War Widows’ Everyday Understandings of Peace in Aceh, Indonesia

Abstract

What kind of peace can be established after a protracted conflict? How do marginalised groups, such as war widows, navigate through decades of hardship, and how do they understand peace in their everyday lives? This briefing sheds light on these questions through the lens of a group of war widows’ lived experiences of the conflict in Aceh, Indonesia, and their perceptions of how peace plays out in their lives. Our contribution is mainly empirical. We show how war widows use a “peace as no war narrative” and how this seems to work in tandem with what they call an “uneconomic peace.”