ABOUT
Project MonmaProject Monma documents and amplifies the lived experiences of women and girls facing violence and discrimination worldwide.
Through research, storytelling, and public engagement, we aim to bring women’s stories to light.
ABOUT
Project Monma
Project Monma documents and amplifies the lived experiences of women and girls facing violence and discrimination worldwide.
Through research, storytelling, and public engagement, we aim to bring women’s stories to light.
Project Monma exists because stories are evidence. When women speak about violence, coercion, accusation, displacement, and survival, they are exposing systems of inequality.
Documenting these experiences challenges denial, strengthens public understanding, and supports efforts toward justice, accountability, and structural change.
Meet the founder
Dr Johanna Higgs
The project is led by anthropologist and human rights researcher Dr Johanna Higgs, whose work over the past two decades has taken her across conflict zones, fragile states, and some of the world’s most remote regions in order to listen to women navigating survival.
She has traveled across the Brazilian Amazon by river, spent weeks in the Sahara desert in Algeria with Saharawi women in refugee camps, journeyed into the remote mountains of Tajikistan and travelled to villages in Uzbekistan. From Baluchistan in Iran and in the far northeast of Afghanistan, she has spent time with women in conservative rural communities speaking about their views on rights, restrictions and finding resilience within it all.
Interviewing Saharawi women in a refugee camp in the Sahara desert in Algera.
Interviewing female soldiers with the Peshmerger (Iraqi army) in Iraq who were on the front lines fighting ISIS.
Her research has taken her to the Republic of Congo to investigate why girls were turning to prostitution, uncovering how accusations of witchcraft pushed many from their homes. In Madagascar she examined the structural drivers of human trafficking and in Mozambique explored the practice known as ‘sex for grades.’ She has spoken with women in Belarus and Ukraine about human rights in the Soviet Union and traveled to Abkhazia to document how women live within unresolved and frozen war zones.
Earlier in her career, she conducted honours research in northern Uganda with former child soldiers of the LRA, and later completed her PhD in Colombia with former child soldiers of the FARC, navigating post-conflict landscapes and interviewing combatants, survivors, and state actors.
Johanna now lives in Cambodia with more than thirty rescued cats and dogs, continuing her work in research, writing, and documentation.
Interviewing Yezidis in northern Iraq about the women and girls who had been kidnapped by ISIS and held as sex slaves.
Interviewing Syrian women living in Turkey about their experiences of sexual harassment.
Why Storytelling Matters
Violence and discrimination against women and girls are often taking place in plain sight. Many experiences go unrecorded, are dismissed as private matters or are absorbed into systems that normalize inequality. This leaves major gaps in public understanding about what women face, how those realities shape their lives and most importantly, how women feel about them.
Project Monma aims to document these experiences. By recording women’s accounts in their own words, the project brings visibility to issues that are too often overlooked. These stories help to reveal injustice and structural harm and then demand change.
Making these accounts of violence and discrimination against women and girls public, strengthens awareness and supports those working towards change. When women’s realities are acknowledged and taken seriously, it becomes harder to ignore them.
Other work
Professional Projects
Gendered Dimensions of Afghan Displacement
Technical Gender Consultant, Norwegian Refugee Council (2025)
This research examined how displacement is shaped by gender across Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, with a focus on Afghan women and girls.
Through qualitative interviews and secondary analysis, it documented the structural inequalities, protection risks, and social pressures influencing decisions to migrate, remain, or return. By centering women’s lived experiences, the project treated testimony not as anecdote, but as evidence revealing how conflict, policy, and gendered power structures intersect across borders.
The findings informed recommendations for more accountable and gender-responsive humanitarian programming.
Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in Myanmar
Gender Researcher, Equality Myanmar (2025)
In collaboration with Equality Myanmar, this project documented patterns of conflict-related sexual violence unfolding across the country.
Working alongside civil society organizations and human rights defenders, the research gathered detailed testimony on rape, attempted rape, sexual harassment, trafficking, and forced marriage not as isolated incidents, but as recurring features of a protracted conflict. By situating individual accounts within broader systems of impunity and gendered power, the analysis traced the structural conditions that allow such violence to persist.
The resulting report contributed evidence-based recommendations to support protection strategies, human rights advocacy, and accountability efforts.
Human Trafficking Awareness for Healthcare and Social Workers
Technical Gender Consultant, Manhattan Learning (2022)
This project developed a comprehensive course to enhance the capacity of healthcare and social workers in the United States to identify and respond to human trafficking.
The curriculum highlighted the tactics used by traffickers, the warning signs of exploitation, and effective intervention strategies.
By combining practical guidance with engaging learning materials, the program equipped professionals to recognize trafficking as a pervasive issue and respond in ways that protect and support victims.
Sexual Violence Against Boys in Cambodia
Technical Gender Consultant, Raul Wallenberg Institute (2021)
This research project investigated sexual violence against boys in Cambodia, with a focus on the legal barriers that hinder their access to justice.
Drawing on a detailed literature review and key informant interviews with NGO workers and community members, the study situated individual experiences within broader structural and legal contexts.
Collaborating with First Step Cambodia, the findings were synthesized into a comprehensive report that supports advocacy for stronger legal protections and improved access to justice for vulnerable children.
Street Life Among Girls in Manila
Researcher, Child Hope Philippines (2009–2010)
This project examined the social and cultural factors driving young girls into street life in Manila.
Using surveys and in-depth interviews, the study explored how gender norms, economic pressures, and family dynamics shape their experiences.
Findings were compiled into a report that offered actionable recommendations to support interventions aimed at protecting and empowering girls living in the city’s most vulnerable communities.
Gendered Barriers to Alternatives to Incarceration in Cambodia
International Drug Policy Consortium
This research examined the current landscape of alternatives to incarceration in Cambodia, with a focus on children and adults detained for minor drug-related offences.
Through a mixed-methods approach combining legal and policy analysis with qualitative interviews with formerly incarcerated women, former detainees, police officers, judicial actors, and programme staff, it assessed whether non-custodial measures function as genuine alternatives to detention or reproduce punitive and rights-violating practices.
By centering the experiences of those directly affected, the project identified structural and practical barriers to accessing diversion and community-based rehabilitation, informing recommendations for more rights-respecting and effective justice responses.
The report is available here.