Violence against women, displacement and religion: Rethinking humanitarianism

Violence against women, displacement and religion: rethinking humanitarianism explores religious influences in displaced women’s experiences of violence by developing and applying a novel integrated intersectional and socioecological analysis. Drawing on empirical mixed‑methods research with humanitarian practitioners, and Christian and Muslim African and Levantine displaced women in Türkiye and Tunisia, the book reveals religion evolves as both an intersectional vulnerability and a resource for resilience, coping and displacement. The reader visits the survivors’ intimate relations with the sacred and their meanings of religious constructs. The book argues that religion is an integral part of survivors’ experiences, which are rarely understood by dominant humanitarian frameworks that secularise women’s realities and frequently overlook their spiritual suffering. By bridging humanitarian, migration and religious ecosystems, the volume proposes the development of an “intersectional ecology of protection”. This volume bridges a gap in knowledge on the dual role of religion in a spiralling continuum of violence across forced migration routes, thereby expanding the scholarship of gender, religion, displacement and humanitarianism. It contributes to the humanitarian reform debates by challenging disengaged approaches to religion in policy and practice, and so it advances more inclusive approaches to protection in ways where lived experiences of religion are understood.