CTJRN Lecture: 'Can Transitional Justice Handle Sexual Violence Against Men? The Case of Uganda'

Speaker: Dr Chris Dolan, Director of the Centre for Refugee Law, Makerere University, Kampala.

Location: Moot Court Room (G28), Faculty on Law, 10 West Road, Sidgwick Site.

Chris Dolan is known for his work on gender dynamics, sexual rights, sexual violence and masculinities in conflict and post-conflict settings. A graduate of Corpus Christi, Cambridge, he first worked with Mozambican refugees in South Africa as it was transitioning out of Apartheid in the early 1990s. This led to work with former RENAMO and FRELIMO combattants in Mozambique in the mid-1990s and conflict analysis with Internally Displaced Persons in northern Uganda in the late 1990s. The latter resulted in the publication of "Social Torture: The Case of northern Uganda, 1986-2006" by Berghahn books in 2009. After completing his doctorate at the London School of Economics in 2005, he spent a year with UNHCR in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a Reintegration Officer, before taking up his current position as Director of the Refugee Law Project, a community outreach project of the School of Law at Makerere University in Kampala, in 2006. In that position he has broadened the organisation's scope to include questions of Transitional Justice, and extended its work with survivors of sexual violence to include men, sex workers and sexual minorities. He has initiated the use of video advocacy to challenge established certainties on gender issues. Examples include the award-winning documentary "Gender Against Men" (2009), which explores male vulnerabilities to gendered violence, "Getting Out" (2011) which documents the realities of LGBTI asylum seeking, and, most recently (Dec 2011) "They Slept With Me", exploring the challenges of justice for male survivors of sexual violence. In addition to his RLP work, he also chairs the Steering Committee of Uganda's Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights & Constitutional Law, which was established in October 2009 to campaign against Uganda's notorious Anti-Homosexuality Bill.