From Peacekeeping to Proxy Wars: Displacement and Gender Violence in the current conflict in Eastern DRC | Annie Bunting

Join us for the second seminar of the 2025-26 CrimSL Speaker Series on Wednesday, October 22, 2025!

Professor Annie Bunting, Professor of Law & Society at York University will present "From Peacekeeping to Proxy Wars: Displacement and Gender Violence in the current conflict in Eastern DRC." 

This is a free event, however, registration is required.

Prior to the seminar, join us for a light lunch from noon to 12:30 pm in the Centre Lounge. Please indicate your lunch RSVP for catering purposes when you register.

Abstract

The ongoing conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) includes alarming levels of sexual and gender-based violence and serious gendered repercussions, with implications for cross-border and domestic security. Sexual violence in previous wars (between 1996-2003) has drawn spectacularized reporting that has served to re-inscribe colonial narratives of the DRC as a ‘lawless space’ and to justify increased militarisation in combating non-state armed groups. Based on this context and advancing a survivor-centred model, empirical research was collected in collaboration with the Congolese organization SOFEPADI in late 2024. This paper will explore the connections between SGBV and forced displacement, the cross-border influences on both perpetration of and protection from SGBV (including M23, RDF, Congolese army, non-state militia Wazalendo and Allied Democratic Forces, UN peacekeepers MONUSCO, and East African Community regional peacekeeping forces, amongst others); and gendered dimension of armed conflict.  

About Professor Annie Bunting

Dr. Bunting is Professor of Law & Society and York Research Chair (YRC) in International Gender Justice & Peacebuilding (2024-29). Her research interests includes socio-legal studies of marriage and childhoods; feminist international law; contemporary slavery; and SGBV in war. From 2010-2022, she directed an international research collaboration, Conjugal Slavery in War, with community-based researchers and women’s rights scholars in the DRC, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Uganda, Canada and England. She is the co-editor of Marriage by Force? Contestation over Consent and Coercion in Africa (Ohio Univ. Press, 2016) with Benjamin Lawrance and Richard Roberts; Contemporary Slavery: Popular Rhetoric and Political Practice (Univ. of British Columbia Press, 2017; Cornell Univ. Press, 2018) with Joel Quirk; and Research as more than extraction: Knowledge production and sexual violence in post conflict African societies (Ohio Univ. Press, 2023) with Allen Kiconco and Joel Quirk.

Accessibility

Please note that our Centre Lounge and CG 265 seminar room are on the second floor of the Canadiana Gallery building, with stair access only as there is no elevator. If you have any access needs or if there are any ways we can support your participation in this session, please email crimsl.communications@utoronto.ca and we will be glad to work with you to make the appropriate arrangements.

Notice of photography and videography

Photography, audio and video recording may occur throughout this event. Therefore, by attending, you hereby authorize the University of Toronto to take your photograph, video and/or record your voice and grant the university all rights to these sounds, still or moving images in any medium for educational, promotional, marketing, advertising or other such purposes that support the mission of the university. If you do not consent to this, please speak with a university representative upon your arrival.