Calling out the State: Southeast Europe, Human Rights, and Gender-based Violence

• In Event: 507 - Section on Human Rights Paper Session. Human Rights, Social Policy, and the State

Abstract

This paper assesses present-day movements in Southeast Europe to combat violence against women as they engage the boomerang instruments of human-rights regimes in confrontation with their resident nation-states. Through the recent history of women’s movements in Albania, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Turkey, I review the societal contexts in which the movements are emerging within new global alignments and ideological shifts towards a normative hegemony of a human-rights canon. I analyze how the current moment offers an opportunity structure in which the state is particularly malleable, given these countries’ ambitions toward European Union membership and global integration, and outline continued barriers to the achievement of activist goals.

Author

• Susan C. Pearce, East Carolina University