From Bureaucracy to Bullets: Extreme Domicide and the Right to Home

Bree Akesson  00:03

The one thing that I think was hard to reconcile is that, and we use this as a heading in our book, is that you can never go home again. When you've been through war, when you've experienced war, and you go back, things are never the same is a never-ending loss.

Avery Moore Kloss  00:25

Welcome to CRSP Talk, a podcast from the Center for Research on Security Practices at Wilfrid Laurier University. That voice you've just heard belongs to our very own Bree Akesson, who, well, I'll just let her introduce herself.

Bree Akesson  00:39

Hi, my name is Bree Akesson. And I'm the Canada Research Chair in Global Adversity and Well Being at Wilfrid Laurier University and also the Associate Director of CRSP.

Avery Moore Kloss  00:51

Bree's work in Chechnya, Syria, Afghanistan, Ghana, and more has a few different focuses. But the one we're interested in today is her work on the idea of domicide or the planned deliberate destruction of someone's home. A few years ago, Bree connected with another researcher in this space, Andrew Basso.

Andrew Basso  01:11

My name is Andrew Basso, and I'm a researcher affiliated with the Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy at Wilfrid Laurier University.

Avery Moore Kloss  01:18

The result of this meeting of minds is now something you can hold in your hands, a book titled From Bureaucracy to Bullets: Extreme Domicide and the Right to Home. We were lucky enough to have the ear of both Bree and Andrew to talk about their new book and their recent op ed in the Toronto Star titled Destruction of Homes a War Crime on how their work on domicide can be applied to the Russian assault on Ukraine. Here is that conversation. Okay, so today I'm joined by the co authors of a new book out in February, Bree Akesson and Andrew Basso, who wrote From Bureaucracy to Bullets: Extreme Domicide and the Right to Home. Thank you both for being with us today.

Bree Akesson  02:05

Thanks for having us.

Andrew Basso  02:06

Yeah, thanks for having us.

Avery Moore Kloss  02:07

Well, I'm really excited to dive into this because I think it's it's really topical, it's a really important subject. And I know you're both experts in different parts of this area. So I think maybe, to begin, and maybe this one's for Bree just to give us a sense of like, where did the idea for Bureaucracy to Bullets start? How did this how did this start to sort of build into a book?

Bree Akesson  02:30

Yeah, this idea actually started probably about 15 years ago, I was doing research in different contexts of war. Specifically, I was in Chechnya, and Ingushetia at the end of the Second Chechen War. And I was doing work with children, I was evaluating a mental health program for children there that were impacted by the war. And we would visit families in their homes, families in their temporary homes, because a lot of them were displaced. And I was going around to meet families, and the families were seeking shelter in these places that were just so unusual and so surprising to me. They were living in abandoned factories, they were living in empty school buses, in garden sheds. And they were just trying to find a safe space for themselves. When they were in this context of the war, their homes have been destroyed, or they were afraid that their homes would be destroyed. And so they were finding shelter in these temporary spaces. And it really made me think about home and the importance of home and what happens when home is destroyed. And so this was really the catalyst for my work to really look at what happens when someone's home is destroyed. And I found that there wasn't a lot of research on this, despite the fact that in the context of war homes are typically destroyed, as you know, either they're targeted or accidentally destroyed, in some cases. So this kind of thread really stuck with me as I did work in other places like Uganda and Palestine, and Syria and Afghanistan. And I found a book written by Douglas Porteous and Sandra Smith, who are researchers out on the west coast at UBC. And they had written a book and they use the word domicide. And I thought, what an interesting word. This word domicide really conveys the intentional destruction of home. So the killing of a home or to strike down a home, home demolition or home loss and things like that. Those terms that it really captures. And so this became a thread within my research program that I was really interested in looking at. And then I should say And I remember Andrew when what year was it that we met? It was 2015, I think.

Andrew Basso  03:02

I think it was 2015.

Bree Akesson  03:59

Yeah, 2015 I met Andrew. We met in a pub in Calgary. And we were talking about our mutual research interests. And maybe Andrew, you can take the take the story off from there.

Andrew Basso  05:17

Yeah, absolutely. I remember, we met in a pub in Calgary. And we just had this immediate synergy, because a lot of my research had been on violent forced displacements of populations. And one of the things that really caught my eye about this domicide idea was it's understanding what people lose when they're forcibly displaced. And I didn't see a lot of this conversation being had in literatures and when you, when you find a gap like that, and then you start pulling on the thread a little bit more, there were a ton of gaps in international laws and norms for human rights, for the laws of armed conflict, for atrocity crime law, that just simply overlooked the importance of home. So with that, Bree, and I think we were able to construct this really neat understanding of domicide from both the individual effects and the institutional processes behind it. And that's largely from our backgrounds from social work and political science. And we've been able to create this really holistic understanding of domicide with the book.

Avery Moore Kloss  06:34

Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's interesting to put a word to it, because I do think that, as citizens of the world, some of the most striking images of war, and we've seen it recently with Ukraine is, you know, these before and after pictures of apartment buildings and houses and how, like, really, everything someone has is destroyed in an instant. And so can you give us, maybe this is a question for Andrew, maybe it's for Bree, one of you can jump in, but can you give me a sense of like, how does domicide fit into international law? Like how is domicide, talked about on a wider scale?

Andrew Basso  07:10

Sure, I can take that. So domicide, it's, I mean domicide as a word. It's not necessarily a crime in international law yet, but the human rights home does exist and human rights laws and norms. We can point to various documents, we can point to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, various legally binding documents, like the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. We can also point to other documents like the Convention on the Rights of the Child. And all these documents, they include elements of the human right to home. The human right to home, it's largely based on this right to an adequate standard of living. And to have a home means to have a potential space for an adequate standard of living. This right to an adequate standard of living was originally interpreted in terms of water and sanitation and food and now it's been expanded to include home. You see that in major human rights documents, and in smaller human rights documents, you see this right to home pop up, sort of all over the place, including the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing. Importantly, though, one of the oversights of the human rights regime thus far has been an active prevention mechanism against domicide against the destruction of homes. So there's there's a problem in our protection regimes. The laws of armed conflict, they are a little bit more robust in terms of protecting homes, that you have Geneva based laws of armed conflict which protect people in places in times of war, and you have Hague law and Hague law it It prohibits certain methods of warfare. Now, there's a division in the laws of armed conflict that the first one is armed conflicts of an international character and those of a non-international character. Protections for people and places are far more robust in armed conflicts of an international character and the armed conflicts of a non international character, that is a civil war, the protections are much more limited. You can point to Westphalian sovereignty and states wanting to preserve the ability to quote unquote, take the gloves off on their own citizens for that. But in the laws of armed conflict, it's clear that there are some some sites that can be targeted and destroyed during war and other sites which cannot. The properties of protected persons that is non combatants, that is civilians, they are not to be targeted in warfare. They are illegitimate targets. There's only really one way where homes can be destroyed in armed conflict legitimately. That is if there's a clear military necessity to destroy a home. So for instance, if there's a machine gun nest in a home, in urban warfare, it is okay to target that home and destroy it. But to indiscriminately bombard cities and towns that is completely illegitimate in in times of war, particularly those of a international character. And then finally, just to round it out, that domicide, it's a cooperative process with a lot of the atrocities that we explore in the book and atrocities elsewhere, we're talking about genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, that it's often necessary for perpetrators of these crimes to remove people from their homes and destroy their homes in order to complete cycles of erasure and annihilation.

Avery Moore Kloss  10:55

It's such a complex difference between rights and and laws, like thank you for laying that out for us Andrew, I think that made it really clear. Bree, I wonder if you have something to add here?

Bree Akesson  11:05

Yeah, I think Andrew did a really good job of laying out what it says under international law. And I just wanted to add that it's so, there's so much grey, well, the international law is a bit of black and white, there's a lot more gray on the ground when wars are happening. And there's so many examples of how domicide plays out that is just kind of doesn't fit into the understanding of okay, homes cannot be destroyed, it cannot be intentionally targeted and more. So one example I'm thinking of is how sometimes perpetrators or the aggravating force, the force that's attacking, will say that they're, that someone's home or that a group of homes is an actual military target, they'll say that, "Oh, there are militants hiding in these homes". And then they'll use that as a rationale for destroying homes, whether or not they're militants there, and these are all the haze of war, right? There's so much gray within that. Within, you know, when wars happening. There's other examples where people have destroyed their own homes, as they're leaving, because they don't want people to occupy their homes, which I think is such a fascinating element of home, and how important home is that you're, you know, or how much it means to you that, you know, you would rather have it destroyed than have someone else live there. So there's lots of different layers that I wanted to mention, in addition to kind of how Andrew laid out the the international laws and how domicide fits in there.

Avery Moore Kloss  12:46

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a really good point to add, bring in and really interesting to kind of try and come from that mindset, right? So let's, let's take it back to the book for a minute. I mean, you both have such long histories of research work in different places, Bree in Chechnya and Uganda and Palestine and Syria and Afghanistan. And Andrew, I know, Cyprus and Bosnia, and I wonder if you could give me a sense of some of the examples of domicide that you detail in the book from from the experience you have researching in these places. Let's maybe go to Andrew first.

Andrew Basso  13:21

Sure, I think we could, I mean, I can go back to my home field of genocide studies to start off with and when we talk about Bosnia first that one of the key overlooked aspects of the war in Bosnia that is the part of the wars of Yugoslav succession in the 1990s, was the cooperative mechanism that domicide formed alongside genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. That domicide, it was used by perpetrators sort of all over the place, in order to complete those cycles of erasure and annihilation I was alluding to before. That part of those ethnic cleansing campaigns that you see perpetrated in Bosnia, it wasn't just about removing people. It wasn't just about killing enemy populations or constructed enemy populations. It was about erasing their existence. That included the destruction of their homes that included the occupation of homes of another. That is you expel populations and then you give those homes to your own citizens. A glaring example of this is what happened in the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia, where it, Srebrenica was a UN protected safe area. It was protected by various forces first Canadians and then the Dutch, peacekeepers that is and then in the course of the war, Srebrenica became sort of a lynchpin for Serbian operaations and desires to create a greater Serbia. Srebrenica was was a multi ethnic town and with a lot of Bosniak Muslims living there. Serb forces they assaulted the town and what they did then was committed gendered division of violence against people that they executed approximately 8000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys, and then they forcibly expelled remaining populations, subjecting women and girls to similar executions, though not at the same level, but certainly sexual violence on a on a rampant level. What happened to the homes then is the homes of Bosniak Muslims, they were they were given to others. They were given to Serbs. They were intentionally left vacant, they were destroyed. And what this did is it completed the cycle of not only ridding an area of an enemy population, again, a constructed enemy population, but erasing their existence there overall. So domicide, it was a it was a key part of all the atrocities that were happening in former Yugoslavia.

Avery Moore Kloss  16:19

Yeah, thank you for sharing that example Andrew. I think sharing examples like this, especially for readers, I think it's so important to like, imagine a place and what the people in that, you know, in that place we're dealing with, and thank you for that context. Bree, did you have an example from the book that you wanted to share as well?

Bree Akesson  16:42

Yeah, I wanted to talk a little bit about the Syrian war. I think it's a really good example of domicide that we use in the book. A lot of people are familiar with the Syrian conflict. It started in March of 2011. In the city of Daraa, where there were teenagers who had were inspired by the Arab Spring that was sweeping across the Middle East, and they painted a revolutionary slogan on their school wall. It was something like "it's your turn next doctor", and the President Bashar Al Assad, the president of Syria, happens to be a doctor. So they were saying it's your turn, right. And so they were arrested and tortured. And this sparked a revolution within the country. People were really angered. They were fed up with the authoritarian governments. The protesters were in turn met with widespread violence from Bashar Al Assad's government forces. And the conflict escalated quite quickly, where there were different parties that were involved. It became a proxy war for different countries involvement. But one of the tactics that was used, and it's interesting to note that this was with the support, with Russia's support of the Syrian government, one of the tactics that was used was really widespread home demolitions, home destruction. And Human Rights Watch actually came out with a report saying that neighborhoods were wiped off the map. So there were large swaths of neighborhoods, tall, high rise apartment buildings, which were completely civilian, absolutely, you know, Syrian civilian population that were living in those places, and they were just destroyed by aerial bombardments. So this is really striking. This war was also heavily documented, which I think, lends itself to a really interesting data regarding domicide. So if you just, you know, Google Search drone footage of destroyed Syrian neighborhoods, you'll see that these communities were just completely flattened. And really, really striking element of war, and completely in contradiction to the laws of international, the international laws of armed conflict, which Andrew detailed earlier in our conversation. And then there's another element of this conflict that I think it's really interesting to note. And this really speaks to the title of our book, Bureaucracy to Bullets. So we talk about domicide, we basically say that the domicide can be done either through violence, through direct violence, like bullets, or through bureaucratic means. So Syria is another example of how bureaucracy can actually lead to the destruction of home and the loss of home. So, Syria, actually, the Syrian government issued something called Law 10, back in 2018, which the stated goal was to redevelop and to create, kind of rebuild, urban areas that had that had been abandoned or destroyed. So abandoned because so many people left the country because of the war, right. So what it said is that people who left their homes, and were living in, typically the neighboring countries of Lebanon, maybe Jordan and Turkey as well, they were informed that they had to register their properties within a few weeks, in order to maintain ownership. And if they didn't do this, if they didn't register their home, their home would become the property of the state. Now, for a Syrian family who's fled Syria, and is living in a camp in Lebanon, for example, to go back, within a few weeks of this law being enacted, and register their home was a near impossibility. So this way, this is one way that the government can basically grab these homes and grab these properties for themselves. And I think it really kind of exemplifies the different ways that domicide can be enacted within the context of war.

Andrew Basso  21:12

Yeah, and I'm glad that we've been talking about these cases, because that's really how the book started too. That we started off with these with these really human, human issues that that are sort of ubiquitous across the world in terms of home. And then from these issues, we realize that, that we can create a typology of domicide, we can understand it in terms of four subtypes, extreme domicide, that is, and we can also identify causal pathways to domicide. That is, explaining why domicide happens. And across the eight cases in the book, we uncovered these specific causal pathways to domicide that first, we have a constellation of variables that formed the context behind why the domicide happens. So that can include things like demographic differences, you know, having different people, constructing people is different. We can also talk about intergroup power asymmetries that some groups in society, in-groups, they're more powerful than outgroups, we can talk about a heterogeneous population distribution that when we're more than two groups live in an area then the chances of domicide are competing understandings of place and space and of legitimacy of home, they can enter into political conversations. We also talked about intergroup grievances, that it's not enough to just say we have demographic differences or power asymmetries or these these various population distributions, that intergroup grievances, it largely deals with the idea of why groups may end up in a state of contestation of socio-political contestation. If those context variables are fulfilled, then we can move on down the causal pathway to specific triggers for domicide. Now, one of the things we noted that across all of these cases is that domicide is a contingent response to realities on the ground. That is, in some cases, domicide was a specific policy aim. And in other cases, domicide, it became a policy aim throughout these socio-political processes, we were examining. That the specific triggers, we can talk about disruptions of established political systems, this can include things like war and revolution. We can talk about the construction of exclusive communities, that it's the operationalization of intergroup grievances, and it's the construction of this idea that some groups deserve to live in an area and other groups do not. And then finally, none of this is possible without people in power. And if people in power buy into the idea that certain groups shouldn't be able to live in a place that is that their legitimacy as a human being is, in fact, illegitimate in the eyes of a perpetrator and their claims to home and homeland, they are illegitimate, then the chances for domicide, they increased significantly. And then we can really talk about, you know why, or why and how, domicide manifests in the ways that it does. And I think we did a, I think I was proud of the way that we selected eight very different cases from around the world. That taught us something a little bit different about domicide. Each one brought unique aspects to the book and I think they ultimately show the extremely destructive nature of of losing one's home.

Avery Moore Kloss  24:56

Yeah, Andrew you talk about all these these different cases and how we got to the specific, you say the causal pathway to domicide. And you you both recently wrote an op-ed in the Toronto Star that discussed domicide in the context of, of obviously the war in Ukraine. I mean, that's the current example. Not the only example, obviously. But can you tell us a little bit about, you know, the book and how, how it can set context and, and sort of a history for those who are, are watching this war in Ukraine, or wars in other places that are happening after the publishing of the book in February? How do those things all connect, maybe we'll go to Bree first.

Bree Akesson  25:34

Yeah, it was really difficult. It's difficult to write a book about a contemporary issue that's happening as you're doing the edits, or as you're seeing the book go to press, because every time something happens in the news, Andrew and I would text message each other and be like, "Oh, we should have included this in the book", or "I wish we could include a chapter on this". So this is always a challenge with books that are, when they're published, because they become kind of a cross section of time, right. And they're not, they're not shifting to include, you know, more modern examples. So we, our book actually came out in February of this year 2022, and I think it was on February 22. And then the war in Ukraine escalated, and kind of the week they started, the current iteration of it started on the 24th or the 25th of February, so just a few days after it came out. And I think instantly, Andrew and I recognized how relevant our discussion of domicide was within the context of Ukraine. So like many people, we were, we've been glued, you know, glued to our TVs, watching the news about what's happening in Ukraine, especially for the first few weeks. And we saw that there was just deliberate targeting of Ukrainian homes by the Russian forces. And this wasn't surprising, to be honest. When I talked about what happened in the Syrian conflict, this was very similar to what happened in Syria. This also really resonated with me, based on my experience of working in Chechnya and Ingushetia. At the end of the Second War, when the Russian government forces were attacking Chechen communities in home. So this looked very familiar to me. So this was an iteration of earlier Russian aggression. It's a Russian military tactic that they've used time and again, and what it does is it destroys homes and communities and it creates fear, but it also destroys morale. It really up ends any type of collective resistance of people, although we see in Ukraine, how much people are resisting and how much they are persevering, and how much they are pushing back against the Russian offense. So we were watching these homes being destroyed. And we wanted to write something about how to not lose sight of the importance of home and we wrote this op-ed in the Toronto Star, about how terrible war is, of course, how homes are being destroyed within Syria. But we wanted to point out that the wanton destruction of civilian homes outside of military necessity is a war crime, that should be added to the list of Russian war crimes that they've committed in this conflict. So we want we emphasize that in the in the op-ed. Andrew, did you want to add anything about what else we kind of highlight in the op-ed?

Andrew Basso  28:40

Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things that is really highlighted in the op-ed and I think needs to be discussed a lot here for the sake of international law, is the distinction between intentionality and indiscriminate attacks. That's, I think, what we see Russian forces doing in Ukraine right now. It's actually both. That you see both the intentional destruction of Ukrainian homes to break the will of resistance. To inflict terror upon civilian populations. And to further an erasure of the idea of a Ukraine. We see those intentional attacks, and we also see indiscriminate attacks. That in war, if you are trying to take out let's say, or destroy a government building, then you should use munitions that are, that get the job done. You shouldn't use munitions that are overkill or that will cause extensive damage beyond the military target. Russian forces they have been using dumb weapons, that is non-guided weapons, so something like a BM-21 Grad rocket. They've all also been using potentially thermobaric weapons. They have been using extensive explosive ordnance from fired from artillery at distance in order to indiscriminately shell towns and cities. And that's a war crime, you cannot do that in international law, you cannot indiscriminately attack a city or a town. And what I think is going to need a reckoning here is who ordered these attacks? And how are they carried out? And why were they carried out? I certainly hope that that the focus on home isn't lost in in future justice efforts for this aggressive action in Ukraine.

Avery Moore Kloss  30:48

So Andrew, just a follow up on that. I mean, we were talking about the op-ed in the Toronto Star, I just want to say it's called Destruction of Homes a War Crime. And we'll put the link to that, that op-ed in the show notes as well. But in, at the end of the op-ed, you say, you know, you and Bree say that you're proposing this convention against domicide as a framework by which to identify, hold accountable, and prevent the targeting of homes and current and future conflict. Could you expand on that and give me a sense of what that convention would call for?

Andrew Basso  31:20

Yeah, absolutely. So let's just quickly reflect back on what I was talking about in terms of that overlapping consensus on a human right to home and against the destruction of homes. There's a weak overlapping consensus on this and international law and international norms. What I think we need, and what I think Bree and I both recognize we need, is a single piece of international law to ban domicide. And it builds upon that overlapping consensus, but it concretizes it, that it makes it real. This is something similar to the Convention Against Torture, that clearly torture was a violation of various human rights. But the international community found it necessary to create a single convention against torture. So with that in mind, I think what we need and what we think we need is this single piece of legislation. It would ban various practices of domicide. We could talk about the aerial bombardment of homes, employing explosives to destroy homes, bulldozing or razing homes, imposing enforced vacancy, resettling members of one group in the homes of another, preventing lawful home occupancy, that we could also talk about systemic discrimination through the denial of building permits, prolonging strife, which prevents lawful repatriation of homes, forcing home dwellers to destroy their own homes and other similar acts that cause great harm to homes and home dwellers. If we had a single piece of international law like that, we wouldn't have to appeal to human rights. Individually, we wouldn't have to appeal to the laws of armed conflict individually, nor would we have to point to domicide being a cooperative process with atrocities individually. We could say that there is this document that clearly states the destruction of homes is illegitimate.

Bree Akesson  33:21

So in addition to what Andrew said about the Convention Against Domicide, I just want to add that the Convention Against Domicide will be most effective, we believe it will be most effective, when it's used in combination with other types of mechanisms of documenting home demolition, and domicide. So I just wanted to mention one example. There's an example called the Aleppo Project, which is a project that is collecting information in the city of Aleppo in Syria. And it collected data on space and place and home and community within the city, both before it was destroyed by the war and the conflict, and then after. And so the project created these really interesting maps and visualizations of the city to serve as a starting point for discussions about reconstruction once the war is over. So it's almost given this, it's given evidence that homes were there. Homes were here before the war. And that's a mechanism by which justice can be pursued in combination with the Convention Against Domicide. I think these two kinds of approaches can be really effective for communities and people and families who have lost their homes due to domicide.

Avery Moore Kloss  34:44

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for that edition Bree. So we've come to the end of the interview, and I think to end off I really want to hear from both of you about I mean, I know in the process of research and also in the process of writing a book often you know, even if you're an expert in your field often there's things that come up that that you didn't know before or that you know you put, you ended up putting together, and so I just wonder from, maybe we'll start with Andrew and end with Bree, what did you learn in writing this book that that you didn't know, before you started?

Andrew Basso  35:15

Okay. Well, I think there were, there were two key findings for me with this study that number one, that domicide has been a severely overlooked process in war and in atrocity and in human rights. That home, I think it's been taken for granted, or it's been seen as a given in many of these situations, and the destruction of homes, it's seen as a tangential byproduct of some of these horrible processes of political violence. But what I learned is that home, the destruction of homes, it is a politically politically violent process in and of itself. It can also be that cooperative process with other acts and events and processes of political violence, but it is violence in itself, and it deserves justice. It deserves punishment. And it also deserves repair. And there are various ways that populations can seek justice. We think that Convention Against Domicide and those documentation processes that have been forwarded by civil society groups, I think those are wonderful ways to start the process on justice. Second, and maybe this is just as important, that I learned a lot about my understandings of home and what home means for me as an individual. And I think I became more aware of my built environments, as well as my natural environment around me. And I started to understand a little bit more about our place in the world, and my place in the world through studying the destruction of people's worlds. That home it is such a central fixture in many people's lives, and putting the focus back on that central fixture it is so important, not only for international law, but also for us to socially understand ourselves a little bit more.

Avery Moore Kloss  37:19

Bree, what was the learning for you here?

Bree Akesson  37:22

Yeah I also learned so much in the process of writing this book. And I guess I love that process. I guess, as a researcher, I love that process of challenging my own preconceptions about things. And I found that I did that in this book when I was writing. And then working alongside Andrew was also just such a great process to open my eyes to different ways of thinking about domicide. One thing that sticks to me, and this is probably due to my background as a social worker, and always thinking about the psychosocial impacts of war on people, is just the impact of home loss and how, how important that is. And so I just wanted to kind of emphasize that, as we close this episode, is how much once home being destroyed can cause significant distress in their lives, and how you'll see examples of this, you can see examples from what's happening in Ukraine, where people have lost their homes, and they're interviewed, and they wander around with a sense of just disorientation. And there's actually an element of just being disoriented to what's happening in, to having one's home lost. There's a lack of stability. For children and families this is so critical. So children who've experienced domicide have been documented to have more aggression, more challenging behavior, depression, decreased educational attainment. Women suffer really differently from losing a home. Because home is the place where women from many cultures around the world spend most of their time. And home can be really protective for women and in a lot of ways. So loss can be one of the deepest wounds, to one's sense of self, to one's sense of identity. And this research really emphasized that over and over again. We delved into media reports, we delved into first person accounts, narratives. We drew from our own research projects. And time and time again, we saw how critical home was and how loss of home was so detrimental and so challenging. And the one thing that I think was hard to reconcile is that and we use this as a heading in our book, is that you can never go home again. When when you've been through war, when you've experienced war, and you go back, things are never the same. And so it is an, it is a never ending loss that people are mourning. And when we meet refugees here in Canada, when you meet them in different places, there's no other place they would want to be in the world other than their original home before the conflict started, and I think we have to remember that. But there is also an opportunity to think about place and space as being an important element of reconstruction and rebuilding. And I think one thing we can do as a community for people who have who have been displaced from their homes, who've lost their homes and are living in a different context, for example, refugees who are living here in Canada, is we can help them as best they can rebuild a home and create a home for themselves wherever they've ended up

Avery Moore Kloss  40:41

Listen, thank you both for doing this and for the beautiful book that you've written. I think it's such an important document, especially with, you know, all that's going on in the world right now. Thank you for listening to CRSP Talk. This podcast is a production of the Center for Research on Security Practices at Wilfrid Laurier University. Bree Akesson is the Canada Research Chair Tier Two in Global Adversity and Well Being and the Associate Director of CRSP. She's an associate professor in the Faculty of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University. And Andrew Basso is a researcher affiliated with the Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy at Wilfrid Laurier University. Their book Bureaucracy to Bullets: Extreme Domicide and the Right to Home is available for purchase from Rutgers University Press as a paperback, PDF, or ebook. The link to buy is included in the show notes. Their op-ed in the Toronto Star is titled Destruction of Homes a war Crime. A link to that article is also in the show notes for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. We will be back with more research to uncover soon. I'm Avery Moore Kloss.