Swallowed silence, strategic silence, and safe disclosure: A multi-level framework for understanding non-disclosure...

Despite decades of investment in gender-based violence (GBV) services, a substantial proportion of survivors in humanitarian settings never disclose their experiences or seek formal help. Existing frameworks have largely conceptualized this silence as a product of access barriers, overlooking its social rationality as deliberate, strategic non-disclosure. This paper proposes the Silence-Disclosure Framework, integrating two original constructs: Swallowed Silence (the phenomenological experience of deliberate suppression) and Strategic Silence (the social-rational calculus underlying non-disclosure). The framework is developed through secondary analysis of two qualitative studies: 33 internally displaced women (IDWs) in Douala, Cameroon, and 352 internally displaced persons (IDPs) and 28 service providers in Kaya, Burkina Faso, both employing intersectional analytical frameworks. Silence operates at three interdependent levels: structural (the social conditions that make disclosure costly), analytical (a deliberate cost-benefit calculus, Strategic Silence), and phenomenological (the embodied burden of sustaining that silence over time, Swallowed Silence). The framework reconceptualizes silence as constrained agency rather than a deficit of knowledge or access, with direct implications for programming that targets the social conditions of disclosure rather than solely service availability.