ABSTRACT
A significant body of research has established that sexual and gender-based forms of violence frequently occur during times of conflict and are omnipresent throughout the refugee journey. However, less attention has been paid to the continuum which links the various forms of sexual and gender-based violence through different stages of refugees’ experiences from the country of origin to the country of destination, and incidences of violence are instead often presented as singular circumscribed and localised experiences. Based on qualitative data involving the collection and thematic analysis of the narratives of 83 refugee women from DRC, Rwanda, and Burundi this chapter seeks to illustrate the continuum of violence experienced by these women from conflict zones, through transit and on arrival in destination countries like South Africa, a country which in theory has progressive asylum systems and laws in place. Employing a feminist intersectional approach, the chapter seeks to analyse how the violence that the women face at the different stages of their migration journey creates situations of disadvantage, thus creating deepened vulnerabilities to violence in other contexts of their journey, and forming a vicious cycle of violence from which it is hard to escape.
