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ABSTRACT
Drawing on archival and field research, this article critically examines the production and distribution of gender roles and expectations in SGBV programming, in particular in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). We find the underlying currents in some of these programmes reinscribe heteronormativity and focus on individual betterment which resonates with regulating gender and sexuality during colonialism. In some cases, strongly western-inspired norms of individual agency have been introduced, disregarding structural constraints of people’s lives. To conclude, we explore alternative approaches to SGBV prevention, ones in which international approaches are re-defined and vernacularized for local use – but which also at times inform global understandings.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Alex Veit, Chloé Lewis, David Duriesmith and Clara Magariño for their valuable comments on earlier versions of the paper.
Notes on contributors
Henri Myrttinen is a researcher at the Mauerpark Institute and has worked on SGBV prevention issues since 2010, including in the Great Lakes region, in various roles, including as a researcher, policy advocacy and programme development. In his work he has especially focused on issues of masculinities and, more recently, diverse sexual orientations and gender identities in situations of conflict and peacebuilding.
Charlotte Mertens is a researcher at the University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on sexual violence in conflict settings, particularly in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. She is interested in representations of violence, humanitarianism, the sexual politics of empire, colonial history and racial epistemologies. She has conducted fieldwork in eastern DRC and archival research since 2012.
Notes
1 For the purposes of this article, we take a broad definition of SGBV, along the lines of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC Citation2015, 322), including domestic and intimate partner violence.
2 Given the sensitivities around the issues raised, we do not single out particular interventions by name for critique but rather examine broader trends in the whole sector.
3 In using the word ‘native’, we draw on Said (Citation1978, 92) who suggested that the ‘Oriental’ or the ‘native’ refers to a category of people, not necessarily contained to a geographical area, but constructed as inferior and belonging to a particular race.
4 The authors translated all archival sources from French into English.
5 Foyers sociaux were training centres where indigenous married and ‘free’ women were taught home economics and maternal hygiene. In promoting the model of the nuclear family, foyers sociaux attempted to curb African primitive sexuality and emerging problems of adultery, prostitution and alcoholism in the urban centres and instill a European way of life.
6 Education was the responsibility of the missionaries, by virtue of the convention concluded between the Catholic Church and the Independent State of the Congo on 26 May 1906 (Mianda Citation2002, 145). Missionary schools taught the men French, the language used by the European elite. Girls were taught in their native language how to become perfect mothers and housewives. Girls’ education focused on the acquisition of domestic skills according to Christian morality (Mianda Citation2002, 144).
7 Author’s focus group discussions in Bukavu and Goma.
8 The slogan later became part of a UN prevention campaign but under a slightly different form. Featuring Antonio Banderas, his message ‘real men don’t hit women’ became the slogan of the HeForShe website of UN Women.
9 See also El-Bushra, Myrttinen, and Naujoks (Citation2014) and Myrttinen and Nsengiyumva (Citation2014) for Uganda and Burundi, respectively, of critiques of approaches of INGOs centring on fore-grounding men’s changed behaviours. In particular in the Burundian case, men repeatedly re-iterated the importance of their new, clean clothing to them as a visible marker of new-found masculine respectability.
10 The practice of having girlfriends on the side is sometimes referred to as le deuxième bureau (literally the ‘second office’). Up to this day, the official matrimonial system in Congo is monogamy but polygamy, although officially illegal, is widely practiced. Having multiple wives is seen as a token of wealth, a factor which enhances a stronger masculinity. The phenomenon of le deuxième bureau whereby a married man enjoys extramarital relationships with several women, is widespread but particularly common among rich men and Congolese politicians (see also Verhaegen Citation1990).
11 Although it should be noted feminist scholarship has pointed to the transformative opportunities created by war which may disrupt the existing gender order (see e.g. Tripp Citation2015).
12 The victim-survivor-thriver comes out of western therapeutical approaches, and can have quite strong under-tones of blaming victims for ‘remaining stuck’ in their victim status, see for example ‘Victim, Survivor, Thriver: A New Perspective on Grief’ accessed at https://donnagore.com/2018/01/24/victim-survivor-thriver-a-world-of-difference/
13 Interview Bukavu, Sept 2012.
14 Interviews with local NGOs in Bukavu and Minova Sept 2012; focus groups June 2016.
15 Interview Mudaka Oct 2012.
16 Focus groups June 2016.
17 Focus groups June 2016.
18 On local resistance to externally imposed interventions, see Autesserre (Citation2014) who argues that disregard of local knowledge and lack of local ownership are the main triggers of resistance. Participant observation at a Congolese community-based organization alongside interviews with other CBOs conducted by one of the authors in 2015 showed resistance to international approaches to sexual violence. In response, some CBOs adopted an approach of proximity while promoting the importance of the natural environment to aid recovery from sexual violence (see Mertens and Pardy Citation2017).
19 These include for example the work of the Goma-based Institut Supérieur du Lac with, HEAL Africa, Benenfance and the US/Brazilian INGO Promundo (https://promundoglobal.org/2016/02/09/thousands-celebrate-nonviolence-in-democratic-republic-of-the-congo-second-round-of-living-peace-groups/), the Tushiriki Wote project co-ordinated by the UK-based INGO International Alert with a consortium of local, eastern DRC NGOs (https://www.international-alert.org/projects/12927); the work of the Congo Men’s Network COMEN which collaborates with a range of Global North and Global South-based NGOs (http://menengage.org/regions/africa/dr-congo/) or the work of IRC (Pierotti, Lake, and Lewis Citation2018) or Tearfund (Citation2017).