DECONSTRUCTING THE CONTINUUM OF VIOLENCE FROM A HUMAN RIGHTS PERSPECTIVE: THE CASE OF VIOLENCE AGAINST ERITREAN WOMEN IN TIGRAY

This thesis offers a rigorous analysis of the ‘Continuum of Violence’ theory - as first proposed by Kelly (1987) and Cockburn (2004) – in the context of Eritrean women, displaced in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia. The theory contests that women’s experiences of violence contradict the embedded assumptions within traditional conflict studies; violence, for women, is not merely a physical act with physical ramifications, nor does it initiate with the outbreak of war and conclude with a peace-accord. This actuality refutes the validity of the binary categories of pre-war, fighting, and post-war, and instead conceptualises the absence of physical violence as an ‘interbellum’ before it proceeds again (Cockburn, 2004:39). To this end, this thesis focuses on a supposedly ‘peace’ stage of conflict: Eritrean women who had fled violence from the state and sought refuge in Ethiopia. Ultimately, only to be apprehended by physical violence once more since the outbreak of the Tigray conflict in 2020, as well as the myriad insecurities which a refugee context creates. This thesis has two fundamental aims. Primarily, it seeks to assess the validity of the theory as a description of women’s experiences of violence and as a tool to critique conventional responses to such violence. Secondly, adding a novel lens to studies of this sort, it seeks to consider the merits of the theory when mainstreamed into policy as a practical solution to interrupt the continuum. It utilises a mixed-method analysis, integrating literature on the subject with findings gathered from semi-structured interviews with working professionals in the field. Taking VAW as an absolute violation of women’s human rights, this thesis also has an overarching motivation. By illuminating that without gender-sensitive solutions there can be no true ‘peace’ for women, and considering the practicality of such solutions, this work ultimately seeks to secure women’s human rights by interrupting continual patterns of violence against them.