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point of making clear the implementation process and the basic
elements of the enforcement component is, I hope, to help achieve
the goal of preventing VAW in actualized terms.
I. VAW as Focal Point around which to Rally
Supports for Women’s Rights as Human Rights
The recognition of VAW in the early 1990s within the then
emergent framework of women’s rights as human rights occurred
only after decades of campaigning. Known as the women’s rights as
human rights movement, a synopsis of this campaign is this:
launched in the mid-1970s as a broad-based movement, during the
1980s, this movement sought to win recognition for issues that are
of central importance in women’s lives as human rights. Then,
bringing forward during the 1995 Fourth World Women’s
Conference at Beijing “a substantial and varied list of rights of
sufficient significance to be considered human rights of all women,
everywhere” (Okin, 2005b: 87), this movement promotes women’s
rights as human rights and more broadly gender equality. A top
priority is to eradicate VAW. To achieve this goal, efforts have been
targeted at implementations of the Platform for Action that had
emerged from the 1995 Beijing Conference,
10
followed by regular
five-year reviews and follow-up strategic objectives.
Yet during the period between late 1980s and early 1990s, when
activists rallied around the phenomenon of VAW in order to gain
recognition of women’s rights as human rights, this development was
overshadowed by the turn to culture. A body of knowledge falling
under the broad description of multiculturalism came to the fore. The
burgeoning of this literature and implementations of multicultural
policies further marginalized gender studies
11
and the promotion of
10
Below I discuss the implementations of the Platform for Action in relation to
gender mainstreaming.
11
Presenting gender “both as a mode of analysis and as a basis for envisioning the
emancipatory transformation of society,” it has been suggested that “gender” may
