Responsibility to Represent : Representation of conflict related sexual and gender-based violence; a thematic analysis of World Bank and ICRC documents

Abstract: Producing information today is unprecedented in both speed and accessibility. This is a benefit of living in these IT times. There is more knowledge available than ever before, which is as fantastic as it is problematic. It leaves both the producer and the user of this information responsible for assessing and interpreting it. This thesis has investigated what information has been produced on conflict related SGBV by the World Bank and the ICRC to see what representations have been established. Several documents from each organization have been collected, coded and thematically analyzed by using intersectionality and structural violence as theoretical lenses. These theoretical frameworks complemented each other in their use in this study as intersectionality was employed to look at what certain portrayals might mean for individuals, and structural violence was used to look at what the result meant on a larger scale. Ultimately, this thesis arrived at the conclusion that the portrayal of conflict related SGBV by the World Bank and ICRC is problematic. No organization is misrepresenting more than the other, but they do struggle on different themes. Overall, the main risk an organization runs when writing about this topic is to portray women as the only demographic group affected and the image that all women survivors are the same in that they are female. This leaves the consumer of this information with the assumption that conflict related SGBV only affects women, because they are women. This is wrong and it is problematic, as this thesis will explain in detail, along with other representations and analytical conclusions.