State Responsibility to End Violence Against Women

Beschreibung

This book explores how multisector collaboration approaches in Kenya and South Africa contribute to the fulfilment of human rights state obligations to prevent and effectively respond to sexual violence against women. Applying a feminist human rights perspective, the author unpacks state obligations to exercise due diligence in prevention, protection, prosecution, punishment and provision of adequate remedies to victims. This perspective puts victims’ needs and rights at the forefront in assessing service integration models, while foregrounding the need for state accountability to establish sustainable and effective sexual violence interventions. Using a qualitative case-study approach and interview data, it analyses how sexual violence service integration centers operate in urban, peri-urban and rural contexts . It demonstrates how these multi-sector collaboration approaches can produce different service orientations that may eclipse and de-center the needs and rights of sexual violence victims. The author concludes by discussing the parameters of what a victimcentered service integration approach would look like and highlights critical ways to shift deeply-rooted social, structural and institutional norms, which are the root causes of violence against women.

Ruth Nekura is a legal scholar, human rights advocate, feminist thinker and sociolegal researcher with 15 years’ of sustained work experience in social justice, with a focus on law reform, research, strategic litigation and advocacy. She is passionate about access to justice, substantive equality and invokes both structural and individual level analyses to challenge systemic inequalities. Ruth works as a consultant, providing technical expertise to civil society organisations’ through conducting (human rights and gender) analyses of laws, implementation practices and program interventions, conducting capacity strengthening, strategy development and knowledge leadership.

This book explores how multisector collaboration approaches in Kenya and South Africa contribute to the fulfilment of human rights state obligations to prevent and effectively respond to sexual violence against women. Applying a feminist human rights perspective, the author unpacks state obligations to exercise due diligence in prevention, protection, prosecution, punishment and provision of adequate remedies to victims. This perspective puts victims’ needs and rights at the forefront in assessing service integration models, while foregrounding the need for state accountability to establish sustainable and effective sexual violence interventions. Using a qualitative case-study approach and interview data, it analyses how sexual violence service integration centers operate in urban, peri-urban and rural contexts . It demonstrates how these multi-sector collaboration approaches can produce different service orientations that may eclipse and de-center the needs and rights of sexual violence victims. The author concludes by discussing the parameters of what a victimcentered service integration approach would look like and highlights critical ways to shift deeply-rooted social, structural and institutional norms, which are the root causes of violence against women.

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Ruth Nekura

Themen in »State Responsibility to End Violence Against Women«

State Accountability Sexual Violence Service Sexual Violence Interventions Victim-Centred Approach human rights feminist discourse Kenya South Africa service integration violence against women

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“Sexual violence is a complex harm that demands a rigorous multi-sectoral state response. But how to achieve that? Ruth Nekura’s empirical deep dive into the South African and Kenyan models provides important answers. Where most studies assume that perfectly implementing the “blueprint” for a model will result in the best outcomes for victims, this book takes as its standard the state’s responsibility to exercise due diligence in addressing violence against women. In doing so, it puts victims at the centre of understanding what works. The book should be the go-to resource for anyone wanting to learn about the South African and Kenyan models. But like all outstanding comparative studies, it offers much more, provoking new ways to think about the design of multi-sector collaboration and insights into the systemic and structural challenges that are endemic to implementation and how to address them. Focused on low resource environments, its insights are universal. The book showcases why Ruth Nekura is one of the leading global scholars in this field today. Always engaged, grounded in her own experience as a lawyer working with victims, and taking seriously the voices of those she studies, her work is thoughtful, direct, and insightful, driven by the imperative to improve how states respond to victims of sexual violence – and the firm belief that it is possible.” (Dee Smythe, Professor of Public Law, University of Cape Town)

“Thirty years ago, one-stop-shop justice centres marked an innovative approach, providing victims and survivors of sexual violence with comprehensive support through a new intervention designed to reduce secondary trauma and the inconvenience of transferring victims between services. This ensured smooth access to all necessary resources as a pathway to justice. Dr. Nekura highlights the unintended effects of this intervention by comparing and analysing models across two countries. She introduces the due diligence framework as a guiding tool for looking beyond criminal justice and the competing priorities of the various sectors involved, enabling careful identification of gaps. This publication offers a timely and essential contribution to one of the most urgent questions of our times: What does it take to end gender-based violence? We now understand that what we believed to be a comprehensive response three decades ago can be improved because, beyond responding when violence occurs, we need to prevent violence.” (Sibongile Ndashe, Founder and Executive Director, Initiative for Strategic Litigation in Africa)

“This book publication is an excellent contribution to the discourse on the efficacy of state-centric interventions that are set up as part of the responsibility of States to protect against, prevent and ensure accountability for gendered harms experienced by women and girls. Dr Ruth Nekura captures both theory and practice through an interrogation of existing international laws and standards, and their application to the multi-sectoral collaboration governance models developed by Kenya and South Africa. Their applicability, both in terms of successes and practice gaps, is analyzed using a qualitative methodology, with a comparative case study approach. A key contribution of the analysis is the question of whether the strategies contribute to jurisprudence, which consequently extends the application of state obligations to act with due diligence to address sexual violence in the national contexts of Kenya and South Africa.” (Rashida Manjoo, Professor Emerita of Human Rights, University of Cape Town)

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