Abstract
This thesis examines how reframing post-conflict justice through a synchronised, survivor-centred, and relational lens can more effectively address the war–peace continuum of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). Situated at the intersection of feminist theory, relational sociology, peacebuilding, and cultural transformation, the research advances the Gender Relational Approach (GRA): an original conceptual model that integrates gender-transformative thinking with dialogic justice, care ethics, and systemic reform. Rather than viewing SGBV as an episodic by-product of war, the study conceptualises it as an enduring socio-relational phenomenon embedded in the cultural, institutional, and affective fabrics of society.
Guided by the philosophies of pragmatism, relational dialectics and social constructionism, the research design adopts a transdisciplinary qualitative bricolage methodology. This includes a scoping review of literature on transitional justice, gendered violence, psychosocial needs, and relational frameworks, alongside a series of semi-structured expert interviews with global peacebuilding scholar-practitioners and gender justice advocates. These dialogic encounters serve not only to deepen thematic insight but also to co-theorise grounded understandings of justice and transformation across diverse conflict-affected contexts.
Employing abductive reasoning and grounded thematic analysis, the thesis in its entirety surfaces a conceptual framework melding peacemaking criminology, psychosocial care and gender relational mutuality, which collectively scaffold the tri-pillared GRA framework of ‘Shifting Norms, Supporting Survivors and Reforming Systems’. Rather than focusing on single-country case studies, the inquiry draws from a constellation of survivor-informed interventions and relational justice practices that span multiple cultural and geopolitical settings.
The GRA thus emerges as a flexible, synchronised model that bridges individual, communal, and structural domains of justice. It offers a continuation of a care as well as a critical alternative to dominant institutional paradigms by centring relationality as both method and outcome, and by affirming survivors as epistemic agents in the co-creation of sustainable post-conflict futures. This thesis contributes to Peace and Conflict studies by expanding the ethical and conceptual terrain of gender justice and articulating a holistic, culturally embedded, and transformative approach to repairing the legacies of gendered harm.