Loud Voices Behind the Wall: Gender Violence and the Violent Reproduction of the International

Abstract

Efforts to criminalise gendered violence in the international domain, through legislation such as the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (1993), can only ever have limited success. Through my analysis of DEVAW, I argue that the Declaration is produced through discourses of gender, violence, security and the international. What is meant by these concepts is reflected and reproduced within the document. Therefore, in order to understand the limited success of such efforts to criminalise gendered violence, it is necessary to investigate how these meanings have been constructed and how they could be constructed differently. I offer alternatives to the dominant conceptualisations of gendered violence and security, considering the ways in which both gender and the international are violently reproduced through efforts to securitise violence. Through my analysis I demonstrate that a reconceptualisation of both gendered violence and international security is desirable and necessary for the construction of research programs that operationalise these concepts in a more coherent and productive manner.