Mairead Smith

Humanitarian responses to conflict-relation sexual violence (CRSV) constitute a shift from humanitarianism’s moral principle of alleviating suffering to a focus on suffering arising from a specific form of violence, namely rape in conflict. In attending to the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) use of CRSV as a crime against humanity, this project examines the responses to the suffering of rape that mobilizes values, norms, and obligations in governing precarious lives in post-conflict Sinjar, Iraq. In Sinjar, the humanitarian response to CRSV is complicated by the fact that Kurmancî–the language spoken by the majority of victims–does not have a direct translation for “rape.” By examining language in practice and language ideologies associated with the processes of translating and universalizing the category of rape, I explore how language is central to how life is remade after violence attending to the often overlooked semiotics of the humanitarian encounter. I seek to interrogate the idea that sexual violence results in a linguistic wound by exploring the language ideologies and language practices engaged with by humanitarian actors and survivors/victims alike and how these shape the creation of certain subject positions that may or may not speak about rape.