Towards a World Order of Dignity
Conflict-Related Sexual Violence as a Lens on Humiliation
Author: Evelin Lindner, M.D., Ph.D.s
Published August 2026, 196 pages, paperback
USD 21.90; 18.90 €
ISBN 978-1-952292-12-5 (print), 978-1-952292-15-6 (pdf)
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About the book
This book was written in response to a 2024 request from the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict (SRSG-SVC), Pramila Patten, inviting Evelin Lindner to apply her research on dignity and humiliation to conflict-related sexual violence and to the situation of survivors in conflict settings. Sexual violence in conflict is never only about bodies. It is also about the systematic weaponisation of humiliation. The author applies experience from her life’s work on humiliation and dignity to the phenomenon of conflict-related sexual violence. Her decades of research across continents, cultures, and disciplines provide a powerful lens to understand how humiliation is produced, intensified, and recycled in contemporary conflicts, and how it can be transformed. This publication brings that lens into sharp focus at a moment when the world can least afford to look away. The book situates conflict-related sexual violence within a wider global paradox. On the one hand, human rights norms, including the equal dignity of all people, have never been more widely affirmed. On the other hand, many communities experience daily realities of dispossession, discrimination, and violence that stand in stark contrast to these promises. When dignity is proclaimed but denied, humiliation acquires an unprecedented explosive potential. In such a context, sexual violence in conflict becomes one of the most devastating weapons of mass destruction. The book offers more than analysis, it also offers ethical orientation. It shows how humiliation operates at multiple levels – from intimate experiences of violation to the dynamics of communities, states, and the international system – and how it interacts with militarisation, economic inequality, and ecological destruction.
Foreword by Pramila Pratten
For more than two decades, survivors of conflict-related sexual violence have entrusted their stories to the United Nations and to my Office. Each testimony is an act of courage that exposes not only individual suffering, but the deeper structures of power, contempt, and impunity that make such crimes possible. Over the years, listening to survivors and communities around the world, it has become increasingly clear that sexual violence in conflict is never only about bodies. It is also about the systematic weaponisation of humiliation.
This is why I invited Evelin Lindner to apply her life’s work on humiliation and dignity to the phenomenon of conflict-related sexual violence. Her decades of research across continents, cultures, and disciplines provide a powerful lens to understand how humiliation is produced, intensified, and recycled in contemporary conflicts, and how it can be transformed. This publication brings that lens into sharp focus at a moment when the world can least afford to look away.
The book situates conflict-related sexual violence within a wider global paradox. On the one hand, human rights norms, including the equal dignity of all people, have never been more widely affirmed. On the other hand, many communities experience daily realities of dispossession, discrimination, and violence that stand in stark contrast to these promises. When dignity is proclaimed but denied, humiliation acquires an unprecedented explosive potential. In such a context, sexual violence in conflict becomes one of the most devastating weapons of mass humiliation, tearing at the social fabric and closing off pathways to reconciliation and peace.
What this work offers is more than analysis, it also offers ethical orientation. It shows how humiliation operates at multiple levels – from intimate experiences of violation to the dynamics of communities, states, and the international system – and how it interacts with militarisation, economic inequality, and ecological destruction. It calls for a world order grounded in what Lindner names dignism – an ethic of equal dignity, mutual solidarity, and ontological humility, recognising that we are neighbours on one fragile planet. This vision speaks directly to the mandate of my Office, which encompasses both the documentation of crimes and the transformation of the conditions that allow them to occur.
The book also reminds us that cycles of humiliation are not inevitable. They can be prevented, halted, and repaired. Survivors and their communities hold knowledge about healing, justice, and restoration that must be honoured and amplified. Indigenous traditions of stewardship, relational approaches to security, and local practices of accountability all point to alternative ways of organising life together – ways that refuse the logic of domination and humiliation.
For policymakers, practitioners, and scholars, this publication is both a warning and an invitation. It warns of the dangers of normalising humiliation – whether through overt atrocities, structural injustice, or seemingly mundane forms of disrespect and exclusion. At the same time, it invites us to imagine and build institutions that protect dignity as carefully as they protect borders, namely, through economies that nurture care rather than rewarding exploitation, and through security frameworks that prioritise human relationships over weapons.
The work presented here will not give easy answers. It will, however, deepen understanding of why conflict-related sexual violence is so profoundly destructive, and why responses confined to the criminal or military sphere will be insufficient. It challenges us to see that preventing such violence requires nothing less than a transformation of how we think about power, safety, and our responsibilities to one another across all boundaries.
It is my hope that this book will be read with the seriousness it deserves by all who are committed to ending conflict-related sexual violence and building sustainable peace. May it help decision-makers recognise the long shadows cast by humiliation, and may it strengthen the resolve of all those who work, often against great odds, to move our world from humiliation to dignity.
Pramila Patten
United Nations Special Representative of the
Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict
Contents
Foreword by Pramila Patten 9
Foreword by Linda M. Hartling 11
Preface 15
Executive summary 17
Expanded executive summary 19
Key insights 20
Structure of the book 24
Introduction 27
Lindner’s conceptual framework 28
Humiliation as theorised by Lindner 33
Lindner’s critical warnings in an era of polycrisis 37
Current global patterns of conflict-related sexual violence 43
Sexual violence within hierarchical honour-based contexts 45
Rape as a ‘war declaration’ between clans 45
Rape permitted as the victor’s ‘spoils of war’ 49
Sexual violence in societal contexts embracing equal dignity 53
Sexual violence in times of transition 57
Historical transition from ‘state’ to ‘feeling’ 60
Focusing on feelings: Compassion or cruelty 64
Planetary survival demands violence prevention 75
Historical window of opportunity for planetary survival 79
Humiliation as the ‘nuclear bomb of the emotions’ 83
Pathways to transformation 87
From male-centred dominance to mutual partnership 87
From the security dilemma to global collective security 88
From run-away profit to global care 90
From ecocide, sociocide, and cogitocide to common good 97
Current initiatives addressing conflict-related violence 99
From silence to recognition 100
The Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict 102
Local initiatives integrating survivors 104
Trauma legacy of conflict-related sexual violence 107
Humiliation and gendered vulnerability 107
Trauma rehabilitation and human rights responses 107
Clinical insights into humiliation 109
Societal and political dimensions 109
Dignity‑based recovery 110
Reflections for leaders, helpers, and healers 113
Global community 113
Affected local communities 116
Those profiting from militarisation 121
Outlook: Ontological humility and dignism 123
Conclusion 129
Policy brief – key takeaways 130
Acknowledgements 133
Other books by Evelin Lindner 137
Short biography of the author 141
Reference List 143
Endnotes 169
Reviews
This book could not have been published at a timelier moment. The world faces rising insecurity, attacks on the rules-based international order, disrespect for human rights, and the dominance of autocratic power. No tool serves these ends more powerfully than humiliation – wielded against both groups and individuals.
Pramila Patten captures this perfectly in her foreword: In such a context, sexual violence in conflict becomes one of the most devastating weapons of mass humiliation, tearing at the social fabric and closing off pathways to reconciliation and peace.
Long ignored, conflict-related sexual violence has left survivors utterly neglected. This book examines international efforts to combat it as part of the broader struggle for dignity, human rights, and peace. It represents a unique compilation of research, legal measures, practical experiences, and ethical guidance. This reading is so strong, so relevant and so urgently needed in today’s world.
Nora Sveaass,
Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Norway.
Former member of UN Committee Against Torture (2005–2013) and UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (2014–2022),
founder of Mental Health and Human Rights Info (MHHRI)