Vulnerability, space and conflict-related sexual violence: building spatial resilience

This article is about the relationship between vulnerability and space. It examines how vulnerability moves and shifts in relation to space – and more specifically particular types of spaces – and how space both generates vulnerability and affects the experiential ‘living’ of vulnerability. With a specific focus on conflict-related sexual violence, and drawing on empirical data from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Colombia and Uganda, the article situates and discusses the relationship between vulnerability and space within a broader transitional justice framework. Underlining the need for transitional justice processes to give more attention to spaces of vulnerability, it foregrounds the notion of ‘spatial resilience’ as providing a conceptual frame for an ecological remodelling of transitional justice.