The ‘War’ / ‘Not-War’ Divide::Domestic violence in the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative

While recognising the importance of policy designed to tackle conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence, scholars have increasingly critiqued such policies for failing to sufficiently apprehend the multiple forms of this violence - from rape deployed as a weapon of war to domestic violence - as interrelated oppressions located along a continuum. In this article I explore a connected but distinct line of critique, arguing that SGBV policies are also limited by a narrow understanding of how gender-based violences relate to war itself. Drawing on an analysis of the British Government’s Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative, I identify a key distinction which emerges between those types of SGBV which are considered to be part of war, and those which are not. This division, I suggest, closes down space for recognising how war is also enacted within private spaces.