Polycentricity and framing battles in the creation of regional norms on violence against women
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117820942944 |
| Author | Conny Roggeband,Anouka van Eerdewijk,Anna van der Vleuten |
| Published date | 01 March 2021 |
| Date | 01 March 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117820942944
International Relations
2021, Vol. 35(1) 126 –146
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117820942944
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Polycentricity and framing
battles in the creation of
regional norms on violence
against women
Anna van der Vleuten
Radboud University; University of Antwerp
Conny Roggeband
University of Amsterdam; FLACSO Ecuador
Anouka van Eerdewijk
Royal Tropical Institute (KIT); Radboud University
Abstract
In Latin America and Southern Africa, norms on violence against women have developed with
ups and downs, not simply in reaction to global norms, but sometimes even preceding global
norm diffusion or surpassing it in terms of scope, framing and binding character. The classic
global-to-local account with a single source of norm creation cannot capture these dynamics.
Including the regional level in a dynamic model of norm diffusion enables us to understand the
changing contents of a norm and to acknowledge transregional agency. We show (1) how norm
contestation is an ongoing, multidirectional and polycentric process; (2) how the regional level
opens up opportunities for feminists and femocrats; and (3) under which conditions regional
norms can be both more progressive than global ones and more adapted to regional needs, and,
in turn, are thus able to strengthen the ‘global’ norm.
Keywords
advocacy networks, comparative regionalism, contestation, norm diffusion, OAS, polycentricity,
SADC, violence against women
Corresponding author:
Anna van der Vleuten, Department of Political Science, Radboud University, PO Box 9108, 6500 HK
Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Email: a.vandervleuten@fm.ru.nl
942944IRE0010.1177/0047117820942944International Relationsvan der Vleuten et al.
research-article2020
Article
van der Vleuten et al. 127
Introduction
Violence against women (VAW) is recognized as a pervasive and intractable problem
worldwide. These days it is even called a ‘shadow pandemic’, as the lockdown measures
imposed to fight the spread of COVID-19 have led to an alarming increase of (emer-
gency calls of) VAW.1
In June 1993, at the UN International Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, VAW
was defined as a violation of human rights for the very first time. Governments agreed
that action should be taken, and that same December, the UN General Assembly adopted
the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women. Although the Declaration
was not binding, its formal recognition of the problem was a major victory for the wom-
en’s movement and sped up the norm’s spread around the world.2 It also generated aca-
demic interest in how international norms on gender equality develop.3 This body of
research provides us with important insights into international norm diffusion and into
the role of transnational feminist advocacy in creating such norms and monitoring imple-
mentation.4 Yet, many of these studies implicitly assume that norms are created at a sin-
gle moment and spread from a single source. Evolving simultaneously with the global
norm, however, Latin American and Southern African norms on VAW in different ways
surpassed this global norm in terms of scope, framing and binding character. Classic
global-to-local accounts therefore cannot adequately capture the regional dynamics of
norm (re)creation.
In the Organization of American States (OAS), for instance, the Inter-American
Commission of Women (known by its Spanish acronym, CIM, Comisión Interamericana
de Mujeres)5 had already taken up the issue of VAW in 1989 in response to the strong
mobilization of women’s organizations, particularly in Latin America.6 On 6 June 1994,
the OAS General Assembly adopted the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention,
Punishment, and Eradication of Violence Against Women (OAS Convention, also called
Belém do Pará Convention) in Belém do Pará, Brazil.7 It established the member states’
obligation to prevent, investigate and punish VAW, regardless of whether it took place in
the home, community or public sphere. It was the world’s first legally binding treaty
which exclusively focused on eliminating VAW. In Southern Africa, women’s move-
ments demanded that the Southern African Development Community (SADC), a newly
founded regional organization, take action on VAW in 1995. Initially, this led to the
adoption of a non-binding instrument, but in August 2008, the SADC adopted the
Protocol on Gender and Development. A Protocol is the most binding instrument avail-
able to the SADC, and this one not only reiterated women’s rights as they were laid down
in the UN Declaration, it also responded to context-specific issues relevant to the
Southern African region.8 In addition, it established institutional mechanisms to monitor
implementation and set targets and a deadline. Southern Africa became the world’s first
region where all existing continental and international instruments were united in a sin-
gle, legally binding Protocol.9
The development of these two strong regional norms on VAW thus raises two ques-
tions which cannot be answered by global-to-local norm-diffusion models. First, how are
regional norms (re)created in multilevel processes? And second, under which conditions
does a strong (feminist) regional norm on VAW develop? To answer these, we propose a
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