re. NI and domestic violence. This was recently published.
“When you know what they are capable of”: Paramilitary-related Gendered Coercive Control
Northern Ireland’s peace process has brought substantial gains. Political violence has dramatically reduced, and economic and social development has progressed. We can easily assume that this means that peace has been secured and is experienced by everyone.
However, paramilitarism remains, and not just as we might assume, as a residual hangover from the Troubles. The terrorist threat level for Northern Ireland is estimated to be ‘substantial’. The Independent Reporting Commission on paramilitarism identifies it as a significant ‘obstacle’ and the ‘unseen’ part of the work towards peace still to be achieved. The 2023 Peace Monitoring Report noted that paramilitaries today direct their violence towards their own communities.
Too often we also assume that violence takes a particular form – a physical incident, an event – something that erupts and then is over. But not all violence looks like that, including some of the violence wrought by paramilitary groups. It is the harm that we cannot see that is often the most insidious and impactful for those living with it.
Coercive control is increasingly recognised as a form of intimate partner violence. While it might include discrete acts or patterns of violence, it primarily involves the build-up of a chronic environment of fear, dependence and shame. Many of the harms of coercive control are imperceptible. It may simply involve a ‘loaded look’, or words of denigration, intimidation or even threat that, over time, become the coercive basis for control.
It is exactly this type of coercive harm that is experienced by some women in relationship with men who are involved in paramilitarism. It remains an ‘unseen’ aspect of today’s paramilitarism, hidden in plain sight.
Article continues at https://foylewomensaid.org/when-you-know-what-they-are-capable-of-paramilitary-related-gendered-coercive-control/
(its not saying that is the case on all instances of domestic violence, but just an additional factor - and presumably the same in other areas of conflict / paramilitaries.)