Panelist: Nazish Brohi
Where: LUMS
 

Through her work on violence against women, Ms. Brohi grapples with what the absence of sexual violence against women means in conflict contexts, when it's accompanied by emphatic statements of presence. Sexual violence remains the single biggest fear for women when they enter the public sphere, even when their encounters with it occur usually in the private sphere. What then do secondary claims of sexual violence signify when they don’t occur? What politics do rumors serve? Do these offer an insight to when such acts do occur? Do these help understand the nuances and conditionalities of impunity? The speaker will use a case study drawn from her research in Swat, and use that to understand other instances. This is an exploratory effort, undergirded by the ethical dilemma of whether one can or should say with any certainty that there have been such absences, given the looming presence of silences.