Legacies of the Disappeared: Missing Children and Parental Harm in Protracted Social Conflict

About the Project

This project examines the lingering legacies of disappearances on affected communities in protracted social conflicts. It develops the concept of ‘parental harm’, which is presented as harm that parents and carers experience when dependents and young people are targeted and taken away. The project defines parental harm through the lens of forced separation and harm to the ability to parent, focusing on ‘everyday’ experiences of harm and separation and emphasising the all-consuming impact searching for the disappeared has on families and communities.

The project also examines the gendered aspects of parental harm and gendered demographics and legacies of disappearances. It assesses how disappearances affect parents and carers in gendered ways and examines visibility and invisibility in narratives and research around disappearances (e.g., the visibility of motherhood versus the invisibility of fatherhood). Further, this research examines agency and the informal and formal ways in which individuals and communities address unresolved and lingering legacies of disappearances.

The project focuses on Tamil war-affected communities in Northeastern Sri Lanka and diaspora communities in the United Kingdom. It also includes field research on everyday peacebuilding and ongoing conflict and legacies of violence in Montes de María, Colombia. To further anchor the harm of disappearances in historical and contemporary contexts, the project organised a significant workshop on ‘Forced Separation’ at King’s College London, in collaboration with Fionnuala Ní Aoláin (Queen’s University Belfast). The workshop brought together scholars and practitioners working on disappearances and separation and covered a range of geographical cases and disciplines.

Key Findings

‘Parental harm’ is a form of harm that arises when a parent or carer loses or faces the threat of losing a child.

Parental harm is a significant, and yet underacknowledged, harm in conflicts and systems of oppression where youth are targeted and separated from their carers. Parental harm includes the harm of separation (and encompasses both active acts of separation and the long-term daily reality of living with the threat of separation). It also includes harm to the ability to parent and social depletion. Parental harm can affect men and women in distinct and gendered ways. Parental harm is also accentuated in settings of widespread disappearances, where it is tied to ambiguous loss.

Disappearances, particularly of youth, leave lingering legacies on many aspects of life, including in the economic, social, and political realms.

Disappearances leave complex intergenerational legacies on families and family life and affect economic opportunities (e.g., giving up work and losing social security) and political behaviour, and can lead to social rifts within affected communities and even families. Disappearances and forced separation have also affected diaspora communities from conflict-affected societies (e.g., the Tamil diaspora community in the UK).

How wars end affects the context for addressing disappearances and the legacies of violence.

Military victory (victor’s justice), militarisation, and continued repression in Sri Lanka made it harder for families to make progress with addressing disappearances. Military victory can also reduce incentives of state and military actors to make progress with transitional justice and investigations and can sustain impunity.

Individuals and communities use a range of formal and informal means to cope with the legacies of disappearances.

These include formal protest and activism, and informal ritual mourning and art. Everyday means of recovery and activism are often less visible and highly personal to the individual and community. Women play a key role in the informal sphere, including in everyday care work, and in rebuilding the social fabric. In some cases, women’s care work within war-affected communities has spilled over into other realms, leading to inter-communal peacebuilding and reconciliation. Affected communities may prefer to refer to collective recovery efforts as activism, rather than healing or memorialisation, as they wish to keep the struggle for the disappeared open.

Arts-based and participatory methods yield important insights into everyday lived experiences of disappearances and into continuums of violence, care, and peacebuilding in non-war, non-peace settings.

Some affected families and communities wanted visibility in research outputs. Against one-size-fits-all ethical protocols (e.g., at some university settings), our research in some cases questioned the standard to necessarily anonymise research. Where one of the harms of disappearances is the erasure of the victim and her history, more reflection is needed on whether anonymising can problematically silence and/or remove research participants from the academic output.

Parental harm is a significant, and yet underacknowledged, harm in conflicts and systems of oppression where youth are targeted and separated from their carers.

Recommendations

Researchers, Universities and Academic Publishers

Researchers should pay greater attention to the harm experienced by carers and communities where disappearances were prevalent. Understanding the impact on carers and communities can inform better support systems and policies for affected communities.

Examining the gendered and intergenerational legacies of disappearances, along with their long- term impacts, is paramount. This allows researchers to examine the multifaceted impacts of disappearances on social, economic, and political realms and over time.

Researchers should further explore fatherhood in relation to disappearances. Particularly where women have occupied a symbolic status, examining fatherhood can uncover the unique challenges and experiences faced by fathers of disappeared children.

Centring methodologies on victims’ well-being is essential for empowering and supporting communities and families affected by disappearances. Actively involving affected families in the research process should be central to research on the impact of disappearances.

Make ethical decisions on a case-by-case basis based on the preferences of affected communities and in consultation with in-country partners.