A feminist theory of state responsibility for violence against women

Over the past forty years the transnational women’s movement has worked to conceptualise and institutionalise the understanding of violence against women as a gendered human rights violation. Their efforts have led the response at the international level, and have shaped the (markedly feminist) international human rights law approach to violence against women. Despite successes in conceptualising and institutionalising norms concerning the elimination of violence against women, there remain problems in implementing these norms and holding states accountable. As such, violence against women is still pandemic, affecting at least one in three women. An area worthy of additional research and attention is state responsibility for prevention – particularly primary prevention, aimed at the ‘upstream’ or ‘root’ causes of violence against women – and the use of the due diligence standard as a tool for actualising this obligation. The due diligence standard is a significant development of state responsibility, which, within the context of human rights protection, broadens notions of state responsibility to include instances where there is a failure to exercise due care to prevent or respond to violative acts or omissions of private or non-state actors. In the context of violence against women, this provides a ‘juridical bridge’ for addressing private violence, particularly domestic violence, as a human rights violation, for which the state can – and should – be held accountable. The evolution of ‘systemic due diligence’ – aimed at the broader level of human rights protection – has furthered this feminist theory of state responsibility. The aim of this thesis is to deepen the understanding of violence against women as a gendered human rights violation and to discover how the due diligence standard can be better used as a tool to bring about its elimination; if, indeed, it is fit for this purpose.