Nina Berman on Visual Choices: Covering Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones

 Via The Dart Center for Visual Journalism and Trauma

"From the Tigray War in Ethiopia to on-going asymmetric war in Colombia, sexual violence is a reality of conflict around the world. Reporting on conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) is fraught with ethical issues and the potential for psychological harm to both source and reporter. The Dart Centre is releasing a new resource to deepen journalists’ understanding of CRSV and to help them report on this complex issue ethically and effectively.

Visual choices are a vital part of this. Photographs can be a powerful means of connecting with an audience, but clichéd images can perpetuate stereotypes and in the digital era, live on the internet in perpetuity. 

To help navigate some of these issues, we spoke with documentary photographer Nina Berman, a professor of journalism at Columbia University who has covered conflicts in Bosnia and Afghanistan, and has written on the ethics of photography in conflict and in peacetime. "