Mental harm of women in conflict zones (in the context of the war in Ukraine)

From gendered victimisation to justice as recognition

Abstract:
This abstract is based on my ongoing research at Södertörn University and explores the concept of mental harm as a bridge between law, psychology, and memory in post-conflict contexts.
The war in Ukraine has exposed a form of suffering that is difficult to measure, describe, or document — the harm that occurs not only through violence itself but also through silence, disbelief, and loss of meaning. The term mental harm is used here to describe this invisible, relational, and long-term dimension of trauma that affects women’s ability to feel safe, to trust, and to speak. It goes beyond psychological or legal definitions, revealing how social denial and institutional indifference deepen the injury.
Drawing on international criminal law, trauma studies, and feminist epistemology, this research traces how existing legal frameworks — including the International Criminal Court and transitional justice mechanisms — tend to overlook non-physical forms of harm. While physical and sexual violence are defined in legal terms, mental harm often remains unacknowledged, lacking tools for recognition and documentation.
Within this gap emerges secondary victimisation — not merely as re-traumatisation through insensitive systems, but as a social process in which the initial harm continues to live through mistrust, silence, and the ways society interprets women’s experiences for them. It occurs when a woman’s voice is replaced, her pain translated into external narratives, and her right to her own story quietly fades away.
The study examines how mental harm manifests differently across three contexts — occupied, de-occupied, and rear territories — revealing how silence becomes both a coping strategy and a form of social survival. It also introduces the idea of an epistemic dimension of harm — when pain cannot be expressed or validated and thus remains outside the realm of shared knowledge.
By linking these experiences to the processes of memorialisation and transitional justice, the research proposes that justice should not only punish but also restore — through recognition, listening, and the creation of social spaces where women’s experiences can be named and remembered.
The presentation invites reflection on how societies can integrate invisible suffering into the language of justice — transforming pain into understanding, silence into knowledge, and individual memory into collective awareness.