Kaufmann, Mareile, “Humanitarian Technology: A Critical Research Agenda”, International Review of the Red Cross, Vol. 96, No. 893, 2014CrossRefGoogle Scholar; K. B. Sandvik, K. L. Jacobsen and S. M. McDonald, above note 17. See also special issue of the International Journal of Transitional Justice on “Technology and Transitional Justice”, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2019.

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22 We also note the risk that digital technology reproduces biases and discrimination in society and in data sets. For example, if the working assumption is that CRSV only affects women and girls, then men, boys, and sexual and gender minority individuals will remain invisible. For an analysis of two examples of algorithmic exclusion of men and boys – in the UNHCR's vulnerability assessments and in drone strikes – see Sandvik, Kristin Bergtora, “Technology, Dead Male Bodies, and Feminist Recognition: Gendering ICT Harm Theory”, Australian Feminist Law Journal, Vol. 44, No. 1, 2018CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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24 Katerina Fialova and Flavia Fascendini, Voices from Digital Spaces: Technology-Related Violence against Women, Association for Progressive Communications, 2011; Barua, Archana and Barua, Ananya, “Gendering the Digital Body: Women and Computers”, AI & Society, Vol. 27, No. 4, 2012CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shaw, Rhonda, “‘Our Bodies, Ourselves’, Technology, and Questions of Ethics: Cyberfeminism and the Lived Body”, Australian Feminist Studies, Vol. 18, No. 40, 2003CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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26 See, for example, “Sexual Assault and Technology Misuse”, VAWnet, available at: https://vawnet.org/events/sexual-assault-and-technology-misuse.

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28 See the Callisto website, available at: www.projectcallisto.org.

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43 Sam Gregory, “Cameras Everywhere Revisited: How Digital Technologies and Social Media Aid and Inhibit Human Rights Documentation and Advocacy”, Journal of Human Rights Practice, Vol. 11, No. 2, 2019.

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45 See James Vincent, “New AI Deepfake App Creates Nude Images of Women in Seconds”, The Verge, 27 June 2019, available at: www.theverge.com/2019/6/27/18760896/deepfake-nude-ai-app-women-deepnude-non-consensual-pornography.

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47 See Anastasia Powell and Tully O'Neill, “Cyber Justice: How Technology is Supporting Victim-Survivors of Rape”, The Conversation, 5 April 2016, available at: https://theconversation.com/cyber-justice-how-technology-is-supporting-victim-survivors-of-rape-56022.

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55 Access codes are a series of letters and numbers that allow access. The idea, of course, is that legal regulations apply once consent to access has been given. The authors are grateful to the participants at the Expert Roundtable on “Using Tech Innovation to Combat Conflict-Related Sexual Violence”, held in Geneva on 18–19 February 2019 and hosted by Legal Action Worldwide and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, for this point.

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58 M.-H. Maras and M. D. Miranda, above note 56.

59 Ibid.

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66 Ibid.

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