Reframing violence against women as a human rights violation: Evan Stark's coercive control more

Violence Against Women http://vaw.sagepub.com/ Kathryn Libal and Serena Parekh Violence Against Women 2009 15: 1477 originally published online 15 October 2009 DOI: 10.1177/1077801209346958 The online version of this article can be found at: http://vaw.sagepub.com/content/15/12/1477 Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com Reframing Violence Against Women as a Human Rights Violation: Evan Stark's Coercive Control Additional services and information for Violence Against Women can be found at: Email Alerts: http://vaw.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://vaw.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations: http://vaw.sagepub.com/content/15/12/1477.refs.html >> Version of Record - Nov 13, 2009 OnlineFirst Version of Record - Oct 15, 2009 What is This? Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at NORTHEASTERN UNIV LIBRARY on February 15, 2012 Article Reframing Violence Against Women as a Human Rights Violation: Evan Stark’s Coercive Control Kathryn Libal1 and Serena Parekh2 Violence Against Women 15(12) 1477–1489 © The Author(s) 2009 Reprints and permission: http://www. sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1077801209346958 http://vaw.sagepub.com Abstract Evan Stark claims that partner-perpetrated physical abuse and other forms of violence against women ought to be understood as a human rights violation. The authors engage Stark’s rhetorically powerful political and analytical innovation by outlining one theoretical and one practical challenge to shifting the paradigm that researchers, advocates, and policy makers use to describe, explain, and remedy the harms of coercive control from misdemeanor assault to human rights violation. The theoretical challenge involves overcoming the public/ private dichotomy that underpins liberal conceptions of human rights.The practical challenge involves using the human rights framework in the United States, given public indifference to human rights rhetoric or law, reluctance of U.S. policy makers to submit to scrutiny or justice-oriented processes under international law on issues of human rights and especially war crimes, and the consequent U.S. legacy of refusal to participate meaningfully in the international human rights process. The authors conclude that employing a human rights framework holds potential in the United States, but the paradigm shift Stark advocates will not materialize without widespread mobilization of interest in and understanding of human rights among domestic violence advocates and the society in general. Keywords human rights, U.S. exceptionalism, violence against women Evan Stark (2007) challenges domestic violence advocates in the United States to redouble their efforts to eliminate violence against women by tackling structural inequality and 1 2 University of Connecticut, West Hartford University of Connecticut, Storrs Corresponding Author: Kathryn Libal, University of Connecticut, School of Social Work, 1798 Asylum Avenue, West Hartford, CT 06117 Email: kathryn.libal@uconn.edu Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at NORTHEASTERN UNIV LIBRARY on February 15, 2012 1478 Violence Against Women 15(12) discrimination against women in all aspects of their lives. Stark links his analysis and political call to action to the international movement to recognize violence against women as a human rights violation. As he notes, the United Nations, its agencies, and the majority of states participating in human rights treaties officially recognize gender violence as a pressing human rights concern. The rhetoric of women’s rights as human rights and the inclusion of gender violence as a human rights violation thus constitute an available and highly attractive “frame” (Gamson, 1988; Snow, Rochford, Worden, & Benford, 1986). Furthermore, Stark’s strategic recommendations for revitalizing the shelter movement and domestic violence activism through a focus on structures of discrimination and inequality echo what women’s human rights advocates have been pressing at the international level for several decades. UN bodies, ranging from the specialized to the general, have a mandate to integrate gender analyses and antidiscrimination policies and practices. Thus, on two grounds Stark’s challenge seems reasonable, albeit ambitious: There is no doubt that gender-based violence is part of the international human rights agenda, and the international human rights agenda tightly associates the struggle to end violence against women with remedies for structural gender inequalities. Despite the institutional recognition of women’s rights as human rights, and the emphasis on structural inequality in international feminist movements, there remain theoretical and practical challenges to recognizing partner-perpetrated physical abuse and other forms of violence against women as a human rights violation. We highlight one theoretical and one practical challenge to shifting the paradigm researchers, advocates, and policy makers use to describe, explain, and remedy the harms of coercive control from misdemeanor assault to human rights violation. The theoretical challenge involves overcoming the public/private dichotomy that underpins liberal conceptions of human rights. This dichotomy undermines activists’ efforts to invoke the “public” language of human rights to address violence and abuse within the family and other contexts considered “private.” The practical challenge involves using the human rights framework in the United States, given public indifference to human rights rhetoric or law, reluctance of U.S. policy makers to submit to scrutiny or justice-oriented processes under international law on issues of human rights and especially war crimes, and the consequent U.S. legacy of refusal to participate meaningfully in the international human rights process. We conclude that Stark’s strategic link among coercive control, structural gender discrimination and inequality, and human rights is compelling, and a human rights framework could jumpstart the “stalled revolution” of feminist antiviolence organizing in the United States. However, the paradigm shift Stark advocates will not materialize without widespread mobilization of interest and understanding of human rights among domestic violence advocates and the society in general. Partner-Perpetrated Abuse as Structural and Political Stark sets forth two primary theses in coercive control. The first is what he refers to as the “domestic violence model,” which focuses on intermittent acts of physical violence against women, and it has failed to reduce partner-perpetrated misdemeanor-level assaults and homicides because it does not address the systemic causes of violence. Around the world, Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at NORTHEASTERN UNIV LIBRARY on February 15, 2012 Libal and Parekh 1479 authorities protect and offer services to victims and prosecute and punish offenders. Because the “protect and punish” strategy of the domestic violence model does not attack the structural roots of women’s vulnerability to abuse, violence against women remains epidemic. Furthermore, Stark notes that the dominant criminal justice response mischaracterizes the harms of partner-perpetrated abuse and limits the possibility of a legal defense for women who have killed their partners. Stark’s (2007) second main thesis is that the domestic violence revolution is stalled and the interventions it has spawned are largely ineffective because it has failed to come to grips with coercive control, a pattern of liberty harms that is several orders of magnitude more devastating than the traditional forms of domestic violence current laws, policies, and programs are designed to manage. (p. 397) Stark’s concept of coercive control draws empirical and juridical attention to the diverse humiliations and degradations that violate women’s personhood. Spectacular or even low-level physical violence generally follows a series of subtle personal attacks best understood as intimidation, isolation, and control. These are the real harms of partnerperpetrated abuse. Because it misperceives and misrepresents the harm of coercive control, the domestic violence model is inadequate. Therefore, Stark argues persuasively that people concerned with violence against women ought to move from thinking about and trying to prevent violent acts to focusing on coercive control and the ways that men entrap women in private life. The common refrain by abused women that “the violence wasn’t the worst part” speaks to Stark’s thesis. The domestic violence model erases “the worst part”: the incidents of control, humiliation, threat, and degradation that presage or preempt physical violence. One of Stark’s main achievements in coercive control is to articulate and conceptualize “the worst part” of partner-perpetrated abuse as the cumulative violations of women’s personhood. Thus, as a corollary to its roots in structural inequality, coercive control is harmful because men use it to prevent “women from freely developing their personhood, utilizing their capacities, or practicing citizenship” (Stark, 2007, p. 4). Just as structural inequality facilitates men’s violence toward and coercive control of women, the denial of liberty in and restriction of women to the private sphere through coercive control has serious ramifications for women in the public sphere. For Stark, the primary harm of coercive control is political, not physical; it is a deprivation of rights and resources critical to personhood and citizenship. Coercive control is the central way men undermine women’s capacities for and exercise of independent decision making, a key feature of the liberal notion of personhood that is the prerequisite for political rights, claims, entitlements, participation, and representation. Human rights norms are public norms that can account for the private harms of coercive control. Human rights theory, Stark (2007) argues, adopts “a broad notion of gender violence that includes isolation, limitations on autonomy, and other prominent features I have identified here with coercive control” (p. 219). If the harms caused by coercive control are to be taken seriously, they must conform to readily recognizable norms Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at NORTHEASTERN UNIV LIBRARY on February 15, 2012 1480 Violence Against Women 15(12) of justice and human rights. Stark argues that by understanding private harms through public norms, we will be better able to conceptualize and redress coercive control. Though extremely private, coercive control has implications for women’s public personae; moreover, women’s public rights (to liberty, autonomy, citizenship) should extend their freedom in the private realm. Coercive control, although individual men commit it in the private sphere, has consequences and causes that blur the public/private distinction. The human rights framework interests Stark (and other commentators; see, for example, MacKinnon, 2006) precisely because it reveals the androcentrism of liberalism and the public/private dichotomy that underlies it (Pateman, 1988). Paradoxically, Stark’s clarifying the public causes and consequences of men’s entrapment of women in personal life through the concept of coercive control simultaneously undermines the essentially liberal definition of human rights as established—and abrogated—vis-à-vis the state, in the public sphere. The question of whether the actions of private individuals can count as human rights violations remains a matter of considerable theoretical and practical controversy. Furthermore, in what way is the state—the quintessential public institution—responsible for and able to punish the controlling behavior of men in the private sphere? These are questions that Stark addresses in his book but that, we believe, require more exploration. The Public/Private Divide as a Challenge for Addressing Violence Against Women as a Human Rights Violation Linking coercive control with human rights violations is controversial because to treat private actions with the same political seriousness as public ones contradicts the traditional understanding of human rights. Human rights discourse, since its modern beginnings in the 17th century, has been predicated on a division between the public and the private realm. This division separates the realm of the political, the government or state, and the economy from the realm of the household, the family, and private affairs. The private realm was largely considered apolitical; it was thought to be devoid of power relations (for feminist analyses and critiques, see Okin, 1989; Pateman, 1988). Classical liberal theorists, such as John Locke (1980), envisioned human rights as the way to protect individuals from the power of the absolutist state. Locke’s liberal model remains the framework for contemporary notions of human rights. The foundational human rights document of the 20th century is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed in 1948. Following the liberal tradition, and in the wake of the global battle against fascism and totalitarianism, the drafters of the UDHR envisioned human rights as protections for individuals against the state. Only a state or someone acting on behalf of a state could violate human rights; ergo, only states could be held accountable for upholding human rights. For example, part of the official definition of torture in the Convention Against Torture is that it is done by a government official, someone acting on behalf of the government, or it is done with the government’s tacit consent.1 The exact same brutal actions when done by private citizens may be considered immoral or illegal, but they are Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at NORTHEASTERN UNIV LIBRARY on February 15, 2012 Libal and Parekh 1481 not considered torture (in the official sense) and, consequently, they are not considered human rights violations.2 Thus, the traditional and still predominant view of human rights excludes the kinds of violations that affect women specifically: violence committed in the private sphere (the home) by private actors (partners, husbands, boyfriends, others). Coercive control, as Stark describes it, is not done by state officials or people working on behalf of the state; it is committed by private individuals in the private sphere. Traditional activists have been slow to recognize it as a human rights violation because they view partner-perpetrated violence against women as private conduct. There is no mention of a prohibition against violence in the private sphere in the UDHR or any of the major UN Covenants, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)—the convention that addresses the rights of women. Although it is true that this norm is shifting, especially in the United Nations,3 there remains much resistance to recognizing violence against women as a human rights violation. States are often reluctant to accept this because doing so would impose a large burden on them to rectify the problem. States commonly dismiss being held accountable by saying that violence against women and the kinds of harms that Stark calls coercive control are matters of culture that the state is not well suited to change (Bumiller, 2008; Merry, 2006). It is not surprising that states are reluctant to accept expanding human rights norms to include violence in the private sphere. What is surprising is the resistance that has also come from some human rights theorists. Philosopher Thomas Pogge (2001), when defining human rights, cited domestic violence as paradigmatic of what a human rights violation cannot be. For Pogge, it is important to keep a strict separation between a human rights violation and acts that are merely immoral or illegal (namely, violations that occur in the private sphere). Pogge (2001) wrote, Human rights violations, to count as such, must be in some sense official, and . . . human rights thus protect persons only against violations from certain sources. Human rights can be violated by governments, certainly, and by government agencies and officials, by the general staff of an army at war and probably also by the leaders of a guerrilla movement or of a large corporation—but not by a petty criminal or by a violent husband. (p. 192, italics added) Pogge (2001) is willing to include corporations and guerrilla movements as potential violators of human rights, even though they are generally considered to be nonstate actors, but not violent husbands. Likewise, Philip Alston (cited in Binion, 2006, p. 78, footnote 30) fears that human rights principles will be diluted if they are forced to go beyond their original conception. This concern—that human rights will be weakened if they are extended too far—helps to explain the resistance to expanding human rights norms that comes from human rights theorists. It is for these reasons that Stark’s suggestion that activists, service providers, and politicians understand coercive control as a human rights violation will meet challenges, within the United States in general and the U.S. human rights community in particular. This is Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at NORTHEASTERN UNIV LIBRARY on February 15, 2012 1482 Violence Against Women 15(12) why we argue that recognizing the harms of coercive control as a human rights concern requires more sustained efforts to reframe how human rights are theorized and practiced. This, in turn, requires a more robust explanation of how a state can be held responsible for the actions of private individuals. Violence Against Women and State Accountability As noted above, one of the main obstacles to increased support of Stark’s view that coercive control is best understood as a human rights violation is the widely accepted notion that the state is not responsible for private conduct. Despite recent challenges to state sovereignty, the state remains the primary actor in human rights.4 Consequently, the following question arises: How can the state be held responsible for acts that it, or its representatives, did not commit? The traditional view is that because violence against women is committed by private actors, and the state is not directly involved, it cannot be held responsible. The state has an interest in public order and defines and prosecutes criminal violence, but those wishing to demonstrate that violence against women in the private sphere is a human rights violation must still explain how the state can be held responsible for it. There are two ways to justify state accountability for coercive control. The first is to see the state as responsible for failing to enforce human rights norms in a nondiscriminatory way. This is an attractive strategy when states fail systematically to investigate and punish already criminalized violence committed against women. A second view of responsibility holds states accountable for traditions, customs, and informal beliefs that entail a negative view of women or serve to keep women in certain devalued roles. This is a stronger view of state responsibility and consequently the hardest to demonstrate because it is difficult to understand how the state can be responsible for social norms and cultural practices. Stark’s account relies on both accounts of responsibility. We examine the validity of both accounts to determine their promise for untangling the theoretical difficulties with treating coercive control as a human rights violation. The first view of state responsibility holds that the state can be held responsible when there is a systematic failure on the part of the state to uphold the rights of women—to life, health, equality, and so on. States can be held responsible for violence in the private sphere if they either do not create effective laws, fail to uphold whatever laws they pass, or enforce the law in a discriminatory fashion. This is the view expressed in the United Nations (2007) report, “Ending Violence Against Women: Study of the Secretary-General,” which holds that “states have a duty to prevent acts of violence against women; to investigate such acts when they occur and prosecute and punish perpetrators; and to provide redress and relief to the victims” (p. iv).5 For example, if a government fails to prosecute men accused of abusing or killing their female partners, despite laws to the contrary, the state has arguably failed to uphold its duty to protect the rights of women. On those grounds, state officials can be held responsible. The legal precedent often cited for this view of responsibility is the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ 1989 decision on Velasquez Rodriguez v. Honduras. This decision held that the Honduran government was responsible for politically motivated disappearances not overtly carried out by government officials. The court found Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at NORTHEASTERN UNIV LIBRARY on February 15, 2012 Libal and Parekh 1483 the state responsible, even though state officials were not involved, because it failed to prevent the disappearances and punish those responsible. Furthermore, the court held that the Honduran government was complicit in the disappearances “for creating a climate in which such violations could occur” (Romany, 1994, p. 102). This case, then, provides a blueprint for state responsibility for failing to prevent and punish violence against women. This is the view that Stark seems to hold when he argues that coercive control is a political issue that denies women their well-established civil liberties. In his view, coercive control violates the basic human rights to liberty, security, freedom from torture, and freedoms of thought, conscience, and religion and thus requires state action. Stark argues that we should see each component of coercive control as linked to a particular rights violation. Battering violates the right to autonomy. Control violates the right to liberty. Isolation violates the right to autonomy. “Security, dignity, autonomy, and liberty are rights that are universally recognized as worthy of state protection” (Stark, 2007, p. 221), whether the violations are perpetrated by state actors or not. In this sense, a state can be said to be responsible for failing to prevent these human rights violations and for permitting the conditions in which they could occur, in the same way that the Honduran government was responsible for the disappearances not directly carried out by them. Stark is aware that this account of responsibility is not sufficient to establish coercive control as a human rights violation. As he notes, simply holding governments responsible for not fairly applying a principle of nondiscrimination is inadequate because it does not take into consideration the deeper structural problems that permit coercive control. The structural causes of coercive control raise the second view of responsibility, the one that holds states accountable for pernicious views of gender. Stark stresses that coercive control is necessarily gendered and is inextricably linked to women’s vulnerability within a society that devalues certain activities and traits associated with women. Even more strongly, Stark says that coercive control is about gender in that it relies on controlling actions and behaviors associated with femininity (e.g., cooking, cleaning, child rearing, heterosexual availability). Stark notes that there are no cases in the literature and no cases of which he is aware of a female perpetrator of coercive control. The empirical lacuna, he argues, is not because women are naturally less aggressive or controlling than men but because coercive control rests on structural gender inequalities. Simply viewing coercive control as a failure on the part of the government to protect gender-neutral rights does not get to the heart of the problem: women’s domestication and subordination. Within this view of state responsibility for the ways structural inequalities reinforce male privilege, it is hard to know when a state has met its responsibilities and when it has failed. On one reading, we can see the United States as having fulfilled, to a large extent, its responsibility to protect women from violence in the private sphere. At least this is how part of Stark’s book can be read when he details the “domestic violence revolution” in the United States and the extraordinary changes in law, police practices, responses to victims, and criminal prosecution that have been part of the revolution (Chapter 1). Clearly, the state can do more, both in terms of implementing effective programs and funding them. But it is hard to make the case that the state has systematically failed to protect women from partner-perpetrated violence, in the sense of failing to enact laws, provide funding, Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at NORTHEASTERN UNIV LIBRARY on February 15, 2012 1484 Violence Against Women 15(12) and train people who work with victims and violators (see Hanna, [this issue]). Despite unresolved questions about the precise nature of state responsibility, evolving international standards and practices now assume that realizing women’s human rights requires overcoming both structural gender inequality and partner-perpetrated violence against women. But policy makers and advocates at the international level have yet to elaborate a theory of coercive control as key to male dominance. We agree that Stark’s analysis of coercive control as a political phenomenon that exceeds “the domestic” warrants much fuller attention by those theorizing and making international human rights policy. Grappling with the implications of coercive control seems crucial to developing a deeper understanding of the pervasiveness and persistence of gender-based violence as well as to reconsidering how to achieve the aims of gender equality and social justice. American Exceptionalism and Women’s Human Rights U.S. advocates have much to offer to a transnational dialogue on human rights and state responsibility for redressing violence against women. Yet their contribution will be limited, as will be the influence of Stark’s argument about coercive control, as long as the United States refuses to participate meaningfully in the international human rights system. Even as violence against women gains recognition as a pressing human rights issue within the international community, it remains challenging to make such arguments to a U.S. audience. One impediment to U.S. recognition of coercive control as a human rights violation stems from the limited public awareness of international human rights norms and practices. This is one legacy of “American exceptionalism,” a heightened sense of national pride and confidence in the uniqueness or superiority of U.S. government and society (Thomas, 2008). The United States is a party to several important human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention Against Torture, the Genocide Convention, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. However, few Americans know these treaties exist, and even fewer understand how U.S. participation in the human rights treaty monitoring process could strengthen human rights at home. Even human rights organizations such as Amnesty International U.S.A. and Human Rights Watch have been reluctant to use the language of human rights to discuss gender violence in the United States, though they target it in other countries. Violence against women in the United States figures much less prominently than other forms of civil and political human rights violations in the rhetorical and empirical materials U.S. human rights organizations produce. Amnesty International’s annual report highlighted violence against women within the United States as a specific topic only once since the U.S. chapter joined the international Stop Violence Against Women Campaign in 2004. Separately, some Amnesty International U.S.A annual reports following 2004 noted abuse of women within the prison system or abuse of gays, lesbians, and transgendered persons by police, but in each of these instances state responsibility was clearly indicated given that the state was the alleged perpetrator of physical violence.6 Reinforcing the division between a “human rights” and “domestic violence” approach, Amnesty International U.S.A has yet to Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at NORTHEASTERN UNIV LIBRARY on February 15, 2012 Libal and Parekh 1485 partner with other domestic violence organizations to draw systematic attention to violence against women within the United States as a human rights violation. U.S.-based human rights organizations might be reluctant to present coercive control as a human rights violation because of the weakness of human rights education. Other than addressing the importance of the UDHR, most young people never learn about human rights while attending school. Although the topic is growing in popularity on university campuses, human rights discourse is a relative late comer to the U.S. higher education curriculum. Few classes exist that interrogate human rights processes as applied to the United States. In short, the U.S. public has limited concrete knowledge about human rights, the human rights treaties to which the United States is a party, and how various UN agencies work in concert with regional human rights bodies. Mainstream media do little to highlight UN monitoring of human rights concerns within the United States, signaling disinterest on the part of media outlets or the perception that Americans would not care about such issues. Public ignorance and indifference also shape the tactics of U.S. advocates and activists using the “domestic violence model.” Karen Morgaine’s (2009) recent research with representatives from national domestic violence organizations underscored that domestic violence advocates consider the “level of disconnect between the human rights framework and the U.S. public” in their work (p. 35). Some advocates were aware of the way that human rights discourse has been cast as “foreign,” “socialist,” or “communist.” Public skepticism, or even hostility, toward human rights language and rationales may in turn undermine access to funding and effective policy making at local, state, and national levels. Those working in domestic violence organizations recognize that state funding targets lawand-order approaches to the detriment of programs that might reduce social and economic inequalities, increase access to education and child care, or raise public awareness about persistent gender inequalities. Because of the “exceptionalist” legacy, which inclines Americans to see both social problems and solutions in the United States as wholly different from those in Europe or anywhere else on earth, even advocates aware of the human rights discourse and institutions are wary of framing claims for policies to stop violence against women as human rights concerns (see also Morgaine, 2007). One of the most obvious obstacles to Stark’s strategy of linking coercive control to human rights discourse is the fact that the United States is one of a handful of states that has not ratified the CEDAW. The failure to ratify is justified by U.S. political leaders in “exceptionalist” terms; they argue that “the rights of women in the United States are firmly established and therefore the United States could not benefit from entering and agreeing to respect international standards of women’s equality” (Ralph, 2008, pp. 182-183). Efforts to ratify have been led by actors who U.S. politicians cast as feminist elites with an internationalist agenda, and mainstream U.S. feminists have yet to embrace CEDAW as a means of securing women’s human rights within the United States (Bumiller, 2008; Thomas, 2008). But the lack of recognition of human rights as something that is “domestically” applicable in the United States is just one obstacle. Another barrier is the legacy of the 1980s-1990s “culture wars” and the attendant backlash against feminism, which make it difficult to grapple explicitly with everyday forms of patriarchy that make coercive control possible. Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at NORTHEASTERN UNIV LIBRARY on February 15, 2012 1486 Violence Against Women 15(12) We suspect Stark is right in his assertion that the antidomestic violence community and human rights activists in the United States would benefit from discussion of international human rights norms regarding violence against women, international law and policy recommendations at the United Nations, and the possible benefits of participating in CEDAW. Activists need to know whether reports, such as the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women’s 1998 investigation of gender-based violence in U.S. prisons (Coomaraswamy, 1999), have provided leverage at local, state, or federal levels for seeking funding and other programmatic development. It seems possible that activists could build on the recommendations of the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination to the United States to address not only state-perpetrated violence (by definition, the subject of the Special Rapporteur’s investigation; Coomaraswamy, 1999) or the effects of violence on women of color (the subject of the 2007 Amnesty International report) but also the question of violence against women more generally and partner-perpetrated abuse in particular. Stark (2007) urges advocates to develop “new organizational forms” that allow for a “political practice that is emotionally complex, activist oriented, and broadly focused on structural inequalities” (p. 373). Although adopting a human rights perspective for ending violence against women has gained currency globally in the past 30 years (Bunch, 1990), engaging the issue as a dominant human rights concern within the United States will require grassroots mobilization of interest in human rights. Ratification of CEDAW and fuller participation in international processes to recognize and protect women’s human rights would also enable United States advocates to engage in dialogue with other international agencies and actors. For example, advocates working to end violence against women at the international level would be interested in Stark’s theory of coercive control. Stark’s insights could contribute to ongoing efforts by Yakin Ertürk, the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, to spur development of indicators and measures of state progress on preventing and redressing gender violence.7 Long-standing government reluctance to expose U.S. officials to accusations of human rights violations, combined with persistent U.S. exceptionalism and isolationism, impede productive exchange between U.S. practitioners and international advocates and experts. The Obama administration and new leadership in Congress on domestic human rights concerns raise hopes for U.S. ratification of CEDAW, renewed participation in the Human Rights Council, and more consistent U.S. involvement in UN initiatives to develop policy regarding gender violence. As Stark argues, grassroots mobilization and a renewed social movement to eliminate gender inequality and violence against women in part by viewing women’s rights as human rights can generate stronger political leadership and action. Authors’ Note Both authors contributed equally to this work and authors are listed alphabetically. Acknowledgment The authors thank Lisa D. Brush for her insightful editorial comments on this article. Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at NORTHEASTERN UNIV LIBRARY on February 15, 2012 Libal and Parekh Declaration of Conflicting Interests 1487 The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article. Funding The authors received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article. Notes 1. Article 1 of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984) reads as follows: “For the purposes of this Convention, the term ‘torture’ means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person . . . when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.” This covenant was ratified by the United States in 1994. 2. A number of theorists have, of course, challenged this view, arguing that partner-perpetrated abuse constitutes torture and a human rights violation (MacKinnon, 2006) or “intimate terrorism” (Hammer, 2002; Johnson, 2008). 3. The Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women is the notable exception to the claim that violence against women is not considered a human rights violation. This, however, only came into force in 1993 and is a declaration, not a legally binding covenant. The United Nations report, “Ending Violence Against Women: Study of the SecretaryGeneral” (2006), is also important in this respect, but this too is a recent document. 4. This relationship between the government and private actors in coercive control brings up another difficulty with using human rights to frame coercive control. In the United States, there is a cultural norm that resists the presence of the state in private life. Stark (2007) wrote, “Governments alone possess the power needed to counter coercive control and ensure that women can reject abusive partners without further interference. But state involvement in personal life must be approached cautiously” (p. 363). That is, the human rights approach risks a backlash against government interference in personal life. 5. The UN study lists some of the general practices and principles that states ought to employ: “clear policies and laws; strong enforcement mechanisms; motivated and well-trained personnel; the involvement of multiple sectors; and close collaboration with local women’s groups, civil society organizations, academics and professionals. . . . The most effective [practices] include consultation with women’s groups and other civil society organizations, clear time lines and benchmarks, transparent mechanisms for monitoring implementation, indicators of impact and evaluation, predictable and adequate funding streams, and integration of measures to tackle violence against women in programs in a variety of sectors” (United Nations, 2007, p. v). 6. One exception is a recent report on violence against Native American and Alaskan Native women and corresponding letter campaign calling for improved health care and programs to assure the overall health of native sexual assault victims (Amnesty International, 2007). Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at NORTHEASTERN UNIV LIBRARY on February 15, 2012 1488 Violence Against Women 15(12) 7. The current list of indicators does not conform to all Stark’s criteria for coercive control, but it does address the need for gender equality as a condition for eliminating violence against women in all spheres of public and private life (Ertürk, 2008). References Amnesty International. (2007). Maze of injustice: The failure to protect indigenous women from sexual violence in the USA. London: Author. Retrieved August 1, 2008, from http://www .amnestyusa.org/women/maze/report.pdf Binion, G. (2006). Human rights: A feminist perspective. In B. Lockwood (Ed.), Women’s rights: A Human Rights Quarterly reader (pp. 70-86). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Bumiller, K. (2008). In an abusive state: How neoliberalism appropriated the feminist movement against sexual violence. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bunch, C. (1990). Women’s rights as human rights: Towards a re-vision of human rights. Human Rights Quarterly, 12, 486-498. Coomaraswamy, R. (1999). Integration of the human rights of women and the gender perspective: Violence against women. New York: United Nations. Retrieved July 3, 2008, from http://www.unhchr.ch/Huridocda/Huridoca.nsf/0/7560a6237c67bb118025674c004406e9?O pendocument Ertürk, Y. (2008). Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social, and cultural, including the right to development. Geneva: United Nations Human Rights Council. Retrieved July 15, 2008, from http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/ G08/104/47/PDF/G0810447.pdf?OpenElement Gamson, W. A. (1988). Political discourse and collective action. In B. Klandermans, H. Kriesi, & S. Tarrow (Eds.), International social movement research, Vol. 1 (pp. 219-244). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Hammer, R. (2002). Anti-feminism and family terrorism: A critical feminist perspective. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Johnson, M. P. (2008). A typology of domestic violence: Intimate terrorism, violent resistance, and situational couple violence. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Locke, J. (1980). The second treatise of government. In C. B. Macpherson (Ed.). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. MacKinnon, C. A. (2006). Are women human? And other international dialogues. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Merry, S. E. (2006). Human rights and gender violence: Translating international law into local justice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Morgaine, K. (2007). Domestic violence and human rights: Local challenges to a universal framework. Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 34, 109-129. Morgaine, K. (2009). “You can’t bite the hand . . . ” Domestic violence and human rights. Affilia, 24, 31-43. Okin, S. M. (1989). Justice, gender, and the family. New York: Basic Books. Pateman, C. (1988). The sexual contract. New York: Polity Press. Pogge, T. (2001). How should human rights be conceived? In P. Hayden (Ed.) The philosophy of human rights (pp. 187-210). St. Paul, MN: Paragon House. Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at NORTHEASTERN UNIV LIBRARY on February 15, 2012 Libal and Parekh 1489 Ralph, R. E. (2008). Back to the basics: Making a commitment to women’s human rights. In W. F. Schulz (Ed.), The future of human rights: U.S. policy for a new era (pp. 176-192). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Romany, C. (1994). State responsibility goes private: A feminist critique of the public/private distinction in international human rights law. In R. J. Cook (Ed.), Human rights of women: National and international perspectives (pp. 86-115). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Snow, D. A., Rochford, E. B., Jr., Worden, S. K., & Benford, R. D. (1986). Frame alignment processes, micromobilization, and movement participation. American Sociological Review, 51, 464-482. Stark, E. (2007). Coercive control: How men entrap women in personal life. New York: Oxford University Press. Thomas, D. (2008). Against American supremacy: Rebuilding human rights culture in the United States. In C. Soohoo, C. Albisa, & M. F. Davis, (Eds.), Bringing human rights home: From civil rights to human rights (Vol. 2, pp. 1-23). New York: Praeger. United Nations. (2007). Ending violence against women: From words to action, study of the Secretary-General. New York: Author. Bios Kathryn Libal received her PhD in anthropology at the University of Washington. She is an assistant professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Connecticut. Her research and publications have focused on women’s and children’s rights movements and social welfare, especially in Turkey. She is currently examining the politics of humanitarian assistance, nongovernmental advocacy, and the rights of Iraqis displaced following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Serena Parekh is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut, jointly appointed to the Human Rights Institute. She works on social and political philosophy, philosophy of human rights, continental philosophy, and feminist theory. Her book, Hannah Arendt and the Challenge of Modernity (2008), was published by Routledge. She is the book review editor for the Journal of Human Rights. Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at NORTHEASTERN UNIV LIBRARY on February 15, 2012