Researching sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in conflict-affected situations and in relation to peacekeeping operations (PKOs) is a delicate undertaking. It is fraught with a range of challenges and sensitivities, from the ethical to the practical, the political to the legal. It is also a field that is problematically seductive in many ways (Henry, 2013a), one that seemingly allows for easy categorizations and for the researcher to side with the right side of history. Certainly, some issues are quite straightforward: cases of sexual abuse and violence, at times horrific, are unequivocally illegal and criminal. As discussed in this chapter, however, the issue of what constitutes exploitation and how to react to it is far less clear-cut. What is also evident is that efforts to end SEA/SGBV in UN or UN-mandated PKOs have been unsuccessful in spite of decades of knowledge of the issue and numerous action plans (Dahrendorf, 2006; Martin, 2005). The reasons for why this is so, however, are less evident. The academic and policy fields are also divided and highly politicized: while there is broad consensus on the need to end SEA/SGBV, and most academics and policymakers are working in the same direction, there are major political fights. Issues such as which categories of victims/survivors should be recognized, what the best way to address prostitution/commercial sex work would be, or how to deal with consensual sex are all highly, and acrimoniously, contested.

I will focus here less on the issue of SEA/SGBV and the responses (or lack thereof), and more on some of the murkiness and dilemmas, gaps, methodological issues and ethical challenges that I encountered in conducting research on these issues. I focus, in particular, on sexual exploitation rather than SGBV or sexual abuse, as it is here that I felt the greatest challenges lie. After a brief digression to my experiences starting out on researching SEA/SGBV in Timor-Leste, I will examine some of the grey areas related to the theoretically black-and-white issue of SEA in PKOs. This is followed by a discussion of methodological challenges of conducting research on these issues, especially on dealing with unverifiable data and the risks of collusion with interlocutors.