Relational Harm:
Targeting the Family in War and Oppression

This is an ERC-funded project based in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. This project deepens understandings of relational harm, understood as harm that individuals and communities experience through the targeting and control of intimate relationships. The project focuses on care and care relationships and how these are targeted and, in some cases, rebuilt in war and counterinsurgency. We examine forced familial separation as a manifestation of relational harm particularly in the context of state enforced disappearances. We look at lived experiences and ongoing legacies of disappearances and family separation and at their instrumental usages in conflict and counterinsurgency. Additionally, we study global, regional, and community responses to relational harm. The project incorporates field research in four contemporary cases (Sri Lanka, the Rohingya community in Bangladesh, Guatemala, and Peru) and archival research on family separation and reunification during the Second World War.